Responsible Leadership

Why is education and awareness raising so important?

2009-12-11T11:04:00.004+08:00

Well, first and foremost, consider the issue of family planning: there is no doubt developing countries need to lower their birth rates dramatically to reduce the social, environmental and economic burden of providing education, healthcare, food, water and jobs amongst other things, to so many people. For sure, some of the poor in those countries understand this and want to have less children but cannot, for reasons including sexual pressure from males, lack of access to (or awareness of) contraceptives and reproductive health knowledge.

But, for many they are not aware of the impacts their children will have: the impacts on the child, on the parents, on the wider family, on the country, or on the environment. They have not done the calculations: if they have they probably still believe that having more children helps provide for the family in the medium-term, and for their parents in the long-term. Overlooked is the real short-term needs as well as a sophisticated understanding of longer-term impacts from splitting land up between children for example. Of course it is on the larger-scale where most of the problems lie, and this falls to the government to deal with (i.e. in providing social services, employment, food etc).

Thus it is hugely important for governments to take the lead, for their own self-interest, in in-expensive education and awareness campaigns for their citizens to better understand the impacts their children might have. Without creating this desire, through role-models, peer pressure, media, peer-to-peer education and so forth (varied and thought-out campaigns utilising all available channels), the poor may never even want to limit their family size.

Once such a desire is created, then specific education on family planning and contraception can be provided along with increased access to a variety of contraceptions and other longer-term social activities to address larger issues such as coerced sex, female empowerment, poverty etc.

Will you have to pay for climate change damage?

2009-06-12T08:12:00.001+08:00

Businesses have long been acutely aware of the implications of breaking laws or having adverse impacts on others: punishment normally ensues. Recently the latter category has moved up the agenda with tobacco companies being held responsible for the health of non-smokes affected by smoke, for example.

The last 2 years have seen less debate and more agreement on the human rights impacts of environmental destruction on local communities. Where there is a proven link businesses have been required to make compensation and their reputation has suffered, although most businesses fight such legal claims and such claims can take several years to be resolved.

Now governments are establishing climate change policies with an acceptance of the impacts of climate change, and such policies are impacting businesses directly (and legally). It is safe to assume that there is now agreement that hgih emitting countries and companies are responsible for the impacts of their emissioins, so it is only a matter of time until those affected by climate change seek legal recourse. Though such legal actions might take years to be resolved, the defendents must recognize such claims as liabilities and prepare accordingly.

Will such liabilities, risks and, ultimately, financial costs, lead to both companies and governments reassessing the negative impacts of their business and accounting for these as real costs in their business strategies, in addition to their current Kyoto and future Copenhagen commitments with financial implications (from Emissions Trading)?

Will we see massive lawsuits against highly polluting companies/countries, particularly by groups in developing countries? Will companies consider the costs of these in their strategies and will that make any material difference to their strategies? Could entire businesses or countries be forced to change by those in developing countries, who rarely have a voice?

Tell.... the truth

2009-04-22T17:43:00.002+08:00

Transparency and Accountability are great concepts and are tremendously popular words nowadays, but, working in the area of Corporate Responsibility reporting, but with reference to general communications from companies and other organizations, it is clear to me that it does not matter how much you say, or what you say.

What matters, is that what you say is true; but even then, what about what you do not say? It is perfectly fine to say the truth, but not say certain things, and thus, in effect you are not telling the truth -but how do you say everything (of course, being truthful about everything)?

This is the challenge, and one complicated by the fact that revealing such information may well be commercially sensitive or create difficult situations for those involved. The easiest answer is to work out what you need to say that people want to know about, as much as possible -and for each of these topics have a group of people who can represent those who might want to know the information and can decide what information should be released or not to ensure the overall picture is fair.

You might also want a second group of people to then be able to actually know all that information: the bad, the good, the sensitive etc, and be able to judge that what was said is a fair reflection or not.

Now doing both will be very hard and time consuming, but might be necessary in some situations, where it is important to rebuild trust after having lost it. In reality, no-one will go to such extremes to prevent losing trust, but will after they lose trust and get desperate!

Each organization needs to tell the truth, and that requires telling the good, the bad and the ugly. If not, no-one will trust what you say, and that seems to be the problem with business now. Business has not tried hard enough to say the truth, and now wonders why no-one trusts business! Business has to get its act together, and find a solution.

Mandatory Sustainability Reporting?

2009-03-16T09:26:00.002+08:00

Last week the Global Reporting Initiative that has led the movement behind Sustainability Reporting (which goes by several other names as well) called for reporting to be mandatory in light of the recent financial crisis and even lower lack of trust in business that this is generating. This is a real change from their previous position that reporting should be voluntary; though they did encourage reporters to use certain criteria.

However, I think what needs to happen is not just for reporting to be compulsory, but that the contents of Reports needs to be mandated in one specific (and new) way. Every company should have to set a level of risk and be required to report any event or activity that is above that level from both a historic perspective, and future perspective.

Thus a Report would say:
"Last year there were 9 events or actions (etc) that represented a significant risk to the business. These 9 events were xxx and we responded by yyy, and to prevent these happening again we have/will do zzz"

"We expect this year, that the major risks will be around ffff, ggg and hhh. Thus we are doing iiii to prevent them".

Right now Reports are too opportunity focused and are not really providing investors (or other stakeholders) with a real assessment of their CR related risks (or indeed business risks, depending on how you define CR). There needs to be a degree of honesty from companies about what has gone wrong in order to ensure stakeholders the company is dealing with this.

In this sense, CR reports could be a very useful, strategic and forward-looking, activity that is adding real value. I still struggle to find many reports that mention any of the negative aspects of a company's work.

Whether the kind of CR report I mention needs to be publicly available is not particularly important. Of course the report needs to be (legally) available to regulators and to investors -and as such, this report does not need to be succinct -instead it needs to be comprehensive and large companies are going to need to, presumably, have long reports if there were so many activities that breached the threshold (that should be set by the company through a stakeholder dialogue that meets some minimum legal level).

If a company chooses to make the report publicly available (and easily navigable online), this would be a bonus; though I would expect certain contents would need to be kept our of the public-eye for privacy, regulatory and competitive reasons.

2009-03-01T09:27:00.002+08:00

As previously proposed, many of us 'rich' are unable to take responsibility for our own lives. We need the government to build barriers in the road to stop us crossing the road when it is unsafe, we need companies to reduce their promotion of bad foods, as we cannot stop ourselves eating too much of them, we need regulations to restrict smoking, because we smoke too much. This is not new, but it is depressing. However, we are educated, and we know what choices we are making and the sacrifices we are making.

The poor though, are not as well educated, so do they have an excuse for making such bad choices, which an interesting article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review proposes they regularly do, with significant negative impacts. As the author notes:

The consequences of bad choices are bad for everyone, but even worse for the poor, who lack the resources—financial, psychological, social, and political—to compensate for their errors.

A recent field study in Sri Lanka reveals that more than 10 percent of poor male respondents regularly spend their entire incomes on alcohol.

More generally, poor people “could easily save more without getting less nutrition by spending less on alcohol, tobacco, and food items such as sugar, spice, and tea,” Banerjee and Duflo conclude. For example, the typical poor household in Udaipur could spend up to 30 percent more on food if it did not spend money on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals.

Evidently education is not the answer to this conundrum, since the rich have education too -or, a fairer comparison might be that the poor in the rich countries have good education (comparatively) but still make the same mistakes. Or is the answer that our education, one that is influenced by school, peers, families, media and more, all geared towards taking away our sense of personal responsibility, or focusing too much on short-term, or personal, gain? If it is, then this could be changed. Whereas, if this is more genetic and evolutionary, then it might be harder to change. Food for thought...

Do the right thing

2009-02-22T19:29:00.004+08:00

There has always been a strong sense amongst the CSR movement, that doing the right thing is the right thing to do. If it does not make profits, does it make it the wrong thing to do? Why do we need to have to have a better reason to do something than the reason that it is the right thing to do?

Well now, in the current crisis, it is pretty clear that the right thing to do is going to work out as the right thing to do in the future, even if it is not clear now. So, if you are looking for a reason to do the right thing, then you need to remember that you don't need a reason -and if someone requires a reason, then you can tell them that the reason will be apparent in the future, as those banks that did the right thing and have still survived have now realized!

Mallen Baker's blog article covers this, and some other nice tips on responsible leadership here

Building communities

2008-12-20T18:03:00.002+08:00

Community, to Block [the author], is about membership, feeling part of something larger than oneself, feeling at home, relating to the rest of the world — and participating in, owning, and being accountable for what one creates with others. It matters not whether the community is a small group, a neighborhood, a city, a multinational corporation, a global governance organization, or any other structure. Organizing any human enterprise is an exercise in developing community.

Block has applied rigor and years of experience in honing his understanding of how people can work together to create what they need and desire, “a future distinct from the past.” He focuses on the structures of belonging, giving detailed attention to the many elements of design, location, and process that contribute to having productive conversations, gatherings, and relationships. He says, for instance, that conversations should be structured around questions that evoke not answers, but commitment, accountability, and the possibility for transformation. These include questions of invitation (not mandate, coercion, or persuasion); questions about possibilities, how we wish to live in the future (not problems to be solved); questions about ownership that lead people to accept responsibility; questions about dissent that leave space for authentic doubt and reservations; questions about commitment that evoke promises and accountability for observable results; and questions about gifts that surface what we and others can bring to the quest for a different future.

Very interesting perspective here, especially in light of the traditional view that we should identify problems and try to solve them. Here we need to inspire people to come together to imagine something better, give them a stake in developing a successful outcome, encourage alternative opinions and create mutual accountability and commitment which should be recognized. Some lessons to be learned.

taken from a review of Best Business Books 2008: Capitalism and Community, by strategy + business

Economic downturn great news for the Planet

2008-11-07T13:56:00.003+08:00

With less money to buy things, people are going to buy less and use less. This is great; there will be less construction, less need for paper and packaging, less automobiles and less of many other things... Not the best way for society to consume less, but the most effective!

There will be a need to keep an eye out for shortcuts being taken to make products cheaper by using less sustainable production techniques or using less sustainable materials. Hopefully pressure from NGOs and the media, as well as the recent spurt in transparency through online campaigns, will restrict the success of companies that try such shortcuts.

In the meantime, it can be expected that with prices of carbon being factored in, prices of water and transport increasing, and new ideas to integrate the environmental costs of products; prices for many products will continue to increase, further reducing consumption. With otherwise downwards pressure on inflation, this will be a good thing, and something consumers might be able to weather (unlike last year when inflation was so high).

Discovering what will be next

2008-10-16T00:07:00.002+08:00

Yes, CSR is the answer to preventing the next crisis, because CSR if generally perceived as being about being responsible to stakeholders -which requires knowing what stakeholders think responsible is. And if you find some stakeholders that can define irresponsible -and related them to your company somehow; then that is where the risks are!

Stakeholder engagement, though, generally starts with talking to the main stakeholders and working out what the big issues are. Then engagement goes on two parallel tracks; one looking at engaging at those issues in depth across all stakeholders, and the other looking into depth at the key stakeholders (across the range of issues affecting them).

But for this to be effective, the little voices, the little stakeholders need to be heard. The one stakeholder that said that debt is bad, that debt and consumerism and endless retail growth is not sustainable -that stakeholder needs to be found and listended to, as wacky as that person might sound like. In reality there were not many stakeholders that said that debt was bad. The investors liked it if they saw greater profit (mistakenly it turns out); the government liked it if created more wealth (aka debt) and stimulated economic activity (aka unsustainable spending); customers liked it (who does not like buying?) and so on.

Finding the issues that will affect you, especially in an era where are few unhappy people can cause a big problem through the internet, is the nexy step for all the super-advanced companies with excellent stakeholder engagement. Yes they are aware of the current issues stakheolders have, but they are not doing well enough to spot the future ones -by talking to the minority stakeholders, who get crowded out from aggregated responses.

Go engage, but engage beyond the local level issues, the global issues, the 'expert opinion' issues and start to explore other industries that you never dreamed would affect you. Go explore the issue that no-one thinks is important -try to see if you can find any reason that it might be important. Go and spot trends through new media, employees and academics. Don't just predict and anticipate the future: predict and anticipate the issues in that future.

CSR: back to basics

2008-10-13T23:05:00.003+08:00

A few years ago, after a mistake in Texas cost BP its reputation, a bunch of money, and sadly the lives of several of its employees, BP had to go back to basics. It had to do two things: Firstly, obey the law and create a culture of obeying the law and doing the right thing. Secondly it had to re-understand risk. BP had done a good job of looking for opportunity but had forgotten about the risk element of CSR.

Now, a financial crisis has hit a lot of companies in the same way. Granted the risks that have unfolded are much more unforeseen than those that affected BP, but none-the-less, companies should have, through stakeholder engagement internally and externally, foreseen this as a risk and taken certain preventative measures. They have not, and the results are serious -not just a PR problem -for many companies they mark the end of the line, so to speak.

Several years ago SustainAbility reported that the economic dimension of the Triple Bottom Line was not being assessed with as much rigour as the Social and Environmental. They pointed out that most companies dealt with their financial reports separately and that the leading companies were looking at the economic impacts of their work, through suppliers, employees, trade etc. A few companies had looked at issues like taxation properly but, apart from that, not much else was being looked at critically.

Now we have found what they were missing: they were not finding that some critical risks to their firms, such as lack of capital, lack of cash and so on, were real risks. Risks that they needed to address. They did not. When such issues developed into reality the enterprises folded. They'd got so excited using CSR for business benefit they had forgotten about using it to minimise risk. Risk being something that is hard to quantify, but necessary, as we have found it recently.

So what will be next? What other crucial assumptions do businesses make, assumptions which provide risks, if something happens? Many companies have looked at terrorism and political risks; many have looked at pandemics too. Some have looked at oil and energy and transport prices; others have looked at trade barriers. Of all the key inputs, money, people and resources are the most important. Ironic that companies had neglected to really deal with the money input, of all the inputs.

Next might be some of the key resources or secondary inputs (inputs needed for money, people or resources). Likely contenders are water, food and energy, but there may be other likely issues too, by sector. The lesson for business is to take a long hard and deep look at the risks their businesses face from all angles; social, environmental, economic, political and anything else they can think of. In particular they need to understand what risks affect their stakeholders that might alter their stakeholder's actions, and thus affect the business: beyond employees and customers, think regulators, civil society or competitors.

What worth is CSR Assurance?

2008-08-31T18:55:00.002+08:00

Recently a report came out about assuring CSR reports (i.e. verifying that the information in the reports are true) which was funded by CSR Assurance companies (hmmm), saying that not enough companies are assuring their CSR reports (surprise, surprise).

I would like to proffer that CSR assurance is actually pretty pointless and useless (in of itself) because:
1) How much time or effort do any of the assurers put into looking at any of the data to see if it is true; is it even possible to verify half the data anyway?
2) Is there any legal liability for assurers, like there is for assuring regular financial reports?
3) Does the assurance mean anything to the reader at all, or add any value to a CSR report?

Question 3 is rather interesting, because the best CSR reports now include all kinds of other methods of assurance, though not technically 'assurance' which for me are much more interesting and useful. These include comments from concerned employees or customers, (unedited) comments from critical stakeholder councils and even comments from a CSR expert on whether the key Reporting principles have been followed or not (e.g. GRI has several principles including materiality). Others include reports from SRI experts or other relevant shareholders.

All of these comments mean more than a statement that the numbers are correct, which i truly doubt, since many of the most important numbers are hard to measure and the rest rely on self-reporting from the company anyway (rather than some auditor going across the world to check on what the exact waste is from any particular machine and whether that is what it has been claimed to be).

So, nothing wrong with assurance, but i do not think it adds much value to a CSR report for external readers, and probably does not (in of itself) help a company improve itself internally. At least, in the press release, they admit that the quality of assurance varies widely, and also point out that many of the assurers are also the ones who help prepare the report!

Responding to signals and feedback

2008-08-25T22:24:00.003+08:00

One of the most striking concepts in Diamond's book is that of the rulers and elite of a society becoming too insular from the actual society and thus unaware of the signals of pending problems; once they realise, it is too late to change.

In this sense, we must wonder whether the elite of society would be the ones most able to survive a collapse (and if so, they have no motivation to prevent a collapse) or whether they too would suffer.

Somewhat related to this is that it seems businesses are being more responsive to the trends in society than elite or politicians are; maybe because businesses are thinking long-term and elite or politicians are not. Businesses might, though not democratically elected, be more responsible to their share holders and customers and employees (through active media, NGOs etc) and thus responsive to changes. However the problem with business is, though they need a successful civilization/society/economy in order to exist, their focus is not on the success of society, their focus will be on profits or some other metric that is rather selfish (as with selfish, nationalistic, governments).

In this sense are the current systems of global governance helping or hindering in any improvements in our responses to the obvious destruction we are causing?

It would seem that the global formal and informal governance systems are not up to the job, but they themselves will protect themselves (and resist too many calls for change or competition for governing institutions) and we will be unable to solve global problems collectively, or as individuals.

Collapse of civilizations

2008-08-25T21:51:00.003+08:00

Jared Diamond has moved on from Guns, Germs and Steel, which gave an account of what factors influenced the growth and development of civilisations in certain parts of the World and not in others. Collapse, looks at why civilisations, well, collapse..and why some do not. Well worth at watching his lecture, available online here.

A few key points include Jared's 5 main reasons for collapse:
1) Human environmental impacts
2) Climate change (and how that impacts environmental services provision)
3) Hostile neighbors (to take advantage of internal weaknesses)
4) Trading partners (as the society may be too dependent on successes or failures of neighboring societies)
5) A Society's institutions being able to perceive and solve, or ignoring and failing to solve the other 4 problems.

He also discusses some of the differences between the past and the present such as:
-We have more people with more potent destructive technologies that can cause more destruction more quickly.
-Faster communications and transportation of good and bad things like terrorists, immigrants and diseases.
-Societies cannot really collapse in isolation as there are likely to be consequences elsewhere, including remote countries like Somalia.

On the other hand, greater hope comes from the faster and greater spread of knowledge for us to learn from mistakes and successes around the World now, and in the past. This gives us the chance to know what we are doing and gives the choice to continue or to change.

Some things he seems to believe are not as important include cultural differences and political system differences, which is quite interesting. I have not read the book but am keen too. In particular I find 5) the most interesting issue.

In bad times...

2008-08-05T22:32:00.004+08:00

If the Tragedy of the commons is a real problem, and has been especially so in recent times as everyone gets rich from the growing economy and if there has been a dash for wealth almost everywhere; a dash to cut up the 'economic pie' so to speak... well then, in bad times will the situation be worse or better? Will people get desperate and have even greater disregard for common property?

It seems to me that in good times we are selfish and in bad times, even more selfish. But there could be a tiny chance a few people might realise that if we all act less selfish we could all get to better times much quicker. The chances of that happening? Well, we just have to look at the past ... and hope the future is brighter!

Personally there is always some hope, as Margaret Mead said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Indeed, the only people who have changed the world are people -and people is a collective noun for many persons, which is a group of ONE person. ONE person who starts something, carries something on, supports something or does something... we must hope we can realise a balance between each of us acting as individuals (hopefully for good) and each of us releasing our responsibility and acting as a group (generally not for good).

Business approaches and Traditional approaches needed, to reduce poverty

2008-07-27T15:53:00.004+08:00

Yes, i totally agree with Paul Polak, Jacqueline Novogratz, CK Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Nancy Barry and the others who think a new, business, approach is needed to help combat poverty. It is, for sure. It helps create new products that the poor need and can afford, and can access. It helps create jobs. It empowers the poor and unleashes them do work hard to reduce their own poverty. It can be sustainable. It can be scalable. There are many many books and reports written about this approach, how it is changing the world, how it is changing the business world and how it is making aid and traditional appraoches to poverty reduction/eradication a waste of effort, time and money.

However, as much as I agree with them, I have to say that there are a number of things that determine poverty, and the business approach will nto solve all of them. It will not help put children in school, not will it get rid of corruption, or write laws that protect citizens, or protect citizens by enforcing those laws (though business could play creative roles in all of these, in some way).

Aid is still needed -more aid and better applied. Governance is a key issue, and one, unfortunately, where so little progress is being made. Ultimately irregardless of how one tries to reduce poverty, be it through aid, loans, business etc... a country needs a good government that sets the right framework for a country (i.e. laws that are implemented), does what is best for its citizens and so forth.

