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A Structured Stakeholder Engagement Approach: Starting Out

July 30, 20117:34 am

A structured approach to stakeholder engagement is an essential element of CSR / Sustainability best practice within an organization. We all know that. But starting out is not always as easy as it seems in my experience.

Here are three practical first steps which I identified as critical over the past years working in the industry when starting out with stakeholder engagement.

Before you start anything involving stakeholder engagement, identify your key stakeholder groups first. When you know these groups you are well on your way. Here is a link to some information on how to conduct a stakeholder analysis.

Once you know your stakeholder groups, go and visit/contact employees from within your organization whom you think will know more about your individual stakeholder groups. Your aim should be to gather as much information on who is talking to which stakeholder group. This can be quite time consuming the larger your organization is, but everyone needs to start somewhere and building these personal relationships within your organization is invaluable. I am sure you will be amazed how much you will learn and benefit from this exercise. In the short and long term.

Create a group of so called “stakeholder experts” from inside your organization. Arrange to meet on a regular basis from that time on to help you gather the important stakeholder updates from within the business. I always felt that gathering this stakeholder information from inside the organization before engaging the actual stakeholder group made me understand these groups so much better.

This is all for now. I prefer shorter blog posts as you will know by now. That is why the next blog post on stakeholder engagement will continue with the next steps on how to properly start with a structured stakeholder engagement approach.

Picture Credit: Robert Higgins

What companies should aspire to in terms of Sustainability / CSR best practice

November 9, 20101:34 pm

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One lesson I learned very early on in my life was to have have dreams and aspire to something you feel is worthwhile for you as an individual. Personally I have these dreams and aspirations of course but what would this aspiration look like if we where to project it onto the corporate contact and it’s Sustainability / CSR best practice?

Recent examples ranging from the outrageous ousting of Jeffrey Hollender at Seventh Generation to BP and its monumental oil spill disaster and subsequent failure to react properly have not really helped to foster confidence in companies in my view. Many companies it seems have lost their aspirations to continuously do better and reach higher in terms of CSR / Sustainability best practice.

My top five aspirations to in terms of Sustainability / CSR best practice a company should have:

Reporting on the Sustainability / CSR strategy and activities of the organisation is embedded in the organisational mind-set. To report means to be transparent and accountable towards your stakeholders as well as not trying to paint a rosy picture. The Sustainability / CSR report is a part of your stakeholder communication tools but not the only one.
Have a CEO and a non-executive board of directors that understand what needs to be done to practice and promote responsible business in and outside of the company.
A cycle of employee engagement is in place that reinforces the Sustainability / CSR activities and creates employees which are proud of what their company is doing and actively shape the future direction together with your senior leadership team.
Have a new product innovation process that has the Sustainability / CSR idea and best practice at its core.
Market and sell your product)s) with a clear distinctive Sustainability / CSR related message. Try to be authentic and not be hassled by financial goals that are violating your Sustainability / CSR values.

These are my top five aspirations a company should have in terms of Sustainability / CSR best practice. What are yours? What are aspects/aspirations you would like to add according to your experience?

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mind_scratch/2434031231

The Seventh Generation example and the future of a Sustainability / CSR leader

November 2, 201012:21 pm

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When I started to browse my RSS feed news items this morning, the first news item I came across was that Jeffrey Hollender, the founder of Seventh Generation, has been ousted out of the company he had build into a global Sustainability / CSR leader. And I was shocked to be honest. This is the link to the source article from Marc Gunther: Seventh Generation article.

I am not going to comment on these developments within the company and about the founder because I do not really know them that well but the purpose of this post is to provide some reflection based on my business experience about the possible Sustainability / CSR implications within the company and our business sector as whole with regards to this shocking piece of news.

Some background information
Jeffrey Hollender and his company Seventh Generation was one of the first companies to embrace sustainability within their business. Whenever I am talking to clients and friends about who was and is one of the key players within this Sustainability / CSR field, Seventh Generation is on that list.

So what does this mean for the Sustainability / CSR practices at Seventh Generation?
It is very early days yet and more details are just emerging but one thing is certain. Seventh Generation will most likely not be as proactive as they are at the moment in the foreseeable future. And the reason is very clear. The leadership team will have to focus on the internal power struggles for now. Their attention on the Sustainability / CSR activities will suffer as a consequence. No doubt. The amount of uncertainty of such a drastic move will also have a negative effect on many employees. Most of them will try to protect their position first due to the high uncertainty and all Sustainability / CSR efforts will suffer as a consequence. My experience has shown me that this kind of uncertainty will most likely not produce Sustainability / CSR best practice any time soon. What Seventh Generation now needs is a strong and capable leader to guide them through this change process. I hope this current chairman will be able to do this.

