Stakeholder Engagement

As consumer expectations and market pressures continue to challenge companies to explore more sustainable business practices and end products, questions surface on how to best focus resources.  In our professional consulting, we see leading businesses shifting their traditional emphasis in research and development.  As a result, innovation and business sustainability appear to be on a similar path.

“Most companies allocate a significant share of their R&D portfolios to incremental and next- generation projects. These projects may generate short-term returns, but they rarely help the company attain long-term strategic objectives or create competitive advantage. Leading companies ensure that they don’t let the near-term crowd out investment in breakthroughs.”  –CEB Views

At Procter & Gamble, CEO Bob McDonald has announced that his company will add a focus on “discontinuous innovation”.  Captured in greater detail in a recent Industry Week article, the author describes the advantages and challenges between continuous improvement and radical change.  Despite the effort, leading innovators, like P&G, are now adding the ‘break-through change’ or new invention to its creative process. 

“P&G needs to improve its innovation capability…The kind of cross-pollination of ideas across products and brands isn't easy for companies to do. Companies need to have the right culture and technology to enable that kind of innovation.” -Bob McDonald

Whether through continuous improvement or radical change, a company must determine its own path toward long-term business sustainability.  Our professional consulting provides information and resources to clients seeking step beyond the confines of their business to leverage employee, supplier, and end consumer thinking.  By implementing an open innovation culture armed with effective stakeholder engagement strategies, sustainability concepts will naturally find their way into the new developments within the company.  

“Where are the new ideas going to come from? Where are the existing ideas? How are they going to break through to reach our company to our decision makers? How are they going to get past our corporate ivory tower walls to the real decision-makers?” - Kieran Brocklebank, United Utilities

These questions were among the many concerns discussed at the annual Action Sustainability Conference last week in London. Specifically focusing on the topic of sustainable supply chain management, our sustainability consulting agrees with group’s defined actions for the current year – to increase the engagement of the supply chain in innovation and the creation process.  Key ‘take-aways’ include:

• Bring down costs whilst delivering sustainability 

• Develop an effective sustainable procurement strategy aligned to your organizational goals 

• Align your procurement processes to ensure engagement from your suppliers 

• Effectively monitor the sustainability progress and competence of your supply chain 

• Understand how much you can expect from your suppliers and ensure it works for them too

• Create a team of sustainability champions from your procurement team

Our sustainability consulting research and experiences show that today’s sustainable supply chain organizations are focused on integrating sustainability concepts directly into their purchasing processes.  These efforts are designed to not only improve supply chain performance but to establish the next-generation sustainable supply chain management.  

However, success relies heavily on the effective stakeholder engagement with the company’s internal and external business resource.  Taiga Company offers social media engagement strategies to businesses seeking to optimize this communication gateway within the supply chain.

What if our planet came with care instructions?  If it did, would we be better citizens?  From a professional consultant's point of view, we do have care instructions for our planet .  The care instructions are commonly known in the sustainability field as: Corporate Social Responsibility, sustainability and green.  Each addressing directly and indirectly sustainability concepts we can include in our thought processes and business approaches to preserve the earth's resources.  

CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility is defined on a corporate level.  It can be narrow in scope compared to the term sustainability as it can imply a "stand alone" program.  It may includes:  diversity programs, wellness programs, sustainable procurement/ green supply chain, telecommuting, remote commuting, investment recovery, community and stakeholder engagement.

Sustainability  is a macro concept that applies more broadly to entire systems and infrastructures. The term can be somewhat elusive  as it spans a multitude of topics.  Business sustainability  and personal sustainability applies to both corporate and at a personal level.  In a business context, sustainability is embedded within an organizations core operations and a corporate sustainability plan is clear, measured, and reported on including all of the above elements of CSR but also, water, carbon, energy, waste management,  and sustainability concepts of reduce/ reuse/ recycle,  fair trade and commitment to renewables.  Sustainability reporting is evident, transparent and may extend beyond the corporation to include tracking of suppliers emissions, waste, energy, etc. Sustainability concepts, in the form of strategies, tools, ideas and models, are tangible mechanisms used to achieve sustainability for both businesses and individuals.   

