Stakeholder Engagement

“New ideas may (and do) spring from any node in the network. That pulling of innovation from the edge to the core is one of the major differences between networked business and traditional value chains. The next step in this evolution will be for network coordinators to reach out to other networks for new ideas they can implement.” -Geoffrey Moore and Philip Lay, Business Network Transformation

Expanding on this concept, the Forbes post, Innovation in Coordinated Business Networks , examines the frameworks of today’s most effective business networks.  With so much discussion now focused on social networks, the article presents a new concept for consideration.  

“Crowdsourcing is the act of reaching out to a large, usually meshed network to solicit members’ ideas that may help us solve a problem or address an opportunity.”

Our sustainability consulting subscribes to the idea that stakeholder engagement success is no longer defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world.  It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line. Together business sustainability and social media offer a refreshing and innovative approach. 

To be effective with its business sustainability communications, an organization must have a defined strategy.  This concept should not only be communicated but aligned with the company’s business objectives and resources, including the interests of its key stakeholders and corporate sustainability plan.  Our sustainability consulting offers information and resources to define social media engagement strategies and right fit tools for your business.  Visit with us at Taiga Company to learn more.

As global expectations for ‘sustainable’ businesses practices continue to intensify, many companies are beginning to view business sustainability as a key component of their long-term business planning process.  In addition, our sustainability consulting finds that executives are embracing a more comprehensive definition of business sustainability.  They are closing the traditional gap between business planning and corporate action through effective stakeholder engagement and business sustainability alignment.  As we follow these actions, we find ourselves asking: What are the keys to effective communication?

Explained in the Strategic Sourceror post, How to Become an Effective Communicator, being able to effectively communicate is a vital aspect for success.  Further offering great insight on the subject, the author offers tips to consider:

• Get personal:  Understanding what is valuable to those you are working will guide you to make better decisions on their behalf or when relating to them.

• Get specific:  Simple and concise is always better than complicated and confusing.

• Focus on the leave-behinds not the take-aways:  While we participate in events to gather information from the other party, we also want to ensure that both parties leave the conversation with a clear concept of what the end goal was at that instance as well as what is next to come. 

• Have an open mind:  Simply put, do not enter into communications guarded or with too many pre-conceived notions..

• Replace ego with empathy:  There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance so tread lightly. 

• Read between the lines:  The most effective communicator can absorb subtle hints of inspiration simply by having a heightened awareness. 

• Speak to groups as individuals:  Tailoring your message to the audience as best you can in any situation involves knowing something about the audience and what they are expecting from you.

Evidence has shown that stakeholder engagement is critical to a company’s ability to capitalize on its eco awareness, product stewardship, reputation, and overall business sustainability.   In addition, the rise of social media has led companies to form new relationships with their stakeholders.  Stakeholders are increasingly looking for authentic, transparent, two-way communication with organizations. Taiga Company’s professional consulting can help your business extract increased value from its stakeholders by enabling your communications with social media strategies.

As today’s business leaders are presented with the unique opportunity to increase profitability through expanded eco awareness and a more proactive response to changing market conditions, these companies are seeking to refine their sustainable business strategies to address a new set of stakeholder expectations.  But how does one distinguish between the many voices of business sustainability?  Our sustainability consulting finds that many organizations begin with the bottom line.

The GreenBiz article, Why Corporate Boards Should Listen to Investors on Sustainability, explores the numerous factors affecting today’s bottom lines.  Leveraging a recent Ernst and Young whitepaper on the topic, the post highlights the influence investors have on critical business sustainability decision making.

“In 2012, investors will continue to spotlight sustainability issues in connection with corporate growth opportunities and risk management efforts.  A confluence of factors – investors seeking greater corporate accountability, particularly at the board level; growing attention paid by regulators to environmental and social topics; and heightened public scrutiny of corporation following recent financial, economic, political and environmental-related developments – are working to sharpen attention on the ‘triple bottom line’ of environmental, social and economic performance.” - Ernst and Young

Our sustainability consulting works with business leaders to define the unique links between sustainability concepts and business value drivers.  We provide information and professional consulting services which assist companies in building a strong platform for sustainable stakeholder engagement.  Visit us at Taiga Company to learn how your company can leverage sustainable business strategies and social media engagement to improve your bottom line.

