What is the future of corporate citizenship?

If you are a corporate citizenship professional it is not hard to feel that corporate citizenship has really come into its own in the past decade. Corporate citizenship seems to have passed the “stress test” as companies continue to embrace corporate citizenship despite the worst economic crisis in 50 years.

Our 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship survey last fall showed most American C-suite executives now realize the business value of corporate citizenship and are actively working to integrate corporate citizenship policies into their companies’ business strategy and practices. There is a rapidly growing corporate citizenship consultancy and ranking industry, which seems to further confirm that corporate citizenship is now material to business and not simply a “do-gooding sideshow” as the Economist once characterized it.

Given all this activity it is easy to lose sight of the bigger questions: Is all this activity adding up to anything meaningful? Are we really driving a fundamental transformation in the way business impacts society? Is business really stepping up its contribution to helping solve the immense social and environmental challenges now facing us? Are we measuring progress in inches when we need to be making progress in miles?

While we can point to any number of individual success stories, the truth is that while we may be winning some battles, we appear to be losing the war. Tracking by GlobeScan and other public opinion firms shows a continued widening gap between public expectations and business performance in corporate citizenship over the past decade, while the scale of social and environmental challenges we face continues to grow.

What will it take to close this gap and truly make corporate citizenship a fundamental driver for business strategy and practice? At the Boston College Center’s annual International Corporate Citizenship Conference next week, this question will be the focus of the breakout session The Corporate Citizenship Journey: What Have We Learned, What’s Next? We encourage you to bring your ideas to this session and consider some challenges I think we need to address.

Risk management >Business innovation
The focus of corporate citizenship as a business driver still centers on risk and issues management for most companies. The challenge for corporate citizenship leaders now is to help their companies understand and use corporate citizenship as an innovation driver for the core business. This is the key to driving real transformation of business’ impact on society as mainstream companies such as Wal-Mart and GE demonstrate with their integration of sustainability into their core business strategies. To meet this challenge, corporate citizenship leaders will need new ways of thinking and new competencies. The difficulty of meeting this challenge is not to be underestimated. In a survey of investors we did last year with McKinsey & Company, investor relation executives and corporate citizenship leaders (How Virtue Creates Value for Business and Society), it was corporate citizenship leaders who had the least appreciation and most difficulty in articulating the business value of corporate citizenship.

Philanthropy >Shared value social partnerships
While there are many innovative examples of business/community partnerships, most companies still equate social issue engagement with philanthropy and volunteering. This is grossly insufficient if business is to truly contribute to solving the systemic social and environmental challenges we now face. We need a new model for corporate engagement that involves and mobilizes the full spectrum of intellectual, financial and human capital resources of companies in addressing these challenges in ways that create value for society and the company. Again, for community involvement leaders this will require new levels of influence and capability. It will require leaders who are connected across the business, and can design full-spectrum social initiatives for the company that align with the company’s strengths as a company and strategic interests as a business. It will require leaders who understand public policy and know how to engage their government affairs colleagues in lobbying for public policy innovations that can support the programmatic initiatives the company is working for, while increasing trust and respect for the company among legislators.

Corporate citizenship reporting>Corporate citizenship performance management
Much of what passes for corporate citizenship measurement and reporting today has little in common with the performance management systems and metrics that are driving the business. Companies can learn to play the CSR ranking game by tweaking reports without any real learning or continuous improvement going on within the company. The truism that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” is as applicable to corporate citizenship as any other part of the business. For corporate citizenship leaders to make corporate citizenship relevant at the line level, they must be able to connect corporate citizenship to the real drivers of the business and an ability to integrate measurable corporate citizenship metrics and targets into the performance management systems that define and reward business success.

Reactive>Proactive
Underneath all the challenges facing the corporate citizenship field going forward is the need for greater leadership both at the C suite and corporate citizenship leadership level. Without this leadership corporate citizenship cannot realize its true potential. It is striking that among all the various public opinion poll surveys done these days, almost no large company in America stands out for its leadership in corporate citizenship in the public’s mind with the highest-ranking companies identified by no more than 6 percent of Americans. There is clearly both an unfilled demand and opportunity for leadership in corporate citizenship that has the potential to reward those who seize it.

Submission by By Chris Pinney, Director of Research and Policy, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship

Workplace Sexual Harassment Seminar

A Great Seminar put on by Monroe County JSEC - Workplace Sexual Harassment: Presented by Sharon P. Stiller, Partner, Boylan Brown Code Vigdor & Wilson LLP. Designed for business leaders, employers, and human resource professionals, this program aims to enhance understanding of Workplace Sexual Harassment Recognition, Prevention, & Compliance . This program is accredited by HRCI (SHRM) for strategic credits . Wednesday, April 28, 2010Cost: $20.008:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.Where: St John Fisher College,Wilson Formal Lodge,Haffey BuildingRochester, New York 14609Parking Available in Lot A/B on Campus To registerRegister by email at fernanc@rochesterymca.orgOr by phone at (585)-263-3907(Fernan Cepro)Registration Deadline April 23, 2010 http://www.monroejsec.org/