        • Energy Efficiency

        • Waste Management

        • Eco labeling

        • Buy Local

        • Fair Trade

        • Carbon Offsetting  

Green, on the other hand, is a micro concept.   We deal with green in our everyday lives with things like clothing, food, transportation, and a long list of "how to go green today" suggestions. Green is a pretty easy concept to understand in part because it’s relative and tangible.   It is measured on a scale from dirty to clean or eco friendly vs. traditional product.   Also, tangible eco actions are oftentimes associated with being green, as in recycling.  

As we've experienced in our sustainability consulting practice, sometimes, these terms are difficult to "get."  No worries!   Enjoy watching the video Sustainability Explained through Animation to help pull it all together. 

A common characteristic across sustainable organizations is the ability to recognize public eco awareness and deliver new products that address societal and environmental challenges in a way that delivers business sustainability and long term value.  However, questions still remain unanswered on the most effective way to harness and drive creativity in an increasingly transparent but equally competitive world.

The Harvard Business Review recently weighed in on the “open” debate with its post, Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries.  Commenting that today’s markets are being transformed into social forums, the article offers some key concepts to consider:

• Leaders and senior teams can take advantage of contrasting innovation modes, paradoxical organizational requirements, and associated dynamic boundaries.

• Leaders need to execute strategic choices with the systems, structures, incentives, cultures, and boundaries tailored to open and firm-based innovation modes.

• Multiple types of boundaries will increasingly be employed to manage innovation. These boundaries will range from traditional intra firm boundaries to complex intra firm boundaries (such as ambidextrous designs), to webs of interdependence with partners, and to interdependence with potentially anonymous communities.

• Senior teams must build their own personal capabilities to deal with contradictions as well as their firm's ability to deal with contradictions. While building internally contradictory organizational architectures is difficult, building these architectures to attend to contrasting innovation modes will be more challenging.

Through our direct engagement with companies and business leaders seeking to inspire and motivate sustainable action in their organization, we find business stakeholders as a valued source for new ideas. Our professional consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employee, supplier, and end consumer thinking.  

Taiga Company offers insight into business sustainability programs and social media strategies designed to encourage business sustainability and expand eco awareness as an asset of the organization - particularly through stakeholder engagement and open innovation.

Social media provides individuals, communities, businesses, and non-government organizations the ability to connect with business in meaningful discussion from anywhere in the world in real time.   Our sustainability consulting has observed how many businesses have already realized value by incorporating social media into traditional business processes including marketing, sales, customer support, and product development.  But what is social media’s role in sustainable supply chain management?

“To capture their suppliers' best ideas, leading procurement organizations work with suppliers to accurately define innovation requirements and help business partners understand how and when to be involved to improve process efficiency.”  –Procurement Strategy Council

As our sustainability consulting has discussed in a previous post, Key Components of Social Media for Stakeholder Engagement, there is an emerging role of social media in stakeholder engagement and for businesses to communicate their broader corporate responsibility agenda.  We now explore social media success in sustainable supply chain management.  As with any program, we advise:

• Defining a Clear Vision: What is social media expected to do for your supply chain.  What are your social media goals?  Are you seeking to simply communicate or engage with your key suppliers?  

• Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities: Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify (key suppliers), but online communities can be a little bit tougher to define.  Theme based or centered on sustainability concepts such as efficiency or sustainable materials, where are your existing and potential suppliers collaborating?

• Actively engage:  Social media is an always on platform.  This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into materials, processes, and products.

Our sustainability consulting believes that in order to be effective with its business sustainability plan an organization must have a defined engagement strategy.  At Taiga Company , we encourage clients to build sustainability programs that leverage social media engagement tools to implement direct and measurable impacts on social, environmental, and economic goals.  This includes active interaction within the supply chain.