In our sustainability consulting, we encounter executives searching for business sustainability answers in various forms and fashions.  To often the source of inspiration comes in the action of the competition, as companies view business sustainability as something external and radically different that must be emulated.   While a drastic external-driven change can be one answer, sustainable development better evolves from existing knowledge and driven by the voices closest to the business.  So we ask: where do your customers rank among your company’s key influencers? 

“Progressive companies focus on understanding customer needs at the earliest stages. They continuously integrate knowledge outside the gate review process to execute faster without wasting resources.” –Procurement Strategy Council

This concept is further explored in a recent Smart Business Network post, Listen, Enrich, Optimize, wherein the author explains that companies must listen to the voice of the customer.  Rather than focusing strictly on internal drivers, leading businesses are engaging with their business sustainability stakeholders to create alignment and promote continuous improvement across the value chain.  

With the shift in consumer preferences over the past few years, companies have been aggressive to respond to the growing ‘green’ value opportunity.  However, lifecycle questions remain on company responsibilities once the products are in the hands of the consumer.   So how can the voice of the customer be ignored?

Our sustainability consulting is mindful of the voice of the consumer as a key business sustainability influencer.  In fact, we view the expanding eco awareness of the global consumer to be a driving change in business.  For the companies sensitive to this change, there is a tremendous opportunity in managing the many voices of business sustainability.  Visit us at Taiga Company to learn more about this concept and how social media engagement strategies for key business sustainability stakeholders can transform you organization.

“Great risk management is simply the movement of information from the informed to the empowered.  While employees are often fearful to share observations about compliance risks due to concerns about retaliation, some companies are markedly better at enabling and encouraging employees to do so.”

An engaging lead-in to the recent Corporate Compliance Insights post, The Importance of Integrity Capital in Corporate Culture, the article spotlights one of the major areas of business development our sustainability consulting foresees throughout 2012.  Corporate culture change, rather than process analysis, will be a key focal point in 2012.  

Leveraging Corporate Compliance Insight, our sustainability consulting practice explores the many steps in implementing a value-driven management program.  As the article explains, this process begins with corporate self-assessment:

• Know the marketplace in which you are operating
• Know which regulatory agencies apply to your business
• Set clear expectations for ethical behavior
• Hold employees at all levels consistently accountable
• Assess your suppliers and customers.
• Reexamine your existing policies that govern organizational behavior

Over the past several years, our sustainability consulting practice has found that the top performing companies are taking a more strategic approach to business integrity by aligning core values with business sustainability activities.  Yet, it is not uncommon for executives to falsely believe their business is exempt from sustainability risk.  Consider how asking the following questions from a business sustainability perspective differ from the traditional approach and how the remainder of your 2012 could be different.  

•    What business are we in?

•    What are the industry risks?

•    What's our unique positioning within the industry, and what gives us competitive advantage?

•    What are the strategic imperatives that are tied to our overall strategy? 

•    What are the processes that are tied to the strategic imperatives, and then the risks that are tied to those?

Early adopters of a pro-environment policy are answering these questions differently.  Business sustainability reshapes the business conversation.  By evaluating business risks through the lens of sustainability, small businesses are benefiting from the tangible and intangible rewards of going green.  

Are you looking for ways to green your business?  Our small business resource offerings include:

1. 15 Small Business Tips to Going Green
2. Sustainability: A Small Business Differentiator
3. How Cloud Computing Helps Small Business to Reduce Emissions and Improve Productivity
4. IdeaScale: Small Business Tool for Stakeholder Engagement
5. Social Media Advancing the Business Sustainability Conversation
6. Telecommuting: help your Business, help the Environment
7. The Growing Role of Virtual Conferencing and Webinars in the Sustainability Meeting Landscape
8. 5 Ways to a Greener Website
9. A Guide for SME's: How and Why to go Paperless
10. Intuit's GreenSnapshot: Do You Have it in Your Green Biz Toolkit?
11. CRM: Golden Nugget for Sustainability in Business 
12. Top 10 Benefits of Bicycle Commuting Programs for Businesses

“Perhaps it is fortunate that varying opinions abound within corporations concerning ‘doing what is right and sustainable’. But regrettably, in relation to sustainable strategies, company leaders rarely encourage and seldom enable enterprise-wide airing of all those diverse points of view. Perhaps leaders avoid the discussions because they fear that the conflicting opinions might impede the company’s ability to execute.”

