Yesterday evening, I attended a networking round table event - organised by Corporate Culture. The title for the discussion was "What is sustainable business and how is it different from CSR" A really interesting subject, with a few surprising outcomes.
Discussions were led by Mike Barry, who leads on Marks and Spencer's Plan-A campaign - In 2007, they came up with 100 commitments that would improve the sustainability of the company.
Both the CEO of Corporate Culture, John Drummond, and Mike are on the ACEVO sustainable business steering group, so we were in great company.
Also around the table were the top people on the issue from Investec, Royal Mail, Sainsbury's, Fairtrade Foundation, WWF, Arcadia Group, Unilever, Coutts & Co, Northern Foods and Tata Beverage Group. We were joined by Steve Howard, CEO of BITC for a short while also.
Mike's presentation looked at the case for creating a sustainable business, why it's different from CSR, how it works for them, followed by some thoughts for the future.
I won't transcribe the whole thing, as interesting as it was, but here are some choice quotes or things that resonated particularly with me:
*Everyone has at least one competitor that is redefining from CSR to sustainability; you can't afford not to do it.
*Sustainable businesses need to cover everything on the sustainability spectrum, not just the few good PR opportunities that CSR may cover.
*Human change is crucial. Those who can drive change are the ones who will succeed.
*Value chain is important - look outside to your stakeholders, suppliers, consumers and seek to build relationships with them and take them on a journey.
*The dull things are still important - things we can't make media hay out of still need to be done.
*It makes money! Plan A was expected to lose £40m in its first year. It is now making £50m profit.
*The low hanging fruit, the easy wins are gone. We need to focus on making difficult decisions, always involving trade-offs.
The discussion that followed was most interesting. Very quickly, we dispensed with a conversation on the language used. Do we call it CSR or sustainable business? Many thought it didn't matter, but I argued that it really does. CSR is 'yesterday', it's been exposed as shallow, PR driven and incomplete. Sustainable business is modern and progressive, it's 'tomorrow'. When talking to external stakeholders, especially in the third sector, it is vital that an image that looks forward to an enterprising future is presented.
What lies underneath the language, of course, is the most important - the activity carried out by the corporation. We all agreed that the fence painting and similar activities speak to a severe lack of understanding of what is needed.
Steve Howard brought up government - he had been to a discussion with Cleggeron yesterday morning to discuss Big Society, and said one big message from the session was championing the need for working in partnerships across sectors. This is great news for our work with the sustainable business forum, and I hope to capitalise on this mood by introducing our brokering and matching service. If two political parties can come together and form a working partnership based on transparency and collaboration, it gives us hope!
Final thoughts on the evening -
Change is key. Those who effect change, who champion a sea change within their organisation, who can garner the right amounts of support, and influence others will be the most successful.
We also need to take a role in translation. We all exist in a value chain, with stakeholders on either side of us - suppliers (of ideas, goods, services) and consumers (of our message, ideas or goods). We need to translate the passion of the consumer and ensure this appeals to the sensibilities and objectives of our suppliers. When we can achieve this kind of joined up, innovative and progressive thinking, we will be well on the way.
Wednesday 19 May 2010
Thursday 13 May 2010
Mentoring and networking
Just a quick update as I'm on the move a lot the next few weeks.
Today I'm having the first meeting of several with ACEVO members who are interested in one of our new mentoring programmes.
The context here goes back about 9 months - I met with John Stokoe, Vice President for National Government at BT first with Seb Elsworth (ACEVO director of strategy and author of fab blogsworth - http://sebelsworth.blogspot.com)
among other things, we discussed the work ACEVO do on developing leadership by facilitating cross-sector partnerships. Quite honestly, we had tried before but the resources hadn't been there to do the project justice. We had produced a great publication with great case study material etc. but there had been little follow up.
Here was a great opportunity to re-ignite the process! The next meeting was with Erin McFeely, my colleague in our Leeds office who has done a great deal of work around developing our leadership work. We floated the idea of partnership creation to John, who said the BT talent pool could be a great access point. Also, many of this group want to experience the third sector- seemed almost too good.