With issues like poverty and Climate Change, where incredibly fast progress needs to be made on a massive scale, there is a need to engage governments and improve the aid agenda (where actually some progress has been made, despite constant environmental degradation, increasingly unfair trade, increasing population growth, wars, greater incidence of diseases amongst others) AND for business to utilise business approaches to poverty reduction. Let's pay more attention to the business approach, but not forget the need for aid and 'traditional approaches to poverty reduction'.

Blanket statements criticising 'traditional approaches' as useless, are not useful. Instead one needs to see how they have helped and learn lessons to improve traditional approaches, and use their lessons in business approaches. Ultimately business will find it very hard (though possible) to thrive when there is no effective government creating an effective marketplace.

Why don't we care about Climate Change?

2008-07-27T15:08:00.002+08:00

Dan Gilbert gives 4 reasons (PAIN):
1) Personal: Our brain cares more about tangible, social (i.e. people) threats that can be personified
2) Abrupt: Our brain cares a lot more about current threats than potential threats
3) Immoral: Our brain cares about unethical threats to us, and no-one has anyone in particular to blame Climate Change on, or any reason to see it as unethical.
4) Now: Our brain does not effectively notice slow changes, and therefore cares less

We are sleeping in a burning bed, and our senses are not aware of it!

Desperate...

2008-07-26T17:54:00.002+08:00

We are getting desperate, having messed up the planet so badly, and continuing to do so, and without any real hope of any significant behaviour change until it is too late, we are having to rely on technology to save us from ourselves, technologies like geoengineering (which would change oru atmosphere artificially) or genetic engineering (to create organisms to generate energy from CO2).

Tragedy of the commons and climate change

2008-07-26T13:42:00.003+08:00

Sustainable Development is really about the Tragedy of the Commons: the concept that when there is a common resource, each of us seeks to exploit it so much, that it becomes over exploited and thus depeleted so we all lose out.

This can be applied to almost anything and ultimately is an issue of how much competition is good, and how much collaboration is good. Nowadays there are numerous new ideas that are part-competition and part-collaboration, not the least the concept of open-source where something is created and then given away for free, or the concepts of wikis where contributors help create something for free, because they recognise that the value of what is created by all contributors will be beneficial to everyone.

As leaders we need to explore these problems and seek new solutions; we also need to examine waht solutions work and imitate them elsewhere. We need to be fast, we are depleting all known resources too fast. There are very few cases where we have collectively worked together to stop a particular resource being depleted, or even begun to rehabilitate it. Despite knowing that deforrestation is bad, deforrestation is getting worse, globally, not better. Despite knowing our sources of non-renewable energy are limited, we are using more, not less, of them. Despite knowing our population is growing too fast and each of us are consuming more than the planet has to offer, the global population continues to expand and individual consumption continues to expand.

In rare cases, we have managed to overcome issues, collectively, such as the hole in the Ozone layer, that is now no longer getting worse; but this was an easy issue to overcome, one that was really about technology and uncontroverisal political decisions. Even in cases of war, with real-time, immediate consequences of death, we are unable to solve collective action problems. The 'we' is both the losers, the outsiders and the winners.

The search still goes on for ways for each of us to understand the long-term negative impacts of our current actions on our own future. Not just on our children's future -but our own future. Can new forms of media and communication lead to new forms of collaboration, or will they lead to new forms of competition? What mix of collaboration and competition is requried to solve our problems -when is competition better and when is collaboration better, what happens when some want to compete and some want to collaborate?

This is the problem we have with climate change -where some see they lose they refuse to collaborate, but others see that without collaboration everyone will lose. The solution is to ignore the past, forget the past and move on. This is not easy, but is the only solution. We cannot complain about others being richer or better-off. We need to all work together to ensure a better future for us all, without worrying about the past, because if we continue to complain, criticize and seek retribution or compensation, we will not move forward. This is the problem -not just that we cannot see long-term, but that we cannot forget the past. That, the problem with human nature, is the real tragedy.

Can Green be a sign of status?

2008-07-26T13:37:00.000+08:00

There comes a point when people move beyond buying out of neccessity and convenience to start buying for greater luxury and status. In China and parts of Asia it's fair to say that the environmental footprint of the poor is fairly low, but the middle classes is higher. Although many that buy cars argue it is a necessary purchase, the reality is that many cars are as much a status symbol than a neccessity. It is reasonable to expect comfort to be an important decision factor but is it unreasonable for status to be such an important factor?

For the upper middle classes, apart from the car, the choice of accommodation also affects one's environmental footprint. Again, though location and comfort are important factors, it is a matter of status: how one's spouse, parents, peers or business partners view your choices matters.

In travelling between Beijing and Shanghai, though the trains' sleeper carriages do contain their fair share of business travellers, most business travellers fly. It can be important to spend the night with one's family, but apart from that, taking the train has many benefits: the stations are on the subway so travelling to/from the station is not just cheap but there is no need to worry about traffic jams. The journey itself is comfortable and efficient -with a few hours to work or read before sleeping. In fact many business travellers i speak to have just never considered the train and are not against taking it, but are just used to flying and are not motivated enough to change.

There is absolutely no status to be gained by being 'green' in China. No-one is proud of taking the train, no-one is proud of buying a smaller (though still comfortable) car and no-one is proud to buy a green apartment. In fact though companies are proud of their environmentally friendly offices, none of them encourage staff to not fly. There are many schemes that work elsewhere to encourage cycling (i.e. suitable cycle storage and showers at work) or public transport (i.e. free public transport cards and financial incentives to use them). It is not cool to cycle to work.

What is needed is a shift in how status is gained, which is not just about being seen in a positive light for being green (like many who buy hybrid cars in the West) but more about being seen ina negative light for not being green. We might start to see this change if public opinion shows distaste at those using plastic bags, instead of a re-usable one. A few are buying fashionable re-usable bags now to seem cool, apparently. but this is not mainstream.

If it becomes mainstream, could it spread? Could 'green' be the real status gainer in China, or will it just affect the youth? If a sense of shame starts to develop that would be great, and maybe have a wider affect than the positive status of being 'green'.

In reality though this needs to lead to something bigger...to the demand for greener cars, greener apartments, environmentally friendly clothing and so on. How can we make 'green' a status symbol beyond the fringes of society, so that demand affects supply leading to retailers, developers, salesmen etc developing greener products, because of the demand for them. How can we create this demand for green life? How can we start to make it embarassing not to use a reusable bag, to fly, to consume too much (waste food or buy too many clothes)?

Although this is yet to even affect the 'cool crowd' in the West it might not be unreasonable to target the 'status' crowd in China (as well as the 'cool' crowd; though the 'status' crowd are those with a bigger impact). It is not just the plastic bag example that could offer a glimmer of hope. The other example is of course the earthquake where amongst the 'status crowd' you were looked down upon if you did not donate a certain amount or attend certain fundraisers. If it was possible to create such an atmosphere because of the earthquake -and that, like china's current environmental crisis, also had no direct impact on the 'status' crowd, is it possible?

The situations are not the same, but there is some hope.

Who is pressurising Chinese companies in Africa?

2008-07-26T13:32:00.001+08:00

What comes into my mind when reading some of the endless articles of Chinese companies irresponsible practices in Africa, like this from Bloomberg news, is not the reasons why it is happening (of course there is pressure to keep costs low and pressure to access resources), not if Chinese companies are any worse than Western companies (either past or present) or other 'developing countries' companies (presumably not that much difference, but more Chinese companies out there and China is in the spotlight more) -but i wonder what the people running these companies are thinking.

I am a strong believer that people are inherently good, though also selfish. This thus means many people will put themselves over others, but if it is a matter of 'a bit more wealth' vs 'death for a child', i am mystified how people can, as human beings, make such a choice. The answer might be that such a choice never happens -that poor decisions create accidents, rather than people purposely acting irresponsibly knowing the impact it will have. Besides, if it is not forced labour, if it was so bad, wouldn't the workers find work elsewhere?

Is not this just the same as has happened (and still does happen, though not so explicitly any more) in China for decades? If China has improved (somewhat), will Africa improve too? Why did China improve and what lessons might this hold for Africa? Does Africa need a strong state to establish and enforce laws (though China's strong state only selectively enforced its own laws)?

Does Africa need more pressure from the West (presumably this makes no difference, as there has been pressure for a long time with no impact) or does Africa (note, the use of the term Africa in this post is inappropriate, but we will use it for simplicity) need other forms of pressure -from customers (Western end-customers might care; direct Chinese middle-men or end-Chinese customers probably do not care), from media (Chinese media will rarely criticize Chinese companies), from Chinese NGOs (are there any that do this kind of thing, apart from INGOs in China?) or from other groups..... I have to say, it does not look good.

The pressures that helped China clean up its act somewhat (some will say that it is still getting worse in China!) do not exist in Africa, so I am wondering how can we encourage some kind of pressure...from Chinese NGOs on Chinese companies, from Chinese media on Chinese companies, from Chinese government on Chinese companies or from any other source of pressure -ideally inside China and ideally with some actual leverage on Chinese companies in Africa. Any ideas?

On a slightly different note, many of the companies that get into the news about Africa are either state-owned, privately owned or micro entrepreneurs. What is the role of the Chinese government in monitoring these activities? Is there a role at all? For some activities, where there is funding from the Chinese state (through the export-import bank) there is a clear role and clear line of responsibility, and the Exim bank, as it is known, is claiming to take its responsibility seriously (though not as seriously as other International banking institutions that have signed up to the Equator Principles and similar collaborative agreements).

For the others operating in China, the government is unlikely to see a need to interfere at all. There is no such 'Alien Tort Act' for Chinese companies operating overseas, as there is for American companies; which can be prosecuted in the USA for irresponsible activities outside the USA. Any lawyers out there know of any Chinese legislation that could be use, say by an INGO, inside China to sue the companies mentioned in the Bloomberg report?

The limits of strategic community programs

2008-07-26T13:27:00.001+08:00

In Asia businesses are starting to focus their community programs, make them 'strategic', leverage their limited resources as much as possible, instigate lasting and large-scale change, increase their community investments as the region's importance to their business grows and explore ways of distinguishing their programs from the rest as well as a number of other trends. This article aims to identify the limits of such trends in order to guide businesses as they develop their programs.

Best practise for an NGO: Identify the problem, identify the best solution, get the resources required to implement solution, use resources when needed (i.e. may vary depending on implementation progress).

Best practise for a business: Identify a problem related to the business (i.e. in the business's local community, related to business's line of work etc), identify what the benefit is to the business to adressing the problem, identify what resources the business has that can be used to address the problem (and that bring the desired benefits), provide said resources. Attach strings to ensure resources are used as benefits the business (i.e. location of implementation), as convenient for the business (i.e. volunteers) and to ensure appropriate use of resources.

Though the above statements are very brief, they describe the dilemna that exists whereby the way an NGO and the way a business addresses problems are very different, and can even be come incompatible in some cases.

Businesses should benefit from their community programs and they should seek to utilise their specific resources as best they can, but this may only be part of the solution. It is rare a business has all the resources to meet the NGO's needs -or the willingness to provide all of those resources.

The result is an imperfect provision of resources to the NGO, restricting an NGO's ability to tackle the problem as it would wish -but this is accepted as a sacrifice in order to get neccesary resources. In some cases NGOs can seek multiple resource providers and combine them, but in many cases this does not work due to business's requirements for 'exclusivity', location specificity, different financial and impact reporting requirements and so on.

Now this situation might only occur for so-called 'strategic' community programs, and not every program need be strategic as every program will vary by business type, location, sector, size etc.

Additionally it musy be recognised that though business can be the solution to many social and environmental problems (as well as economic ones), they cannot solve all of them. Though strategic community engagement is a good thing, as are other programs engaging with the environment and other issues, it must be recognised that there are other limits as to what business should or is willing to support.

There are other resource providers out there -each with different roles to play, resources that can be provided and interests including governmental funding, aid funding, individual charitable donations, foundation funding and so on. Some issues business will not touch, either becuase the link to the business is too weak, the issue is too sensitive or business does not have the required resources.

One benfit of a corporate foundation, especially for US companies, is that the foundation can have a wider remit and address issues the business might not want to. In fact the more strategic businesses become with their community programs, the more there seems to be the need, in Asia especially, to keep some money and other resources aside for non-strategic purposes.

Increasingly businesses are recognising the importance of actually engaging the community through employees as volunteers and this is a welcome move to adding value to communities and educating employees, providing them extra skills and so on. Unfortunately the side effect of this is that, in Asia, most businesses are therefore more willing to support programs in major cities close to where their customers, employees and target markets are. Indeed, in this case, a strategic community program can be crafted, and this should be encouraged.

The problem with this is that most of the social and environmental problems, in China, and other parts of Asia (though not all), are not in the major cities but in rural areas, away from the major cities. In these circumstances resources are not going where they are most needed and instead are going where is most suitable for businesses. Again, this is just good CSR, but is not good for development and this is the conflict.

In fact, in 1 example, businesses are falling over themselves to support migrant children because, as an issue, it is a hot issue, it is no longer politically sensitive, it is an urban issue and it is a ‘children’ and an ‘education’ issue. This is not a criticism for businesses who are supporting this issue and it is still worthy (though, increasingly less so as the government policy changes and government allocates more resources towards it, such as in Shanghai). It is especially a large issue in the smaller cities, though these are often places businesses are only just starting to touch with their community programs.

At the end of the day a little money can make a big difference and any difference a business can make is good for society and good for the business -inspiring employees, generating good PR and generating goodwill. So as businesses grapple with this issue of focussing their community programs but at the same time wanting to do what is best for development, they need to:

Recognise the limits of what they can do
Recognise the NGO perspective and needs
Be flexible and explore different options and partners
Recognise how important small grants (or volunteers, in-kind product etc) can be, especially in stimulating smaller NGOs' development (even if these small grants are not ‘strategic’)
Explore partnerships with other businesses with complementary resources and aligned interests (i.e. pool resources)
Explore supporting joint initiatives (e.g. Chambers of commerce, World Bank etc) in order to reduce transaction costs in developing suitable programs and to contribute to programs that otherwise are too big to do alone
Continue to support employee driven local initiatives, even if not strategically aligned with the business
Develop a coherent plan within different business units and within corporate foundations, so that where foundations are more separate from businesses, there is less overlap and foundations can focus on those areas business units might not be interested in
Explore ways to support programs and projects that might not be such an obvious strategic fit, but can still be a good fit with a bit of thought making the partnership mutually beneficial.

.....For example, this could involve supporting programs in rural areas and sending volunteers there (and covering these costs and time off) for a number of days. Such volunteering activities can be used as team building activities as well as providing real eye opening experiences to employees and fully immersing them in communities for a longer time.
.....For example, looking at longer term secondments that can bring tangible benefits to the secondee, as well as the NGO.

This article is not a criticism of strategic community programs; it is an attempt to help explain the limits of such programs and to explore options for overcoming some of these limits. It is, though, intended to sow some ideas for readers to contemplate how businesses can be a part of the solution for those issues that many businesses are not yet part of –but that definitely still need solutions to come from somewhere. There are other resource providers for many of these solutions, but as we all recognise, there are some resources foundations, government etc just cannot provide that businesses can: be it brand awareness, staff expertise, technological expertise or a multitude of other useful resources businesses can apply to make the World a better place –for those in habiting it, and for the businesses that depend on it.

Fast-tracking poverty reduction

2008-01-18T10:37:00.000+08:00

In the world of poverty reduction, shortcuts will not work, but there are various ways to speed up the process and increase the impact of projects (such as that mentioned in the previous post):

+For example, it is now popular to try to leverage your resources to gain other resources so that the impact of your contribution is bigger. Other resources could be from governments, other businesses, other partners or from local populations (remember that when locals have to contribute for something they always value it and respect it more).

+Another popular option is to organise a competitive process. The idea being that although the contribution only reaches (say) 5 people, (maybe) 15 people were inspired to try (and thus might continue even without your prize) and you can be sure the person/project you support is the best one to support. Competitions can be a great way to discover and promote new ideas especially.

+Partnerships, as always, can (though not always) create situations where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, especially, if in the case of a poverty related project, the value of the in-kind contribution would otherwise be prohibitively high (products, labour, advice etc).

+Learning from previous lessons and sharing your lessons with others helps ensure that projects become iteratively better, and if your project was successful or developed some resources that can be useful for others, they should be promoted and shared to increase their impact.

+Although organising conferences is an old favourite of many, and criticised and expensive by many others, there is a need for these kinds of activities. Though much could more could be written on these, it is important such events have clearly defined goals, are designed to achieve those goals and is not an event in isolation. Ultimately some events, like the Global Clinton Initiative or TED have value incredibly greater than the cost of organising them, though for others I am not sure. Tip: if your conference is related to poverty reduction or environmental sustainability, don't have expensive or environmentally unsustainable events!

+Choosing between starting something new and potentially successful vs. selecting something already successful and scaling it up is difficult. Both are needed and both have great impact -ultimately the choice here will depend on the specific options available.

+Try to use human nature and the market, rather than always trying to change it (though there is a place for this as well). Even altering is easier than changing! The old saying of 'banging your head against a brick wall' is very valid and many people do not realise this. Though the temptation is to head straight for the target, a more convoluted path may, in fact, be better. Incentives and punishments need to be used in the right way and in the right combination.

Making a difference to education

2008-01-18T10:16:00.000+08:00

Always a hot topic and ultimately the bedrock of creating a sustainable society, for without quality and accessible education there can be no government officials, judges, teachers, doctors, engineers, journalists etc and it will be harder to reduce corruption and inequality or increase participation.

It is common to focus on helping those who really need it, and making a massive difference to those who are disadvantaged and lack the opportunities that others have. This is not a bad thing, especially if the school or students have (or will have) a relationship to the company, i.e. by being in the company's 'local community'. Scholarships can be great especially if they are motivating others as well as those who get the scholarship, and if they are really helping the needy.

But, for these initiatives, a holistic perspective must be taken. The most needy might not apply for the scholarship or be able to take advantage if they have to care for their family or must work to earn income for their family (so does one provide a scholarship to the student and also cover the opportunity cost of that student not generating income?). A school might look great, but what is the quality of the teaching? In many poor areas, even with trained teachers and good facilities, is there ongoing support for the teachers and are the children actually healthy enough to attend school and concentrate?

A school is not just teachers and students, it is also head-teachers, local education officials, parents and even sisters/brothers. All of these (and more) are stakeholders in the school to varying extents and through participation ideas and efforts from all can be generated and then implemented. But participation does not come naturally and must be facilitated to ensure those who do not want to participate, who are afraid to participate, who are unable to participate -do participate.

Support also must take a long-term and wider perspective in order to understand any side-effects from the program. An extreme case could be that the government has money for the school, but because of a corporation's contribution, that money ends up in someone's pockets, but to all affective purposes, what the money was earmarked for was achieved and thus the books can easily be amended! And what about the other schools, or the other students, that do not get the support of the company -how do they feel? How can the support in one location rub-off onto others? Anything is possible as long as such an approach is taken.

This kind of effort is not easy, and this is why companies rarely do this themselves and instead partner with another organisation, but a company needs to understand the issues to thus select a suitable partner and help that partner (whose capacity may well be weak, if they operate in an area that needs help). Reducing poverty is not easy and as with the case in China, the poor are often stuck in a rut. A certain proportion can get out of poverty relatively easily, but for the rest, it takes a long time and a lot of effort.

How can a corporation make a difference?

2008-01-18T10:00:00.000+08:00

If a corporation takes a broad aim of 'to improve the environment, to support education, to increase transparency' or anything else, for various reasons -selfish and altruistic, what are its best options?

Well, ultimately the biggest difference occurs from systemic changes and behaviour changes -none of which are easy, but which a corporation can support by working with government, with business associations and with initiatives (i.e. research, pilots, advocacy).

The next step would be to support others that are helping make systemic change; they are often doing this by raising awareness or improving accountability (naming and shaming, for example) and this could be the media or civil society or initiatives to build participation in decision making. This, again, often requires supporting existing initiatives and helping scale them up -or it could be to seed something new (but that will be sustainable or will have a defined end date).

Next could be to improve the ability for enforcement of laws and to improve the ability to meet legal requirements or implement legal reforms which may mean supporting NGOs, training government officials, training teachers, supporting training institutes, organising skills sharing etc. Supporting Universities can be a good way to support promising research, build capacity in teaching institutions etc.