Six Career-Killing Facebook Mistakes

With more than 400 million active visitors, Facebook is arguably the most popular social networking site out there. And while the site is known for the casual social aspect, many users also use it as a professional networking tool. With that kind of reach, Facebook can be a valuable tool for connecting to former and current colleagues, clients and potential employers. In fact, surveys suggest that approximately 30% of employers are using Facebook to screen potential employees — even more than those who check LinkedIn, a strictly professional social networking site. Don't make these Facebook faux-pas — they might cost you a great opportunity.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109267/6-career-killing-facebook-mistakes

Listening to our Subconscious Intention: Truth in Leadership

Ever notice that what gets your attention gets your energy. This seems to hold true in both personal life and organizational behavior. If your attention is scattered, your ability to focus your energy on achieving your goals is greatly diminished. If your attention is focused on negatives, mistakes or problems, your ability to sustain positive attitudes and behaviors that bring about desired results in the workplaces is greatly diminished. Listening to your subconscious intention is such a critical element of true leadership. Concentrate on your intentions and be aware of where they’re leading you.

The primary task of any good leader is one that can establish the intention for the group, how it will perform, the strategies they will use as well as the set up of processes and alignment of talent. Leaders fully engage those who will be involved in the process, welcoming their wisdom and advice. They keep close eyes on how the project or process is unfolding so that they can adjust and adapt to new ideas as they emerge. Most importantly leaders need to be positive, appreciative, and encouraging throughout the project; to bring out the best in the whole group, individually and collectively. Even when mistakes happen, leaders recognize them as opportunities, whereas to learn and explore new possibilities in reaching the desired goal. But none of this truly can happen without everyone paying attention to a clear and agreed upon intention from the very beginning. Leaders establish and sustain their intentions through one simple competency – the ability to have conversations. The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of the conversations you initiate and sustain. If, in those conversations, you grow ever more proficient at listening, appreciating, encouraging, contributing, aligning, and inspiring, then you will gain and retain credibility as a great leader; you will help people achieve their intended aspirations, both personally and organizationally. That is the real truth of leadership.

Entrepreneurs: 3 Clues That It’s Time to Delegate

Entrepreneurs tend to be wildly confident. But too often, confidence can mutate into arrogance, and arrogance can blind you to the reality that you need help. The bigger your company gets, the more likely it is that you’ll wake up one morning and suddenly realize that your darling baby has grown into an unruly toddler and that you’re quickly losing control. You need the entrepreneurial equivalent of SuperNanny: professional managers. So how do you know when it’s time to call in the reinforcements?

Nick Thomley, the 30-year-old CEO of Pinnacle Services in Minneapolis, made that decision three years ago when he hired Jill Cihlar as his COO. Pinnacle, which provides home health care, housing, and employment services for seniors and people with disabilities, is now an $11.5 million company and has been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies for three consecutive years. Thomley attributes that growth to his new management structure. Here’s how he knew it was time to loosen the reins of control so that his company could grow (and grow up):

• He was avoiding tasks he found unpleasant. “I wasn’t dealing with employee issues, like terminating people who should have been let go, or getting employee evaluations done on time,” he concedes. And the more the company grew, the more important those responsibilities became. “I needed to realize my strengths — and they weren’t in operations,” Thomley says. “After I hired my COO, I had people who I had previously supervised come and thank me.” Ouch!

• He was missing out on new business. Because Pinnacle lacked the organizational structure that any multi-million dollar company should have, Thomley found that he was too busy putting out fires and running the company on a day-to-day basis to think strategically. “We definitely missed opportunities because we just weren’t organized enough,” he says. Since hiring Cihlar and another senior level manager to oversee the company’s case management division, Pinnacle has been able to expand its service offerings and increase revenue by 64% since 2006.

• He stopped having fun (and so did everyone one else). Thomley had always been proud of his innovative, youthful, and fun company culture. But a growing staff combined with an overflowing in-box meant that Thomley didn’t have time to nurture that culture. When he delegated day-to-day control over operations and the company’s 80 full time employees and 450 part time service providers, Thomley could once again focus on the fun stuff. The result: a foam pit (see picture, above) into which employees hurl themselves from the second to the first floor (”I went first and found out we needed more foam,” says Thomley) and an inflatable Velcro wall (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). The staff recently took off a day to go snow tubingtogether, and a Minnesota Twins game is on the schedule for this spring. Thomley has also brought in an acupuncturist and a manicurist for free treatments. He estimates that turnover, which is typically high in his industry, has been reduced by 10% in the past two years.

Now, Thomley is preparing for the changes, and potential growth, that may come from the effect of health care reform on his industry. With a new management structure in place, he feels well positioned for whatever opportunities may come his way. And if there are bumps in the road, he can always pitch himself into the foam pit.

How about you? Do you have a trusted management team? How do these employees change the way you run your company?

By Donna Fenn@bNet