This lead-in quote was taken from the Environmental Leader post, Seeking Sustainability? Encourage Discussion of Conflicting Viewpoints, which speaks to one of the primary focuses of our sustainability consulting.  How do companies overcome problems stemming from competing corporate priorities, varying levels of commitment and differing perspectives on what sustainable strategies needs to be taken?  The answer is engagement.

Our sustainability consulting believes that there is an emerging role of social media for stakeholder engagement and for businesses to communicate their broader corporate responsibility agenda.  With preferences shifting as to how we communicate and exchange information, social media is becoming the transparent, engaging, competitive advantage that business sustainability delivers.   However, to effectively harness the power of social media to create business sustainability value, there are definable keys to success.

• Defining a clear vision of 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.

• 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 products, services, and ongoing dialog.

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.  To focus the corporate ear, business sustainability minded organizations are engaging with stakeholders, who have a vested interest in the success of the business and profoundly advance the sustainability conversation.  

“When it comes to energy and the environment, most people want to do the right thing. But how many people actually contribute to improving energy use and environmental impact is another story.”

This quote from the GreenBiz post, How Businesses Can Use Games to Spur Greener Behavior, speaks to the heart of most business sustainability concept implementations: transforming thought into action.  Focusing on employee action, the article offers a light-hearted approach to stakeholder engagement.  By applying principals of gaming in a traditional business setting, many companies have already witnessed great success in increased eco awareness.  

Research reveals that leading business sustainability companies place an emphasis on sustainability as an integrated business process change consistent with economic recovery business improvement.  As we have discussed frequently, the key is to create alignment.  The GreenBiz article poses several questions:

• How do we obtain enough information to compare to our peers?
• How do we define the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to spur action?
• Is your organization driven by social pressures or internal drivers?

Our sustainability consulting finds the gap between awareness and action is often the biggest challenge in the implementation of any change.  In terms of business sustainability progress, the action step represents the single largest opportunity.  We spend a considerable amount of time exploring avenues to accelerate global eco awareness into true impactful business action.  

The concept of gaming presented in the above article may offer one method.  Combined with other social media engagement strategies, your company could not only raise the eco awareness of its business sustainability stakeholders but motivate action.  Visit us at Taiga Company to learn more.

Business sustainability performance has been a topic of debate for as long as our sustainability consulting practice can remember.  There are the common questions that rise on every project and just about every discussion: How will we know that we are making progress?  How is our performance in comparison to our peers?  What are the measures of success?

The Inc.com post, 6 Ways to Measure the Success of Any Project , offers a traditional view of performance from which we can expand upon our business sustainability discussion.  Focused on project performance, the author defines success as ‘meeting the expectations of the customer’.  Taking this definition, it becomes important to define the customer and his/her criteria of success.

In a similar fashion, our sustainability consulting spends a great deal of time defining business sustainability stakeholders and assessing their expectations.  Through active engagement, business sustainability can be defined by the alignment of expectations with company objectives.  

Several forward-looking sustainable supply chain performance questions posed by GreenBiz  to supply stakeholders include:

• Do you have a business continuity plan that is linked both to your operational risk management program and your sustainability effort? 

• Do you have an active engagement program that you use to determine the interests of your key stakeholders? 

• Do you use an integrated management system to make sustainability a key component in how you operate your business rather than having it work as a peripheral activity? 

• Are you quantifying the continual improvement made within your sustainability program with a single score? 

• Are all three responsibilities (i.e., environmental stewardship, social equity and well being and financial prosperity) integrated in your sustainability program? 

Whether a company is just becoming familiar with the concept of business sustainability or is a sustainability leader in the industry, there are business improvements that can increase eco awareness and drive sustainable change.   Our sustainability consulting encourages clients to recognize that business sustainability is a continuous and long-term journey that requires the active engagement of key stakeholder to produce success.

“Companies invest significant effort structuring the front end of the ideation process. The best companies use a variety of quantitative and ethnographic research techniques to research the marketplace and map out the competitive landscape. This allows companies to deeply understand the needs, problems and aspirations of their customers before ever beginning to brainstorm on possible solutions.”  