Next, is the difference the corporation can make itself through its operations and its products. Making its operations more sustainable (Reducing waste, improving safety etc) and by developing products that are more sustainable.

Finally, once the corporation has got itself to a decent level it needs to start helping others reach this level, it needs to raise the bar. Not only does this provide massive benefit for the company in terms of PR, but it also raises the standard and forces its competitors to meet it. Best practise needs to be shared and others inspired to achieve. Influence should be used, especially on business partners and suppliers.

Ultimately it is the market that affects businesses and if the market mechanism is used to force others to improve, whilst the corporation stays ahead of the market, the corporation will always be first to market (since it is creating the market!). It is thus in its best interest to effect legal change that influences the market and to support the implementation of that legal change.

Educating for the future

2007-12-23T11:18:00.001+08:00

Today, a child of 5, entering our education system will be working until 2070, at least; but we cannot predict the future in 5 years, let alone 65, so how do we know how we should be educating our children? Ken Robinson believes we need to focus on nurturing creativity in our children, instead of educating them out of creativity, as we are doing at the moment. We've decided what the World of Work needs at the moment, and this is what we are preparing our children for -but the World of Work maybe be incredibly different in the future.

If there is on1 think I am sure about, it is we need more creativity to solve the mess we have put this planet, and this society, in. There are many problems that need to be solved -and that can be solved, but only through creativity.

We should focus on developing our children, and helping them be the best they can be -without defining what the 'best' is (i.e. academically intelligent). Apparently Picasso said every child is born in artist, but only a few are allowed to keep the skill into adulthood. Why should sport, art, music, theatre and other non-academic subjects take up so little of our childhood (especially at school), and even at High School, University and beyond, our we still undertaking enough of these activities to develop ourselves -or are we too focused on developing the tiny per cent of our brain that deals with marketing, finance etc?

In fact, we need to not just nurture creativity in our children, we need to nurture it in everyone, and in the World of work, this means nurturing it in our employees. When I heard google allow all employees 10-20% of their time to do whatever they want to to, whilst at work, i became inspired (i hope this is still true, at google!). Of course nurturing creativity in employees will help them be better at their jobs, but it will also, more importantly, help them be better for the whole of society. This is something responsible leaders need to think about.

Overcoming differences is neccessary -and maybe even possible

2007-12-22T16:02:00.000+08:00

There might still be hope! When I consider nationalism and countries that make progress in extraordinary times; both point to hope in our fight against massive problems like Climate Change. Why? Because when we fight against a common enemy, we bring everyone together and achieve something that otherwise we cannot do.

The world has not worked together to really tackle a common enemy ever before, and this is a big test. However many regions or countries or groups of people have done just this before. By overcoming our differences we can understand that we are, fundamentally, all after the same, and when something threatens that, we can work together. It is not easy, and it is rare that a challenge is so great that it can bring us all together. For the moment, Climate Change is certainly not bringing us all together, in the way that, say World War 2 brought the entire UK (and many of its colonies) together to fight a common enemy.

Many in the World do not care about climate change, because they are not affected by it, or do not think they will be affected by it… and this is a huge issue. This is what must change; otherwise we are accepting that, until the whole World is affected by the issue, we will not tackle the issue. Of course, by that time, it will be SO much harder to deal with the issue. But I suppose this is normal, looking at how much easier it might have been to stop Hitler before 1939, when Chamberlain refused to deal with the issue head-on; instead Britain waited until the problem was so much bigger before actually trying to tackle it.

So, can we learn from these (and other) lessons and get together to fight the common enemy now, when the battle can still be won, and can be won with less disruption, loss of live, damage etc than if we continue to wait? We are evidently starting to find out.

Stability and responsive competition

2007-12-22T14:46:00.000+08:00

Business needs certain things, and what seems to be mentioned most often is the need for stability, so business can research, plan, execute, invest and so on. But today’s society is becoming increasingly unstable affecting the stability of society, but also the stability of consumers –and, on the flip side providing immense opportunities to new market entrants who can take advantage of the instability.

It is therefore imperative that current businesses seek to restore stability to society, to prevent climate change flooding cities or causing the biggest migration in history. It is selfish that big business wants to preserve the status quo and ensure the future that it is planning for in its strategic plans can be realized. This is a good thing; this encourages the current players who normally get complacent to take action to ensure stability.

As the world becomes more unstable we need to support social entrepreneurs who will create new solutions and put the current solution providers out of business. Look at the pharmaceutical industry which is struggling, look at the auto industry which is struggling, look at countless other industries that are struggling –and anticipate more disturbances to their market and within their market. It seems a win-win solution.

More new entrants will both create new solutions to current problems and incentivize current market leaders to fight back to keep their market share. One will be fighting for more stability, and one for less –but, ultimately this competition will be good for us all… in the hope that both ‘attacks’ can succeed. With a more competitive market, with more problems that need profitable solutions, there is cause to be optimistic that businesses will, for their own survival and sake of their own future, rise to the challenge.

Substituting the very bad for the bad

2007-12-12T11:01:00.000+08:00

Sometimes it is just not possible, or too hard to actually solve a social problem, in which case it might be easier to try to just reduce the problem. 1 example would be to decide to use biofuels instead of oil for energy, in that using biofuels is better than oil, in terms of the impact on climate change (though still debatable), but it still has many other negative impacts (food prices increase being one of them).

Another example, rather more interesting, is the issue of alcoholism which leads to health problems (such as harming the liver) and social problems (such as abusing others or not working). This article talks about a solution in Africa where local alcohol is highly alcoholic and dangerous, but extremely cheap. So if something less alcoholic (and thus less dangerous) can be provided for the same price, people might switch. It is an interesting solution; and what i like about it is that it still tries to create local economic benefit (which presumably, the local dangerous alcohol does) in order to keep costs down.

A parallel can be drawn with cigarettes and providing low-tar cigarettes (or 'light' cigarettes) instead of regulars. Though, is this the best solution compared to promoting nicotine patches or just by trying to stop smoking altogether? It depends on the problem, since now the problem is seen less as the health impacts on the smoker and more on the health impacts of others (and the nuisance factor). Presumably promoting such low-tar options, though helping reduce the harm on the smoker, does not really reduce the nuisance factor and still harms (though maybe somewhat less) other passive smokers.

I wonder what the side-effects of the above mentioned experiment is Africa are -would the local alcohol growers/sellers start campaigns against the cheap beer?, and whether there has been any studies on them. Well, if DfID get involved, I am sure there will be plenty of studies!

How to reach fulfillment

2007-11-24T14:56:00.000+08:00

Tony Robbins suggests we need to be fulfilled, to do this we need to meet our needs. To do this we need to accept that our decisions affect our destiny and we need to thus understand our decision making process in order to make the right decisions for ourselves.

To do this first we need to decide what we want to focus on, in order to generate feeling. Then, we need to decide what this means to us and finally we need to decide what we are then going to do.

Once we have this then we need to pay attention not on the resources needed, but how we can be resourceful in meeting our needs. Ultimately to be fulfilled we need to go beyond meeting our basic needs (certainty, variety, significance, connection of love) to those needs of the spirit: growth and contribution beyond ourselves.

Watch this 20 minute video, if there is nothing else you do this year, and be inspired!

Responsible leaders need to appreciate others

2007-11-24T14:54:00.000+08:00

Tony Robins suggests we need to not just understand what drives others, but we need to appreciate what drives others. Ultimately what drives someone can change; but first we need to appreciate others and what influences them, before anyone can change.

Responsible leaders need to influence others

2007-11-24T14:37:00.000+08:00

Tony Robbins suggests you can only move yourself and others to action once you understand the invisible forces that shape ourselves and others. To do this we need to understand what influences people in the short-term (their state) and in the long-term: their NEEDS, their BELIEFS, and their EMOTIONS.

He suggests everyone has the same needs, but prioritizes them differently and this thus shapes who we are, along with our beliefs which shape how we will try to meet those needs.

Is being a charity, charitable?

2007-11-19T09:11:00.000+08:00

I’m the first to admit most charities become so focused on what they are trying to change and who they are trying to help that they forget, as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as individuals, they also have responsibilities to society beyond their core activities, just like every other organization, business, government or otherwise.

Thus the need for social charities to consider their economic and environmental impact, for environmental conservationists to consider their social impact and so on. But, further to this, there is the issue of what is the charity’s contribution to society? Yes, it aims to contribute something by achieving its mission, but can it achieve more?

Without straying from its mission, can it utilize or leverage what it has to help society in other ways? Can it lend its office space, its staff skills, its communication channels etc to other organizations or individuals in society? It is about going beyond the ‘practice what you preach’ debate into the realm of ‘contribute all you can to improve society’

The role of arts in education for Sustainable Development

2007-11-19T09:08:00.000+08:00

It is now best practice for workshops and lessons to be interactive and learner-centred; indeed occasionally role-plays and the like are utilized to increase the ‘learning by doing’ element of such a workshop.

The next step is to go beyond ‘learning by doing’ and ‘learning by expressing’ but to recognize the power for the arts (music, art, theatre etc) to connect to people emotionally and sensually; to not just support co0ncepts of discovery, creativity and innovation, but to inspire. The arts can transcend gaps (in student abilities, in time, in cultures) that other forms of communication cannot and can play a key role in not just improving the educational experience, but in relating education to sustainable development.

Through arts individuals can feel a part of something bigger, can connect to other people and to society and can better value intangible elements in life. They can of course also develop key skills required for a sustainable society such as creativity and communication; but more importantly they can be inspired, inspire others and envision a sustainable World.

Once such a world is envisioned, the arts can be used to inspire action, as communication tools and as enablers. They can be used not just to help people think but to help people feel and to influence how they behave. There is a whole new world out there and the arts need to play a greater role in that World, starting with education.

6 practices of high impact nonprofits

2007-10-21T16:18:00.000+08:00

From an excellent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 07 edition:

1. Serve and Advocate in order to achieve large-scale social change. It does not matter which angle you start with but to have a high impact you need both [my note: agree, but advocacy is much harder, costlier, unmeasurable etc than serving as well as less attractive to funders -unfortunately]
2. Make markets work: tap into the power of self-interest and laws of economics. Understand how to influence the market through working with different partners e.g. changing business behaviours, earning income.
3. Inspire supporters to help in whatever ways they can and nurture supporters' groups to maximum benefit.
4. Nurture networks; share ideas and information and harness the power of partnerships.
5. Be adaptive by responding to external changes; make sure you listen to others and understand the changes as well as evaluating activities and incorporating learnings.
6. Share leadership within the organisation and with other organisations by building strong leaders internally, building strong executive teams and powerful boards. This is crucial for sustainability.

Other important management principles:
-diversified, sustainable, financial support
-invest in HR and build reliable infrastructure (even if this means higher admin costs)

One area the article touches upon but I believe is the most crucial practice of all, is the use and leverage of other organsiations and other resources through the use of mutually beneficial (or 'strategic') partnerships. Finally an excellent point is made about the need to focus less on process and more on impact!

Myths of Nonprofit management

2007-10-21T16:05:00.000+08:00

From an excellent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 07 edition:

Myth 1: Adequate management is necessary but perfect management is not and has little improvement on social impact [my note: agree, but it depends how you define this as financial management is crucial as is HR management; the latter terribly neglected in all organisations, especially nonprofits]
Myth 2: Brand name awareness is not always important and does not have to be a critical part of strategy [my note: agree, but it depends on if the brand is also a message/'voice' that is crucial to the organisation's mission]
Myth 3: Breakthrough ideas are not always necessary; what is better is to tweak existing ideas to make them more successful [my note: the problem with nonprofits is most of them do not know what other ideas are out there, working and why and there is little genuine sharing or knowledge transfer in the industry globally -maybe higher staff turnover would be a good thing?]
Myth 4: Missions drive an organisation but there is not much need to specify what it is, fine-tune it and write it down [my note: surely this requires a nonprofit whose mission is already well understood by existing staff, easily understood by new staff and brings staff together rather than causing rifts, which also seems common]
Myth 5: Measuring nonprofits' impacts does not work as something like 'overhead ratio' has little direct bearing on impact [my note: agree, especially as most nonprofits need to spend more on HR to ensure effective programs and more on advocacy to ensure sustainable programs]
Myth 6: Large budgets does not mean high impact; organisations of large and small budgets can have high impact [my note: yes, but larger organisations should be able to better pool resources , partners and knowledge to make a greater impact. Unfortunately they should also be more flexible and innovative and work more with the low budget nonprofits to provide them these capacities]

CSR’s challenge in China

2007-09-20T14:51:00.000+08:00

As Rich and others well know, business in China is moving rather fast. For most Multinationals they are under pressure to make profits in China, gain market share, open new branches or R & D Centres, recruit more (quality) staff and so on. The Olympics are around the corner which is adding extra pressure along with increasing numbers of high profile CEO and political visits because of China's growing importance in the World -environmentally, socially and economically.

What this means is that things like risk management tend to get pushed down the agenda (which is a big, big mistake), volunteering gets sidelined unless HQ orders everyone to do something on 'company's volunteering day' (as employees are too busy to take time off of work and companies unwilling to spend too much time organising anything) and community partnerships or other elements of CSR (like HR diversity programs or governance) tends to be dealt with rather hurriedly.

This is a missed opportunity for all concerned. Working on CSR is by necessity a long-term strategy. There is now a slow trend of companies in China to start to engage in more meaningful community partnerships, but only a slow trend. Most companies still lack the time, the ability, the people or the will to really engage meaningfully, even though the more meaningful the engagement the greater the benefits. Yes, more and more organisations are offering consultancy related to CSR in China, more and more are also providing outsourcing services (such as PR or legal companies, let alone those in supply chain areas); but the major issue is still there. Consultants or other agencies rarely train staff. They make suggestions that are accepted or otherwise or they implement directly and what is really needed is training (not just conferences) of staff dealing with these issues accompanied with high level support providing the time and will power to make something meaningful happen.

I expect that, for Foreign companies, their 'Global CSR people' will start playing a more important role in the future, as they recognise the limitations their China staff have and the environment these local staff operate in. It also means we will see more high level Global CSR meetings in China, attended by Global staff. By this i do not just mean the UN GC or those events, i mean meetings by WBCSD or BSR as well as smaller meetings. I also expect companies to start having their internal Global /Asia CSR meetings here more often. Unfortunately those people will still struggle to find a 'green' venue for their meetings too!

Speaking Different Languages

2007-09-14T16:17:00.000+08:00

In all the literature about cross-sector partnerships there is always two key problems that are identified. The first is the lack of communication and poor expectation setting between different partners, and indeed different people within each organization. The second is the different perspectives the different organizations are coming from. I’d like to focus somewhat on the second problem for a moment.

What do companies think of NGOs? There are some good terms that come to mind, such as ‘dedicated’ and ‘worthwhile’ but more often there are rather less-favorable terms used such as ‘unprofessional’, ‘a nuisance’, ‘money hungry’ and ‘unreasonable’. In return, what would NGOs think of companies? Thinking of the whole range of NGOs here, though in public most are very positive if it helps them get money (except for the combative anti-corporate NGOs), in truth most NGOs do not look too highly upon companies either.

This misunderstanding between both groups leads to a lack of trust and without that no partnership can be a success. 1 way of avoiding a lack of trust developing is to try to bridge the gap between companies and NGOs. If NGOs knew what it was like to have to reach ambitious targets or get fired, what it is like to deal with internal politics, what it is like to deal with finance departments or sales departments, they might understand companies better. Similarly if companies understood the lack of trained staff in NGOs, the lack of consistent funding and how that affects an NGO’s operations; and what an NGO is actually doing, they could recognize the different pressures NGOs come under.

In addition to all this, there is often a real language barrier. Companies talk about sales, profits, margins, adding value, supply chains, distribution, brands and franchises. NGOs tend to talk about communities, vulnerable groups, sustainability, empowerment, IEC (Information, Education and Communication) and more. If it happens to be an International NGO and a Multinational company then there will also be all kinds of internal words and acronyms that add even more to the confusion.

Despite all the literature and examples of how these issues affect partnerships, there are very few proposed solutions. The best solution is for an NGO to recruit staff from a business background and for a business to recruit staff from an NGO background. The former can be tough though, since not too many staff are willing to move to the countryside or take massive salary/benefit cuts (which is often the case in Asia) whilst the latter is just as hard since not too many NGO staff have the relevant experience or skills to cut their teeth in the business world.

Thankfully some certification schemes are being developed (such as that by the IBLF), some masters, MBA or short-term programs exist that can bridge some of these gaps (such as those provided by Ashridge), providing relevant training to either party; yet neither of these solutions are likely to have a massive impact. Hence both parties continue to be communicating and getting increasingly frustrated.

Companies are looking for quick results, but NGOs realize that reducing poverty or solving massive environmental problems will not happen quickly. Companies expect a measurable outcome, yet many development programs require sophisticated assessments or evaluations in order to understand what impact the program had, if any, and these impacts are often spread over a wide group of beneficiaries over a long period of time with other forces playing a part. There is definitely still a need for greater understanding between the NGO and corporate sectors.

Partly this can be solved through recognition and acceptance of this language and experience barrier and then both parties can be more patience, explain themselves and their concepts better. For those involved in partnerships it really helps to try to meet as many staff as possible in the other organisation to find out what they do and how the organization works as well as talking to friends in the same sector and researching the company or NGO endlessly (NGO folk, try going online and downloading a presentation the company gave to investors and trying to understand it!).

Since business is everywhere and generally goes along similar lines it can often be easier for an NGO to understand a business, even if there are still communication problems. In my experience though, the more significant issue is for business to understand development. The ‘base of the pyramid’ area is really just smart marketing –but marketing that requires some understanding of a new market segment and it is clear that business currently lacks any understanding of the ‘poor’ or ‘disadvantaged’ market. Well, apart from needing this to succeed in the BoP world, they need this to develop successful community partnerships.

Companies need to understand how development works, what terms like ‘training of trainers’ or ‘peer education’ might mean and how they fit into program designs. Granted they cannot become experts over night, but an openness to trying to learn this, to visit NGOs, spend some time with them, at their work and taking some time to actually read some of their (often lengthy) reports can work wonders. Of course, for those who do not understand the 3^rd sector, they are just happy to give away some cash based on some simple criteria and get some PR out of it. An actual partnership though can be so much more. Companies can really help NGOs, giving them advice to improve their programs, helping them develop their brand and raise awareness of issues, helping them develop professional budget or accounting procedures and so on.

Yes, true partnerships require much more work than just giving out money and more often than not neither companies nor NGOs have the time, skills or genuine interest in such a partnership. But, it is clear that when these kinds of partnerships develop they really make a difference and often in many unexpected ways. There is no need to go through the ‘benefits to a company from engaging with the community’ here, but this is the time for both sectors to spend more time trying to understand the other and trying to work with the other, rather than against them.

In recognition of these kinds of language problems that exist, Plan China (some shameless self-promotion here) is organizing a study trip for corporate staff involved in working with the community to some of our program areas to understand the bigger picture and rather than just talk about the problems, the focus will be on solutions. The idea being that afterwards, staff can return to their companies better able to understand NGOs, poverty and how their company could play a role.

An inspiration, a hero, a role model.... Anita Roddick died yesterday

2007-09-11T17:28:00.000+08:00

Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop is one of the few people I could call either a hero, a role model or an inspiration to me. Way before people were talking about CSR she was doing it (1976) because it needed to be done for business reasons and for social and environmental reasons.

Her whole life has been devoted to issues she truly believes in and issues her company truly believes in. Lets just have hope in others like her and hope that there are many many more people like her still to come.

For Dame Anita, the truly exceptional entrepreneur, business and ethics came together. "Businesses have the power to do good," she wrote. "That's why The Body Shop's Mission Statement opens with the overriding commitment, 'To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change.'" Capitalist with a Conscience

Smoking in China

2007-09-01T17:18:00.000+08:00

It is interesting to hear that 18 months after China ratified the WHO’s framework convention on tobacco control, China has now finally announced it is going to do something to meet its commitments. This is not just a ’smoke-free Beijing’ slogan which in effect means nothing; it is potentially a new law that can be relatively easily enforced. The government can stop companies from advertising and it can stop advertisers from accepting advertising; by enforcing the law from both directions it might actually be enforced -at least in the big cities. It will be interesting to see what happens in the countryside and what what strategy the tobacco companies come up with (maybe just focusing on promoting the brand of the company rather than its products, like Western tobacco companies; or maybe resorting to more underhand tactics and increasing promotion online, ‘on-the street’ or through other less regulated channels).
It is about time that China accepted that the profits the government makes from tobacco (taxes as well as from the State Owned Enterprises in the industry) and the number of people employed in the industry (including many poor urban residents selling cigarettes in tiny shops or from make-shift stands on the sidewalk) is not a reason to continue to support an industry which such devastating impacts on people’s lives, their productivity and their household economy (it is no wonder that most NGOs prefer to support women more than men when so many men spend their pocket money on cigarettes when women spend pocket money on food, education or clothes for the family).