Ghandi said, "The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others."  While Valentine's Day is generally celebrated by personal relationships and uncelebrated in the business world, as most leading sustainable business strategists know, challenging assumptions leads to innovative insights.  Why not share the love on Valentine's Day as a means to engage with key stakeholders in the community?   

Business sustainability is noted as providing solutions to complex problems; specifically in business and community development.  It can create solutions sparked by unusual pairings.  Consider the proposition that a business can grow by partnering with with suppliers, customers, and employees to collectively contribute to the local community for a common cause.  As noted in our business sustainability programs, these kinds of partnerships lead to beneficial back scratching.  Organizations working together allow sustainability plans to synergize in a way neither organization can achieve on its own and also powerfully contribute on a local level.  

Another option?   Corporate volunteering.   Corporate volunteers are valuable knowledge brokers uniting the sustainable business interests of the business with the interest of the community.  Information, knowledge sharing, shared experiences, and ongoing discussion provides for individual empowerment, meaningful work, and engaged employees.  The process of uniting employees with community offers opportunities to creatively work together to forward common objectives.   Engaging employees in corporate volunteer programs transforms the corporate vision into tangible, qualified action.  By tying corporate sustainability initiatives to day to day processes, it makes a corporate sustainability plan more personable to an employee and helps employees to identify their role in corporate responsibility.   The vision is experienced differently with an emotional link formed between the employee, the organization, and community.  

With the essence of Valentine's Day being one of love and appreciation, perhaps engaging employees in the community via volunteering is a way for business to celebrate Valentine's Day every day.  

Learn more about employee volunteering and workplace giving: 

• 14 Charitable Ways to Celebrate Valentine's Day
• 13 Conferences in 2012: Employee Engagement and Corporate Citizenship
• A Comparison of 12 Workplace Giving Tools

When CEO Larry Page cleaned house and shut down Google Labs, a home for innovative Google projects, many believed the company’s cutting-edge image began to fade.  With their rivals running their own ‘secret’ labs, pressures began to build on Google to re-open its program.  However, a new collaborative and arguably more sustainable approach to next-generation innovation had just broken the surface at Google.

Described in an Information Week article, IW explores Google’s recent approach to ‘Radical’ idea generation.  Breaking the mold on typical in-house development, the tech-giant held a meeting of business stakeholders focused on a variety of business sustainability concepts and innovative thinking, which the company has now shared on its website.

"Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems…Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction."

Google, like many other progressive companies, is opening the doors to innovation.  Our sustainability consulting firmly supports this path of collaborative innovation for sustainable business development.  How we communicate and exchange information is becoming a true competitive advantage and in some cases a business sustainability necessity.

For many, success may be determined by selling a product or service.  For others, it is about advancing the businesses sustainability conversation - whether that is in regards to their own products/ services or the conversation as a whole.  The leading-edge and proactive businesses are leveraging both definitions of success simultaneously through social media engagement.  Google’s ‘Radical’ approach is one such example.

“Business partners can understand Procurement has value to add but still fail to see the need to engage Procurement in the earlier stages of a new sourcing initiative. Leading organizations quantify the value gained by bringing Procurement in early…’ – Procurement Strategy Council

As the Strategic Sourceror article Change Management in a Dog Eat Dog World  goes on to explain, it is not always so simple to influence sustainable supply chain actions that are outside of an organizations direct control.  Today’s procurement professional must be able to call upon an expanded set of influencers.  This begins with knowledge and preparation.

• Know the market, at least a little bit – As a sourcing manager, you need to know what to look for:  What is the market doing? Who is the competition? What are the key attributes that drive cost?

• Pre-empt the pushback – Knowing the issues stakeholders might raise gives you a chance to address them before they bring them up.  It also allows you to pre-empt the pushback with their superiors.

• Show your expertise –What you are seeking to convey to stakeholders isn’t your knowledge of their industry or your ability to pre-empt their opinions, it’s your expertise in spend analysis, strategic sourcing and negotiation best practices.