So Erin and I took these strands of ideas away and knocked them into shape and created a full proposal for John. It was at this stage that julia Richards got involved to create the matching part of the programme - she has created these on the past for large corporations and has had huge success doing so.
So skip ahead through the months and here we are - approval to run a large scale, nationwide mentoring programme between third sector CEOs and top BT execs. And I have a meeting with Matthew Thompson of the LCRN to discuss it later today.
It's easy to forget how much various people put into this project; I'm very lucky to be part of such a great team.
This evening, myself and my colleague Jazzmin (who works on all things sustainable business with me) are going to the spring conference of the pennies foundation- a great organisation who are getting into a very interesting area - using technology to generate point of sale charity donations. I met the CEO a few months back and am really looking forward to seeing how they have progressed. Hopefully there are some connections I might make to ACEVO's corporate partners who may be in a position to help. It will also present a great opportunity to meet some more potential corporates and, more importantly, spread the word about our sustainable business forum!
Today I'm having the first meeting of several with ACEVO members who are interested in one of our new mentoring programmes.
The context here goes back about 9 months - I met with John Stokoe, Vice President for National Government at BT first with Seb Elsworth (ACEVO director of strategy and author of fab blogsworth - http://sebelsworth.blogspot.com)
among other things, we discussed the work ACEVO do on developing leadership by facilitating cross-sector partnerships. Quite honestly, we had tried before but the resources hadn't been there to do the project justice. We had produced a great publication with great case study material etc. but there had been little follow up.
Here was a great opportunity to re-ignite the process! The next meeting was with Erin McFeely, my colleague in our Leeds office who has done a great deal of work around developing our leadership work. We floated the idea of partnership creation to John, who said the BT talent pool could be a great access point. Also, many of this group want to experience the third sector- seemed almost too good.
So Erin and I took these strands of ideas away and knocked them into shape and created a full proposal for John. It was at this stage that julia Richards got involved to create the matching part of the programme - she has created these on the past for large corporations and has had huge success doing so.
So skip ahead through the months and here we are - approval to run a large scale, nationwide mentoring programme between third sector CEOs and top BT execs. And I have a meeting with Matthew Thompson of the LCRN to discuss it later today.
It's easy to forget how much various people put into this project; I'm very lucky to be part of such a great team.
This evening, myself and my colleague Jazzmin (who works on all things sustainable business with me) are going to the spring conference of the pennies foundation- a great organisation who are getting into a very interesting area - using technology to generate point of sale charity donations. I met the CEO a few months back and am really looking forward to seeing how they have progressed. Hopefully there are some connections I might make to ACEVO's corporate partners who may be in a position to help. It will also present a great opportunity to meet some more potential corporates and, more importantly, spread the word about our sustainable business forum!
Friday 7 May 2010
Is big beautiful?
So I'm going to start every blog now with an apology for not writing for a while. This one is HUGE! I'm so very sorry, dear reader.
Now, onwards with blogging. Serious stuff.
I have recently been taking a lot of meetings with young, entrepreneurial types. This makes a considerable change from the law firms, accountancy practices and large firms whose primary interests are in corporate responsibility and sustainability, or developing new business contacts through large-scale, multilateral marketing strategies.
So which one is better? Is that even a fair question?
Well I like the entrepreneurial thing - I like the fact that an idea and a charismatic person can give life to a profitable and sustainable business. And the thirst for success is of course admirable, but what are the differences? Individuals in large multi-national companies have the same thirst for success, so it can't be that.
Large companies are powerful, and can use their significant balance sheets to invest, develop and market new products,and carve out a larger market share. Young innovators don't get this, but aren't naive enough to assume they can. That's not what they want.
The main difference is ownership. And not ownership of equity or assets, but ownership of the ideas and the intellectual property behind a business. Giving this away seems to be something you have to be willing to do in a large company.