Taken from the CEB Views post, What Albert Einstein Can Teach Us About Ideation, the author explores the front end of the ideation process and ways to improve the quality of its eventual outcome.  As the text describes, leading innovators spend much more time on the front end framing and focusing on the challenge.  In our sustainability consulting world, this is demonstrated through the value of early stakeholder engagement and alignment  around mutual benefiting sustainability concepts.  Some commonly observed steps to aid in this pursuit include:

• Define the objectives clearly: Understanding the purpose will enable decision makers.

• Design around the objectives: The key to effective design is working back from the business decisions that need to be made.

• Map out the decision processes by considering: Will it underpin a redesign of the brand and the value proposition or of frontline sales and service? Will it ultimately result in more tailored and dynamic online and direct marketing? How are the business and functional units responsible going to access the information and use it on a day-to-day basis?

• Manage the implementation process: The tools for managing change need to be deployed fully.

Today’s business executives are presented with the unique opportunity to increase profitability through greater eco awareness and the pursuit of a more sustainable business.  Our sustainability consulting firm believes the engaged and aligned stakeholder holds the keys to not only business improvement but a constant stream of sustainable innovation.

A common held belief is that employees with a vested interest in the success of the company become much more aligned with the goals of the organization. Therefore, how could linking business sustainability concepts to employee success support both interests?  Our sustainability consulting investigates.

Scanning a recent GreenBiz article, 5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement, we find complementary evidence to our own believes around stakeholder engagement value.  Focusing specifically on the negative impacts of a disengaged workforce, the post offers some helpful tips based on research findings.  

• Connect employees with the people they serve: Interaction increases empathy for customers, motivating employees to do a better job serving them. 

• Get personal: Employees who know their manager well “as a person” are more likely to be engaged. 

• Allow employees to help colleagues via employee support programs: Employees who support co-workers in need experience increased commitment to the organization. 

• Commit to corporate social responsibility (CSR): Research shows that employees who are satisfied with the organization’s commitment to social and environmental responsibilities demonstrate more commitment, engagement and productivity. 

• Invest in workplace wellness: Employer-sponsored programs that support employees in adopting behaviors that reduce their health risks and improve their quality of life -- also known as wellness programs -- raise engagement levels and directly impact the bottom line. 

Business sustainability presents the unique opportunity to increase profitability, gain and maintain a competitive advantage over one’s peers, and create meaningful work for your employees.   The key is in value alignment.  How can organizational values and employee values find common ground?   Our sustainability consulting offers information, resources and tools to build stakeholder engagement strategies into a business sustainability plan.

The ability to capitalize on opportunity or mitigate business risk depends on the availability and access to quality information.  Being able to sift through what is important and what is not can be a determining factor in transforming a good decision into business turning point.  Today’s market intelligence has expanded to include business sustainability expectations, trends and requirements.  Because your supply chain can be an invaluable source of information, our sustainability consulting asks: Are you listening? 

With the speed of business sustainability information rapidly increasing and global eco awareness constantly expanding, it has become increasingly important for companies to leverage available technology to capture and access information.  The questions we often pose in our sustainability consulting: where is this information coming from and is the feedback specific enough for your business to take action.

“Communicating is a key element of Procurement. Category managers that work with unfamiliar business partners often fail to understand informal feedback because they are not familiar with their stakeholders or stakeholder communication patterns. To help category managers understand business partner requirements without relying on a long-term relationship, provide them with tools to identify and accurately address their internal partners’ comments.”  -Procurement Strategy Council

Done effectively, stakeholder engagement creates alignment and can positively impact the outcome of business sustainability decision making.  Our professional consulting helps clients to leverage technology  and social media strategies to enhance their sustainable supply chains.

A major component of any corporate sustainability plan isn’t so much how a company carries out those strategies but also how it communicates it to its many stakeholders.  There is an emerging role of social media for stakeholder engagement and for businesses to communicate their broader corporate responsibility agenda.  Within our sustainability consulting, we've discovered that social media executed successfully, can be a powerful vehicle to build sustainable business communications by engaging with stakeholders. 

When businesses create an account on Twitter, they must consider the right “Brand Voice.”   The same holds true for sustainability professionals, consultancies, and personal branding.  Shaping transparency and authenticity through a series of 140 characters can be a challenge much less the effort of connecting and sharing relevant content with key stakeholders.  What are social media success best practices for defining your voice on twitter?  Consider how leveraging one of the following suggestions can aid in your social media marketing strategy.   

