Some people think I have a "thing" about heart, because I was born on Valentine's Day. Most of us know that the heart is easily associated with love, romance, Valentine's Day. Many people forget what I have been on the fast track to learn, heart implies courage. In fact, the French word for "heart" is le coeur, which means "courage." Leading change takes that kind of courage. It is courage that comes from the heart.
Being a women in today's workforce takes courage. And yes, I will readily admit anyone living today - man, woman or child- needs courage. Yet it is becoming common knowledge that the decisions women have to make regarding going to work, take extreme measures and the constant pressure of making difficult decisions.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook has been on the speaking circuit. More recently, Sheryl presented at TED and asked the question, Why women are dropping out of the workforce." This takes real courage. Sheryl has formulate a message that is quite remarkable for an c-level executive in business creating new markets; in a new like the burst and bubble created by Amazon and Google.
One of the questions that Sherly asks in the talk is, "What can we do as individuals to keep women from dropping out? The numbers are clear right now. Women only retain leadership positions in
As heads of state; there are 9 females out of a total of 109 heads of state.
As elected officials of parliaments at a rate of 13%;
As C-level leaders or Board of Directors in Corporations at 15-16%
In non-profits at 20%
These figures have not changed since 2000 and they are going in the wrong direction.
Sheryl also describes why for women it comes down to what I feel is a form of great courage that is involved in waking up each day and making difficult decisions.The fact of the matter is that now more than ever, women need to earn and in a form of "right livelihood," that supports them long term to assure their health, sustainability, professional credentialling and retirement, whether married or not married. But the context of helping a woman to be more successful in the workplace is often left to HR policies and procedures that are important, but not sufficient. Most of the times they don't address very systemic issues.
For example, you can get a generous amount of time off for doctors appointments and visits to your child's school, but doctors and schools don't very often conduct themselves with a rationale for what it means to be working and care for children. Frequently you hear academics and medical professionals, say that a parent is not doing enough.
Yet in Harlem, where there is now a leading mentoring program for youth designed and implemented; every mentor is taught that each child has a parent working 2-3 jobs just to keep a family with a roof over their head. This is an economic and systemic issue; not enough jobs, not enough education for parents to get reasonable paid wages and too many people working in environments where they are treated like indentured servants. I have worked in a few contract consulting settings with top firms and been treated that way.
Elaine Cohen, @elainecohen as author of CSRforHR, has taken the lead to describe that in her book and the implications and power that Human Resources has in any structure to impact these important organization HR activities.
However, my work in examining sustainable health and the building of the Thought Leadership for AboutWorkEcology --- goes into a more strategic layer of work that requires learning and the intersection of combining brilliant minds with sweet heart drawn from government, industry and non-governmental organizations.
The economic crisis we find ourselves in globally, now implies that people in small thoughtful groups lead change and author "stories of meaningful use.' So while I continue my research and writing and everything else I do, I discovered that in addition to Sheryl Sandberg, I could bring my heart to Facebook and build a community who wants to learn from authoring with me the Story of Meaningful Use, which is the name of my Facebook Group. So now I offer two invitations here,
Sometime in the late 80's, I contributed a chapter to George Simons book, Transcultural Leadership. While I contributed as senior editor to the design of a strong message for market; my contribution from a contributing author was based on this question: What is now implied by women enterring the workforce rapidly? What was not being addressed that went beyond issues of Mars versus Venus.
What was going to happen at home, to children, the earlier traditions of caregiving. How was the cost of going to work going to effect family budgets. Little did I know at that time, the real issue would grow into an economic disparity issue; as downsizing accelerated, hence fewer jobs, the newhousehold tradition would reshape into reliance on two income and everything else this implied.
I had no idea at that time my own journey as a single parent would require me to find the courage to make the continuous decisions about my life relative to others I loved and worked with that were difficult and sometimes unkind.
LIttle did I know my life lesson lesson would include becoming that kind of person; the person who had to use their heart everyday to find courage. Getting down to business for me is now about organizing my work, shaping my learning activities to focus on how to accelerate sustainable economic change. so that the way people work can sustain them to care for others who may take ill or grow old. Most important the way we work needs to shpae into assuring our childrencan learn to sustain emotionally and economically while growing up and learn the habits of healthy living.
Take a minute to sign on to my FB page, The Story of Meaningful Use FB page. If you are linked in anways to Sheryl Sandberg, to send her this post as my invitation to her to write the preface for my book. My book speaks to the need for change, the changes that have already occurred and the changes forming to build a sustainable world of work and health that grows of societal scale so people can work wisely to live well. It offers the values that underscore this change, how value creation can occur and most important where value can be created as a step toward building a sustainable economy.
I am doing my best right now with people I work with and collaborate with to shape a series of business books that convey that foundation of values, the value creation emerging and more important show that business can make money, do good and be kind so more people can sustain and we end this nightmare that Hazel Henderson so aptly describes as The Money Fix.
Alice Korngold in her 2011 predictions,outlined the agenda this implies for sustainability, when she wrote on Fast Company's blog,
"The bottom line is that the world of empire, entitlement, and should is over. Going forward, more and more companies will engage in CSR--not because they should, but when it's in the best interests of the company and its shareholders to invest in the environment so that the company has renewable resources to manufacture its goods in the future; foster economic development to ensure that workers and customers will thrive in robust communities; provide workplace safety, education, and health care to ensure that it has a capable and productive workforce; improve communities where the company has a presence in order to foster government and public relations; deal fairly with indigenous people in order to access natural and renewable resources that the company needs for its products; and build its reputation among customers and stakeholders by respecting society's expectations with regard to the environment, human rights, and corporate ethics."
Alice provided a perspective in a long run on sentence. I am famous myself for writing sentences like this. Women like Alice and me, have a lot to say that we have created the audience for. Alice articulation of her view and business case always reflect good care and thought. Another activiyt of the heart.
This ambitious agenda is similar in value to what Sheryl Sandberg is speaking about. Sheryl also, states that it is probably that will not be carried out in full by our generation of leaders. I have felt that way for quite some time. And recently, I adopted a new attitude that I am asking on, I am developing a concrete foundation on which this change can occur and will occur.
In fact, I am doing more than my best to make this happen. In fact, I am doing what Sheryl advises women, I am forming partnerships with numerous men , primarily thought and practice leaders under 50, who want to work and be responsive to their families. Slowly and thoughtfully, I will identify these men in future posts.
Yesterday, one of them spent one and 1/2 hours with me yesterday doing more than any book agent can do, by getting me ready to give him a book table of contents and market plan that he can bring to editors in major publishers he knows. In fact, this conversation led to this post.
With this man and one other prospective partner, we are brainstorming how to build a virtual center of knoweldge exchange and insight that will also empower this change based on my formulation and their wonderful input. Stay tuned.....I believe at this time, my focus and perseverance is bringing me to something good.
I am becoming more efficient in my communications and with my heart, insuring I partner with people who are ready to act. The ideas in the blogsphere are numerous and the stories many. My forte is for leading change, building capacity and shaping the learning from which people can learn to know and act.
I look forward to having contact with you, if you are this kind of person. My plan is with all I doto build a foundation with partners that will stand with or without me; and I am going to do just that.
Chuck Maniscalco's resignation as CEO of Seventh Generation in September, followed by Jeffrey Hollender's departure from Seventh Generation in October pushed me to think about leadership in a company committed to sustainable business practice and what that implies.
In the mix of my thinking, I recalled reading that Seventh Generation has $30M in investment lined up to expand and grow the company. So I began to wonder what does this imply or mean to all the stakeholders and its implication to leadership responsibility.
Seventh Generation is currently a privately held company, after a period of being a public company from 1993-2000. During its public status, its stock was never worth more than $5.00 per share. I cannot find any information on status of that $30M and its implication to the investment strategy or company incorporation.
In 2000, Jeffrey Hollender and others perceived that they had lost control of the company; and Hollender and 11 other investors bought back the shares for a premium to investors and took control of the company. At that time of transaction the stock was valued at $.87 and private investors bought out public shareholders for $1.30.
I believe that the way Seventh Generation - the board, stakeholders and current leadership prepare to measure Seventh Generation as an investment public or private for the future will be the critical to how a CEO is hired to replace Hollender and Maniscalco? The kind of CEO needed to answer to investors for a public traded company is very different than than a CEO preparing the company for IPO or a CEO hired by all stakeholders to lead solely focused on sustaining the company and guiding the adaption of the company strategy for the marketplace and regard to competition e.g. Clorox, Procter and Gamble or S E Johnson and Company?
Yet a $30M investment can also be an opportunity for a company to think of itself as an economy, create jobs and integrate a complete sustainability framework of continuous learning with regard for all stakeholder needs, where the needs of investors do not take priority over the needs of other stakeholders.