Someone said to me two days ago that they have started companies, knowing that the shelf life will be fairly short. This means he can put it down, sell it, and start the next thing. In the technology space this is definitely an advantage.
So I'm not sure whether one is better, whether big is beautiful. For my purposes, I need to strike a balance between large companies who will join the debate on sustainable business - I am working a lot with Mike at M&S, who runs their Plan A strategy. I need businesses like this to be involved. When it comes to delivering services, I prefer dealing with innovative and progressive companies that have the 'fleet of foot' flexibility and mentality to suit how ACEVO works. So maybe beauty really is in the eye of the beholder...
The ACEVO sustainable business forum is going very well indeed - we are coming out of the planning stages and into marketing and development. I'm looking forward to our next catch up, when our chair Oliver Rothschild has returned from his latest travels. In the last few weeks I have been meeting with BT, with Joyce at Catch22, with Ben Brabyn to discuss marketplace creation and matchmaking, and with a number of firms who are interested in joining the network. We have also added John Drummond, CEO of Corporate Culture to the steering group. John has been working on sustainable business for a number of years, advising companies such as t-mobile and BSkyB on their sustainability strategies. I'm really glad he has decided to join us.
We are also doing a project with the CBI at the moment, about how private and third sectors have created partnerships to deliver public services. This will add significantly to the dialogue around sustainable business, and there is a great deal of cross-over between the two projects. A lot of people are joining this movement to make conversations between sectors more transparent and easier - it is a really exciting time for us and our members.
Now, onwards with blogging. Serious stuff.
I have recently been taking a lot of meetings with young, entrepreneurial types. This makes a considerable change from the law firms, accountancy practices and large firms whose primary interests are in corporate responsibility and sustainability, or developing new business contacts through large-scale, multilateral marketing strategies.
So which one is better? Is that even a fair question?
Well I like the entrepreneurial thing - I like the fact that an idea and a charismatic person can give life to a profitable and sustainable business. And the thirst for success is of course admirable, but what are the differences? Individuals in large multi-national companies have the same thirst for success, so it can't be that.
Large companies are powerful, and can use their significant balance sheets to invest, develop and market new products,and carve out a larger market share. Young innovators don't get this, but aren't naive enough to assume they can. That's not what they want.
The main difference is ownership. And not ownership of equity or assets, but ownership of the ideas and the intellectual property behind a business. Giving this away seems to be something you have to be willing to do in a large company.
Someone said to me two days ago that they have started companies, knowing that the shelf life will be fairly short. This means he can put it down, sell it, and start the next thing. In the technology space this is definitely an advantage.
So I'm not sure whether one is better, whether big is beautiful. For my purposes, I need to strike a balance between large companies who will join the debate on sustainable business - I am working a lot with Mike at M&S, who runs their Plan A strategy. I need businesses like this to be involved. When it comes to delivering services, I prefer dealing with innovative and progressive companies that have the 'fleet of foot' flexibility and mentality to suit how ACEVO works. So maybe beauty really is in the eye of the beholder...
The ACEVO sustainable business forum is going very well indeed - we are coming out of the planning stages and into marketing and development. I'm looking forward to our next catch up, when our chair Oliver Rothschild has returned from his latest travels. In the last few weeks I have been meeting with BT, with Joyce at Catch22, with Ben Brabyn to discuss marketplace creation and matchmaking, and with a number of firms who are interested in joining the network. We have also added John Drummond, CEO of Corporate Culture to the steering group. John has been working on sustainable business for a number of years, advising companies such as t-mobile and BSkyB on their sustainability strategies. I'm really glad he has decided to join us.
We are also doing a project with the CBI at the moment, about how private and third sectors have created partnerships to deliver public services. This will add significantly to the dialogue around sustainable business, and there is a great deal of cross-over between the two projects. A lot of people are joining this movement to make conversations between sectors more transparent and easier - it is a really exciting time for us and our members.
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