Businesses and individuals across the nation and around the globe are feeling the impact of the current economic uncertainty.  Many of our own sustainability consulting clients are feeling the impacts of softening sales and unstable cash flow.   We believe that the companies positioned to weather this temporary set-back are that who capitalize on their strategic relationships.  

Through collaborative stakeholder engagement, a procurement organization can promote engagement, create alignment, and ensure the most effective results.  Our sustainability consulting provides information and resources to clients seeking to optimize their strategic relationships and build a sustainable supply chain.

“Problem solving is an integral part of the project review process for R&D organizations, as companies must identify and correct R&D process barriers, boosting project success rates by ensuring reapplication of lessons learned from past projects.”  –CEB Views

Described in further detail in the article, Problem Solving Is More Than Method, an author from Manufacturing.net takes us on a tour of popular tools and strategies to address business and process improvement.  Common to all and imbedded within most this concept is an inherent need for active engagement.   It is this level of participation that most often defines the quality and sustainability of the outcome.  Thus, our sustainability consulting poses the question: What is the most effective way to engage these process stakeholders?

Referring back to our professional consulting experiences, we picture a room full of moderately engaged individuals sometimes lead by a facilitator but more often not.  This face to face discovery was limited by those in the room and by their willingness to share.  While it's an effective approach- if done properly, there is another way.

Our sustainability consulting practice believes that social media engagement tools offer an evolved approach to stakeholder participation.  By expanding the scope of contributors and encouraging increased feedback, a decision maker opens the ‘suggestion box’ to a variety of untapped view points. In building an active social media engagement strategy, there are several things to consider:

• Social Media is an ‘Always-On’ Platform: This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

• Start with a Clear Vision: What social media is expected to do for your organization?  What are your social media goals?  Increase website/ blog traffic? Enhance brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics? 

• Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities:  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based. 

The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  Stakeholder feedback is being used to solve problems and drive innovation.  Our sustainability consulting encourages businesses to provide even greater transparency into the implementation of sustainability concepts and open the conversation to business stakeholders.

How does the old adage go?  Two aspirin a day keeps the doctor away?  Well, we subscribe to the idea that blogging 2 posts a day, inspires eco action each day.  Truth be told, as sustainability consultants, we like to lead by example.  

Within our business sustainability consulting practice, it's not uncommon to encounter those executives that say sustainability is too hard, too resource intensive, or that it's a passing trend.  With big aspirations, 3 years ago Taiga Company set out with the intention of writing 2 blog post each day to dispel the myth that sustainability and living a sustainable lifestyle is hard.  Blogging is sort of like writing an essay. Imagine writing 2 essays, every week day, in addition to your regular workload, the requirements of your personal life, sick or not sick, holiday or not holiday, vacation or no vacation…you get the picture.  

There are ups and downs in life and there are easy days and harder days.  While it's easy to be green or execute sustainable business strategies when things are good, most fall short when the challenges increase. The intention of writing 2 blog post each weekday is a living example that you do the best you can with what you've got.  Some post are great.  Others, not so great.  But, the posts demonstrate the commitment to sustainability regardless of the ebbs and flows of life.  And, it demonstrates that sustainability isn't all or nothing. Short story: we all can take eco action daily and we don't have to be perfect about how we do it.

So what about blogging for a sustainable purpose?  To have an impact in communicating the sustainability business strategies of your business or consulting firm, it's not required that you blog as frequently.  However, there are benefits to blogging.  Blogging on sustainability related topics offers a host of benefits: insights to new, fresh perspectives of sustainability; a resource for tools, services, white papers; and more importantly, how your business is leading in the sustainability space.  

If you are new to blogging you may not realize there are ways to spread the great green news that you are writing about in your blog posts.  

• Consider building your community of linking your blog post to LinkedIn and Facebook updates.  
• Engage with stakeholders on Twitter to promote relationships.
  
• Collaborate and participate in conversation on LInkedIn groups specific to sustainability concepts of water, energy, and carbon.