How do people think about "leadership?"
Leadership has become a buzz word like CSR and Sustainability.....yet in todays' world we are always looking for a leader to idolize or blame. We are quick to talk about leadership failure and the media has a constant our pouring of philosophical views on what it means to be a leader or what a leader did or did not do.
What we do not often talk about is what is a leader leading and for what reason in a context that goes beyond the idea that a leader heads something or sits over a group of people or is responsible for delivering on a promise.
Over the past decade leaders have come under microscopic view re: their behavior, value and ethics.
Rarely have I seen any leader judged or reviewed for his impact on an economy. Tyler Elm, past Senior Director, Corpoate Strategy and Finance, Wal Mart Stores, Inc. wrote in his foreward to Chris Laszlo's, Sustainable Value
I recall a colleague presenting me with the following statistic a few years ago: "Of the world's 100 largest economies, 42 are now corporations, not countries."....walmart Stores, ranked first on the Fortune 500 and approaching $350B in annual sales by 2007.
For 2010, the top 10 Fortune 500 companies again ranking Walmart as first followed by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, General Electric, Bank of America, ConocoPhillips, AT&T, Ford Motor, JP Morgan Chase and HP.
All these companies have the great impact on jobs and the economies local to their operations. These companies impact the health, well being, economic stability of the people they employ and all other stakeholders. Collusion, ignorance or an informed decision by any corporations of this size can impact millions of people that may have no direct involvement with a company in the way the BP Oil Spill impacted the Gulf Region of the US.
Yet in most instances corporations, their stakeholders and others do not think of a corporate system as a living economy. Living economies are geographical regions of dense populations of people who reside by each, who can experience direct and indirect harm due to economic decisions made by political, business or community leaders.
Residents within these economies can experience harm due to how economic decision makers carry out their jobs for people they perceive as their most immediate stakeholders without factoring in how a decision can create harm to health, the environment and a region, e.g. the BP Oil Spill. These decision makers make decisions from the view of benefit for their most immediate value chain of people, e.g. shareholders, investors, or customers.
What happens when leaders think of a company as an economy?
Two companies on the list of the top 10 Fortune 500 began a few years back at the leadership level began to think about the implications of company strategy and what that meants if the company stakeholders viewed a corporate strategy as a "economy." These two companies are Walmart and General Electric.
The Wikipedia about Walmart offers a thorough summary of how Walmart changed after embedding sustainability into the company culture. Walmart's CEO Lee Scott passed the baton to Michael Duke, after Duke was elected at the 2009 annual shareholders meeting. Scott has been serving as Duke's and will continue to as Chairman thru 2011. With Duke's appointment Walmart has expanded its application of sustainability in the company and throughout the global supply chain.
Walmart's format of success planning and strategy I believe is less relevant to Seventh Generation's needs today. I find the change that General Electric has gone through guided by Jeffrey Immelt much more relevant. GE like Walmart appointed a leader from within the company, unlike Walmart, this leader has been the one to embed sustainability into GE's business strategy and led a company through a culture of change that has included job creation, investment in new ventures and an outreach to its supply chain that is serving as a model for others.
GE has also developed and funded a non profit foundation with an educational focus. The GE Foundation foucs is on funding programs that supports US students to achieve a strong foundation in math and science. Skill in science, technology and math (STEM) are now viewed the most critical skills to learn as early as kindergarten, in order to join the new emerging sustainable workforce. Through GE's management education program, STEM skilled workers are supported to develop the emotional intelligence and holistic overview critical to working in a company that has integrated a sustainbility into its culture.
Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO followed decades of empowering a performance driven culture as led by Jack Welch. Welch was Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. During Jack's reign, the company culture was described as "the Welch Way.". There are many books and stories about how Jack led GE and what his values and leadership implied to others.
While Jack Welch fostered a system of professional development and management education in General Electric that is globally respected, the Welch Way has been replaced by an integrated sustainability strategy that fosters people as corporate citizens who define their work from a perspective of CSR through a new lens of what it means to integrate sustainability into a culture of change. Jeffrey Immelt began fostering GE's culture with this view when he followed Welch became CEO and Chairman of GE in 2002. Jeffrey, like Michael Duke of Walmart had a long career internal to the company where he was promoted to Chair and CEO. Immelt's personal choice was to lead his company to embed sustainability into its culture.
By 2008, Immelt began describing himself as a banker with "deep pockets, who also invested in people. Immelt differentiates himself from an investment firm because he devised and put into practice a sustainability framework that defined how General Electric could lead the world into the building of a sustainable economy describing practices within the company, plans for how to work with the supply chain. Outside of GE, Immelt announced and carried through on plans to invest in new ventures that are not entirely owned by GE. In some cases these small enterprises are competitors to GE divisions and businesses; creating a social network of coopetition as part of the GE Culture.
Immelt outlined this framework, September 2008 to students at University of Berkley, Hass School of Business. I have since listened to this video personally over 10 times as a source of influence for my own thinking on Sustainable Strategy, Leadership and Change. Immelts presentation to me has served to be one of the most practical guides for how I define, coach and think about leadership for any company. I view this as a manifesto of change for the 21st century.
While Immelt and GE's executive team were outperforming the stock which from 2004-2006 traded at about $35.00 a share; Immelt showed his belief in a company that under Welch grew into a performance driven culture. It is now 2010 and GE's stock value is at a low of $16.22 and considered a good stock pick with a outstanding portfolio of new innovative businesses in wind and bioscience and more. For all appearances, it appears that GE has become a culture of innovation and transformed from a culture of performance. Yet doesn't innovation imply performance?
In someways, Immelt and his teams' performance and leadership approach remind me Procter and Gamble as led by both John Pepper and Al Laffley. Laffley will step down in July and be replace by Bob MacDonald. What all these men share in common are their passion for developing people, investing in them, and supporting foundation activity that impacts the healthy and education of future generations.
What have I learned from Jeffrey Immelt, P&G and others I view as Sustainability Leaders?
1. They think! Each person presents when they speak publically provides a thought leadership and frameworkof learning and practice; they do not impose their will on others. These leaders offer their thought leadership as something for personal translation and relevance.
2. They ask questions! These leaders don't come on stage presenting their way of doing business as "the way." These men speak in plain english with out jargon in a form of authenticity that opens the door of possibility for another person to learn from and adapt for their own personal model of guidance.
3. They value others! They invest in people. Immelt made this clear in his presentation at UC Berkeley Hass. I have watched John Pepper as a long time observer of his work at P&G and Disney do this over and over again. Pepper pays attention to people by observation and reflection. without speaking and invited people into conversation without regard for hierachy. I have watched both Immelt and Pepper recognize value in network rather than hierachy.
4. These leaders invest in education and professional development for the people they work with. When these leaders ask for proposals, they view that proposals imply an investment in time, learning and resource allocation. Learning implies embracing failure and they insure that in any company they work in there is a professional development and education system that supports people to apply their learning on the job.
5. These leaders proactively respond to marketplace change. The video provided here shows how Immelt has responded to the demand of change re: energy, environment and health. At P&G, Pepper was the first leader to acknowledge the need to reward brand managers for retiring products out of date and innovating new products; Lafley took on the integenerational and cultural changes of his consumers working with his team to conduct research on the appeal of products and formulas for age and country. Bob MacDonald is now facing a frugal market that is not as brand loyal to Tide, Gillette or Olay and showing price points matter as much as brand.
6. These leaders have a strong value for sustainability. . I believe that Immelt, Pepper, Lafley and MacDonald not only embrace the company mission but line up the company strategy, organization and practices to take on the challenge of the times. GE and P&G have a history and score card of leaders of specific business units that shaped their jobs and response to the challenge their CEO embraced.
7. Each of these leaders is involved in mentoring the next generation by funding and building programs that invest in youth education, health and job creation.
These CEO's also know how to stand by people they work with, who worked hard to learn from failure. They continually let others lead with their own personal autonomy and don't perceive the job of a CEO is about taking credit for what others do. Recent reports from GE re: Ecoimagination and Healthymagination offer these stories. There are many stories in the business literature about P&G and some of their leaders who had the gumption to act on intuition and gut and create exceptional results.
What does this Manifesto imply to Seventh Generation?
Jeffrey was Seventh Generation's spokesperson. There is no replacement for Jeffrey's voice.I don't know Peter, I don't know if he is a leader or simply an investor who has inherited a lead position with a community now seeking leadership. At the, I wonder if Seventh Generation in its transition will rely on "a leadership voice" or inspire many voices offering different perspectives for a variety of topics e.g. stock value,chemicals and more.
What can Seventh Generation learn from Procter and Gamble and General Electric where it contributes to images of a generation of healthy workers, who work wisely to live well and contributes to what WorkEcology's Contributing Editor, Dave Wann would call the New Normal.