1. Subject Matter Expert:  Are you an expert on renewable energy? Water? Energy Effcieincy?  Sustainable supply chain? While these topics all fall under the umbrella of sustainability, each are sustainability concepts that garner unique insights, information, and expertise.  Tweeting your knowledge and insights on the topics garners credibility for your brand as well as powerfully contributes to the sustainability conversation.  Good examples include: @packagingdiva for sustainable packaging, @elainecohen for HR for CSR and @DRMeyer1 for sustainable supply chain. 
2. Community Builder: Are you passionate about generating momentum on sustainability concepts?  Perhaps spreading information on sustainable lifestyles or green business is your twitter calling.  Build the green twitterers by promoting relevant content and key green influencers by rewtweeting, commenting, recommending others to follow. Host and participate in twitter chats.  
3. Green Nay Sayer: Do you have a critical eye or a provactive perspective?  By asking questions and probing conversations, you have the opportunity to invoke further explanation.  Questioning invites innovation. A good reference point is @JenniferWoofter as she offers a provocative and different perspective on business sustainability topics. 
4. Reporter:  Spring season brings May flowers and also sustainability reporting and conferences.  If you have a pulse on what's new, be the go to tweep for sustainability reporting and upcoming conferences.  Post upcoming conferences, engage with attendees, recap conference findings and promote conference engagement.  @RealizedWorth on twitter offers several excellent blog post on employee volunteering and CSR conferences.
5. Idea Generator: Sharing content is great but eco action is better.  Providing inspiring, easy ways to go green throughout the day is like a green public service announcement encouraging others to take action.  Connecting the dots between eco info and eco actions is a big gap to fill.  Tweeps doing it well on twitter include: @greendreamin and @SCJGreenChoices.  

The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  Find your voice! Connect and engage in the green twitterverse! 

With new tools and strategies changing the way the business world communicates and exchanges information, social media is becoming the transparent, engaging, competitive advantage that business sustainability delivers.   However, to effectively harness the power of social media to create business sustainability value, our sustainability consulting explores the key components for success.

The GreenBiz post, Building a Global Brain to Solve Sustainability Puzzles, summarizes an evolved concept of ‘corporate communications’ discussed at a recent business sustainability conference in Washington DC.  Expanding social media engagement beyond the simple spread of information, today’s social business leaders ask: how do we take collective intelligence a step further.

"We're facing some pretty big problems in the world today.  And the way we've been tackling them has struggled to keep up.  The idea of pooling minds and resources holds great promise for sustainability.”  -Tim O'Reilly 

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:

• Begin with a Clear Vision:  What are your social media goals?  Is it to increase website/ blog traffic? Promote brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics?  Clearly identify your traditional sales objectives combined with your sustainability metrics and design a social media marketing strategy that delivers results to both. 

• 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.  Consider shareholders, partners, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and NGO's. 

• 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.

Social media success is no longer a defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world.  It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line.  Our sustainability consulting offers social media for sustainability tools to assess the market, your competition, and your own efforts in the social space around your business.  Visit with us at Taiga Company to learn more.

What can the World’s Most Ethical (WME) companies teach us about business success? Well, on average, companies that go beyond simple ‘ethical’ claims out-perform their peers. In fact, this past year’s WME honorees generated 30% greater returns than the S&P 500, demonstrating a strong correlation between responsible actions and business success.  the 2012 business year is well underway.  How is your business embracing sustainability? 

With the changing landscape of business and greater evidence now pointing to sustainability as critical component to future business success, companies that are ready to get started today can make some quick progress.  Our sustainability consulting encourages clients to go beyond a simple vision and focus on business and culture change. Over arching sustainability concepts discussed in our eco friendly consulting include: 

• Review current performance as an opportunity for sustainable improvements.
• Define a corporate sustainability vision.
• Encourage stakeholder discussion in business change.
• Get employees engaged in the business sustainability direction of the organization.
• Create motivation and enthusiasm to promote innovative thinking and business sustainability implementations rolling.

By raising organizational eco awareness, encouraging employee participation, and taking specific actions to promote business sustainability, your organization can have a positive impact on the environment and facilitate the sustainable lifestyle choices of your employees.