I wonder, though, how the tobacco lobby in China (and though Western companies are a part of this lobby, evidently the major players are all Chinese) let this happen? China is a huge market for the tobacco industry and one of the few countries where (I believe) the number of smokers is growing. I also wonder how high up this decision goes and whether the decision was purely an economical one (i.e. taxes received =lower than cost to health system for dealing with impacts) or also motivated by other reasons.

Smoking itself is one of those industries CSR people love to talk about with the question: Can tobacco companies be responsible? In one way, the answer is no, since the companies’ product kills people that consume the product, and those who do not and particularly harms the vulnerable in a household (i.e. the women and children who suffer from second-hand smoke but do not smoke). In another way, the answer is yes, since the companies’ product is not illegal, employs millions of poor people (especially farmers and those involved in distribution) and contributes high taxes to the governments that need money for health sectors. Does anyone know of any Chinese Tobacco companies that have ever said anything about CSR (not just charity)?

We're using up our Earth!

2007-07-27T22:36:00.000+08:00

Humanity's Ecological Footprint is over 23% larger than what the planet can regenerate. In other words, it now takes more than one year and two months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet's ecological resources. This is a vastly underestimated threat and one that is not adequately addressed.

It is fascinating stuff, showing that around 1988 we started using up more resources that the Earth generates each year and that North America uses up 8 times more resources, per person, than Asia Pacific. The UK's footprint (in hectares per person) has gone from 4 to 5 in the last 40 years; even though its capacity has stayed almost constant around 2. China's footprint has doubled from 0.8 to 1.6, whilst its capacity has been getting smaller relatively quickly (down from 1 to 0.8).

The good news is that technology can save our problems; but due to market imperfections, it is unlikely to -will we, since it is the only other option, be able to reduce our global footprint instead, to solve the problem? It seems unlikely, bearing in mind the impact of fast growing developing countries -though if the developed countries could halve their ecological footprint it would make a massive difference. Anyone for behaviour and lifestyle change?

Compromise

2007-07-27T22:30:00.000+08:00

-or Balance, either are key elements in Sustainable Development. 1 interesting example is about energy, since around 20-30% of energy is lost in transmission; hence the interest in personal energy sources.

This is especially useful in developing countries where there is no infrastructure to distribute energy, but, for example, also relevant for developing countries. Since we will (eventually) roll out hydrogen powered cars, we will need to roll out a network of hydrogen providers (i.e. filling stations). What if each individual could make their own hydrogen, with a system that came with their car, when they bought it? It would save on time and money and resources to install these distribution systems. However, it might be much more efficient to make the hydrogen in a big facility, rather than in many many (individually owned) smaller ones. I guess the solution varies for each product or service, but it is an interesting conundrum.

The owner is not the user

2007-07-27T22:24:00.000+08:00

This is a major problem that society is still trying to overcome. A typical example is that when a building company builds a house it wants to build the house that it can make the most profit on, through selling it. It has an incentive to source cheap materials, if this does not effect the value of the house -or it might want to source energy inefficient materials, because there is no incentive for it to use energy efficient materials. Why? Because the person who buys the house will be the one who will be paying the energy costs!

A possible solution to this is PSS -Product Service Systems, which sounds complicated, but is really just the idea of not selling someone a product that, once sold, no longer is related to the seller; but instead, selling a service which includes that product plus extra services. The seller can make more money on an ongoing basis from the extra services related to the product and, as will be attached to the product for longer will have an incentive to ensure its performance is, well in this case, environmentally friendly, as this will affect its service revenue/contract. It also means that the seller can easily retrieve the product afterwards and re-use it in some way; and the seller is motivated to do this, and can easily do this.

PSS seems to be a win-win, but is not as easy as it sounds; leading to extra complexity, extra costs (although potentially, extra value) and greater risk (for the seller to have to support an ongoing commitment) but it can really motivate the seller to be more sustainable!

Own but don't possess

2007-07-27T22:21:00.000+08:00

What if you wanted to own something but did not need to actually have it in your possession? Maybe you can save energy and resources by not having it in your permission. The best example is of a bank that needs to have gold reserves in order to have assets and protect its currency, but actually it probably never needs that gold.

It could buy the land the gold is in, but save on actually extracting the gold. Just by knowing it owns the gold (which could be extracted if required) could be enough. An interesting idea indeed, that is applicable elsewhere.

Leverage points

2007-07-27T22:18:00.000+08:00

Another aspect of Systems theory centres on identifying key aspects of a system which not only allow you to be able to make a difference to this aspect, but subsequently have an impact on other elements in the system.

Of course, this means you need to be careful about how changing 1 aspect of the system impacts upon other elements; but if you can identify an early aspect of the system and change that, great leverage can be achieved. It is risky, but it could be rewarding. Seek out those leverage points and apply some leverage, but be careful about what happens!

Fixes that fail

2007-07-27T22:12:00.001+08:00

1 of the learning points of Systems theory is that often, in response to a problem a 'fix' is undertaken that is not actually the right 'fix' -it has been created without enough attention (or knowledge) to other elements in the system. Thus the 'fix' does not solve the actual problem, but often makes the problem worse by accidentally increasing the impact of another aspect of the system which continues to work restricting the attempted solution. The solution failed, because it was just a fix and not a real solution.

Real solutions need careful analysis of the problem; causes and effects; consequences of the actions involved in the system and an understanding of knock-on effects. This is a crucial aspect of poverty reduction when programs are not integrated or fail to make a difference because it was the wrong solution in some way. Take your time, analyse the problem, test the solution. Don't be left embarrassed by creating a 'fix that fails' -create a real solution!

Are Leadership skills transferable?

2007-07-27T22:08:00.000+08:00

Maybe not. Apparently there are 3 aspects of leadership: personal leadership skills, relational leadership skills and contextual leadership skills. The point being that personal leadership can be transferred along with the leader, but the relational skills the leader has will depend on those who the leader must related with or to -with different people, the leader may not be effective. Similarly, the ability to lead varies in contexts especially different cultures. Cultures may or may not be country based, but of course, can vary between organisations too -and that could be the big killer and the major hindrance of leaders successfully leading other organisations, other than their current one.

Spread good ideas

2007-07-27T22:01:00.000+08:00

The biggest problem about poverty reduction is a lack of knowlege about how to reduce poverty and a lack of education about aspects of poverty -hence the poor often lack health knowledge or education or ideas to improve their economic efficiency (i.e. knowledge to improve crop yields etc). Many NGOs work in concentrated areas to make a difference through an integrated, long-term approach.

This is great, but maybe it would be more efficient to work in disparate villagers and trust (or facilitate) other villages to learn from the NGO's actions in 1 village, in order to replicate it. This does of course require a visible improvement in poverty and a clear link with the cause; which the nearby villagers can learn from. Peer education on a village/geographic level could be a great way of quickly and efficiently spread education about how to individually act to reduce your own poverty. The Millennium villages concept has adopted this idea.

Consumers drive responsibility

2007-07-27T21:57:00.000+08:00

Is it consumers that are driving responsibility, through requiring safe products made in a responsible way? This does play a significant role, in which case are B2C (Business-to-Consumer) companies more responsible than B2B (Business-to-Business) companies?

I understand that eventually B2Bs sell to consumers, and that consumer's requirements will work themselves up the supply chain to force B2Bs to be responsible, but in reality this is doubtful. However, if CSR is just commonsense, then maybe there is no difference, as any buyer of a product (be it a consumer or a business) will demand the same from the seller. However I would be interested in comparing how responsible B2B companies are compared to B2C companies.

A company's 'community'

2007-07-27T21:55:00.000+08:00

It is often hard to define the community around the company -yes a company should be a good neighbour to its community, but a better word than community is influence. A company should do good within its sphere of influence which is wider than 'community' and therefore better for society, but it is also easier to identify a company's sphere of influence (through mapping) and where the leverage points are to make a difference in that sphere.

Market Intelligence

2007-07-27T21:51:00.000+08:00

Fundamental to R&D, marketing, sales and more; yet how good is our market intelligence? CSR helps with principles to listen more, speak less; talk, understand, question, analyse and then it is possible to get useful market intelligence. Understand the current market, understand new (potential) markets, understand the trends affecting all markets; all of this helps to improve product and service identification and sale but also helps give the market what it wants, which is a key responsibility of business!

The most improtant stakeholder cannot speak

2007-07-27T21:48:00.000+08:00

The natural environment is what all of us rely on for our existence, so it is quite important to know what it thinks, what it is up to, what's affecting it, how it relates to us. But, it cannot speak, and environmental NGOs/Charities may be able to stand up for the environment, but they do not really know what it needs, what its state is and what it wants to say. Of course, they should continue to try to communicate with the environment through research as much as possible, and to try to listen to the signals the environment gives off. This way, they can do their job as best as possible -and they need to, we are really not listening to the environment; instead we are suffocating it!

Risk and Opportunity

2007-07-27T20:31:00.000+08:00

I fundamentally believe that CSR is about companies behaving responsibly; why would they do this? Simple: to reduce risk and find new opportunities. Those risks and opportunities can be related to PR, employees, sales etc etc. Though many companies like the word 'opportunity', others might not really understand the word 'risk', a good way of expressing this is to explain that it is all about trying to "pre-empt potential blindsides". In business, there is always something that will unexpectedly come up and affect you. It is necessary to try to anticipate these and act to mitigate their impacts.

Hence the importance of stakeholder dialogue so a company is more in touch with its stakeholders and able to better predict future 'blindsides'. It is crucial -start engaging today!

Transparency is...

2007-07-26T01:38:00.000+08:00

...a swimming pool with clean water, where you can see the ends, see the floor, see who else is in it.

...not a muddy lake where you do not know how deep it is, what attackers lurk within in etc.

A great mental picture which has many lessons for the real world. think them through in more detail.

Another urban way!

2007-07-26T01:34:00.000+08:00

Urban areas can be green, they can include biodiversity, they can involve circular, planned systems which are designed to increase the quality of life for all living things in the city. Urban development is not just roadworks, slums, pollution, overcrowding or high prices.

But, which is more common? Why -is it because of a lack of knowledge, a lack of ability, a lack of money, or (as i suspect) just because of a lack of will. It is time for people to stand up and make the changes we need to see in our society. Those building and selling such properties must be pressurised to take action, and must be willing to take action.

Business's convening power

2007-07-24T02:37:00.001+08:00

A NGO with x million approaches the government for a partnership and is rebuked, but if they partner with a company who foots the x million they will be accepted, due to the clout that the company has. Why? Well it is not just brand or connections, but because governments recognise how important companies are through their FDI investments, job creations, technology transfers and so on.

It is clear business has this important convening role and this should be utilised as much as possible.

The purpose of business...

2007-07-24T02:16:00.000+08:00

(not an easy answer, but here is one answer:)
Make sustainable profits in sustainable ways.

How? Need to define 'sustainable ways', which is different for each company, and translate that for each individual's job role and evaluation criteria.

But is 'profits' necessary? In today's society with the current ownership structure, yes. Since pension funds, and the whole banking system is dependent on generating dividends to then give back to society, indirectly, or to re-invest. However, potentially profits are not necessary, when a company is privately owned, collaboratively owned and so on. There is a trend for this, but how important will it become?

Culture vs Human Rights

2007-07-23T20:24:00.000+08:00

What do you do when cultural sensitivity is in contrast with human rights? do you abide by the local culture (i.e. not promote women) or do you support women's rights?

It seems that there are many examples of 'international human rights' being in contrast to local traditional norms and cultures. Similarly, since values are so crucial to people and to organisations, how do you deal with contrasting and conflicting values? Do you impose values on others (surely not!) or what?

Migration

2007-07-23T20:18:00.000+08:00

Migration is often unplanned, but actually it is also, often planned, or at least encouraged. Since the importance of remittances has now been well recognised in contributing to a developing country's economic growth, international migration is often encouraged, despite the brain-drain consequences.

Internal migration is also often encouraged as a solution for those whose geographical location restricts their ability to escape poverty. But, of course, migrants are often mistreated and exploited. Furthermore, how is migration related to outsourcing and the whole freedom of work/movement issue? It seems that migration is actually the opposite of outsourcing. Instead of sending work to poor people to do it, the poor people come to the rich countries to do it (or replace 'countries' with 'cities' for internal migration). Is there a correlation of any kind? Which is better -migration or outsourcing? How are the drivers different and what is a more successful way of reducing poverty?

Urbanisation -good or bad for SD?

2007-07-23T19:12:00.000+08:00

Urbanisation is traditionally seen as a disaster for SD. Unplanned urban expansion causes diverse environmental and social problems which previously did not exist -and the problems are exacerbated due to their ability to spread quickly or just become more significant due to the numbers of those affected.

But, maybe urbanisation can be an opportunity? It is easy to reach out, within a city, to those in need, quickly. It should be easier to plan and control development. It should be easier to solve problems in an urban environment. Evidently it is not, and there needs to be more work at a city and government level to see urbanisation as an SD solution and to plan it thus.

Who owns natural resources?

2007-07-23T19:10:00.000+08:00

The discussion on ownership of natural resources is not one with an easy answer, but it is one that is becoming more important as energy (which comes from natural resources) becomes a greater issue; not just the supply of energy, but related issues of energy security, renewable energy etc. Water is also a big, big issue and one that will get even bigger. It is also related to energy, since hydro-power can be an effective method of generating electricity, often in developing regions which can benefit from the electricity and the income; since those areas might not have any other resources.

If you build a dam to generate electricity, you create unmeasurable impacts upstream (through needing to flood certain areas and destroy biodiversity or relocate residents) and even greater impacts downstream where the river's flow and composition is altered which affects those who rely on the river for food, to flood their fields, for transport, for drinking or even for their own electricity. These are just the problems affecting people directly, let alone the other biodiversity related impacts. So who owns the rights to use a river, especially if that denies others those same rights?

Public health -the public's responsibility?

2007-07-23T19:09:00.000+08:00

I've mentioned before how it seems that individuals are losing their responsibility and nowadays it is up to companies and governments to help/tell people how to live their lives responsibly. In a health context this is more extreme: if a person wants to be fat and eat junk food and not do exercise it is surely up to them. They need to make informed choices, for sure; once a government (or a company) has made the relevant information available, why should they still be involved?

Well, moving past this kind of health topic to ones of public health, like SARS or avian flu or HIV/AIDs, one can see that increasingly companies are having to play a much greater role; in a supporting role to gvernments to help governments deal with these kinds of crisese. Why? Because they will be affected -as with any CSR issue- they will start to be impacted through a lack of employees, customers etc. But where is the impact? This involvement is purely a risk management investment. But how many investments must companeis make in risk management? What companies can afford these investments and should they be bearing these costs, probably disproportionately?

Climate Change affects those who did not cause it

2007-07-23T19:01:00.000+08:00

So what does this mean? An acceptance of this fact might help for a start, but that won't happen. Money to help those who need it could be provided, through traditional aid or disaster relief public fundraising campaigns, but this will likely happen after a disaster which is, of course, too late. Some extra aid money is bein provided to help those countries deal with any extra possible disasters and prevent them. Otherwise a market-based system will be needed, like the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), which allows polluters to pay others to reduce their pollution, since it is probably cheaper and easier for others to reduce their pollution (or not become polluting). Though CDM is not working effectively right now it is a great experiment and we have to hope it will have some impact and continually get better.

Problems with strategic CSR

2007-07-23T00:35:00.000+08:00

One aspect of Strategic CSR is when a company uses its core competencies to help society; such as trained staff or (customised) products. But it is easier to just write a cheque and give some money. Not only is this quicker and require less time from the company (as well as being simpler, since companies are not development experts) but normally it just requires 1 or 2 people to sign off on the contribution.

If you want to, say, develop a new toilet that is suitable for people that lack suitable toilets, you do not need to just talk to PR or Finance, you need to talk to Sales and Marketing, R&D and HR... in fact you need an internal project team that is committed to this (and thus more than just the CSR person!) and able to do this. Part of the ability issue is whether the company allocates these people to the project. This project may be great in many ways, but it is most likely not going to be as profitable as targeting rich people and selling them toilets (though, in the long-term it might be). So, a) how to build this consensus and commitment to this idea throughout the organisation that you need to deliver this project successfully, and b) how to get them committed to the project, compared to the other priorities the company has?

Corporations helping community or vice versa?

2007-07-23T00:25:00.001+08:00

I fully believe that business can be the solution to poverty. The process is simple:
1. Identify the problem
2. Identify the solution (technological, training etc)
3. Innovate to provide the solution to the problem.

Point 2 is actually quite easy, and there are already solutions to almost every development challenge, be it finding water, preventing HIV/AIDs etc. Point number 3 is where the challenge lies. So far government has failed to provide the solution in most developing countries for various reasons (money, ability etc). Can business do better? Well they also need to overcome problems, such as providing the solution cheap enough, ensuring there are qualified people to distribute and provide the solution, ensuring the solution is suitable to local needs and so on.

If a company can do that, great. Companies can profit from helping the community. If they do that, then there is a clear motive for business to invest money in helping raise awareness of the problem, the need for their solution and their proposed solution (possibly through NGO partners).

This is the issue: when does this become unethical? Health companies already understand this uneasy balance when they go to doctors to tell them about their solution to a health problem. This means the doctor will use that product to solve the problem, but is it actually the right or best product -or just the only product the doctor knows about? How to stop the doctor accepting bribes for distributing that product and not another one? Will the patient lose the trust of the doctor knowing how closely associated the doctor is to the company (and companies often havea lack of trust)?

For me, working in an NGO, where we have the trust of the community, we would gladly like to (and already do, to some extent) promote certain products (and sometimes subsidize them) -in fact we are keen to help companies understand the problems and help them develop a solution, but where is the line between promoting something that will help solve a problem and becoming (in effect) a distributor for the company? How does this affect the trust the community has in us, if they link us so closely to a company?

Upcoming posts

2007-07-23T00:18:00.000+08:00

Over the next week I will be posting based on some thoughts from the conference I am attending; there will be many (but short!)!

Has Development failed?

2007-07-03T18:02:00.000+08:00

This article questions whether the theory of 'development' as proposed by the UN, World Bank and IMF mostly, has failed. The article makes sense but has a ridiculous notion of development, only focusing on those 3 organisations who though shoot above their weight in some developing countries regarding their influence on policies, really have very little impact at all because they only worked at the governmental level until recently.

Development in its modern sense is about government -yes, in theory good governments lead to their citizens creating their own development by operating in a peaceful society which respects rights and gives the freedom to make the most of the market. Unfortunately most governments in impoverished countries are not like this, and trying to change those governments has (as history has shown) only made things worse. Stability and peace is the most important requirement for development. It would be nice to have functioning education, healthcare etc.. or even a functioning market, but without these, it is necessary to help create them.

If governments cannot create them, then other actors must and this is whether civil society comes in: NGOs, trade unions, co-operatives and of course, individuals. Of course there is a role for business/entrepreneurship too. Development is about all of these actors, and it is not failing; it is struggling to be efficient in overcoming the government deficiencies, the market deficiencies and the instability most developing countries are in.

Secondly development as seen by grass-roots organsiations, individuals themselves, and now even by the UN/IMF/WB is now seen as the opposite of what the article describes: it is about bottom-up, empowerment, skill provision, access to markets and so on. It is about partnership between different societal actors and it is about, eventually, reforming those limiting factors -especially government, through a gradual process. It takes time to educate citizens, train teachers or health workers, or create distribution channels for medicines, credit etc.

Once countries have skilled empowered citizens, they will inevitably be able to enter government or create new (capable) governments. If the WB/UN/IMF model has failed, that is really of little significance to development now, as those actors are now so minor. Much more important are civil society actors, entrepreneurs and 'foundations'. Development has barely even started yet... but in the last decade or more, it is sure that there are enough cases of it working in different ways in different countries to prove it can work. Just give all those actors the chance to do their bit and it will work, from the bottom-up.