For now, I am looking to Seventh Generation to learn how the board responds to filling its leadership gap; and how the board begins repair of a failed succession plan. To me the real preparation re: succession is not in finding "a replacement leader;" it is how the people who worked for the most recent leader are prepared to respond to change and do their jobs with or without the appointment of a new leader.
I asked myself, "What I would do if I was Peter Graham or actually working at Seventh Generation?" My approach would be similar to the answer to the question John Pepper asked me years ago. When John Pepper asked me what I wanted to do at P&G at a time P&G was preparing for change, my answer was this:
1. I would meet with every employee in any business unit I was assigned where I could have impact to find out how they want to give their best performance;
2. I would synthesize this into a report into a learning report and present the report to everyone influenced by these employees (all stakeholders) or seved by these employees and convene a meeting to launch a learning community with representation from the investors.
In addition, I would place this list of intention on a wall above my desk with guidelines for my own behavior:
1. Make no assumptions about what I want to do.
2. Find out what others want to do and where they have not been heard and provide people a framework to request what they needed to give their best performance?
3. Compare all the requests and see where there are replications and ask people who replicated each other to meet in small groups and unite in a new proposal framework?
4. Map out a base of operation that cannot change that keeps the company stable with the leaders of all operational aspects of the company.
5. Select a person on the transition team as acting CEO, with the understanding that the CEO job description will be written at the end of one year and there will be a recruitment process created at that time to select a CEO based on insuring a CEO who is respected by investors and representation from all stakeholder groups.
6. Ask everyone to map out how they Seventh Generation can define itself as an economy, similar to GE and Walmart or if it can? Guide a cultural shift in view beyond how people's jobs are defined; and imagine how Seventh Generation can create an exemplary performance in the contet of the Earth Charter's Precautionary Prinicple.
7. Run an election for all stakeholder participation to recommend people to participate in a transition leadership team. Bring to this team a specific list of legitimate competencies and skill requirements that are needed now for the company to perform in a stable form?
8. Survey all stakeholders to submit a list of values, ethics and principles that matter to the all stakeholders in how Seventh Generation operates in the world?
9. Finally, create a review and final summary for the transition team to review and approve. Begin to see who within the transition team is demonstrating leadership and taking responsibility and let them author formal job descriptions reflecting this and prepare their own metrics for performance review.
At the end of 1 year have a meeting with the investors to review performance and get their feedback. Take the investor feedback and begin a new stage of work
Then for begin a new stage of work as follows:
1. Select a group of people who do not ordinarily work together to begin to identify views, perspectives that have not previously been discussed in the company that others would like to learn more about.
2. Begin to build out a method for a community to form a continuous learning group that identifies activities of learning important for the future of the company for which the company does not have resources or people in place to evaluate the implications of what is identified as a learning ladder for the company to sustain and operate with stability.
3. Based on these intentions and principles of behavior and practice, begin bi-weekly meetings of everyone on the transition team to continually review and audit the process and improve on the process based on the outcomes harvested and the observations of the transition team and well defined methods of review with representation of all stakeholders.
Why value this approach?
In my experience many companies formed out of an entreprenuerial vision become about the founding heroes or an idea of how to protect the original intent and product line of a company. I believe one of the most challanging transitions to any company today, is to create an activity drawning on input and participation from all stakeholders to examine how a company brings life to the economy it contributes to or creates.
Anyone who takes a look at the story of Walmart, GE and Disney through 2000, will see that that company story is about what the leaders want and do. Today Walmart, GE and Disney that have taken their portfolio of assets, knowledge and talent and shaped those assets into something of value in many different forms for millions of people.
My belief is that this is the most critical leadership framework any company can create for itself and through observation I can now see that if the CEO's or Chair's of each of these companies mention were unable to perform their job, there are many other people who can continue with inspiring and acting on what really matters and is reflected in the purpose each of these companies has integrated into their strategies, decisions, products and services that delivers on a brand of with a reputation for influencing society today to work toward sustainable change and inject life into our global economy for people, planet and environment.
My own work now is to test this manifesto within communities of people I engage with out of my own passion to empower companies to create a societal scale means of healthy living for people of all generations.
Seventh Generation like many companies I know is at the threshold of contributing to building a great capacity of health and wellness for generations to come. I hope that the company can muster their capacity to do this at a global scale and make that difference. This is why I have always believed in Seventh Generation as a potential investment and a company deserving of my attention as a sustainability leader and consumer.
Will Seventh Generation, grow, become public or stay private, sustain the same culture, use a $30M investment? I have lots of questions to watch for answers. At the same time, based on my Lavinia Homegrown Manifesto, what can I predict? I can't predict anything at this time.
My approach to learning is to simply join a conversation if the door is open for that or to simply observe. From a distance, my instincts tell me not to predict or place bets and to identify the people who roll up their sleeves like I do to do the hard work of change and to see how they work as a community to build the company future.
Key to this approach is a recognition that Seventh Generation is a living social network of economy where it is up to the leaders to sustain this economy for eco-growth and safe chemical practices.
@elainecohen has been using her twitter and blog posts to mix up a lot of ideas that added great value to the idea of chemistry (#safechem) as a metaphor for a sustainable leadership practice of "sensemaking." Elaine directs us to think of the chemical practice of "mixing up of ingredients" as a metaphor from which companies can build learning and sustainable outcomes ( OR NOT).
I pointed out something similar this past week, as a guest blogger at IN GOOD COMPANY.In this post I provided my thesis for how CSR and Sustainability has to move from its frontier form of startup into a practice that mixes up all the ingredients that sustsainability implies.
By the time I completed and published this post, Elaine had me on my toes again without permitting me any time to take a breath!
Interacting in the CSR Social Media world has most certainly become an opportunity to gain more precision with life balance. While Elaine finds stress relief with Chunky Monkey; I have taken to the treadmill and nautilus for my own stress relief. Right now I can't imagine doing anything else but breathing and sweating my way through the chaos of opportunity that has shaped in CSR and Sustainability.
On a daily basis, I am pushed to distinguish my writing time to the art of research and story telling versus the art of summary and analysis. Your combined intelligence productively distracts me!
In the last few weeks, Elaine's blog posts and twittering have generated rapid forms forms of response and analysis that set me back from doing the thorough reearch my work requires to teach and capture the story of change in sustainability. Hence, I am getting far more selective in what I read and harvested these links most recently that are relevant to my own work.
This is keeping me on my toes to perform a more in-depth of analysis on how companies are embedding education in their culture to lead change responsive to a need for sustainability.
Within Elaine's Dow Chemical analysis, she asserts an important meta-perspective using the practice of chemistry as a metaphor for sustainable business practice, when she asserted:
"This rigid structure, together with the impersonal nature of the report (only one photo of the Chairman and none of employees or any other stakeholders) made me think of comparing the Dow report to a chemistry experiment - sterile laboratory conditions, detailed lab notes, exact measures of all materials, a process conducted in perfect sequence and an output which delivers a predictable result. A CSR Report is, after all, not just a report. It is a story. A story of how PEOPLE are doing sustainable business. Even chemistry labs need people."
This metaphor implies and supports how critical PEOPLE and HUMAN CAPITAL are to '"mixing the ingredients" of CSR into sustainable business practice.
As a consultant to @jeffreyhogue, Elaine provided the idea and driver for the the Danisco synthesis of its report with the title she gave to Danisco for their 2010 report, "Ingredients for Sustainability."
This morning, Elaine twittered the link to Sanofi Aventis 2009 CSR report
After quick review of these links, I formed these questions:
1. What is the obligation of a company in a merger acquisition to to repair any harm created by the previous CEO and Directors?
For example, what lessons and change did Dow Chemical lead with the acquisition of Union Carbide and its repair of the Bhopal Chemical Crisis?
2. What can other companies can learn from Danisco's culture as to how they Danisco embeds a sustainability agenda into its operations at 80 sites around the world? What does this imply?
Is Danisco seeking to follow Walmart and General Electrics' example of reorganizing as an ecological economy by design rather than focusing on strategy as an exercise of organization and business planning?
3. Will Sanofi Aventis rapid position and action steps their leadership has taken to acquire Genzyme for $18.5 Billion embed sustainability into its agenda?
Will the focus for the merger be based on how much Genzyme's CEO, Henri Temeer can personally gain ($23M projected personal gain). Or will Sanofi Aventis bridge its sustainable agenda with Genzyme influenced by Sanofi Aventis' membership in the UNGlobal Compact?
Deloitte is inside Genzyme now as we speak conducting an analysis or audit. Given their role in developing the UN Global Compact Framework for Sustainability will they use this as away to value the company and contribute to the design of the merger/acquisition?
