Principle 9: Corporate Citizenship (Item 10)
The organization's action to ensure a clean, safe, fair and prosperous
society enhances the perception of its value to the community.
You should take a strategic approach to your Corporate Citizenship.
For example, you should plan your approach to all phpects of Principle
9; and measure your success as a Good Corporate Citizen.
Principle 9 is important. However, it can be easily overlooked in
the daily bustle that mean urgent jobs take priority over the important
jobs – the ones that make a huge difference in the long term.
To make certain that you address Principle 9, you should include
it in your strategic work. Make plans that address all phpects of
the Principle, implement those plans and measure your success at being
a Good Corporate Citizen. Make Corporate Citizenship a Key Result
Area. Include your Corporate Citizenship measurements in your Key
Performance Indicators.
The motivation for such changes is often external, sometimes internal.
For example, Germany's packaging `take-back' regulations and the threat
of further product take-back requirements have been the driver of
environmental design and business strategy innovations for many companies.
The inescapable logic of the Natural Step is a catapult for others.
A personal commitment to crack the disparity between the dispassionate
business person looking just at the numbers and the loving grandparent
looking at a child's future has turned the tide for still others.
For Electrolux, the immediate prospect of a significant economic
impact focused and shifted the company's attention, and the prospect
of significant competitive advantage has held it there. In many cases,
it is a combination of all these factors and others. The good news
is that it works!
For Electrolux (see box) the Natural Step `funnel' became an important
part of the company's strategic landscape. Electrolux made a strategic
decision to aim its company toward the narrowing throat of that funnel,
rather than drift haplessly, like most companies do, toward the sloping
walls.
This hard-nosed business decision embedded `sustainability' as the
heart of business strategy; moved `environment' from an obscure operational
function to a core strategic driver of everything from business strategy
to product design.
To do this Electrolux moved compliance obligations to line and general
managers, and had environmental managers and departments focus on
strategy and design issues. This is served two purposes: it put an
environmental orientation more deeply into the operating company,
and it focused `environmental' work on business problems, business
solutions, and strategic competitiveness. That is, on real areas where
sustainability-oriented thinking can lead to major breakthroughs for
companies.
Electrolux AB of Sweden didn't eagerly choose
the Natural Step path toward sustainability. Apparently, the company
faced a multi-million dollar contract loss when a major customer who
had been working with the Natural Step turned them down because Electrolux
products violated the Natural Step's four `system conditions' for
sustainability. Electrolux executives angrily demanded a meeting with
the Natural Step's founder Dr. Rob“rt. "What are you doing?"
they demanded. "You've cost us millions!"
Dr. Rob“rt, as he typically does in the face
of such confrontation, returned to the basic thermodynamics and evolutionary
biology underlying the TNS framework. The Electrolux executives, good
scientists and engineers that they are, found the non-negotiable scientific
principles...well...non-negotiable!
With no choice but to acknowledge their validity,
the Electrolux executives moved on to the challenge of how to steer
their company's operations to be in line with the laws of nature.
Now, seven years later, Electrolux calls their billion kroner-plus
investment in their Natural Step initiatives the best financial investment
they've ever made.
Source: New Bottom Line "Strategic
Sustainability - Dragged kicking and screaming to where we really
want to go" NBL 6.2 January 14, 1997.
Footnotes
This material comes from
articles by Gil Friend and Associates.
|