Unfortunately development takes a long-time. That must be accepted. Unfortunately there are bad people doing bad things which is continually restricting development's potential. That must be accepted and worked around. There are many exciting examples of development taking off -explore the nextbillion.net, ashoka.org and hundreds more organisations that are connecting technology, people and organisations to create more success and scale-up successes to create greater impact.

‘Strategic’ CSR in China

2007-07-02T15:05:00.001+08:00

Why should a company ‘do’* CSR? Because it is in its own benefit to do it.

What CSR should it ‘do’? That which benefits the company the most.

The word strategy always sound good, and in a CSR sense, it means doing something that is of maximum, long-term, benefit. Strategic CSR is not, necessarily a strategy in itself, but a commitment leading to a direction identifying certain areas a company will focus on which will improve itself and society (either at the same time, or at a later date). Thus an investment in staff makes it easier to attract new staff, reduces staff turnover (and hence recruitment costs), increases staff morale and productivity etc. An investment in the supply chain improves partnerships with suppliers, increases their efficiency, reduces risks from being associated with suppliers who break the law etc.

In the last few years, a new are has developed focusing on strategic CSR within a company; normally including a team crossing the functions of sales, marketing, research & development and corporate affairs. The objective: to develop products that fulfill a societal need, and to deliver that product to those who need it, profitably. Simple examples would be a company that makes soap that has tremendous hygiene benefits. Thus by improving the distribution a company can get soap to more people who need it and by reducing costs poorer people can afford it. It might not be easy to do either of these, but it can be possible and should be attempted because if it can be done, sales can be increased.

Many multinational companies are now focusing on this area; though not so much in China (as they are still obsessed with the higher margin middle and upper class customers), but i am sure it will be an area to watch for more. Interestingly though, China’s very open capitalist market economy has led to many companies employing these kinds of strategies anyway, without having a dual goal of helping society AND making a profit. They just want to make a profit; but the side-effect is to help society. It is easy to buy things like soap in even the most remote areas of China.

What is next, is the products and services that are harder to distribute en masse and harder to profitably sell to the poor; such as water purification systems, education, sanitary toilets, advanced farming tools, good quality roads and so on. The list of possible products and services the poor do not have in China, but need to improve their lives is a long one. The challenge is to develop a needs-based product, get it to customers and sell it to them profitably (yet at a price they can afford -or possible along with micro-loans).

China, with a huge market offers significant opportunities to do this by achieving economies of scale and scope. It is, of course, also a country with 20 million people in absolute poverty and around 200 million in poverty -second only to India. However China also offers numerous challenges, such as Intellectual Property Rights and logistics. The challenge to entrepreneurs (and of course, current businesses) out there is look for the needs that poor people have and try to serve that need profitably.

*I dislike the use of the word ‘do’ but ‘do’ is the simplest word that everyone will understand. To explain how to ‘do’ CSR is not possible in a simple blog post; though use of the word ‘do’ does imply something very simple, it is indeed definitely not.

Not Zimbabwe again

2007-07-02T15:04:00.000+08:00

A topic I have not touched for a year or more; orginally writing about how the West should be ashamed for not doing something about a country that is constantly getting worse. Well, finally, as the problem has got worse, some other African countries have been forced to do something. Not because they really want to help of course, but because the problem is so bad that at least a third of Zimbabweans have fled their own country, many to South Africa. The migration is having such an impact on South Africa it has been forced to at least acknowledge the problem and started to apply some pressure.

The pressure makes no difference; Western countries ignore the problem; Zimbabwe gets worse. Inflation at 3,000% was bad, now it is above 15,000%. Prices triple every month. Salaries double every 3 months... an imbalance that means poverty is just getting worse and worse -a vicious cycle has taken hold leading to worse health problems and worse educational facilities. How can this cycle be broken? Even if Mugabe falls, even if the transition to a stable leadership could be relatively smooth (which would be a first through out the World), how long will it take to recover? to rebuild, to retraing, to re-attract talent...

But first we need to convince our governments to do something. To get rid of Mugabe and his cronies and try to help Zimbabwe find itself a decent leadership. Then we can think of trying to help. The future is not good. If anything it is, unfortunately, a case of how bad can a dictator mess up a country, before it actually self-implodes? It seems, regrettably, like we might be finding out in the next year. At least something might change soon -but only because the situation is so bad. And what do we do about it?

Macro Micro-finance

2007-07-02T15:01:00.000+08:00

The greatest problem for countries to trade their way out of poverty is lack of infrastructure, especially roads. Even if the government funded the big main roads throughout the country, and the government maintained them, what about the small roads connecting through to the villages? Well if we presume that these small roads are only used by the villagers themselves to transport goods out of the village, or into it, then the villagers could pay for and maintain the road. They have free labour to some extent (in the off-season) and only need the materials/expertise (though we are talking simple roads here).

If we believe that improved roads really will help the village trade and increase their income, why not lend them money to build the road and get them to pay it back over time; once their incomes go up. The loan would be guaranteed by the whole village as they all have a stake in it. This idea of collaborative, group-ownership, lending model might work. The returns might not be great; and the loan would have to be paid back over quite a long time, as the initial cost is quite high -but it could still be profitable, and the primary purpose is to utilise funding more effectively in ways to support development.

Now, once the road is built, villagers' incomes increase and so they can become traditional microfinance clients, and this can be much more profitable.

Mission Creep

2007-06-14T08:50:00.000+08:00

Corporations face a choice of whether to diversify or to specialise. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to both. However the decision on what to do is normally driven by the need to make the company as successful (i.e profitable) as it can be, in the long-term. Thus if the objective is already decided it can be easy to list the pros and cons and see whether to diversify or specialise.

For NGOs, it is not as simple: NGOs are driven by a vision: to make the World better, and each NGO has it own mission: how it will make the World better. Though it is rare, once an NGO achieves 1 mission (i.e. campaigning for better environmental protection), it can then move onto another mission towards this overall vision. Most large NGOs do this within the context of restricting themselves to what kind of missions they will undertake: normally based on their expertise and their beliefs -so they may concentrate on the environment, or poverty, or education etc.

Larger NGOs are quite well funded, however they still face potential mission creep, though for smaller NGOs it is a much greater concern, for NGOs all require funding (from just a few dollars a week to millions) and that funding must come from something and be directed towards something else. Often the 2 are connected, sometimes they are not. Faced with the opportunity to get money, most NGOs will try to get it, changing their programs or approach accordingly (which may no longer best address the needs of who/what they want to help). Is this good or bad? Every NGO must make decisions on a case-by-case basis, but it is very tough to reject funding.

Additionally many NGOs have their own little 'cash cow' which they use to raise money, and they spend resources on generating income -how much should they spend? Well, the international standard is no more than 20% of expenditure should be for admin or for fundraising. A 'cash cow' could be money from the government, from a business, from the public, from selling a product or service etc. But what 'cash cows' to pursue that support the mission; and which to reject? Again a case-by-case decision must be made considering various factors. One thing is for sure, Mission Creep in an NGO is a tricky issue and an issue most companies don't face. They have to worry more about strategies and less about objectives. NGOs often worry about objectives because theirs are more fluid and less defined.

Women

2007-06-10T16:13:00.000+08:00

If the World was equal women would, on average, be in half of all positions. In reality most, globally, dominate the 'working in the field' and 'looking after the home/family' positions and are under represented in many others. The devil's advocate (or the economist) could argue that the division of labour means people do the job they are best at. True women are probably best at bringing up kids; but maybe they are also the best at running countries, institutions and businesses too?

After listening to a special podcast from one of my favourite websites, I had a new epiphany. Previous I was all for women's rights, and women being at least equal to men. I had also read some of the (slightly scary) articles about Women soon not needing Men (biologically) -well, whatever. I had, also, realised that when Women are allowed to do things, they often do them better than Men -maybe because they need to prove themselves (having not been allowed to to it before) or maybe they just work harder than Men. I am well aware that Men and Women are better at different things.

Being involved in the Development World I am well aware of the crucial role that women play in rural communities (particularly). They care for the elderly, care for the young, look after the land if the men work elsewhere (migration) for cash, look after the home and more. They are the life of a community. They are very busy, but very competent. But they are 'stuck' in this role, without being able to use their wonderful abilities to achieve more. They are also discriminated against (physically and mentally) at home and in communities, often lack any voice individually or collectively in communities (as Men are seen as more important, culturally, especially in China) etc. So, the idea of empowering women came about a while ago. We are a year into our own Rural Women Empowerment Program -and it is such a simple concept but so exciting.

Allow me to elaborate. You have these women, who are normally quite busy, but sometimes have some free time; they are mostly uneducated but have huge responsibilities (including managing household finances as well as everything else previously mentioned). They rarely read (some cannot read). So you give them something to read, something relevant about childcare, farming, finances, womens health etc. Then you get them to get together with some other women to discuss what they are reading, share ideas and work on common challenges. Then they have a greater collective voice in the community, are more effective at their 'work' saving them time etc etc. Many of them can then work together to start micro-businesses (needlework, selling food, for example) from micro-finance. The result: just from giving them something useful to read and facilitating/encouraging the formation of collective groups is incredible.

Micro-finance is now becoming well-known, and is making a greater impact across the world. over 90% of all micro-finance clients are... Women. They are ones who have the time and ability to implement small business ideas; they just need the seed capital and training to do it. And it is making a difference, a huge difference. Our Micro-finance program has lent to over 5,000 people and not had a single payment default on interest of 10+% (which is low for micro-finance, due to local situations).

Anyway, back to the epiphany (of sorts) was that for the jobs that Women are most under-represented in; i.e. politics, Women might actually be the best ones at those jobs: better at understanding different people's opinions, better at negotiating, better at 'reading people', more inclined to help people and be less ruthless and so on. Apparently there is a UN Security Council resolution about Women being involved in more political processes, though i wonder how this is enforced...

So we shouldn't be helping women get certain jobs because they have equal right to them, we should be helping them get them because they can do them better and though that might mean Men like me lose out, it means Women can help make this World a better place cause all the Men can't manage to do it! hmmm

Values for Sustainable Development

2007-06-07T21:02:00.000+08:00

So, though the World is more and more acutely aware of how unsustainable it is, the World continues to get more unsustainable. Weird that isn't it? I have wondered for a while how this bizarre effect takes place. The more extreme example I can think of is HIV/AIDs.

I know there is obviously a lack of education and awareness about the disease; but if 25% of a population, or in some villages 60% have HIV/AIDs and are actually, visibly dying from it, why doesn't the rest of the village realise and address the issue? Is it just because everyone catches it before it is too late to realise? In which case, why is it, when these people then tell a nearby unaffected village about HIV/AIDs, that that village seems to ignore them, catch HIV/AIDs themselves etc.

I might be oversimplifying things somewhat, especially for such a complex issue. But People are pretty stupid. I've commented before on the problems of the disconnect that is the main cause of today's problems -we do not see the (unsustainable) impact of our actions, but even when we do see the negative impact of our actions, we still don't care. We absolve ourselves of responsibility, find some solution (to the detriment of someone else) and move on. It is a dog eat dog world. But when you've eaten all the dogs, then what will be left for you to eat?

So if you were given the chance to try to spread a few values that you thought might be the ones, that if everyone agreed with, and acted based upon, would lead to a sustainable World? Well, I led a short discussion and though the list could be endless and so many of the values are overlapping we came up with:
-Respect
-Interdependence
-Equality
-Responsibility

I believe that if everyone lived those values and understood those values the World would be a much better place. As it happens the project we've been running to teach the top high school students in China about these values through discussion on key SD issues is just finishing it's first phase. So far about 2,000 students reached and, for a pilot, it has been fantastic. Let's see what more we can do next time.

Community

2007-06-07T20:47:00.000+08:00

Everyone and everything is part of a community, though how large the community is and who/what is in it varies. Human beings seem to change communities more than most species, moving between communities and changing communities more and more often. At what cost?

Communities developed as people realised they needed to trust others to survive and work with others for the common good of their community. Nowadays we leave communities searching for spouses, education, jobs, fun, adventure or just something new and different. Ironically the people that are forced to leave communities are often the ones that do not -they are forced to leave because occasionally they did something to offend the community, but most likely because the community is unable to provide for those within it any more.

A sense of community is essentially similar to a sense of social responsibility, though a sense of community is easier to define and provides more tangible benefits to those within it. It is, I believe, not a bad thing to move communities, but the bad thing is that once we move out of a community we often do not move into another one, or we do not recognise the one we have moved into -how big is it? who is in it? what are the commonalities holding the community together?

We don't recognise our community because we are not trying to; we are not trying to because we do not recognise the value of a community -to us or to others. We do often end up in some kind of community, whether we want to or not, but then we are not entirely aware of it, and are not sure if it is the right community for us. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. These new communities that we join are often short-lived or only based on a social nature; thus there is no long-term commitment to the community, especially it's physical environmental nature.

We need to identify our community and it's impacts. We need to recognise it for what it is worth and strive to improve the value we get from it, and the collective value within it, as well as how it interacts with other communities. I worry that as we lose our sense of community, we venture into the unknown -with unknown consequences, both short and long-term. What community are you a part of?

Participation

2007-03-03T10:45:00.000+08:00

Levels of Participation is what possibly used to be 1 aspect separating businesses from NGOs from governments -but the recent trend has been for everyone to take-up participation in different ways which is now another example of the blurring of the line between the 3.

Governments all try different models of participation as democracies or even as autocracies too various degrees; with citizens able to vote on certain people or decisions as well as have access to information and the ability to input into ideas, processes etc through consultations.

NGOs have long had to use participation to find volunteers and raise funds and utilise some sort of research to start an idea and then to affect real change engage people in their activities as much as possible.

Businesses used to only use participation for market research and employee unions, but now involve employees much more, customers and their ideas much more and stakeholder engagement is the buzz word around to identify new opportunities and understand potential risks.

Though all kinds of participation are different within sectors and within organisations there still is a trend for all 3 sectors to increase their participation: for government it is a way to increase their legitimacy (which is getting lower), for businesses it is a way to increase trust and hopefully increase profits and for NGOs it helps increase their impact.

Participation for me is a great thing as it helps create mutual accountability between groups, increases communication, gains greater agreement, inspires confidence and generates ideas amongst other things. Of course there are limits to how much participation is useful -however I believe these limits should be decided by the 'participants' rather than those deciding. If it requires too much time for too little benefit, let the 'participants' say! If 'participants' are not qualified for certain discussions, let them realise so!

Power to the people, greater participation and greater involvement can unite this world slowly and surely to achieving better things for more people in better ways. After all, who will complain if an idea they contribute to fails? Though they might not take responsibility, they will still be happy about the process of decision making -and this is the key point for participation. The process is more important than the result and if 'successful' will often achieve better results in the wider sense.

What is the role of NGOs?

2007-02-12T22:02:00.000+08:00

NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) is a very loose term covering all kinds of organisations: normally anything that is not a government or for-profit enterprise. It could include churches, chambers of commerce, business association, lobby groups, trade unions, charities and more.. However the way it is generally used is to describe an organisation that is organised like a business in order to serve a social purpose and without focusing on profits.

Thus typically there are 'grass-roots' NGOs often formed from a few volunteers campaigning for a local issue or providing care for some disadvantaged section of society; there are larger charities that provide welfare to those in need and there are the bigger Development NGOs that aim to influence government and business and effectively use resources to e.g. reduce poverty on a large scale.

Moving quickly past such a brief summary, in recent times there has been a blurring between business and NGOs into the so-called world of 'social enterprises' whose primary goal is to serve society but who wish to make profits at the same time. Many think that these are more effective at solving societal problems as it is more sustainable, more competitive and more efficient. It is noted that the best way to solve problems requires large-scale solutions and these kinds of scales or innovations are often only achieved through a profit incentive and a functioning market to make organisations more effective.

NGOs are often profitable in some sense: selling a service to make money (e.g. running a home for disabled people) or providing benefits to a corporate partner (e.g. advise on reducing their environmental footprint or training their suppliers) -they just pay less tax and promise to spend any profit on further programs. They do not have owners as such, and this is normally seen as their advantage: no money to stock-holders or to rich private owners. However it is also seen as a disadvantage: who are they accountable to?

Interestingly NGOs and businesses alike seem to be converging on a model that governments ar supposed to use -but often fail to do so. The model of being accountable to various stakeholders locally and otherwise. Governments are notoriously slow to change, and rarely due if changes negatively impact those in power, or those who might get in power. Now that many companies engage with local groups; NGOs engage with local governments and communities it seems like both sectors are listening.

It's pretty clear that NGOs are not changing the World; neither are ineffective governments (which are still too frequent around); and neither are aid agencies. Business, it seems, could be the answer; but it requires a stable environment and infrastructure and this is often lacking. Thus the current trend for NGOs to work with governments and businesses (using Aid) to try to focus on this issue 'sustainable livelihoods'. Is this the future role for NGOs?

As the most trusted type of organisation in the World, will NGOs be able to bring partners and stakeholders together to find solutions to allow business to flourish -to create meaningful jobs? Jobs, is the ultimate issue here -and this is really only something that a business (whether it is for-profit or not; including collaboratives) can provide. This week the good news is that more people have jobs now than ever before, but more people do not have jobs too (as the population constantly grows).

I am excited by some of the work that Plan is doing in China: trialling new methods and schemes that government (especially in developing countries) is unable to try (too slow, too corrupt, too cumbersome, too political, too hierarchical, too poorly trained); raising issues that otherwise have no-one to raise them and so on. The end result should be either government, business, or individuals doing something different that is better than what they were doing before.

The problem is so much that NGOs do is not sustainable, not an efficient use of resources -and often fails. Not that it is always their fault: after all most businesses fail too. Interestingly NGOs tend to try much much harder than businesses to make their projects a success. I am still looking for the balance between time/money spent researching, measuring etc vs. actually doing, subsidising, training etc.

In the future I see NGOs having to better define their 'ownership' in order to work out where they fit in society; since their roles overlap with all other sectors (including the media). I see them struggling to keep their 'independence' whilst being involved in so many 'partnerships' (including revenue generating activities). I think accountability will be come a bigger issue: NGOs will have to carefully balance how they spend their money on staff (pay more to get better?) and on research and evaluation. But I hope that NGOs will be given more slack to fail more, learn lessons and so on. International NGOs will need to start incubating ideas, being more innovative, spinning off from themselves to remain flexible and innovative and better define their relationships and purpose to other (grass-roots) NGOs.

In many areas NGOs are in competition with each other for resources: a good thing no doubt; but more partnerships are likely to form to prevent competition ruining funding streams or affecting transparency. NGOs have undoubtedly become more professional; and the next step is to move into the relm of M&A, spin-offs and so on. It excites me to end this post with the concept of taking the real world to NGOs: could venture capitalism have a role with development? How can you define the worth of an NGO? There already exists 'tables' of NGOs which are most effective with their money. It would be great if these very basic methodologies could develop -and who knows what might happen?

Business is having its time turning into an NGO through social enterprises; now NGOs need to do their bit to come towards business by tackling the challenges outlined above. And, who knows maybe a time will come when NGOs and Business will be one and the same -all serving to create jobs and services that society needs, whilst being accountable (and responsible) to society.

having what it takes

2006-12-17T18:52:00.001+08:00

Recently I've been thinking about the whole topic of interviews, skills, competencies etc and have had to explain to a few people what it is that people look for when recruiting someone. Of course every job is different, but I do want to discuss a couple of key concepts.

It is not what you know that matters that much. It is what you are capable of doing and what you want to do. If you have the capability and the ideas of how to direct that capability to achieve the results, then that is wonderful.

It is not what you achieve, but how you achieve it. Sounds contrary to my previous statement; but in my point of view this is crucial for modern organisations. It is not just about issues like corruption or management, it is related to an organisation's culture. Will you be someone who is inspired to achieve a numerical result or inspired to achieve the result of that result? Will you be content with reaching a goal or want to go further? Are you motivated by the number or the consequence? Do you have a plan or a vision? First you need to have a vision or a dream of where that plan leads to, then you create the plan. You have to be inspired by the vision primarily, not just the plan.

The how matters, because when you join an organisation you do just that -join an organisation. This requires communication, teamwork, motivation and so on. When you work with someone who challenges you, inspires you, provides ideas, helps you generate ideas then you are very lucky! But that is what makes an organisation a success and that is what makes an individual a success: even if a job does just require you sitting by a computer and a phone, there are still people around you to talk to, to eat lunch with and at the other end of the email or phone!