If Sanofi Aventis acquires Genzyme, will it introduce an initiative that leads current Genzyme employess into a culture of change that engages Genzyme's social network to experience sustainable improvements through the supply chain
What is at risk here?
Will competent employees be put at risk by downsizing and layoff for what or will Sanofi Aventis value the richness of human capital and address the barriers within the culture that have prevented competent people from performing for the benefit of all Genzyme stakeholders?
How will Genzyme improve on the delivery of current and new treatments to patient populations suffering with illnesses related to diseases, e.g. renal failure, leukemia gaucher disease?
The implications of questions like these are critical to embedding education into a culture of change initiative. This type of perspective requires looking and engaging outside the traditional boundaries of organization.
What are the core group economic decision making patterns within all these companies and what makes their CSR performance distinct and valuable or not?
A Personal Thank You to Elaine
Elaine, thank you so much for inspiring my week with your fast pace and intelligent analysis; While keeping me on my toes to shape my message in a productive and cohesive form, please forgive me if I occassionally seek out quiet from your very on demand world of media, please forgive me for not reading every valuable word of what you write. It seems after a year of posting on AboutWorkEcology,
it has become time to focus on my book, the indepth analysis I am doing to
to market and conduct workshop program (for individuals, communities of practice and organizations) to inspire new formations fo social networking that embed sustainability into Stakeholder Engagement to construct education formats of learning that impact and measure economic metrics for sustainability;
defining a new forum that is responsive for #safechem practices;
getting focused on taking my book proposal for Tale of Meaningful Use; Giving Economic Backbone to Sustainability the attention it requires to complete the book sooner rather than later.
And for now, simply adding a note of Congratulations to @Jeffrey Hogue on his marriage. Jeff, I saw you could not keep away from twitter, before your 9/6 projected return to work. Jeff, I hope I can connect with you constructively sometime post 9/12 so we can review my questions on the impact of Danisco's sustainability agenda from an economic point of view beyond organization practice.
The President's signature on the bill for Health Care Reform has not put a stop to the criticism, anguish and
negativity that surrounds change in this country. It appears in this country we have to have a push that is top-down from the Presidential Office Suite to legislate change in
this country. It is becoming a barrier to change that most people want. The kind of people who take responsibility for their actions and want to work in jobs they love providing competent work. Ordinary people who want jobs they love and want to support quality patient care and know how.
This is the profile of most people who put any form of digital media to work as part of their work practice, so they can build capacity to serve their clients with a view for quality performance. It is not the profile of a government bureaucrat operating to push EMR into "meaningful use" so people can take benefit of funds allocated from the America's Recovery Act.
It seems that in this country we cannot get away from mandating laws that perpetuate fear. We rely on politicians and lobbying group and corporations to make change. These economic decision makers end up spending billions of dollars per year on media, advertising and debate that perpetuates fear instead of leading change for health, environment and law.
The day Health Care Reform passed, I was still unable to put my frustration aside about health. It had nothing to do with the heated debate and force that surrounded Health Care Reform for years. My mental anguish had nothing to do with the long history traced back to Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican Activist, who first proposed US Health Care Reform.
The staff at Justmeans.com did an incredible job or coverage from all points of view, Sara Libby provided a history of the bill tracing it back to 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt was in office. Alisa Ulferts wrote about how the voices of hate, threat and ill will related to HCR made her feel ill, and Ano Lobo asked some tough question, e.g. will 50 states each interpret their way of implementing hcr and will the health of Americans' overall improve.
I found these events that coincided with the passing of the bill far more telling on what the challenge is ahead of us for health, environment and education in this country.
Jamie Oliver's First Episode of Food Revolution portrayed a reality in American culture where adults are so critical of change it stops it dead in its tracks. Then we have to own how our children are not raised to have good food manners and eat with proper utensils. Oliver has met with a layer of challenge he did not anticipate when he decided to create a revolution to change the diet of citizens of America's most obese town. He has to induce fear in people to gain their cooperation. Is this the American way? He had to take a family to the doctor's office who never go and have them hear from a doctor what they had done to their son's health by letting him eat whatever he wants.
The fight and battle to obstruct good nutrition in the schools after the health care reform bill was signed began this week. Politicians have begun to lobby to block Michelle Obama's School Lunch Campaign designed to give a message to families and school son the importance of passing a new bill authored by the Obama administration to allocate $10B on school lunches over 10 years to feed children with healthier food. Michelle's partner for this bill is Disney, who is assisting with building a public media to teach good nutrition to kids and their families. Disney is producing Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.
We are now looking at more media and more government and more mandates ahead of us to put into action a series of laws that have mandated use of health care information technology.
At almost every home page today of any EMR company they are promoting a $44,000 rebate from this stimulus package for clinical practices to adopt "meaningful use" of electronic medical record pages into their practice. To embed images from the website of HIT companies promoting the purchase of EMR systems that display the stimulus package as motivation for purchase would position me as a person attacking a specific company. That is not my intention.
In my opinion there seems to be a systemic flaw in the marketing and promotion of EMR and HIT. The media does not instill any understanding of how health information technology can be adopted in to use to
1. improve the delivery of care to consumers;
2. simplify the task of processing medications, insurance claims and information requests;
3. create a system of tracking and formatting a record of patient health that will weave into a larger knowledge base of research and practice relevant information associated with a specific patients health needs can be accessed;
4. build a translational and evidence based practice of medicine so that clinicians and patients can find the best in practice research, clinical trials and new diagnostic procedures.
For many years, I have had a passion about the possibility of Health Care IT and found a dynamic that surrounds it similar to health care reform.
The Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration and Health and Human Services have spent billions of dollars through the years to develop and put into use thousands of health care information technology pilots that have failed to result in improvements of quality of care and access for patients. Last summer, Obama and Congress scrutinized numerous projects that associated with a price tag of $3M for each project to find out if the purchase and adoption of these technologies resulted in patient outcomes. By the end of the summer, the Obama administration stopped 48 VA HIT projects mid stream.
We can now speculate on the billions of dollars in projected expenses and the cost of ongoing operation for initiatives led by Dr. David Blumenthal, from the Office of National Coordination of Health Information Technology. These initiatives are generating scazillions of bits and bytes of information on how to format electronic medical records for meaningful use.
To date, I have not yet found any information or knowledge shared with the people this initiative effects and apply a sustainability management practice of Triple Bottom Line to Meaningful Use. The Triple Bottom Line is a term that was coined by John Elkington in 1994. The application of this financial leadership approach to integrating ethical and sustainable practice to industry finances has not yet come into common use within all sectors of health care. Some BioPharm companies have adopted its use into practice because of the growing interest to comply with Corporate Sustainable Reporting Practices that are being adopted into use by the 7700 compnaies associated with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC).
UNGC has authored a set of principles and leadership practices that are inspiring the business associated with the UNGC to learn from the span of practices authored and facilitated by global non profit organizations and investment indexes on how companies integrate practices into company strategies that are responsive to the environment, health and social justice topical challenges of today. Sandra Waddock, the Galligan Chair of Strategy at Boston College's Carroll School of Management has authored a paper, Building the Infrastructure for Corporate Responsibility, that summarizes the thought leadership and provides tables and listing for all the monitoring organizations globally that can guide groups in achieving a system and ethic of reporting for the environment, health and social justice that could add benefit to the growing through related to "meaningful use."
To integrate this system of thought we would begin to see images in health care that report metrics of change that "meaningful use" to a Triple Botton Line practice reflected in these images.
Health Care Reform and the adoption of use of HIT has been motivated by the view that we can as a nation create a health care that
It seems to me that the vision of HIT and the values associated with the importance, do not have the power that can be derived from a message enclosed in a vision of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. I know that this method of thought, inquiry and learning could change the posture of conversation to generate change rather than re-enforce fear, debate and threat, hence paralyzing members of the legislature, government agencies and health care institutions and players from authoring a new leadership to lead change.
Health Care is so much more than health care. Health comes from the air we breath, the food we eat, the way we work and live in balance with our family and communities. Health grows out of a sense of belonging and learning a capacity to deal with the growing uncertainty of these times.
Maybe it is time for the experts in government, technology and science to alter their view a bit. To do this it will require convening groups of stakeholders that represent all groups who live in the strategic geography that any change initiative reaches out to. This would mean putting various people who represent the diversity of expertise and diversity of people in need of response that includes patients and advocacy groups, clinicians the the institutions where care is provided, employers, insurance companies, think tanks, professional associations.
In gathering these people, the convening teams will need to identify and draw on perspectives from "natural leaders" who work within these groups and have the energy to lead change and examine all that change implies from a strategy perspective that is translated into action with plans for resources, budget and engagement to deploy these plans of action.
Last week as I combed through my research, conversations with my colleagues in the world of Corporate Social Responsibility and listened to the reports in the media on health care reform, I began to conceive my own picture of what is meant by Meaningful Use.
