LEADERSHIP -
My recent meeting with the Boy Scouts of America and their suppliers radically shifted my view of what the Scouts are about. My impression of the Boy Scouts was stuck in my experience as a Scout back in the ‘70s. As a middle schooler, I joined the Scouts to hang out with my friends. I loved the outdoor activities and the pursuit of merit badges.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
My friend recently purchased a washing machine from a major manufacturer. Its energy efficiency was poor but the carton it was delivered in featured a large recycled packaging label. A credible sustainability claim? I would say not. Believe me, I am all for recycled packaging. But credible claims are relevant to the main sustainability attributes of a product. For a washing machine, that should be energy use. Otherwise, the claim could be misleading – think of the consumer misconstruing the recycled symbol as the mark of an overall ‘green’ washing machine.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
On Monday evening, opening night of SB '15 San Diego, Gregg LaBar and members of the Dix & Eaton team led a creative session in the Activation Hub. Instead of presenting from a PowerPoint, they asked a series of questions on their whiteboard, crowdsourced input from attendees, and empowered people to write down and interact with their ideas and those from other attendees. Ask meaningful questions and we usually get meaningful answers.What was the deep-dive topic? Finding the communication sweet spot between “greenblushing” and greenwashing.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
I like singing, dancing and snapping like everyone else when it comes to ‘Single Ladies.’ And I totally agree - if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it. But it still doesn't mean I like Beyoncé.Why don't I like Beyoncé? Very simple, I have no clue who she is. I've never met her and know anything about her life. How I can I like her? What's there to like? I just don't like her. Not even a bit.Make no mistake, I don't dislike Beyoncé either. I am completely ambivalent when it comes to Beyoncé the person. Beyoncé the person is a complete unknown to me and everyone who isn't close family or friends. How can you like or dislike something or someone you simply don't know and have no clue who or what they are?
NEW METRICS -
During my past five years at PRé, I’ve observed how companies approach different issues. I’m very interested in social impact assessment, and I experienced that companies have wildly different approaches for assessing the social impacts of their products and services, and for managing product social sustainability.
NEW METRICS -
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”— John DonneIs the world a better place because we exist?Socially useful business is neither a new idea nor one that is particularly at odds with the fundamental point of business — to sell things that people want or need.However, demonstrating social utility has becoming rather a burning issue in recent years, spurred not just by the slow growing questioning of the current mode of international capitalism but also by the rather more pointed challenges to the purpose of whole sections of the economy raised by the recent financial crash.
NEW METRICS -
Despite the progress being made in organizations around the world in the pursuit of sustainability, many still suffer from internal breakdowns in communication on the subject, even when all teams are, ultimately, working toward the same goal. We asked a variety of practitioners their thoughts on solving two of the perhaps most common “language barriers” within companies today — that between Marketing and Sustainability teams, and between LCA practitioners and, well, the rest of the company. And the common theme around solutions seems to involve little more than changing your perspective.
NEW METRICS -
When Peter Bakker from the WBCSD declared that corporate social responsibility is dead, he urged us to create new definitions of success. The change to a more holistic approach is already happening. However, shouldn’t we place the shared value that we create at the heart of what we do?
LEADERSHIP -
Fritjof Capra is the author of many best-selling books, including The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, The Hidden Connections and The Web of Life. His most recent book is The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, co-written with his friend Pier Luigi Luisi. I recently had the opportunity to meet Capra in São Paulo, where we discussed this new systemic concept of life, and particularly what it means for leadership in organisations.
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Mark DeGrootMaking time to help others is an invaluable experience. Volunteering benefits those we serve and adds meaning to our daily lives. I am proud of the many hours my AT&T colleagues devote to helping others – not only during National Volunteer Week – but during every other week throughout the year. During this year’s National Volunteer Week, I spent my time supporting the United Cerebral Palsy Land of Lincoln (UCPLL). UCPLL provides comprehensive services to over 600 children and adults with disabilities throughout Central Illinois. Over four days, a group of us completed various activities including helping UCPLL participants with art projects and making the center more beautiful by planting flowers.
LEADERSHIP -
We’re up to our ‘proverbials’ in Brand Advocates, Influencers & Champions. The social shock troops have to no little degree saved a lot of the big consumer multinationals from themselves. They have proved themselves both central in driving relevance and a vastly improved and far more respectful model of customer service. They are to that end critical in securing the survival of relevance in many multinational brands who until quite recently had acted with old school impunity and arrogance when called to account.But the blunt grassroots tool for creating better is just one of two required to secure an improved human existence in the face of our stratospheric levels of consumption and the brands who feed it.
NEW METRICS -
In 13 earlier parts of this series, Claire Sommer and I developed 25 pitfalls in the sustainable business metrics field, based on the experiences of many mostly non-business fields. (Find them here.)It is tempting to believe objectivity is possible, humans are rational creatures, and decisions should (and could) be based on these. To be a member of such a higher species is reassuring (however much one might question this status on some “Page 1” newspaper days).
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Jenny Robertson“Have you ever been to prison before?”Tall, quiet but confident, Lisa asked me this as we sat talking before her graduation ceremony started. Dressed in navy blue prison scrubs, she smoothed the notebook in her lap and chuckled when I confirmed this was my first time in a prison. “Everyone stared at you as you walked in, right? It’s so bad — we all stare, but we can’t help it. Everyone wants to know who you are and why you’re here.”
MARKETING AND COMMS -
For those of us in the sustainability field, stakeholder engagement that leads to action is the Holy Grail for creating the change needed for a healthy world and future.
COLLABORATION -
As we approach the world’s 21st year of international climate change negotiations (let that sink in), it has never been more critical for citizens to begin demanding and building climate action. That is exactly why Prince Ea has teamed up with Code REDD's Stand For Trees campaign to create an unprecedented reflection on the consequences of our climate inaction, and an inspired vision of collective change.
LEADERSHIP -
As some of you will have seen, some time ago I coined the term ‘knotworks,’ which I defined as ‘networks with ego.’ My first articles about knotworks related to co-creation and the way in which many networks, projects and organisations eventually collapse due to underlying dynamics relating to ego, which people, especially leaders, fail to either recognise or address.
NEW METRICS -
In 12 earlier parts of this series, Claire Sommer and I developed 22 pitfalls in the sustainable business metrics field, based on the experiences of many mostly non-business fields. (Find them here.)
PRESS RELEASE -
UPS helps the NCAA solve the challenge of delivering the Final Four to the fans -- everything from the floor to the seats to the game balls. As teams battle it out in the NCAA Final Four tournament, coaches and fans fight cancer with a different court. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), together with UPS, created a replica of the NCAA men's and women's Final Four basketball courts. Each coach participating in the NCAA tournament has signed one of the 132 panels that make up the courts. Fans can bid on the panels in an online charity auction benefitting the Kay Yow Cancer Fund and Coaches vs. Cancer. NCAA coaches, fans, and UPS, are committed to more than basketball.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
OK, I hear you. The change chart is pretty busy, but there’s a lot packed into this infographic. In the first post in the series, I highlight the key curves: The blue value & profitability curve shows that companies will be more successful as they adopt sustainable business thinking.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Clif Bar has released the second installment in its Farmers Speak series. Where the first centered on organic oats; the second installment “gives voice” to organic almonds — a key ingredient in 17 products across the company’s CLIF®, CLIF® Organic Trail Mix, LUNA® and CLIF® Kit’s Organic Fruit + Nut Bar brand bars.The video tells the story of Burroughs Family Farm — which grows nearly 1,000 acres of organic almonds in Merced County, in California’s Central Valley — and the family’s decision to make the bold transition from conventional to organic farming practices.