What will the effect for the Sustainability / CSR sector be?
The sector will loose one of its leading companies in terms of best practice in my view. Yes, the company will still do something really good in terms of best practice in the short term but in my view the success of the companys’ Sustainability / CSR efforts was very much tied to the actions and the passion of Jeffrey Hollender. Which obviously can be interpreted in both ways, positive and negative, depending where you argue from.

In summary:
Overall, this is really bad news in my view. For all employees of Seventh Generation but also everyone within the Sustainability / CSR field. It will be interesting to see what the next few months will bring. For the company and for Jeffrey Hollender personally.

What is your view on this management change?

Additional posts I could recommend: 1) Another really worthwhile article about Jeffrey Hollenders’ ousting has been written Lynn Anne Miller: Managing and Disclosing – Where’s Jeffrey Hollender?. 2) The New York Times also now covered this news item: A Pioneer in Green Business is Fired. 3) FastCompany: Inside Seventh Generation’s Firing of Founder Jeffrey Hollender.

THE LATEST ON THIS STORY:
Here is the statement from Jeffrey Hollender on Facebook about his departure:
More than two decades ago, I founded Seventh Generation with the idea of creating a different way of doing business. Since then, the company has established new benchmarks for ethical and sustainable corporate behavior, grounded in the principles of employee ownership, pay equity, environmental responsibility and transparency. At the same time, Seventh Generation is a recognized pioneer in its category and a successful business enterprise.

Last week, the Seventh Generation Board announced to its shareholders and employees that they have “decided to end the company’s employment relationship” with me “…without cause.” I wanted my friends to hear it from me.

Over the past twenty years, I have had the privilege to work with an extraordinary group of committed, talented people — and I thank them all and wish them the best. Moving forward, I plan to remain fully engaged in the work of creating a new paradigm for justice, equity and corporate responsibility through my new book, Planet Home, that will be published by Random House in January 2011; my work on the boards of Greenpeace and Veritee; and in my role as the co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council.

Cartoon: Leadership and Sustainability / CSR

September 28, 201012:45 pm

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While I am getting back in to the swing of things after my holidays I felt I needed to keep my first blog post short and direct.

Take a look at this cartoon:

I would be interested to hear what your view on the message of this cartoon is.

My view on this cartoon:
Obviously this is an exaggeration of the problem we face in convincing the senior leaders within business to sign on to Sustainability / CSR best practice. But I feel that we also need to be as direct as possible with these senior leaders to show them that Sustainability / CSR best practice is proving to also contribute to the bottom line of businesses. This is the language they will understand for sure. Some leaders also understand the ‘schmoozing’ Sustainability / CSR talk but definitely not the majority.

This cartoon also reminds me a little bit of some parts of the #csrdebate several weeks ago. One the one side argues as the Sustainability advocate and on the other as the sceptic.

But back to my original question: What is your view on the message of this cartoon?

A big thank you to polyp to let me use this cartoon.

Video: A best practice example of CSR and Cause Marketing Integration

June 28, 201011:31 am

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The video interview below I believe represents a very interesting best practice example of how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Cause Marketing can be successfully linked in order to improve products, increase sales, build reputation and do good for the cause that is being supported. In this case, the quality of dog food and the support of dog shelters across North America.

Here Chris Jarvis of 3blMedia interviews John J. Anton, Marketing Director at Mars Petcare about their integration of CSR and Cause Marketing.

BP – a disaster for the Sustainability / CSR sector in general?

June 17, 201012:01 pm

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Everything in the CSR / Sustainability world at the moment seems to evolve around BP and its action/inactions to fix the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I am not doing any BP bashing here today. I am only using the current BP oil spill disaster in todays post as an example that CSR needs to evolve beyond its environmental aspects and the attention for detail by its practitioners.

This is my main argument in this post: Best practice such as the latest trend of integrated report, use of social media, etc. are steps in the right direction in my opinion but we need to increase the speed of the adoption of a more responsible business practice across the board within business in your local area and region.

The BP example has shown that big business will not act responsibly if it can get away with it. We therefore need to start at the local level to convince businesses to demand a more responsible business practice from all their businesses they are involved with. Customers and suppliers. Sustainability / CSR starts at the micro level and with clear guidance and support from a governmental level as I argued in my previous post.

This might sound very general and broad but it seems to me that we as Sustainability / CSR professionals are being caught up in the nitty gritty details of working with CSR / Sustainability far to easily and are somehow loosing the view of the big picture and the main purpose of this practice: To champion Sustainability / CSR and to help organizations in the transition to adopt a more responsible business practice.

This is the short video I recently did in partnership with 3blmedia on exactly this topic. Please let me know what you think about my argumentation and whether you agree or disagree.