 To contextualize these concepts, we offer a few ideas from leading companies with whom our sustainability consulting is currently working:

• Office Energy Consumption – Evaluate the average energy use per square foot of office space and implementing best practices to reduce: energy consumption studies, efficiency practices, equipment modifications, etc.
• Employee Commuting – Offer employees incentives to ride public transportation or participate in car/van pooling.
• Sustainable Design – Consider materials selection, energy consumption, manufacturing, product use and operation, and final disposition, early in the product development process.
• Water Conservation – Manage water entering the company and look for opportunities to reuse water.
• Management Systems  – Raise eco awareness and company commitment through established sustainability policies, standards, metrics, and self audits.
• Environmental Philanthropy – Beyond just corporate volunteering efforts, provide access to technology, engineering support, information and research that benefits the local community and the environment.
• Packaging – Focus on using as little packaging material as needed and making packaging as recyclable as possible.
• Recycling and Waste Reduction - Anywhere there is a trash can, there should be a recycling bin.
• Resource Conservation – Consider material and energy consumption across the entire value chain…reduce, reuse, recycle.
• Go Digital – Reduce paper use and get contracts and documents signed more quickly by using electronic signatures.
• Sustainable Partnering – A key aspect of business sustainability is making sure that you manage your supply chain and partner with companies with similar values.
• Sustainable Education and Development - There is always more you can do to make your business more sustainable.  Encourage education and innovation within the organization.

Companies becoming more environmentally, socially and economically responsible are driving innovations in sourcing, products, and services.  While some argue that sustainability is a passing trend, profitable businesses are not. Sustainable business strategies are designed to bring eco awareness and sustainability concepts to employees, customers, and suppliers which brings value to the organization and also broaden and expand sustainability concepts into the communities and lives of the individuals.  Which sustainable business strategies will your business kick off in 2Q 2012? 

“To offset the pressures for efficiency, companies should refrain from forcing creative teams into one method for innovating; seed lots of methods, tools and time lines across the company and enlist many middle managers in the effort, a consultant says. Focus on innovation should come from the top.”  -CBE Views

This concept is discussed in greater detail in the post, A balance of innovation and efficiency .  Contained within, the author discusses the often diverging forces in today’s business and offers guidance to get the creative juices flowing.

• Be open to new tools, methods – You won’t succeed if you try to seed innovation in only one business area or product line.  You need lots of tools and methods, a variety of time lines, and middle managers across the organization primed for innovation. 

• Become more ‘plastic’ – Brain scientists talk about plasticity – the advantages of being open, flexible and nimble. The same holds for innovation. 

• Keep experimenting – Try lots of experiments and prototyping. Consider the effort as being as much about discovery and new insights as it is about validating internal perspectives and theories. 

• Embrace patience – Innovation requires patience, as does creating the systems and culture to make innovation happen. It also requires will. 

In this post-recessionary climate, there remains a strong need to drive cost from the organization.  However, analysts and professional consulting would argue that now is the ideal moment for new ideas and business change.   Our sustainability consulting believes these two often diverging forces of efficiency and innovation can be brought together with stakeholder engagement and business sustainability alignment.

An open innovation approach to business sustainability offers stakeholders the opportunity to become engaged in the future of a business.  Recognizing that key stakeholders have a vested interest the success of the company, creates openness to new ideas that promote business success and innovative ideas.

With a wide range of perspectives and view points on sustainable development, it may seem unlikely that a common definition or framework of ‘business sustainability’ could ever be defined.  Add in personal beliefs and business operating philosophies, and the conversation continues to expand.   However, our sustainability consulting believes that the point of convergence in the personal and business sustainability conversation begins and ends with value.  

Exploring this concept, we leverage the recent white paper, Transforming Mindset from Compliance to Business Value. Contained within this research, Environmental Leader examines: “How do you transform the corporate mindset from being strictly compliance-focused to creating business value via environmental data”.  Moving past the negative monitoring, the report seeks ways to engage business sustainability stakeholders with new information.

• Identifying a broader audience for your environmental data 
• Providing usable information to different audience needs 
• Creating processes to communicate data 

The realities of increased business risk, increased cost or the loss of revenue, often limit the discussion of business sustainability pursuits.  When sustainability concepts are ‘positively’ applied to specific areas of stakeholder interest in current business processes and practices, the value of sustainable action can be viewed in a different light.  Our sustainability consulting encourages clients to focus on the brighter side of business sustainability.