Real teamwork cannot be measured. It is not just having team meetings; it is about helping others to achieve and helping others to help you achieve.

Now, all this said, having these qualities (or an organisation that allows these qualities to develop and exist) is not easy. I'm yet to find either a person or an organisation that is perfect -but still, when you are interviewing someone you want to try to find that perfect person, and you want to try to develop that perfect organisation.

And if you don't, then you need to! Which comes to the final quality: Perfectionism is not an optional trait. Everyone needs to aim to be perfect, to achieve perfection somehow -when you define perfection aim high (and realistically) -and yes perfectionism requires persistence. The problem is, how many leaders know any of this, let alone try to make it happen? I hear about some organisations where all this is true.. let it be known that I hope to create an organsiation like this some day!

partnerships

2006-12-17T18:00:00.000+08:00

Reflecting back on a 'Strategic Marketing' course at University reminds me that I did learn something.. and indeed, still remember something of use from University. Namely that though partnerships tend to be seen as a end in themselves, and a very popular concept nowadays, partnerships to really be a mean to an end.. and once the end is achieved (or as close as can be), the partnership should be dissolved (therefore when it is created, such a dissolution point should be planned for).

I also remember that the professor's definition of strategic partnership made for interesting thinking: combining different strengths of organisations together for example, or that a partner often enters a partnership hoping to actually beat its partner -partnerships are rarely equal and partner's unstated goals rarely the same. Of course there was much more to the course, such as the difficulties of creating and integrating joint activities, managing them and so on.

In my work I look at strategic benefits in a philanthropy way: between organisations of different sectors, which explicitly have different objectives from partnerships: a company might hope to improve its reputation whereas a charity might want to help poor people. However these partnerships are often fairly successful.

What about partnerships where all partners' over-riding goal is a philanthropic one? This strikes me as interesting because everything in 'business' is about motivation: if the motivation is so strong and commitment so great, might success be achieved? So the recent trend for all kinds of people to start joining coalitions or partnerships to fight some aspect of poverty. Many are not real partnerships; indeed a coalition is often just a membership of a club where you contribute something and a central secretariat actually does something with it. But for actual partnerships; with each partner contributing something, doing something, having a direct stake in the outcome etc -then are these partnerships more successful (the typical MBA textbook will state how often mergers fail to add value, or how often partnerships do not bring much benefit to either partner!) than traditional business partnerships (which my professor was talking about)?

I hope to find out more over the course of my career; one thing is sure, is that these new partnerships (Cross Sector Partnerships, Corporate Community Engagement and so on) are rarely assessed adequately in the context of how successful the partnership is (if it is actually a partnership, rather than just a 'sponsorship'); and only the outcome of the partnership is assessed (and often badly).

prioritising

2006-12-15T17:55:00.000+08:00

In business it is tough to prioritise. Can you really choose what is more important to your business -your employees or your customers? You obviously need both; and this is just a very simple example. There are many situations where prioritising is difficult and complex.

Leading CSR thought is along the lines of integrating CSR and responsibility into management decisions. In this way the impact of decisions can be viewed through a 'responsibility lens'' thus if there are guidelines within a company for how to select priorities, the litmus test is where is sustainability or responsibility in these guidelines.

I write about the difficulties of prioritisation because we, as human beings face similar problems daily. The world, it seems, is now moving climate change up the ladder of priorities, but at what cost? Will the environment (in a traditional sense) or poverty reduction drop down a few rungs to compensate?

It is clear we cannot focus on all issues; and all have their merit. It is also clear that all issues are inter-related. Yes you cannot generate economic growth if the people who generate wealth are dying from HIV/AIDs, and their future successors are not being educated or looked after. But at the same time, you cannot generate wealth, if there is no water for growing crops or cooling factories, or for drinking. Another simple example, but this I believe is an issue we are struggling to deal with.

There are too many issues with complicated solutions and not enough will power or resources to solve them all. The Copenhagen Consensus was an interesting concept, when it started in 2003 -and its great to discover it is still going. The Copenhagen Consensus process aims to establish a framework in which solutions to problems are prioritized based upon the best information possible. The idea is a great one, and they have wonderful educational resources which I think every institution should use to stimulate debate and ideas.

Their founding conference in 2004 came up with these top 4 priorities: HIV/AIDs, Nutrition (Micronutrients), Trade liberalisation, Malaria. (Interestingly the youth conference came up with Malnutrition/Hunger, Communicable Disease, Governance/Corruption and Education). Now they are updating their framework and preparing for a similar conference in 2008. What will the priorities they come up with be then? Will Climate Change still take 3 of the bottom 4 places?

Thankfully there is some follow-up, including an interesting book (a rich set of arguments and data for prioritising our response most effectively).

On a personal level, as much as we may all care about helping others, there is the question that we hate to ask ourselves.. Is watching a 2 hour movie going to really make much difference to the World? Is our job really what we want? This discussion shall be had another time!

HIV/AIDs as a reflection of our society

2006-12-02T18:04:00.000+08:00

just watched a movie called A closer walk which I encourage everyone to watch; one of the many very good points is that HIV/AIDs and our failure to stop it spreading reflects about our society in general. Of course every society is different between regions, countries, cities etc; but there are some interesting thoughts that came into my mind.

First I started thinking about social stigmas -related to sex, related to old or disabled people, related to people of other races and sexes. And the obvious truth that we start with a negative stigma of almost anything different or anything we do not understand, but once we come into close contact with it and reach across the divide to make a personal connection, then we can lose the stigma. But the problem is if we think this way then we start with holding stigmas towards so many people and have to work to overcome them -rather than the opposite. I understand the evolutionary perspective of having to earn trust and fear people or things that are different or we do not understand for own survival; but today we come into contqact with so many people and things that are different: much more than in the past; and we effect so many more people that are so different to us, without even knowing it!

How can we change these stigmas? Are we as humans, humane people? It seems not. Despite knowledge and awareness we often do nothing, for so many reasons -some simple and some complex. The more reasons there are, the more solutions there are -which makes it harder to solve on one hand, but also offers more opportunities for us to do something -just pick one small solution that fits our personal situation. Despite evident visibility on our own streets of people less fortunate, we as humans don't seem to do anything about it. It's not often about desire, or about means, or ability (though all often are missing); but more generally about behaviour.

What does it take for society to change? To take responsibility for itself? I mean, our society is killing itself in so many ways... Yes, there are 'bigger picture' ideas: of there being more people creating more diseases killing more people, of poverty being inevitable no matter what and so on.. but what strikes me, is that we COULD actually do something about it.. it is not just out of our hands!

Now for a problem I do not have an answer for- if in some countries 40% people have HIV/AIDs and whole families and friendship networks are dying from it; why is HIV/AIDs becoming a bigger problem? Surely everyone is affected by it; surely they can see it, see the effects and will want to stop it -for their own, selfish sake -but this is not happening. If there are cultural reasons for this (man involving the role of women in society) then how come the culture does not change? Yes, we need to understand different cultures, respect them etc. But there is no point in preserving a culture if it is not fit for the modern society.. if by preserving a culture it wipes its own people out. They need to change their culture to survive (and not necessarily change to a certain or specific culture; but make some kind of change)!

Finally a point was made by the Director of the movie, that there are somethings that are fundamental rights and others that are a privilege: The rich may have more priviledges than the poor, but we should not have more rights.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

2006-11-25T14:07:00.000+08:00

I am a convert! -after the BAWB Global Forum in Cleveland, I've been researching more and more about this so-called 'Bottom of the Pyramid' concept -that it is in business's own interest to help society, and the best way to do so is, through doing more business. Sometimes known as 'doing business with the poor', this is not necessarily a new concept: indeed the poor have been integrated into (and benefited) from global supply chains for a while -and will continue to do so.

The 'new' trend (by that I mean a trend that only recently academic studies have discovered is happening and started researching, though i am sure inspired individuals and business throughout time has been involved in this trend for centuries) is basically about how important innovation and entrepreneurship is to doing business with the poor -and therefore I am convinced that entrepreneurs have been doing this for years. It's great that Multinationals are getting more involved, since they can scale-up and mainstream.

The fundamental learning point is very much about understanding the market. The market might for your business yet, but if you can provide a useful service, the market will buy it. The product or service does not necessarily have to benefit society per se; but by creating a successful product or service, it will provide some benefit in its use and in knock-on wealth creation (jobs, distribution etc). There is 1 caveat though, in that these products or services should not be harmful. Writing this, it is clear that the best example of BOP is the illegal drugs market -where there are incredible innovations in supply chain, distribution, marketing and so on -and huge buyers of poor people some how become buyers (unfortunately often through crime).

Now companies are listening more, engaging more and experimenting more: another example of CSR just being good business -a logical evolution of what had been happening previously. Often serving this market requires a new product or service, and often it requires rethinking the associated business functions entirely. Thus businesses need to encourage more entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, give their employees free-rain, flexibility, and take a long-term approach to profit making. Society needs to encourage innovation more; it needs to encourage entrepreneurship in its educational systems, in its economic frameworks, in its recognition and status socially and so on. Much more needs to be done about this urgently. We need more leaders with more ideas to solve the many challenges we face.

Supply Chain and Development

2006-11-24T13:41:00.000+08:00

After a recent conference on Supply Chain Management I came to realise a few things. The most important is how great a lot of the stuff Brands are doing: they are (for various reasons) demonstrating fantastic leadership and I believe had made a big difference in the last 10+ years. There are of course multiple problems still to contend with; especially considering what they are doing is not driven my much local pressure; and most of what they are doing should, to some extent, be done by the government (enforcing Health and Safety laws, working hours laws etc).

There are some fantastic pilots taking place that really bring 'CSR' to local managers in factories and engage with all stakeholders in such programs (including, crucially, the workers) -so that the managers themselves see the business benefits of CSR -and are actually able to understand CSR as a holistic concept, rather than what they see at the moment (compliance, training etc). There is further to go, not least in addressing the scale-up challenges involved.

Scaling-up is the buzz word in the development world (where I work) and it is clear that the CSR world needs to take a leaf from the development world's book -or at least learn the lessons the development world has gained from many years of failures, and some successes attempting such grand initiatives. The Business world may be great at scaling up marketing, but scaling up CSR/development programs is different. For too long pilots have occurred in the supply chain and not expanded, there has been a lack of involvement of government, policy makers and academics, there has been limited attempts at partnership with other sectors (or with competitors) and not enough capacity building.

Maybe Supply Chain Staff should meet Marketing staff and realise that distributing products requires partnerships and adequate distribution channels, as well as effective communications, effective research and so on.

This takes me to the lesson the Supply Chain only seems to have recently learnt: the need to engage with stakeholders and more than this, provide for the stakeholders to make the decisions. In the development world the community is encouraged to make decisions -an example might be an offer of funding for a community to improve the community. Now, the funder might not actually care what the community chooses to do with the money, what they care about is the process the community went through to make the decision. Thus the community has buy-in and is accountable to itself as well as the funder, and the community will learn the lessons. At the conference people were finally talking about the need for a bottom-up approach; an engagement approach and so on.

There is of course a lack of people around who can facilitate this process, inspire the stakeholders to be involved, or trust the stakeholders enough! But, for Supply Chain Improvements to really take off, that is what must happen. The Buyers will need to reach a stage where they trust their suppliers and step back -audit less not more.

A Factory is different to a village community though, so Buyers need to empower the managers to willingly want to empower and engage with their employees and other stakeholders. Not much sustainable benefit to the buyers doing all the 'csr' on behalf of a factory they do not own! When a Factory manager spoke to us, he was not knowledgeable about CSR as a concept -and indeed most auditors are not 'csr experts' -they are auditors, and this is the problem. Most trainers (either from the company, ngos or consultancies) are training bits and pieces as required by whoever pays their services.

Development looks at comprehensive needs of a community, takes into account external factors, spends as much on research before a programme and evaluation after the programme (plus disseminating learning points) as the programme itself. Development requires spending LOTS of money, but aims to do small things well, then identify opportunities to scale-up -often involving government, business and other stakeholders.

The key to development though is that those being 'developed' want to be developed -they see the benefits, and this is not something the supply chain movement started with; and is something it has tried to create -Brands are having to go in and convince the factories of the benefits of CSR. Will this and other lessons be learnt? I suggest a dialogue between development NGOs and the Supply Chain actors; share some lessons, and then lets make sure that what is happening is sustainable. I don't believe much of the supply chain movement is sustainable. There are some fantastic examples, but these are few, and the sample a tiny proportion of all 'supliers' that exist -which is almost any company that sells something to someone!

Though the migrant workers complained at the conference about lack of training and how they wanted innovative training, career development opportunities and so on; they are much better off than in their villages -if not they would not be there. Ambition is a great thing. How about they take some of these lessons back to the factory outside their village, and take some leadership upon themselves? I think there needs to be some re-thinking about scaling-up. Let's hope that future conferences focus on that. Too much good stuff is happening to be wasted on having such low impact.

Is this great stuff bringing the whole field up? Maybe some of the factories in apparel, toys and electronics in a couple of geographical areas are getting better. Is the entire field of factories getting better, no matter where they are based or what product they are making? No, but some leaders need to start re-thinking, re-planning and being more ambitious.

Market Failure

2006-11-22T21:26:00.000+08:00

The Stern Report states that we are witnessing the biggest market failure ever -and the consequences are climate change. It would be hard to argue with this. The report contains many suggestions and most are dependent on someone -business or government mostly doing something; rather than just talking. Whether this will happen or not depends on how sever climate change becomes (and the short-term impacts) and particularly on public opinion.

Public opinion does seem to be, finally, changing. After a recent conference on Supply Chain, I wonder if there are some lessons that could be learned from what has been going on there in the last 10-15 years or so, since public opinion started to become vocal through NGOs (though how much the average public really cared might still be debatable). The labour conditions is actually not a case of market failure: but it is a case of how a non-financial/tangible/measurable matter became a more important driver than economics.. In climate change we cannot wait until we run out of cheap coal before we find alternatives!

It is interesting how, I believe, average people still do not care much about poor labour conditions (often workers do have a choice of going back to the countryside if they wanted to, for lower wages and more poverty) or even about starving people in Africa -since that still persists even though it could be easily solved if there was the individual will. Instead changes come about through a few passionate people and the systems they use to stimulate change: specifically the International NGO and the media -both are leading the campaigns about climate change too. Good job they exist; good job they are doing something. Ironically various Sustainable Development Communication email lists are buzzing with the problem of people being confused with so many messages, and none of them seemingly working. It seems that the more popular an idea becomes, the more competition there is in the arena, the worse a problem becomes the harder it is to mobilise people with a simple message, simple solution, simple actions.

There have been lists around for years about how we could save water or energy, yet toilets still use up way too much water in a single flush than they need, and shops still sell inefficient light bulbs. The simple message is that we need more individuals who are going to make brave decisions: either for ethical reasons or because they can spot a market opportunity. Climate Change surely offers both as well -the World just needs more individuals to make the different, be different, and then they (and the World) can reap the benefits.

Decline in leadership- what next?

2006-10-22T13:26:00.000+08:00

When your leadership role decines, and this seems inevitable, what do you do? Try to postpone the inevitable; try to prevent it through eliminating the competition; accept the decline and manage it to your own benefit or are there other options?

Some could argue the USA faces this option in the next 20-30 years. As sure as people cannot live forever, empires cannot live forever and the USA will need to sacrifice its individual dominance of the World at some point -maybe to China, maybe to China and India combined, or maybe it will just have to share its dominance with either of those (or Europe etc)?

Previous empires have tended to implode through over-stretching or because the competition beat them (often in a group) or because someone else just developed to be better.

Let me introduce: The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle. Now this seems to imply that the USA will not give up its leadership position.

Fair enough -let PNAC research this (and who knows how much support it actually has from the 'powers that be'. But what would be better for the USA is to also have another think-tank entitled: Project for the Non-American Century which could explore what the future might look like under a different country (or group of countries)'s leadership. It could explore what the US could do to ensure it still benefits from this decline, how to deal with the psychological implications, how to prevent a nuclear attack on the (overtaking) competition and so on.

Even more interesting it could explore peaceful means of how the US could retain its leadership role in a way that is good for itself and others; in partnership with others. Unfortunately political international partnerships (e.g UN) rarely work due to the inherent fundamental need to preserve one's self-interest over all else... simple game theory does not adequately explain irrationality based on human kind's selfishness; or if it does (I am not an expert) then why has no one put forward suggestions to make partnerships like the UN Security Council or WTO work better?

The Leadership of the US needs to be responsible to itself and to others by creating several scenarios of the future and explore each one in detail. Instead of just presuming there is only 1 possible scenario (continued dominance) and exploring how to best ensure that scenario happens. As we are slowly, slowly realising we are an interconnected species on a small planet (witness climate change) and we have to put the 'whole' ahead of ourselves. Other species seem to be able to do this. Are human beings up to the task?

I would hate to see yet another cold war of some king... one that might end up warming up just a little too much..

bbc

2006-10-20T01:45:00.000+08:00

I'm a big supporter of the role of 'the market' to allocate resources effectively and balance long-term with short-term consequences. It is not perfect by any means and despite the interesting use of the stock market to counter for long-term impacts (e.g. futures), the time lag between our reaction to certain problems and our decision to do something about it is still too great.

There is though, always other problems, such as out lack of ability of how to do something about a problem (once we eventually realise it is a problem).There are also some things where a 'market concept' has not developed -and maybe cannot develop. One example is politics; which should be the model 'market' but is often not; another is the Media. For several years I have held a great interest in the role of the media, its power, its use, its ownership, its impartiality and so on. What strikes me as interesting is to consider the 'marketisation' of the media, into monopoly ownership (is it a bad thing? if so, won't bad things naturally fail to be replaced with better things?), onto the internet (how many of us would love to spend all out time viewing all that media up there -too much!) and how it impacts it's content.

I think the UK is in an interesting situation regarding the media. There are some media providers who are purely commercial (though still regualted by the government and forced to show a certain number of 'educational shows', or to limit the amount of advertisements, for example) and then there is the BBC. The BBC is about broadcasting TV and radio (nationally and globally), funding and making content for itselves and others and providing the UK's most popular website (and a top site globally). Although it is sort of a non-profit entity, its existence is entirely dependent on the government to give it its 'license' -i.e. remit on what it can or cannot do. Thus the government controls the BBC -but the funding comes directly from the people (everyone must buy a TV license), though this is not a tax it is barely a 'user fee' since usage of the BBC is so loosely related to how much is paid (compared to a normal market commodity).

As much as the BBC loves to hate the government it has to rely on the individuals within the government who are willing to support something that might be bad for the government (its controllers). Indeed what makes the BBC so interesting is this weird balance of control and ownership.. because it impacts what the BBC is able to do, and crucially, what the content is.Thus the media is a unique issue to discuss in the context of responsible leadership.

Many argue (at a macro level) about the crucial role the media has to play in informing the public, in playing an active role in supporting democracy, freedoms (of speech etc). Others can argue (at a micro level) about whether the media should promote domestic talent (since it is paid for by domestic money) or whether it is stifling other competition. It makes the mind boggle to consider how complex a responsibility the BBC has -given its international role, its influence across so many types of media and its remarkably high level of trust that almost everyone holds in it (in a world where no-one trusts any thing nowadays!).

My take is that there is a responsibility to stimulate a healthy democracy and debate, there is a responsibility to inform people about issues that they need to be educated about (climate change, poverty or whatever), there is a need to provide fantastic documentaries even if so few people watch them, there is a need to provide a platfor for new talent and new ideas and there is also a need to show shows that people actually want (e.g.soap operas).

Getting the balance right is not easy; it seems the BBC is doing ok with this balance at the moment, and the government is doing a fair job of both controlling and not controlling the BBC in a way that is best for the 'public good' (who can decide what THAT is?). I hope that it continues in it unique and weird form to continue to be a fantastic organisation.

Pandas

2006-10-15T17:09:00.000+08:00

The 5 other animals that are in the same species as the Panda (debated as to what exact species the Panda is) have all disappeared -most of them hundreds of thousands of years ago, and not because of mankind. Now the Panda has started disappearing, partly from human activity and partly from other animals or natural changes.