As I have repeatedly written here, health is so much more than health care.
I apologize Dr. Blumenthal for raining on your parade. For me, "meaningful use, and the current buzz that surrounds it. It all gives me the experience of finding myself in an "electrical storm" that is raining pellets you have to add to your list of what to do, before you can leave the office. On Friday evening a office manager in a Harvard Medical Area, forwarded me an email instructing her on how she would have to collect more demographic patient data so her office can qualify for the first $18K payment from the Federal Government. My first reaction to this email was to ask, "Why is she still in the office on Friday night at 7 PM, when I know the doctor she worked with that day, left work at 4 PM?"
I believe if "meaningful use is to become more relevant to health professionals and their patients, we need to expand our vision of building health technology that supports people at work, home and in the doctor's office. In the world of social media this can become a never ending story that inspires people who want to live life sustainably to chose access to the best technology, science, and lifestyles that give give us the best shot at a quality of living, no matter our health status from cradle to death.
Perhaps with the appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), we now will see a more educational approach to what we need in health care. Berwick like me is a Larry Weed, M.D. fan. For years, Larry Weed was the voice on the power of digital health and how it can enable quality decision making and support evidence based practice of medicine. Dr. Weed like any practical physician and health informatics specialist had vision and imagination that for some reason the politicians and medical bureaucrats want to obstruct. Sometime in the 90's the Rockefeller Foundation gave Dr. Weed a grant and in his early 80's he established PKC, which has the architecture for this work to expand into practice and provide an outreach that is viral with quality capacity.
Both Berwick and Weed's work is focused on supporting the physician to provide quality care and assure the best practice to any patient possible. That is quite different than coming into a practice and starting off your contact with a clinician proposing he can get $44K in the bank for adopting use of an EMR.
I am working toward not getting trapped by the behavior of Social Media and work toward having my communications influence and lead change. Over the last month, I have someone gotten lost in the sea of media that is fueled daily on Twitter within these groups, #csr, #justmeans, #sustainability, #diversity, #hit, #emr, #whitehouse, #healthcarereform, #omb, #philanthropy, #NHIN, #meaningfuluse and more. It has been a rare a event that I identify a link to a concrete and rarely see anything in the media that correlates with assuring citizens health from cradle to death.
I am thinking of cutting back my time on Social Media and simply watching, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and Extreme Makeover where I can learn more about how to influence an entire city or town to change their eating habits or I can learn what it takes to construct a home that protects children and adults from environmental exposures and assures their health. Extreme Makeover teaches us how a community can provide a quality of life for families who have been adversely effected by military service or lose a love one who gives his life in service of the country or their community.
Overall I have been enjoying watching how Disney and ABC have impacted change in society since John Pepper, former Chairman of Procter and Gamble, who became Chairman of Disney's Board. I have observed since Pepper came into his role at Disney/ABC that this company has moved beyond the heroic selfish acts of Michael Eisner.
I met Pepper in the late 80's when he gave a key note for a conference I helped to organize that was a followup to a research study I staffed on downsizing. In the short time I had, I was invited by Pepper to join him at his table for lunch and in 3 minutes or less, gained something from this experience that was a real lesson in leadership.
I have come to find out that Pepper in 2007, published What Really Matters. It was from John Pepper that I learned that you cannot judge a company entirely by it's leader. Quality leadership does not mean that all people perform well, and bad leadership is simply reflected in a bad company performance.
The transparency that surrounds Pepper is exceptional. Where he works is never about Pepper, it is about the company, people and values.
In the mid 90's I was invited by my health care network to learn about a private Workman's Comp program that Pepper resourced Pepper with my friend, Jim Palmer designed and implemented a system of WC at P&G that could only be organized in a company of that size. It was a total quality system by comparison the Federal Government private system for postal workers that did not deliver and insure a quality process for people and organization. This model was grew into a model of reputation that Palmer talked about on the lecture circuit for years. The applause and attention Palmer received was never matched by intention for others to learn and apply.
In fact, Pepper and Palmer formed a non profit in Ohio, that was unable to construct a model of adoption that did not success. In my opinion, the system this group put together required a national agenda to insure it's outcome and guide the system on paper into design. it was a product of the times where by most leaders did not grasp or understand the implications of "embedding a change" as a culture of change.
I know this struggle pervades today. I have learned this by monitoring the HHS Media promoted on on #EHR and #HIT lists that follow David Blumenthal, M.D., National Health Information Technology Coordinator for HHS. Like Blumentahl's predecessor, Dr. David Brailer, I do not see the systems defined or progress we need. The culture and activity as organized by government, insurance and HHS is simply not empowering a culture of change based on convening a community that learns together and derives from that learning how to lead change.
Like Dr. Brailer, I do not see that Blumenthal can stand a chance to empower change until US Citizens and all that implies recognize that changing our health care system is not a matter of technology. Technology has to become a tool for carrying out new initiatives that are economically and patient centric driven in a new format of conversation that embraces creates a culture of innovation.
I have tried to follow Blumenthal's activity as best I can and I find most of it disempowering. me Blumenthal like his predecessor has convened a community of people drawn from health insurance, delivery systems and government are lost in conversations that are so mechanical the jargon they speak has no meaning and the public reports get lost in the anacronyms they create.
The discussion I monitor shows no recognition for for leadership values and patient centric care. The people in this world are living in a condition, I describe as "how to & tell me what to do." They are not leading change into practice that convenes conversation that matter with people who can lead change and build new practices based on an imagination they construct with each other because they believe they can.
I continue to believe that health for every citizen can be sustainable. I also believe that Health continues to be the most ignored issue by business and ordinary citizens who simply may feel disempowered to do anything.
People have great difficulty wrapping around the idea of health and how to track improvements because health measurements cut across every sector, industry and may require a new economic thought leadership that has not found its way in the ordinary speak of people today.
And if you don't have your health, what does that mean to your capacity to live and sustain in any society or economy today?
In talking about health, the conversations dribble into categories e.g. health care systems, health care finance, health information technology, electronic medical records, patient care, cancer, public health and more.
In talking about CSR and or sustainability, we talk CSR, SRI, GRI, Reporting, Workplace Issues, Corporate Responsibility, Climate Change, Green Technology, Green Jobs, Corporate Governance, Monitoring, and more.
Yesterday, I downloaded reports from creating a new Road Map in thought leadership for CSR and Sustainability. I have begun a detailed review of these resources that include:
Mindy Lubber, President of this investment coalition writes, "We need accelerated performance improvements from companies that reflect the true scientific and economic impacts of unchecked carbon pollution, growing water scarcity and billions of people still living and working in poverty."
From WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL for SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
This report provides, " a study lays out a pathway leading to a global population of some 9 billion people living well, within the resource limits of the planet by 2050."
While I do not want to distract from the responsive missions that both these groups have authored into action; I was struck by how each of these groups mapped out reports that did not concretely address health and value health separately from the category of "social" responses for society. Each report speaks to the needs of people to live well or for corporations to respond to social needs of society. What these reports do not recognize is that a strong component of how health is provided and influenced comes out of industries that effect the economics of health- insurance, medical devices, biopharm, technology and more.
Neither of these reports/activities directly speak to how health can be assured all global citizens and what that means to the role of business and hence corporate performance and systems by which to monitor the impact of business on health as it factors into investment and the global market place.
Yesterday, I received Hazel Henderson's periodic update to her colleagues and friends, which pointed to these articles that are a composite of Hazel's current campaigns to shift focus on the economy to build more ecological initiatives to author a recovery. Hazel's life long view of the economy and building a new set of indicators for GDP and Investors had been to create economic methods and practices globally that build a new sustainable economy and stop the band aid quick fixes. Here are the articles that summarize her latest views and initiatives tied to those views:
Within these articles Hazel speak as she always has about the power corporations, investors and people have to remedy the growing country debts, define metrics of well being and assure that government is not used to lobby for profits and schemes that do not respond to the needs of people.
While all these articles are intellectually right on and report on initiatives none of them address the issues that are so critical to people to sustain their health by reducing
1. The impact and harm that bad out of date public and private infrastructure (energy, fuel, heat and electricity) have on people's health;
2. Influencing a change to the structure of how health care is accessed globally through a costly infrastructure of institutions and geo-strategy of real estate property that does not provide a patient centric care centric to home.
3. Redefine in all countries with regard for culture, tradition, life cycle rituals who people are born and where they can that assures a quality of life and human respect that is not poverty or technically driven;
3. Addressing compensation structures in corporations, e.g. CEO pay, bonus programs and cash incentive programs that are paid out before members of the workforce can be guaranteed health insurance and responsive occupational health programs that do not compromise their capacity to earn a living and sustain their families;
4. Assuring a set of workforce practice that assure for the care and health of the future generation so parents (married and single) who need to work can assure the attention their children need for their nutrition, health and safety to counteract violence, obesity and lack of learning that does not encourage these kids to believe they have a future.
