More than two million people in six countries subscribe to HP’s “Instant Ink.” When a customer is running low on ink, an Internet-connected printer notifies HP and a replacement cartridge is automatically delivered, with a return envelope for t... View More
Boards are the last great sustainability frontier. They set the sustainability tone at the top, which then cascades throughout the company. It is essential for boards of directors to be engaged in the sustainability agenda. They define the long-term ... View More
“Our organization is totally supportive of sustainability as long as nothing else comes up or it doesn’t interfere with something the Executive wants to do!” Hands up if you have heard this before. Many organizations find that after the long pr... View More
Your company’s sustainability commitments help attract the best and the brightest, reduce turnover and enhance productivity. That’s the substance of consistent and compelling research that shows the power of embedding sustainability into corporat... View More
Mention the term “corporate social responsibility” and you might hear something like: “It’s dead.” “CSR has stalled.” “CSR has not fulfilled its potential. It has failed us.” Why? Because even at its best, CSR is only a partial solu... View More
The recent launch of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the commitment last month of over 170 countries to the Paris climate agreement illustrate global consensus regarding the sustainability issues we need to tackle to put society and the ... View More
It was the mid-‘90s. The Board of Directors at Vancity – a large regional financial institution based in Vancouver, Canada – was struggling to get management’s attention on its social purpose agenda. I and the other directors believed that ma... View More
There’s an urgent challenge for human resources leaders: Ensuring their organizations anticipate and prepare for the inevitable effects of sustainability mega-forces. As globalization, shifting demographics and competition for the world’s depleti... View More
At age 27, I was the youngest director elected to Vancity Credit Union, the largest community-based credit union in the world. It was the late 1980s. I ran a seniors' agency, was chair of a provincial social planning group and had been a recent board... View More
My last social post explored how living wage employers benefit from higher productivity levels, lower hiring costs, better brand recognition and increased customer satisfaction. In this article, I focus on the importance of Social Buying, the third o... View More
Around the world there is a growing consensus that a company’s social role goes beyond meeting legal requirements, complying with ethical standards, creating jobs and paying taxes. People everywhere now expect companies to act as social leaders, us... View More
The world’s most innovative leaders know that social businesses are more profitable businessesConsumers around the world, from Vancouver and Toronto to Shanghai and New York, believe that a company’s social role goes beyond simply meeting legal r... View More
Today the ethical consumer market hovers between 10 and 20 percent. These numbers haven’t moved much since the term was first popularized 25 years ago. Yet market researchers such as Edelman and Ipsos Reid tell us that more than 80 percent of Canad... View More
Over the past few weeks, several people have shared with me how they’re using my sustainability competencies research and guide to define the leadership skills and knowledge needed for long-term business — and societal — success. The feedback h... View More
For 25 years, I’ve developed CSR strategies. And now I see that CSR is becoming business as usual.You’d think I’d be celebrating. But I’m not — because CSR has stalled.This struck me in 2012 when I developed the Qualities of a Transformatio... View More
When I was a director of a financial institution in the 1990s, we struggled in vain to get top executives to pay attention to the Board’s sustainability priorities. To no avail. Then we stumbled upon the idea of rewarding the CEO for long-term sust... View More