To some extent, yes, it is because of humans that the Panda is now facing extinction -but at the same time, it is also simple evolution that the panda has failed to react adequately to climate changes; failed to change its eating habits; failed to escape from or attack predators; failed to mate quick enough etc.

Much is made of manking altering nature for our own good, well should we be artificially protecting the panda; which currently only survives in zoos or protected reserves. I believe only 1 panda has been returned to the wild (ever); no matter how much we can increase the population of pandas, what is the point if they cannot survive alone in the wild, unsupported?

Do we have an obligation to protect species from going extinct? Should we continue to keep them alive in order to study them, their breeding habits and so on, so we can increase our knowledge of nature, animals and history? Are we only protecting the panda because it is cute (and other animals that are not cure, are disappearing)? and so on....

What should we do, what is the responsible thing to do? I can definitely see value in protecting the panda in order to study it and learn from it; but then i think that what we should do is have these kinds of discussions about the panda, about extinctions and about mankind's place in this world. Instead of information in zoos about how we should support the panda, donate money to WWF and environmental conservation, we should be telling children the panda's story and discussing with them these and other philosophical questions.

Rarely does anyone learn about philosophy at school, unless they take it at 16, 18 or older as some academic option, but at a time when the debates are growing into the general public demain about the role of business in society, about the role of humans on our planet, about the role of the person flying on holiday (is there a right to travel?), then i think that a great philosophy class could tie all of this together in a fun and interesting way (the panda is a great example). This helps the future generations learn about the past, explore the present and challenge the current preconceptions. Right now the most responsible thing we can do is explore new ways of living; of surviving -we cannnot go on as we are.

Stability

2006-09-25T00:12:00.000+08:00

Stability and change. Most people, especially in the corporate World will argue that you need to continue to innovate to succeed. In literary terms you can find 'sayings' both for and against change; in political terms everyone is always talking about change; in our personal lives we are always against change and upheavals.

I find this topic interesting just because in different situations, leadership might require stability, and others might require change -and it is impossible to create any kind of generalisation or advice on this. There are, of course, issues related to responsible leadership: a duty to understand what impacts changes might have on people (many are unforeseen) or a duty to be brave enough to change ahead of the times rather than after the times, in order to remain competitive.

I want to focus on the Political World though: Looking at Iraq, life was not great before Saddam Hussein, and it will hopefully be much better 'after him' -though when the 'happy' 'after him' period arrives is anyone's guess. Change is never easy (personally, politically or professionally) and Iraq is a simple way of asking, is the change process worth it? Even if the end result is better than before the change, the change process might be so bad (or so long) that is outweighs the benefits of the change altogether.

People like stability; people do not like to take risks and there needs to be a big enough motivation to take risks; or else those risks won't be taken. You could argue that in Iraq things were not bad enough (yet) that people were willing to risk doing whatever was needed to change the status quo. Now its clear that it is not so simple as to say that the US acted like an external consultant, assessing that 2002 was the time that the change should happen: that the risks were good enough (because there were many reasons for their intervention); but looking at a political situation through a corporate viewpoint draws interesting parallels.

Who should instigate change? The internal staff (or citizens) or the external consultant/new CEO (revolutionary leader or attack/'invasion' by another country)? How can the change process be best managed -and what is the goal of that change? Interestingly I think looking at Iraq from a business point of view it's clear that the US (apologies for simplifying such a controversial and complex issue) had a vision for the 'post-change period', but had only though of the first few strategies for getting there, underestimated the time to complete the change, forgotten to think about what the impacts of the change might be on different stakeholders, ignored what the 'competition' might do, misjudged the time frame and so on. Anyone reading this could draw their own parallels to various situations.

The end of the day is that business knows how hard change is, there are thousands of models and theories and good and bad examples.. there are though some simple rules that most MBA schools will teach. But what about political change? Even looking at more modest changes, like a domestic election leading to a change in political party leadership, there seems to be no real understanding of how to create the change, what the vision is, what the strategies are and so on. At least, that is a very initial statement.

With deeper reflection, I believe that there are many successful cases of political change, and what seems to be common with all of them is that change was so desperately needed that it was simple and obvious to work out the details, the strategies, to get stakeholder support etc. Nowadays most western countries don't have serious need to change, therefore whatever supposed changes they initiate (and most mainstream parties in most developed democracies seem to be very alike) they are not very successful. Now if change was really needed then an extreme party (communist, fascist or whatever) would take over... therein lies the issue: these parties will take over once the need is great enough and they get enough support. However it is in the current mainstream parties interests to stop that from happening.

The competition in the corporate world is much greater; the need for change is often more pressing and more is at stake. Politically countries can afford somewhat to just be stable, making minor changes, and sometimes companies can do the same -other times companies cannot afford that whatsoever. So maybe politics needs to look at itself from a corporate viewpoint; to look at issues about stakeholders, visions and strategies, goals and accountability, 'change or die' perspectives, scenario planning, competitive analysis and so on. This is an interesting topic to explore more of in the future.

Meanwhile I'm more interested in the 'tipping point' that leads to successful changes.. when are what pressures so great that change happens? who instigates the change? was the change worthwhile? For me, time is the most important issue with change. Try to make the change quickly. Get it over with, then tweak it. Everyone will argue with change, no-one likes change, everyone is suspicious of new things and demands will change, pressures will change... so much will change as time drags on that the whole change process becomes based on a cause that has changed and a vision that is no longer relevant. So, responsible leaders need to understand this (no matter what they are leading), they need to prepare, research, strategise. But most of all they need to get their timing right. Make the change at the right time -get it finished when that time is still right.

Then start thinking about other issues in change mangement: expectation setting, vision setting, leadership, buy-in, progress communication, stakeholder participation and agreement etc etc. How much of this has ever been done politically? Only when the situation was so bad that enough people could easily identify the problem and the problem was so serious that it had to be changed NOW and quickly has political change been successful (of course other factors are useful too, like outside support or copying other successful models) -overall change is about time, and about need. Right now some of the world is slowly starting to realise that change is needed, and quickly, to stop climate change or HIV/AIDs. But the world is not there yet. The pressures for change are not direct enough, not important enough, not relevant enough to create the tipping point needed. Lets hope though that this change will come, it will come quickly, be done quick enough, and be successful. Isn't is scary to compare the battle in Iraq with the battle against HIV/AIDs?

When will the end come? Who really wants the end? Are those who have the means to end it willing to end it or do they know how to end it? Is it just getting worse? The longer it goes on, the worse it gets -that is for certain.

Sustainability takes off

2006-08-12T18:53:00.001+08:00

So Sustainability might have finally taken off. The general public seem to know about climate change, have heard something about hydrogen replacing oil and have had to suffer either an electricity shortage or water restrictions recently. Many have read about the pollution in and from China, about the destruction of ecosystems globally and problems of slums, droughts, war and all things 'Africa-related'.

What is exciting is that all of these above things, including normally 'Africa-related' problems are becoming problems for the very people creating them -us, developed world's consumers. There are campaigns and 'days' or 'years' of all kinds. Companies are launching awareness campaings, politicians are fighting to be greener than their rivals and consumers are sometimes choosing 'fair-trade' or 'organic' products -or at least have probably heard about them.

The problem with all this, is that the World is a very big place, with many people, and many problems. Most of the causes for the problems we have are large-scale, and though its good to be aware of the cause and to have a solution. Actually implenting the solution on a scale that makes a difference (and hopefully reduces the problem) is another thing altogether.

So we are short of oil or water? It's not easy or quick to find more of either. So there is too much carbon in the atmosphere? Right now we are still pumping more into the air each year, let alone reducing our emissions, or finding a way of taking out what already is in the air! Our buildings and infrastructure waste water and heat. Newer (eg. LEED certified) ones are 10 times more efficienct, but look how long it has taken (and how little success their has been) to but energy efficient lightbulbs, let alone replace our water pipes, homes and offices.

I am excited by the trend that has started and is growing exponentially. But at the same time worried, because by the time the trend and the 'noise' gets big enough it might be too late. Recently a Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth's upper atmosphere. Uh-oh

Losing our responsibility

2006-06-08T18:37:00.000+08:00

I'm often talking about PSR -Personal Social Responsibility- in the context of each of us should try to save water, recycle, help others and so on. But, actually in the last 20 years especially, we are all losing our sense of personal responsibility.

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper puts a humerous twist on it:
-Did the credit card company force us to sign up to 6 credit cards and spend the money available on them?
-Do McDonalds force you into their restaurants to eat unhealthy food?
-Does your employer force you to not wear a safety mask?

Of course an employer should make sure their workplace is safe. Of course they can provide healthy products as well as unhealthy products. Of course they should not use advertising irresponsibly to attract you (or especially children) to smoke.

But it is almost sad when companies are providing training to their employees about sexually transmitted diseases or about traffic safety; because their employees do not know this information already (and the company does not want employees missing work from illness or injuries). Yes -there is a business case for companies to protect their employees from themselves, but why do employers have to do this?

innovation, CSO and BoP

2006-06-05T13:33:00.000+08:00

I was having a discussion with a friend about Nike and it developed into a new realisation for me. I suddenly realised the obvious linkage between innovation, CSR as CSO (Corporate Social Opportunity -not as just a responsibility) and BoP. BoP is the Bottom of the Pyramid theory that is popular nowadays, as a reason to motivate companies to create more products to sell to the poor in society, since they have some money, and if companies can create accessible products for them, they will be able to improve their quality of life.

In Nike's case there is not such an obvious proposition. They need to keep their products at a certain price to maintain the brand's status as well as make a profit to pay for their manufacturing and marketing costs. The proposition would be that Nike could create another brand (not called Nike at all, or called Nike Base or something) that would be at prices to rival local products (or the fake brand's products!) but would be based on Nike's quality standards. The products might be made from cheaper materials and would be proftable because there would be no need for R&D costs, promotional costs etc. It would not have maybe the same design benefits -since many people at the BoP require products for their use, not for their image. Thus this would differentiate it from the main nike products.

The conundrum though would be how to not lower nike's brand globally whilst still being able to sell these new products at a profit.

The next line of thinking is how to not just sell products to the poor -the idea is that the poor will benefit from these products, by the way, not just be exploited. How can Nike help the poor make more money (either to buy their products, or just to become less poor)? This would require looking at new manufacturing or distribution models. For distribution, you could look at a simple coca-cola model, where local distributors would sell their products and make money by doing it. One may ask why would poor people need nike clothes.. quality is not that big an issue for clothes. The locally made ones might be very similar to Nike's.

What makes this interesting is to tie this in with one of the key aspects of Nike's brand: of an active life. Sports and physical activies DO have huge benefits for people -anod not just in keeping them healthy, but in bringing people together for team activities as well as developing individual skills (team-work, motivation etc) or inspiring young people. This is the problem fo r Nike. What they can bring to the poorer people is a brand that will inspire people to be active..but they would need to keep their brand on these lower costs products to do this. What's the answer? Comments please, but there might be one somewhere out there.. Alternatively a low cost retailer might want to create a new brand: the ethos of Nike, but at lower costs!

How else could Nike help poor people? Apart from paying them to be distributors, they could also pay them to do marketing, to be sports coaches (if there was a business case to this then leading to greater sales), or to be involved in manufacturing.

There has been renewed debate against global supply chains and for local supply chains. Global Supply chains are the best way to maintain quality and be cost efficient, but the goods have to travel with climate change impacts and affecting the time to market from production. Groceries is a key player in this discussion at the moment: sourcing locally rather than centrally. But what if Nike's products could be made locally in small workshops, in local houses -much like 200 years ago in pre-industrialisation times.. and what if this was more beneficial than centralising everything, someway?

The point of this post is to show that for any company there are various options of innovating that might provide new market opportunities. Of course none of these might be feasible.. why should nike bother about producing locally, let a local entrepreneur or a mother stitch her own clothes! But, what if companies started to investigate and ask themselves these kinds of questions, to explore all kinds of new opportunties? Then, with some radical thinking, some determination and some innovation, we could get something, maybe. Maybe it won't benefit Nike, but if it can benefit society, someone else can take it up!

Transparency

2006-03-27T10:40:00.000+08:00

Transparency is important and becoming increasingly so. I am a big champion of transparency, but then I work for an NGO, so I would be!

I was wondering, in the context of the previous post about the 'invisible line', about how transparent a business could be. Nothing is simple. I looked before at why businesses are not responsible, since no-one seems to focus on this as much! Likewise, why is the 'publish what you pay' coalition (seemingly) such a failure? Why are companies not telling everyone how much taxes they are paying? Why in their Annual Report do they not geographically break down their payments? I think there are some unforeseen consequences. These could be positive but they could be (almost) revolutionary (sounds so dramatic). Let me introduce some scenarios:

-Shell says how much it pays the Nigerian government in taxes; the local people try to find out where it is getting spent and then civil unrest starts. This forces Shell to stop producing and to leave the country -for how long? Alternatively say Chevron pays less taxes and everyone tries to work out if this is justified or not (maybe from less income) -since tax regimes are so complicated that unfair comparisons are likely to be made and little achieved.

-If Wal-mart declared part of internal financial statements then competitors can work out their margins. Suppliers will realise the actually costs or sales of their products and renogotiate. Maybe this is stupid: but this is transaprency. Imagine that the current trend of supply-chain management develops so that customers demand more. Not just wanting to know if the company supports illegal forests, but wants to know if they use any of this or that chemical, they want to know how many products are bought locally (to support the local economy) and they want to know which ones. This could be fantastic: a concerted drive to source locally since customers might pay more for locally sourced goods it if keeps their neighbours in business, and so Walmart buys more locally... One way or another Wal-mart is forced, or voluntarily, reveals all this kind of information.

-If the terms of a contract were made public, how would this impact future competitiors wishing to bid for the contract? Granted if this was unusual, there would be (presumably) inequality in bargaining power, in knowledge disclosure and so on.

What I am really getting at, is that transaprency could work. But if it is to work, it needs a totally new paradigm: a new society with a new perspective on transparency with consequences that would (if transparency were the 'norm' -ie. legally enforced, and so everyone had the same access to the same knowledge) completely revolutionise how business is done. Would business be able to survive in this environment? I wonder if anyone has thought about any modelling of how it might, or how business could compete with total transaprency?

If we presume, that this would not be possible, then we have to work out where the line is between no transparency to total transaprency. Then we need to establish the motivations behind increasing transparency: legal or just self-interest? Transparency will increase when organisations think it is in their own benefit. Otherwise it would not be sustainable. No wonder 'publish what you pay' is destined to fail. NGOs might wield power of a sort, but its influence is limited when its demands unreasonable and when the impact of its activities (even if successful) may be limited: the unintended consequences could be graver. I'm a believer that someone will do something if they think its right. Telling them its right is not as effective as showing them.

Back onto the topic, what if transparency was not total: but more complicated (even those complexity usually makes things worse, in my opinion). What if different disclosures were made to different groups at different times (or when asked) and what those groups did with information did not affect the company's competitiveness or comparative advantage? Well, lets see if this will work. It seems this is the way the World is going... I can imagine in the near future that Transparency International will get certain information, create a report and say 'trust me' without revealing all the details. But what makes this interesting, is that companies are now refusing to trust governments with their details (ID cards in UK, google in the US), so why should we trust NGOs, or any other organisation for that matter?

I'm looking forward to how the current experiment in transparency works out and would be much more interested to look further into a concept of a world with total transparency: what would the ramifications be for salaries, costs, negotiations....?Why, we might end up in a world totally different -would it be a world that works better than the current one? Maybe, but will it be better for those who control the world now -no. So how likely is it to happen? So, going backwards somewhat (to reality), how likely is transparency as a concept to develop anyway? It is a concept that SEEMS to only have negative effects to those benefitting from an untransparent World. What is the future of transparency?

The invisible line

2006-03-27T09:41:00.000+08:00

Assumption:
-Partnership between sectors and organisations are good. eg. government and business collaborating on new laws that businesses could abide by and benefit from or companies in the same sector creating a voluntary code that they will agree to (such as not advertising chocolate to shildren)
-Corruption is bad. eg. business paying government to make, or not make, a certain law or businesses working together as cartels to create artificial price fixes

You'll see what I am leading to... where is the line between partnership and corruption? That the line can be greay and not black/white means it is harder to define the boundary, but more importantly, it is harder to interpret. So a company may quite happily have 2 principles: 1 of partnering to achieve more and 1 of refusing to be involved in corruption. It may strive to work closely with its suppliers and customers so it can better service them, it may give preferential treatment to preferred suppliers. But when does this preferential treatment become bribery?

Consider the case of treating a customer to dinner, or the case of a business partner also being a friend. When does the dinner become a bibe and when does a social conversation about their sector end up as a tacit agreement to collude or lead to sepcial favours? When recruiting someone, it is sensible to take into account personal experience or recommendations, but how valid is this, and does this not lead to discrimination against those who you did not know before?

Thinking about this more and more show that there are so many more examples -how do you draw the line? Presuming you do not intend to break the law then the line is very subjective. It is defined in reference to the 'norm' (ie. the normal circumstances that you think everyone does all of the time as part and parcel of the job). This creates a problem if there is no established 'norm' or if you do not know what the 'norm' is. In the case of China, where everything changes so fast (including the legal framework) and where most foreigners enter the market without understanding the culture or even being able to communicate effectively these issues might become especially valid.

On a slight tangent, this question leads me to think of the separate role of government and business. Is there a separate role? In every country the role is different. In some cases governments provide training, healthcare, utilities, salaries (pensions, unemployment benefit) etc etc. In others it is different. On a micro level in China you will find the British Embassy offering some free advice to British companies wishing to set up here, since the government wants to encourage business success, yet the company could also pay a special consultant for more in-depth advice. In fact often the government might subsidise this kind of advice directly.

What do companies do? Provide services in return for money? well governments do the same: you pay in your taxes and receive benefits. Governments tend to then themselves pay another company to do some of those services (outsourcing) and then it can all get complicated and confusing. I think the concept of CSR is struggling somewhat since it is trying to establish the rold of business in society: in reducing poverty, in creating a successful, sustainable society and so on. But this is also the role of national, local or international governments. Then there are NGOs: many bigger and with more influence than business or governments. Many performing services that are effectively government services outsourced.. but to an NGO not to a company. No difference, except in name.

All types of organisations have the ability to accrue debt or make profit. It could be possible to argue that governments are elected, other organisations are not: but this has nothing related to role of the organisation itself: maybe in the future, since stakeholders are becoming so important in business, that business will not just hold itself accountable to its stakeholders, but will go even further and hold itself electable to stakeholders. It will certainly gain legitimacy and trust! Though this may seem pointless since many countries struggle to have high turn-out in their governmental elections anyway!

So, the invisible line: macro and micro level discussions. Impact on individual level? How the individual defines their own lines, in the context of how the individual believes others see the line, and how the individual thinks others expect the individual to draw the line. Its all to subjective... no wonder corruption is a problem!

Why do companies behave irresponsibly? -2

2006-03-24T13:06:00.000+08:00

So how is the internal environment of an organisation influencing CSR? First I'll convince you that it is important. Look at Shell and BP: 2 of the best companies in the World for CSR (apparently); Shell had to revalue its oil reserves 2 years ago in a transparency disaster and this year BP has had an oil spill in Alaska from pipes that used to be inspected by 4 people but now only by 2 (to cut costs) .