5. Organizing communities to champion changes in the health insurance industry in the US that is least aggressive with learning how to lead with a triple bottom line practice.
When it comes to matters of health I wish to read blogs and social media from health care experts that do not focus on changes in technology, clean tech, green jobs and begin to define a role for the practice of medicine that is inclusive and defines an understanding of where quality of life, change in business practices regarding energy, clean tech and green can impact quality of life indicators in terms of conditions for housing, education and work environments that assure people and their children health.
The kind of effort that I am asking for here, is beyond anything that one person can conceive of or act on. It is a horizontal response that cuts across industry, government, education and non profit organizations where the focus on leading this change requires education and inquiry.
This week, I finally began the annotation of literature, organization of a project plan and identified a small group of people who can have input in this process to prepare health service leaders and business stewards to begin to define and design the kind of inquiry that is required to align a thought leadership between leaders from which they can act to create the design, funding and organization of hybrid projects to influence this change.
This small scale initiative now has a network of people who listen and act and may get to know each other. It is small scale and it requires a certain kind of attention and response, most people do not know how to give. It requires a type of attention where anyone no matter how successful they have been in the past is willing to step up as described by Jay Coen Gilbert in today's Inspired Protagonist
Jay's insight as co-founder of Seventh Generation is this:
"Ambiguity is not an option. For any company that seriously intends to harness the power of the marketplace to crack society's biggest challenges, authenticity -- the capacity to do what you say you'll do -- is a core, non-negotiable attribute."
In my humble opinion, we have come to a time where the massive distributed change can only be authored and led from a heart of generosity and not the generosity or one person.
Cary Krosinsky, who I look to for advice for this project I am convening with others, asked a question on his FaceBook page this week?
"as we exit the generation of selfishness in America, what's next?"
Cary's question got me thinking and I re-framed it from the perspective of health?
"What would it mean if every person you knew in any country, place or culture could have the right to health?"
How would that change our practices in business, government, health care and with the panel of experts who are the keepers to that question? and what would it take for them to come out of their "selfish silos."
And how would you bring global thought into this thinking. Health is not a problem in the US alone, we have resources to solve it and I believe more than every it requires new thought leadership and methods of monitoring that grows out of a grassroots approach just like movements for SRI, CSR and Sustainability.
This is my food for thought today, I look forward to your comments.
This week the leading innovators in thought leadership, who
guide people into practice provided their followers briefings
that tie in well with my new focus, Up The Ante on CSR.
Early this morning, I viewed Christine Arena's live interview on 3BL Media
with Gil Friend, . Christine's pointed question to Gil, "is it enough
that companies are doing the bare the minimum for sustainability?" Gil
responded by stating that 70% of companies see they are inadequate in
addressing the need and don't understand the business case.
Shortly after I viewed this broadcast, Christina launched a conversation on JustMeans.com's Live Feed summarizing her view of the broadcast. Christina liked," how Friend characterizes the multiple risks of not employing
an intelligent strategy for sustainability: "lost profit," "market
access," "license to operate," "recruitment and retention" and "lack of
meaning....There's your business case right there."
In my experience of Christine, she always
has a gracious way of getting to the point and I have been following her
activity ever since I met her in a discussion on Justmeans.com about
the harm caused by Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria and her
examination of looking at all sides of the coin with people from Shell
and other Justmean's Members.
If you have not seen Gil's book, the
cover provides on its own the most powerful message you can take into
any workplace.
I have watched Gil's practice move out of his
personal style of aggregating on his feet, while he creates what he
learns in a format for his clients. While gil was my neighbor in the Bay
Area, I first met him on listserv formed by the University of Colorado
called the Future of Work.
This group gathering in the early days of social media gatherings via
listservs comprised leading thought leaders, consultants and academics
who were grappling ahead of schedule on the issues that were pointing to
the potential of a recession with that reflected greater harm the Great
Depression.
Subsequently through social gathering through
the Tides Foundation in the Bay Area and other professional
associations. Gil founded a company as CEO, Natlogic, and I followed his website
and subscribed to the RSS feed to his blog. Gil is a man of a few words
and I promised you they are always poignant and educational. I attended
his workshop focused on strategy and sustainability and watched
corporate and non profit participants (all sizes and budgets) leave
stunned by what they learn. I even got a chance as a participant to
build my case for WeCareMetrics.
Today, in particular, Christina Arena's question of Gil Friend and
his responses got my attention and pushed me to reflect on this input as I filled my day getting organized to write a new white paper. What they spoke to really pushed me to think how this relates to
cultivating an educational format so sustainability is
more widely understood from my view. Sustainability had the most meaning for me in the context of the Precautionary Principle assuring practices that protect a future for our children. It is the less attractive business case for
corporations and parallels the spiral of exploration that surrounds
creating CSR metrics that support the improvement of quality of life for
women.
So while I was writing out my reflection, I got a twitter from Elaine Cohen which led me to listen to a broadcast of Elaine
Cohen on 3BL Media on Women and CSR. The title of this broadcast
is CSRunscripted. Elaine Cohen does not need a script for anything she writes or
thinks about. She speaks it off the tip of her tongue with an
intelligence and analytics that get to the bottom line. Elaine in this
video makes a case for my point of view that I have been saying in
various froms, e.g. this February 11, 2010 insight note, "Moving Beyond
Gender Buzz".
Elaine delivers a message to the point that
says it for me, It is not about improving, training or developing women
for advancement. It is about a culture of change; and in my personal
view a culture of change that impacts a new form of education.
I
could not let day go buy without writing this post so integral to the
white paper I have been researching on barriers to change and how to
address those structurally beyond interpersonal dynamics. Changing
people, changing women to fit in a defined structure that is not
sustainable is simply not good CSR.
Join me on @workecology and join this
new list #CSRuptheante, if you have something to contribute to this
line of thinking or want to follow my aggregation as it emerges, direct
me to funding sources for my research or simply decide you want to learn
how in your company to build the business case and hire me to join with
you to make that happen.
"When will CSR move from being a heroic deed and translate into a workforce initiative that creates more jobs and methods of work that bring the experts out of their silos to work together, learn together and build outstanding practices that help us build the "dream" we now define as an "impossible dream?"
This question is now the question leading of a new inquiry and white paper, stay tuned to #csruptheante for more updates (white paper, blog posts and more. (Lavinia Weissman)
Read on for the additional input from people who contributed to this orginal post and my reflection- February 26, 2009..
I chatted a bit with Michael Dupee, VP of CSR at GMRC after writing and releasing this post to syndication. I reflected a bit on what Michael had to say about the blog post and from my perspective I did not create a context that served this post to be understood as I wanted it to be.
I thought of something after I spoke to Michael that paints that context well. It relates to my father's generation of business owners, who practiced what we now call CSR and Sustsainability before the terms were spoken...
It is emulated by the way Paul Newman created the Newman's Own Brand and his philanthropic council for CEO's, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. Paul Newman live his life and carried out his interests at a level of precision and quality reflected in his passion for race car driving. Race car driving even more than acting requires a precision of spirit, knowledge and technical skill in balance. That is how Paul Newman approached his life with family, as an actor, philanthropist and business owner.
Like my dad, I wage you that Paul Newman did not even think on the words Corporate Social Responsibility. As a humanitarian, business person and creative artist he approached everything he did with the same level of precision. That is the precision now with which we need to approach education and all aspects of #csr and #sustainability in my opinion.
to up the ante on CSR or Sustainability, I believe education has to begin with a foundation of value's that leaders like Paul Newman emulate in practice. These leaders know that education does not stop there that learning is generated life long and grows out of a discipline of science, technology and inquiry.
Read on to read my original post...
This week I gave some thought to more conversations I have had and the work of people I know in CSR that are striving to do just that.
Jeff Hollander is someone I know from years of hanging out in various places in New England. For those of you who do not know Jeff, Jeff describes himself as the Inspired Protagonist and CEO of Seventh Generation. Through numerous activities, I keep bumping into Jeff on the virtual plane of CSR or through people we know in common. Jeff is stretching out to create Sustainability as a revolution of values based leaders who are leading "purposeful companies." His new book, coauthored with Bill Breen, is about how the next generation of business will
Last summer, an academic professional association adopted me and informed me that I was an ecological economist and I found myself in conversation with a group from Vermont launching a new magazine that Jeff and Michael Dupee, VP of CSR for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters helped to launch for people and academics working in the field of ecological economics.
MIchael Dupee, recently asked a very broad question on CSR Education on Justmeans.com. Michael and I decided to connect by phone for more of a dialogue. Michael and I decided to connect by phone for more of a dialogue. During
the conversation, Michael provided me a very interesting overview
related to the needs of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMRC) and the
success of all
GMRC brands from Newman's Own to Kureig in a Cup. .
GMRC added 1,000 jobs in a recession economy over the past 3 years. The experience of identifying candidates, hiring and bring 1,000 people into employment gave Michael some real insight into what is not happening in education today to assure a person can work in a CSR enterprise. Michael is finding he has something to contribute to MBA programs that focus on CSR and Sustainability. He recently lectured to students at the CSR MBA Program at Notre Dame University and is seeking an educational partner to shape his ideas with in action translated into an MBA educational program and plans to write a book about it.
I am now working on a white paper that is food for thought on today's challenge re: Sustainability and CSR and providing a proposition for could change in education. I am also thinking through a structure of mentorship and what factors into learning and interaction outside of a school setting that employers,government agencies, health services and non profits need to consider.
Shortly after I talked to Michael about what I also thought about a new educational format for CSR, two new articles on sustainable education came to my desk authored by Jeffrey Hollender with Ashely Orgain, Seventh Generation and Ted
Nunez of Kaplan Eduneering. I have placed these articles in queue for my review at a later date to grasp the quality and their implications and weave the thinking into conversations I am having with John Friedman at Sodexo about how to move CSR activity to a new level of quality and impact.
After I talked to Michael, Cary Krosinsky told me he was going to speak at an SBSI conference Duke University hosted by the Fuqua School and sponsored by Newman's Own. Cary like me monitors the press and articles about the new emerging education and had pointed me to a McKinsey interview with the Dean of the Fuqua MBA program on today's educational challenge. Cary is Vice President of Marketing for Trucost.com and coeditor of with Nick Robins, who heads Climate Change Initiatives at HSBC. Cary has been lecturing on Sustainable Investing at numerous "green mba" program including Marlboro College and Columbia and I continue to watch how he influences curriculum and thought leadership to prepare today's CSR and Sustainable Workforce.
Slowly from these conversations, an idea is starting to shape for me to organize a private research quality newsletter on the new education format for CSR and Sustainability within the context of how I define sustainable portfolio work that assures all workforce citizens sustainable wage and a system of compensation that assures access to health and educational opportunities as needed through a worker's life time.
For me this form of learning started up close and personal during a recession in the early 90's in the Bay Area where I had moved to obtain employment after Massachusetts went through years of downsizing. In the Bay Area, I had joined initiatives tied to the Bay Area Regional Technology Alliance and Silicon Valley Joint Venture and authored job retraining programs for manufacturing that won grant funds by a community group I belonged to. In parallel, I also developed a curriculum to prepare Human Resource Professionals and Licensed Clinicians to think about the Wellness Revolution for the Workforce. This led me to join community education activities on the influence of environment and chemical toxins on consumer health and to become curious about when and how this form of education would link with CSR and Sustainable Programs in companies to exercise precaution related to the health of the workforce.
For me when Anita Roddick, Ben and Jerry launched Business for Social Responsibility it seemed only natural that CSR and Sustainability agenda's should examine the state of employment, job creation, workforce health and retooling education to insure someone could stay educated and contribute as a viable member of the workforce.
This passion for me traced back to a simpler question that was natural for me to ask after I became a working mother and then single parent. The question has been very simple to ask and far more complex to find answers to.
Take a minute to read my question out loud and make it your own in your own words:
"By the time my daughter grows up will I have means to give her an education, teach her health practices to keep her healthy and be able to assure her a job and stability in life?"
The impetus for this question came from my experience by the time my daughter was 8. By then I had lived through an employment cycle that spanned 3 recessions and 3 experiences with downsizing.
As a former health care practice leader I began to see a pattern emerging of increasing health care costs, increasing work and economic related stress and the impact it was having on ordinary people like and my daughter and aging parents to be able to churn a daily wheel of activity in an ordinary day - earn a living, stay healthy and keep a roof over our heads.
Yesterday, Jeff Hollander wrote a note on his blog - titled Systematic Dissonance: Ben and Jerry's & Unilever. Jeff noted in this blog post that his friend, Walter Freese stepped down as President and the announcement contained no discontent. Jeff also indicated that one could imagine the friction that may have grown between a commercial giant like Unilever swallowing up a values based company like Ben & Jerry's. It made me think a bit about Ben Cohen's ideas on compensation and the challenges that Ben and Jerry had to recruit a CEO to fill their shoes at a pay scale significantly below any form of CEO compensation.
At the same time I remember my first drive from Boston up to Burlington, Vt where i was greeted by a sign shaped like one of Ben and Jerry's cows that welcomed me to Vermont, the home of Ben and Jerry's. I thought at that time how fortunate Vermont was for the jobs this company created. Now I thnk the same when I think of the jobs created in Vermont by Seventh Generation and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.
I also know that Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stoneyfield Yogurt in New Hampshire has had a different experience different from Ben and Jerry's experience with Unilever. Gary wisely took initiative with Danone Partnership during the merger with Stoneyfield Yogurt to address issues of value practices upfront. I learned from reading Gary's book, that within the merger agreement and transition lots of thought was given to the values of Stoneyfield. I wonder what Danone learned of value that has led to continued success and introduction of a new product line, In my opinion, I think there is some wisdom here from Stoneyfield that is not contained in the world and circles in which ohter CSR heroes travel. Yo Baby Meals is part of the world of children and a brand that is creating a future for our children delivering to their homes health foods and snacks.
You can be sure that many of the households that stock Yo Baby contain circles of conversations from mothers and fathers ,who think sustainable like me and are working hard to learn how to sustain livelihood to support a home for their families, and find a form of healthy living and health livelihood.
That is the thinking that was the basis for my vision a portal called WorkEcology.com. My simple question is now a question that any family group of single person is asking after this last economic meltdown with some reframing
"In the world of Sustainability and CSR are we going to create more jobs with sustainable compensation plans that see us through health challenges, education and old age? And when we are recycled or downsized by industry how will be get the funds and ability to retool?"
So my next question was what group of people want to look at answer how we organize ourselves in knowledge sharing communities to lead qualified people to jobs, train ethical and hard working people for skills they don't have and assure them the housing and health they very much want.
As part of beginning my education on global employment and learning how to predict skills gaps and moving people from country to country, I viewed this video of From my virtual cottage near Jamaica Pond in Boston, I write and
correspond with some of the most incredible heroes of Sustainability who
are creating this new score card that has not translated as of now into
an economic sustainability for the millions of people in the US out of
work and in other parts of the world. David
Arkless, Manpower Inc.'s President of Corporate and
Government Affairs participated in activities at the World Economic Forum in Davos, this past January, David spoke about the rising challenges of employment
globally that have been discussed at meeting hosted by the UN. At Davos, he asked for help to build a platform that can predict workforce patterns and skills
gaps and how to address the social injustice issues that arise from changing global patterns that can also imply a need to move entire labor pools of people between countries.
View the video of David's presentation linked to his name, and begin your learning and join the team to address global employment and build local sustainable opportunities for the workforce in your community.
The New York Times Sunday Cover story this past week was on the New Unemployed Poor,
describing the new face of uemployment in the US as creating a new form
of poverty.
" Time 4 us to collectively raise the profile of #CSR More attention is being placed on it today,
&.."
I raised the profile by starting this Twitter list, #csruptheante
Prior to this tweet, the New York Times Sunday Cover story was on the New Unemployed Poor, describing the new face of uemployment in the US as creating a new form of poverty.
That is what I am working towards and more specifically interested to develop, facilitate and monitor. I want to build with others CSR and Sustainable Metrics and
Investments which monitor the growing and changing world design to assure more jobs, more people access to right education, right livelihood and compensation schemes that support our health and living lifelong.
So to Sustainable LIfe Media and all my new friends on #CSR, this is how I would like to up the ante and collectively raise the profile for CSR from my corner of the world as a private citizen and thought leader to collectively work on this. Who's game?
Kevin Long asked a question that caught my attention this week,
"Is any one bothered by the fact that they spent $40 million on the Olympic opening ceremonies?"
This question made me think, how would you go about measuring the impact of the Olympics from a sustainability and CSR perspective. While I don't have the answer, this is what I learned......
When someone like Kevin Long, who I respect, drops a question in a social space, sometimes I take a minute to reflect and think on what does this question really mean? Social media, especially twit like/length remarks do not easily convey in 140 characters the real power of the comment of question. So I paused to reflect after Kevin asked his question.
For me, with my background inter sector engagement, I took a grand pause:
I became interested in inter sector engagement at the time I worked to co-produce an annual event in Silicon Valley, a triathalon for kids. This experience introduced me to the world of corporate community relations, volunteerism and philanthropy. I worked on this event in a minor role for one year and then joined as co-producer and it really pushed me to think about these events, the implications, the cash flow and more.