Its clear that many of the best run global companies still have not mastered CSR by integrating it into their culture, despite valient attempts to. It seems that I should try to remember something about the module on 'OB' -Organisational Behaviour that I sudied at University, but I cannot! Anyway once again it shows that if you learn something in real life you'll remember much more. So what have I learnt? (and lets hope I'll remember!)

detachment. I have mentioned this before, and it is hugely important that you see the impacts from your actions. So many people don't even know what their impacts are, let alone try to ackowledge what those impacts might mean if they were aware of them. Will the BP person who originally decided to cut the oil pipe inspectors from 4 to 2 realise what has happened? Or was (s)he sitting in a head office, has now switched jobs or (if (s)he read the news) is (s)he blaming the accident on something else?

individualism. People tend to have individual targets and goals, and this is what they focus on. This detracts from seeing the bigger picture or caring about what other people are doing... or even thinking if what you are doing is related to someone else or not. As long as you do what your job is properly, then that's ok? Probably not, since it won't leverage any synergies in the company, it won't create the best solution for larger problems and it will only create a sense of responsibility to yourself, not to the organisation or to society.

reward and punishment. Punishment is always used too much, and is rarely effective. Reward is a better motivator, yet is rarely motivating anyone towards sustainability or responsible actions. You reward a sales person for increasing sales this year, you don't care whether those sales will be re-sold next year. Similarly you'll reward someone for a project completed on time, but won't think that they should write a report on how they did that which could help someone else repeat that accomplishment or consider the impacts of the project 5 years down the line (by requiring a post-project completion impact report or something). Companies need to reward in the right way in order to create the culture they want, and if they are serious about creating a sustainable, successful, organisation, their reward should support this.

misalignment. I find is fantastic that organsiations have values, goals, strategies and plans. Yet are they aligned? Are you rewarding employees for exhibiting the values you want to encourage? Are the goals sustainable and related to a long-term plan -what is their impact? Its fine to increase sales by 20%, but what will that do? Make people 20% fatter? Make employees work 15% more overtime? Reduce costs by 25% from your supplier who then goes bankrupt or pays their employees 25% less and so reducing product quality or requiring you to change supplier the following year, incurring the necessary switching costs? Will this growth generate bigger bonuses to employees who might then get poached by another company due to their success? All kinds of issues should be considered. I don't know if a framework exists in order to consider these -but maybe one should be! Life and Business is complicated -but it should be possible to make it simple: align, motivate and achieve.

decision-making. Also mentioned before but something i am becoming more intrigued in. What are the improtant factors when making a decision? Why will someone 'take short-cuts' or cheat? Who needs to be consulted for a decision to be made, and if everyone involved all has different motives might the outcome be a compromise for everyone and unsatisfactory for everyone at the same time? Is a decision based on the past, present or future, and how can you measure either: is a projection reasonable or is it biased?

I am sure these kinds of issues play a very important role in an organisation -i guess they are not very well understood. I think they need to be better understood for each of us to be responsible leaders, and for our organsiations to be responsible leaders.

Why do companies behave irresponsibly? -1

2006-03-24T11:13:00.000+08:00

It just dawned on me that instead of sitting in these conferences, always talking over and over again about why CSR is so good and why everyone should do it; it might be better to question first why are companies NOT doing it, since it is good business.

Is it a case that these people are stupid? or bad businessmen? Maybe it is. But also maybe it is much more complicated. I really do not think that the managers of mining companies in China want to kill their workers, but many of them end up hurt. Why?

It seems there are 2 main areas for discussion here: the external framework (that is often location specific) and the internal environment of a company/organisation.

At one event I went to recently, the GM of a state-owned railway company, spoke about the pressures he faces: he says a project will take 4 years, the government says to do it in 2 years! How can you implement a prject sustainably when you have to do it in half the time you expected it to take? The private companies also said that when they bid for a project they expect it to cost a certain amount. Then they are told that if they want the project they will have to do it for 25% less. How can they do that? If they do not accept then they have no business -if they do accept they will have to make some short-cuts to save on costs!

It is no wonder that there are health and safety problems: pressures to use cheaper materials, pressure to do things quicker and take less safety precautions. In this short-term situation it is hard to use the normal CSR lines to convince the company. On one hand there will be extra costs if there are injuries or problems with a bridge collapsing for example, but maybe you can complete the project without any of these problems.. and so the company tries to do this. In this case the solution seems to be about the development of the external framework to be more ameniable for CSR.

Thus, NGOs or government will pressurise the organisation awarding the contract, so make sure that all the companies that bid must meet certain minimum requirements. This means there will be a certain cost that no-one can go below, and the awarding body will have to accept that it cannot continue to force down the cost. Alternatively customers will actually start to care about CSR: so they will choose the best company for the project, not the cheapest. Right now costs is always the most important factor. I believe some companies like Shell take other factors into account to some extent, but when you make billions in profits you can afford some luxuries like this!

Management problems

2006-03-20T16:54:00.000+08:00

When writing my ideas for submitting an essay to the China CSR Map's essay competition I started thinking about CSR in China from an objective, long-term perspective: trying to think about why CSR is growing, is it growing and where is it going...

One of the issues I draw upon is related to the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in China. The largest national ones have all been put under the control of SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council) in order to reform and restructure the SOEs. The question I posed was oringnally just about CSR: If the government wants to encourage CSR then it should tell the SOEs and they will do it, or not?

Now ignoring the issue of CSR and just looking at the issue of owners telling the managers to do something, you come to several problems. Key, for me (especially in a CSR context) is that it is likely that some of the instructions will be beneficial to the SOE, but not to the manager. If we presume that implementing CSR has negative short-term implications (financial and human investment required) but positive long-term implications, then the Manager might not care about the long-term. In addition, they might not want to accept more responsibilities or more targets, or anything that makes their life harder, more complicated or more difficult. How much power does the owner wield? For non SOEs, the bigger issue is that short-term investments often lead to lower profits and lower stock (share) prices; both of which managers are measured against to judge their success.

Presuming that current governance models, therefore (either government owned or publicly owned) have these inherent problems (and many more, that I will not delve into right now), what can be done?

There are 2 focus areas. The first is to try to create an organisation that acts responsibly, which can mostly be done through creating such an organsiational culture (as mentioned many times before on this blog), but this is not easy -especially if you have to change the current culture of a large organisation. It would be easier to try to create the necessary processes that create a responsible organisation. This could be creating a reward system that rewards the kind of beahviours or results that you want, or it could be from the 'stick' approach: through governance and reporting systems.

The second is to create individuals who act responsibly which is also tough. Responsible leadership is important: since setting an example and acting as a role model can really make a difference. You need to create people who see what is best for the company, and do that -even if it is not best for them. Create the culture of 'what is best for the company is best for me'. This is not easy though... so there are some little tricks that can be employed.. For example, try creating buy-in from the individual by tapping into their loyalty to the organisations or by instilling a little fear.

At the end of the day, this problem is one that is inherent and wide-spread, with no simple solution. The solution is tough and demanding: the solution is to recruit and employ individuals with an ethical stance, with the sense of responsible leadership. Create the framework and the system for this attitude to thrive and this should mitigate the ownership-manager conundrum.

CSR at Board Level

2006-03-09T20:44:00.000+08:00

Where does CSR sit at Board Level? Well probably under the External Affairs team, or maybe there is a specific person responsible for CSR. If there is, what are they called?

A survey of 100 fortune 500 companies could reveal some interesting results. In the meantime I'd like to propose whether the title means a lot or not. Personally I don't think the title means all that much. What is most important is the job description and the responsibility/respect the person has. However the job title might imply these. Thus there may not be much difference between CSR or CR but there is for Community Affairs and Legal (which may also be responsible for CSR).

A few leading companies have redefined 'CSR' as CR or R or many others (some including ethics which is to be aplauded). One that I like is CSO: Corporate Social Opportunity, thus someone's 'CSR' report was titled CSO: Turning Corporate Social Responsibility into Corporate Social Opportunity (it may have been P&G I am not sure). Although this may work for some, for others they may not have the ability to capitalise on CSR as core to their strategy and a source fo comparative advantage or innovation.

What I would encourage for companies not yet at the CSO level is another title; one that is more short term focused, more financiall and legally focused -and thus easier to define a short-term business case: Risk Management. Whilst investigating our own CSR report, we've realised there will be a number of various focuses. 1 is what we are doing badly, not as well as we want to, or can do better and achieve more. Another 1 is what risks we face now that we are not addressing and what ones we should be anticipating in the future.

Risk Management is a really great way of defining the most pressing aspect of CSR: the one with the most examples, and the one that can most easily be understood by other Board level Directors.

Organisational Culture

2006-02-28T11:19:00.000+08:00

Since CSR is an attitude, it must start with a personal attitude (which each organisation could help develop) but of course, it must also be the organisational attitude.

I say attitude which of course means 'culture' but is more than that. Organisational Attitude is how the oganisation approaches decisions and stakeholders. Decisions should be approached with a view to be fair, to be balanced, to look for the best (long-term) answer. Decision-making processes need to consider so many factors I can hardly list them here, but if employees are aware of the concept of considering the impacts of their decisions on them, on other employees, on other decisions then they might just make better decisions. And these decisions could also be more responsible on a personal, and organisational, level. A good start for decision making could be to look at consequences from a few different models: Triple Bottom Line (Social, Environmental and Economic), Stakeholder (Employee, Customer, Supplier, Shareholder, Community and others), Time (Past, Present, Future) or more 'academic' ones such as the 3 lenses framework* (Contribution to Purpose, Consistency with Principles, Inmpact on People).

According to the World Bank online course on CSR and Sustainable Competitiveness, there are a few other interesting considerations such as Why do 'good' Managers make bad choices? Apparently because they believe the decision is ethical, or it's in the indivudal/organisation's best interests or no-one will discover its impact. An organisation needs to consider issues like these in light of how the people it recruits makes decisions, how it encourages or rewards certain types of decisions and how it creates the frameworks for company decisions as well as personal decisions.

Then there is how an organisation approaches its stakeholders. Does it communicate, and is the communication effective? Does it appreciate or respect them? Are stakeholders able to impact each other (and therefore provide a motivation to manage each other)? How much control can one have over stakeholder's actions (like media, government etc which are not equal to the organisation)?

Crucially with the issue of organisational culture is to start with the most important thing in the organisation: its people, and this is what the term commonly refers to. Some leading organisations tie culture in with branding, since culture is normally internal, and branding normally external. Realising that the 2 are actually the same ensures a cohesive message is portrayed to all stakeholders. Entire courses are written on both branding and culture, so what could I write in 1 paragraph or even claim to know (having not read many of those books)?

Well, as always, I like to focus on the important things: having a culture defined, communicating it to others ALL the time and not just tangibly, but also intangibly. Intangible company culture -hmm, not the easiest of topics -but one that I truly believe is what defined an organisation. Its what you feel when you walk into the organisation's building, its how people talk about their organisation (with love or hate!) and its what keeps employees, keeps customers and creates a team spirit -an attitude of working together towards common goals, or doing so responsibly!

The problem with CSR is that how many organisations have the ability or the time to consider issues like these? Not many -and this typicalises why CSR is currently still dirven by large organisations; those with smart people and the money to pay for people to spend their time on these issues. These are crucial issues. Surely the businesses that can consider them will be more successful than those that cannot, thus ensuring larger businesses go from strength-to-strength but smaller ones might find it much tougher to grow or compete! There are of course many cases of how this cycle is broken (every large company was once a small company!), it would be interesting to find out how?

There is also the problem of outsourcing. Where are the limits of the organisation and how much control does an organisation have? Does it force new employees to change their values? The perils of outsourcing are that you lose control over creating a culture, and this is the reason behind outsourcing failing: conflicting objectives, lack of team spirit towards common goals or passion towards the organisation, no feeling of belonging, trust or respect. In fact, the reason why so many SMEs are so successful and have no 'obvious' CSR' is because they are small, often dominated by the personality of their leader and work closely in a team with a great culture. They don't need to have to analyse so many issues related to decision making or creating and communicating a culture since it happens naturally. But when they start transitioning to becoming larger companies then they face these problems. In fact when any organisation goes through change it faces problems, and this is a topic for a later post.

*For more information on this framework, refer to Lynn S. Payne, Three Lenses for Decision Making, Harvard Business School, August 7, 1996, 2-396-200.

CSR is PSR

2006-02-28T10:53:00.000+08:00

What is CSR? CSR is an attitude.

This has been one of the key learning points personally over the last year or two and one that others seem to share. It is also what I try to convey to others. Thus CSR is a personal attitude and very much related to how you live your live and what you care about: PSR -personal social responsbility. PSR is mostly about a) awareness and b) action (or laziness to be more pessimistic). There is a continuing need for more awareness around how you can be more personally socially responsible; not because the 'how' is so complex, but because no-one spends 5 minutes to sit down and think about it.

What should you do? Sit down and think a bit about your appartment, your office and what you do in them and in between them (and what you do elsewhere of course too). Do you re-use your cup, turn the lights off in the toilet or your office/room (even if you just leave for 5 minutes), leave your computer on overnight, or whilst you pop out to lunch? How are you travelling, how are you treating people? It would be great to come up with some brief structured list of questions that each person could use to sort of do a PSR report (like a company's CSR report). Maybe this already exists? I am sure there could be some basic award or something that a school could give to the most PSR schoolkid (or most improved!).

Actually, the best thing to do might be to team up with someone else and take it in turns to spend a day monitoring the other person and what they do. It can be a competition to see who can list the most things the other person could do to improve their PSR, since it is hard to recognise your own actions but easier to observe someone else's. It is with great joy I discovered the 'We are what we do' website yesterday (www.wearewhatwedo.com/).

It lists 50 things each person can do at work, at home, at school and 'out and about' (and have received a further 5,000 suggested actions!!). Have a look, and maybe they could develop their concept further. So think about your PSR today!

The multiplier effect

2005-12-17T13:36:00.000+08:00

This is something that is often mentioned in my posts, but here I want to take the multiplier effect on a bit of a tangent and see where it goes. I first really encountered this 'Multiplier Effect' in an employment concept: Shell, for example, talk about 100,00 directly employed, 500,000 indirectly employed and many more receiving benefits from their operations (and I suppose also encountering the opposite too!). I next encountered it in an excellent report by SustainAbility (I highly recommend everything they have written) who commented on the fact that of the 3 aspects of the Triple Bottom Line, the Economic one was the one least understood, least measured and least reported.

So this post is not rocket science but it is written to emphasis the importance the multiplier effect has. From the oft-quoted 'giving the fisherman a fishing rod is better than giving the fisherman a fish' type of quote that appears often in poverty-reduction papers, to the 'shall i work for a small NGO and change a few lives lots or work for a Multinational and change more lives, but probably less'. As these examples highlight the multiplier effect is not just about a company's supply chain or employment chain, although these are the most obvious consequences of a business's activity.

On the topic of responsible leadership, I feel the need to stress how the consequences of an organisation are normally so poorly understood. In fact impact is a better word. What is the impact of an organisation and how can this be effectively utlilised? The stakeholder mapping technique is a good start, but normally these stakeholders are engaged with on a quantitative level -by this they are asked questions about the current impacts the organisation has and then asked to quantify them (good, bad etc). What would be interesting is to ask a bunch of people "What impact am I having on you?". Maybe you randomly saw a quote from my CEO who inspired you, maybe your school got a computer from my company, maybe because you eat my chocolate, you have to empty the litter bin more often -extreme examples as they may be, but I find it intriguing to think of all the small consequences that occur, all the time, from so many small, minor actions that each individual makes.

Some practical examples: how Coca-cola cans were used to create art or to create practical objects..how some are reused for years... these cans have probably helped some of the poorest people in the world carry their water around, make things to keep themselves entertained (or even to sell) and so on. Or how the company that wrapped their sweets individulally for hygiene purposes (and to make it last longer) then realised that someone was able to buy the whole pack and then sell each individually wrapped sweet in order to make money and sustain an income for them!

On a more extreme note...Maybe paying the fees of my company's service meant you could not afford medical care for your child or you could not take a holiday. A massive undertaking it would be, to interview so many people, but with such a simple question. It would of course be hard to get the answers needed -most people don't think very creatively any more! And i doubt the results of the survey would matter that much, but there could be some interesting clusters that are new, some impacts that no-one realised; these impacts could create business opportunities or minimise business risk. So please do create as many jobs as you can, please do spread your values to your suppliers, distributers, manufacturers, staff and so on. Please ensure your staff recycle at work, and encourage them to do so at home. But please also be more creative, more innovative, more open to really understanding what impact you are making on this World. Leading is about making an impact -the question is how responsible is the impact you are having?

CSR -who is responsible?

2005-12-17T13:34:00.000+08:00

Not a particularly new or insightful topic but still one without an answer: In a company do you have someone specifically responsible for CSR or not? And if you do, how much of 'CSR' are they responsible for?

In theory CSR would be so well integrated into the company that you would not need someone responsible for it. If you do then it means that everyone else ignores CSR and lets that person deal with it -an impossible task. From my experience of contacting companies here in China and finding out who is responsible for CSR; it generally falls to the corporate affairs team and for them their main priorities tend to be around philanthropy, branding and environment. I am not sure how much they play a role in the many HR aspects of CSR or governance, amongst others.

This question opens up a wider one of how to integrate anything really. I suppose my solution is that you always need a champion, even after the initial introduction of an idea or activity; but the key is to try to integrate the idea into a reward system, into every day life and into the values of an organisation. The general consensus tends to be that initiatives need to have top level support -which they do AND most initiatives tend to come from the top. This is something I disagree with. For sure if the initiative is driven by external needs or is based on solid stakeholder engagement and feedback then this is ok, but (and I have limited experience); most initatives are driven from the top with only minimal support from the bottom. By this I mean that one department or other has suggested something, the Execs have done their research and decided to implement it. This will work for most initatives; but for big things -things that affect the culture of the organisation, such as CSR, this is wrong.

I am not saying all organisations do this wrong, but I bet some do. What is the right way? I am a big supporter of faclitated discussion -of coaching. Coaching is, in my definition, where the coach never gives the 'coachee' the answer or tells them anything, they just ask the right questions, listen and guide the coachee to come up with their own answers. This is how organisations should run -I have read many CEOs say the hardest thing they have had to do is change the culture of an organisation -it takes years. I am not saying its simple -the organisation might have the wrong people in it; it may have systemic problems. But what I am saying is that those at the bottom need to realise that the organisation's current culture is not right and they need to work out what the culture should be. They need to be the ones who suggest how to get there too, and then they can give this remit to the team tasked with driving this change: thus the team knows the whole organisation supports it, and the organisation will change much quicker.

With CSR, this is about the values of an organisation and then how these values are translated into process and then what actions result from these processes. Ideally everyone should be recruited based on these values AS WELL as their abilities. And I highly recommend this for any values (CSR) driven organisation. However what do you do with those already in the organisation? Well you may have to lose some of them -you may have to change some, but most I expect you just need to make them realise what their values are... and they should align with the organisation (them already working in the organisation). I am amazed at how much effort companies place on internal values education programmes and handbooks. I am amazed in a good way -it is very impressive, but I must also wonder if they ever question their employee's values? Do they do personal value alignment exercises....if you don't there's little point in changing the organisation's culture!

So who is responsible -everyone should be responsible for CSR; adhering to an organisation's principles (values) should be in every employee's annual assessment -and this can partly be a self-assessed exercise. For some of the more concrete outputs of 'CSR' (and the term is being used loosely here) then that needs to be delegated out. If you have to choose a department 'responsible' then for me it is the 'branding department'. Most business gurus will express how important a brand is - it is the essence of an organisation. In fact a branding department rarely exists (if i create an organisation i think I will call it an 'identity' department -my organisations will wear their identity and their values on their sleeves). Nowadays it ends up in communications department -fair enough I suppose. I am hoping to get a deeper insight into how different communications departments work, what they prioritise and what they achieve in different companies, sectors etc. It would be very interesting research. So responsible leaders? Do what's right -for everyone. Find out what everyone thinks is right; do it; tell others about it; judge people on it; walk the talk. Lead.

CSR in China -chinese giving

2005-12-06T01:03:00.000+08:00

A few things recently happened:

1) I came into contact with a minute chinese NGO -well actually just 2 ladies with an idea for asking some volunteers to help them with something. But they required each volunteer to get 5 hrs training for doing 2 hrs work and after 2 hours of trying to help them with their idea, they said they had no location and no funding -yet the event was in 4 days. This is, unfortunately, typical of Chinese NGOs. Not legal, just run by a few people with no money, but who care a lot abotu society and are doing something about it. Its a shame, but its true. There are a lot of organisations helping with NGO capacity building in China - I wish them luck.

2) ACNielsen (a market research company) produced a report of Chinese consumers' attitudes. Lots of the donate and more want to, if they could trust NGOs more.

3) I spoke to someone else who told me that companies he knows have money to donate to NGOs, but cannot find any worthy to give to -they want to give to local NGOs, but none are professional enough.

4) I met a group of women working in good companies in Beijing who got together to donate money to a school in South China to pay for some children's education. They didn't want to go through some big organisation, but wanted to go directly. So they are doing that. I am inspired that they go to the trouble to organise this.

The conclusion. The chinese like to give, they want to help. But right now the environment in China is not helping them. What is needed are more credible NGOs, easier ways for them to get in touch with the right (corporate or personal) donors and trust in the system.

China has lots of responsible citizens. It needs some responsible leaders to help those citizens exercise their feelings of responsibility. Who else will step up to the plate and help solve these market inbalances?