I developed a passion related to this learning and in 2001 I chose to develop a graduate thesis/examination on this practice. I realized in this educational cycle I was being pushed to really understand a degree of corporate citizenship and relationship between sectors well beyond anything I could imagine. I thought there was much for me to learn with others, especially because of the implications of this learning on creating health in society beyond "health care" and learning what metrics are that measure "beyond the gdp." I can't speak to all my work in one single post, but I can share with you why I paused to think about Kevin's question and what I learned.
The Olympics to me is an event of centuries that has seen every challenge known to person-hood. The scale of societal influence on this event and changes influenced by geo-politics, e.g. WWII, Mideast politics, the growing cost and complexity of producing this event and finally the total dollars associated or measured in expenditures from commercial sponsorship to urban planning issues re: housing the games, transportation and implications of how people think in from the perspective of the travel and entertainment/media industry suggests to me a complexity of scale well beyond my imagination; how about yours?
Coincidental to Kevin's question, I received an email notification of an article in Strategy and Business from the desk of Art Kleiner; titled, A Gold-Medal Partnership (free subscription may be required).
The article's author, Michael Payne is the former International Olympic Committee (IOC) Marketing Director. He recently authored a book, summarizing the history of the Olympics turnaround from near extinction.
In this article, Payne summarizes a picture of thought that is really worth thinking about
The 20th century Olympics was plagued by financial problems and enar bankruptcy because the model organized for its operation in 1890 when the Olympics was relaunched after the original sporting event, the model of the past simply stopped working. Cities also acquired serious debt, e.g. the City of Montreal had a $1B debt after the olympics for an overrun on a budget originally projected at $310M.
Besides, the constant pulls and tugs of financial problems the Olympics became a geo-strategic opportunity for politicians to push their politics or terror. The most harmful mark occurred and was led by Adolph Hitler during the 1936 Berlin Games where the Nazis used this event to promote their agenda to a crowd size of approximately 200K people where 6,000 SS body guards accompanied Hitler and the Olympics was viewed as a promotion for the Nazi propoganda.
Numerous other protests and such became agenda through the years for the Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon, including the deaths of the Israeli Olympiads summer 1972.
In 1980 when the IOC was at the brink of bankruptcy the Olympics found its financial muscle with long term commitments from global company sponsorships, e.g. AT&T, Coke, McDonaled, Samsung. That year became a turning point for IOC, when the summer games in Los Angeles Host committee led an event with a first-time profit of $223M.
Between 1984 the event financially and with attendance has almost doubled in size from 6,829 athletes from 140 nations in 221 events with 9,190 media outlets reporting to 186 countries, to the 2004 event in Athens with 11,100 athletes from 202 nations in 301 events covered by 21,500 media outlets reporting to 220 countries.
With the advancements in technology, site build out, complexity of managing over the last decade budgets for the Olympics have grown from $3.4M in Sydney in 2000 to $11.6M in 2004 in Athens to a projected $3.8B in London for 2010 and much more.
For London Summer Games in 2012, the social impact is seen as enormous in both job creation and a reason to muster resources to address long term infrastructure issues for transportation, environment and housing in a city stirred up by depression/recession.
The costs are already escalating over what was announced as a $3.8B funding package and the government of London is already looking to build an extra $2B above the $3.8B.
How do we measure CSR or Triple bottom line metrics for the Olympics and the impact of such incredible spending. How do we respond to leap in currency expenditures transferring into the bank of one country?
While watching this years Olympics, I felt that it gave such an important message to our youth on what it means to persevere and develop the discipline of practice and effort to compete and what an important message of faith and hope this is.
Is there perhaps a new format ahead for us re: the Olympics where we create local centers of competition to configure results into a global competition. I don't know?
Hats off to Michael Payne for documenting this important history and value of a brand, identity and the co-creation of building a politic, a revenue model and initiative of global scale that shows the world can be organized to cooperate.
What are your thoughts, please add your comments here:
Simply click on the blog post title to get to a single page format that includes comments, if you are not already at that page.
I wove myself into the "gender buzz" conversation years ago when I wrote with my co-author George Simons, Men and Women Partners at Work (no longer in print). The irony behind this book with respect to my own employment was the reality of today. I was a female VP in a consulting firm at that time and paid 50-60% less than my male peers. I was also laid off with cause for being a "vulnerable employee" with excessive family demands related to a special needs child and elderly dying parent.
My perspective at the time of my layoff and reflection of my ethic was simply this: I worked 40 hours a week since I was paid less, and I met all my sales goals and completed all my projects on schedule. In fact, post my termination, our operations manager called me to update me on sales that closed once I was terminated. The man who was hired to replace and lay me off was terminated and won a financial settlement after my departure.
I can find myself easily lost in the gender buzz and inspire myself in the mirror with some frequency to cheer myself on at a career I love in a gender biased world.
In 2003, I attended a conference for women alumnae in the financial service and investment industry at for a prestigious academic institution with a network of over 900 women MBA graduates. I was not a grad and was invited to attend because of my passion and interest. By the end of the day long conference, I was looked over to a woman I befriended during the day and I asked her, "Did you notice that almost 80% of the women who presented today stated that their career and the stress of that career had ended as a result of a chronic illness or life threatening episode of health?"
At the end of the day, the most "successful" alumn presented. These woman had achieved the position of Chairwoman in an investment firm. At the beginning of her presentation, she noted that her career success had caused her marriage to fall apart and altered her relationships with her daughters negatively.
That experience left an impact on me that was different than most with think. I became more dedicated to altering the consciousness and structure of how in the United States we approach work and use our earnings to sustain, educate and protect our health.
It grew into my idea of the WorkEcology.com portal becoming a social media platform to attract today's intelligent workforce of all ages who wish to work wisely and live well had been my passion for some time. Through the guidance of many solid thought leaders along the way, I continued to develop the key aspects of creating this portal that were unrelated to technology.
This particular conference left me with the passion to create a thought leadership that through invitation, action and incubation would create a system for our workforce that steps up to the needs of today where the full employment model has failed us proven by a series of 12 recessions and reduction of jobs with benefits that continues to be the response to a need to restructure this country and the globe with a new economic vision that defines and factors the needs of its citizens Beyond a GDP.
So my hats off this week to
1.Elaine Cohen, Co-CEO of Beyond Business, Ltd. authored an excellent editorial,Down With Woman Washing. In this editorial, Elaine is asking to adopt use of CSR Reporting activity to monitor programs and outcomes for dedicating resources to the advancement of women in business. The links and the questions she provides as a source of monitoring are outstanding.
I would only add to the questions, how do you track the health of women and their families and as an employer support the health of women or anyone for that matter that also has child-rearing or care giving responsibility?
Take a minute to also read my comments and the comments of others.
2. Beverly Denver, Publisher of Houston Woman Magazine, offered an updated report, Wage Discrimination Still a Reality. This report is based on research from the US Census Bureau that states women earn 78 cents out of every dollar paid to a male counterpart. One of Beverly's resources on thinking re: gender issues, is the BMP Foundation, A spokesperson for this foundation has emphasized the necessity ensuring "that the
workplace is ‘ready’ for all workers and the way we work today and will
in the future," as we work to rebuild the economy.
Within my comments to Elaine Cohen, I realized that there is a necessity to build an emerging movement of women, who learn a new form of speaking up and structuring the workforce activities of employment of any form that include contract, micro-enterprise, full time jobs and more newer alternatives to assure a future for women that permits us to work wisely to live well so we can sustain, have health and assure our education and professional development. This is core to my vision for why I authored and developed a thought leadership and social media strategy for a portal I will call WorkEcology.com.
This morning, I previewed the latest on Justmeans.com, where I am active community member. I checked on a link provided by Deb Berman, Managing Director pointed out with enthusiasm which brought me to a new Justmeans.com member company, Criterion Ventures. I found myself immediately drawn in by the fact that this venture is
1. led by a woman, Joy Anderson as President and Founder. If you read Joy's bio, you will see how her vision leveraged from a remarkable portfolio of work as an educator and consultant with non profit background complimented by her education in American History with a focus on prison reform; and
2. Criterion Ventures has formatted their identity and offer to bring communities of people into changing perspective that is so key to moving beyond the buzz of protest and debate often the trap of today's post modern industrial world that inhibits change. The link to Criterion Ventures will bring you to the page that directly describes this program.
This is the perspective of thinking I can get behind as a way to construct change. This is why I worked so hard not to define my life as a victim when discrimination altered my capacity to earn, learn and work. Criterion's approach is my approach that no one can create as a masterful practice alone. It is what Hillary Clinton once wrote after her failure with health care reform in the 90's. "It takes a village."