While business sustainability and economic growth are the ultimate goals of most companies, evidence shows that these effort are best served by a strong and stable work environment.  Our sustainability consulting finds that successful business sustainability cultures focus on communication and learning.  We believe that by allowing for flexibility and promoting innovation across the value chain, an organization can capture the interests of current and future employees.  But what are others saying?

The Innovation Excellent post, What an Innovative Culture Looks Like, provides its own unique perspective on sustainable organizational development.  This article focuses on leadership’s role in the process.

“An innovative corporate culture is one that supports the creation of new ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Leaders need to help employees see innovation in the right light.”

The ability to remain open to test new ideas and innovative strategies has proven to be a successful business sustainability strategy.  Businesses who continuously assess and reassess the needs of their internal and external stakeholders are often more adaptive to the dynamic landscape of today’s business.  Leveraging Innovation Excellence’s view, we get an inside look into how leading companies now perceive managed creativity.  These organizations:

• See innovation as a competency:  Innovative companies treat it as just another core skill.

• See innovation as a competitive weapon: Innovative companies use innovation to differentiate themselves.

• See innovation as a process:  Innovative companies don’t treat innovation as special, unique activity. They see it instead as an ongoing “stream of effort” along with quality, leadership, productivity, and other imperatives.

• See innovation as both systematic and opportunistic:  The most innovative companies flex between different styles of creating opportunity.

The business world too often approaches sustainable development with traditional structured implementation processes.  In contrast, our professional consulting has observed that those who excel are those who step outside the traditional business structures to add and spontaneity to their long-term business sustainability plans.  At Taiga Company, we maintain an open culture as part of our core values, and our sustainability consulting encourages clients to include active engagement as part of an overarching business sustainability plan.  

Is there a reason to do employee engagement right?  In fact, are there dangers of a disengaged workforce?  Some would argue low employee morale, broken culture, loss of productivity and unmet performance objectives as symptoms of a disengaged workforce.  Engagement begins with what an organization values.  Where do employees rank among business sustainability stakeholders? Who is ultimately responsible for their engagement?  And how do they directly contribute to your business success?

In an attempt to answer these questions, our sustainability consulting focuses it attention on the post, Employee Engagement: Why Do It If You Can’t Do it Right?.  Contained within, an Environmental Leader guest writer and professional consultant explores the relationship between employee engagement and company success.  

“Leaders who are embracing employee engagement as a tool for supporting their sustainability efforts would be well advised to think through why they desire employee engagement, what they are trying to achieve, and how they intend to carry it out.”

Providing us with some insight, a recent GreenBiz article, 5 Companies, 5 Different Takes on Employee Engagement, discusses the many faces and complexities of a stakeholder engagement strategy.  Specific to employee engagement, the post cites are a number of motivating factors which drive today’s companies.  Some of the noted examples in the article include:  

• Encourage a Public Commitment: Motivate personal sustainability practices in support of a business sustainability pledge.

• Define a Shared Vision:  Encourage specific business sustainability action.

• Provide Personalized Data: Help employees understand their individual sustainability opportunities through personalize participatory information.

• Expand a Corporate Initiative: Foster personal development opportunities through specific business sustainability programs.

• Nurture a New Method: Create energy and enthusiasm in the workplace.

As our sustainability has frequently discussed, business sustainability presents the unique opportunity to increase profitability, gain and maintain a competitive advantage over the competition, and create meaningful work in the process.   This belief is supported by the above stakeholder engagement strategies which find a common thread in value alignment.  When you consider what other businesses have achieved through employee-inspired and driven leadership, can you foresee opportunities within your own organization?  Our professional consulting at Taiga Company works with clients to enable employees to leverage their eco awareness and take inspired business sustainability actions for the benefit of the organization.  When employees feel educated, inspired and empowered, the real magic can begin.

The Forbes Magazine article, How to Be a Top 50 Innovator, discusses the characteristics of sustainable business leaders and compares the companies at the top of the list.  While new product development is often a mark of innovation, this Top 50 list represents a much broader perspective.  Which path is your business currently pursuing? 

“Too many companies see innovation as merely coming up with new products or services. Certainly, that’s part of it. But at its core, innovation is all about thinking differently than you have in the past. It’s about finding new ways to improve internal systems and processes.”

As sustainability consultants, we wonder: What circumstances, frameworks or parameters need to be in place to spark creativity and innovation in a business?   The conversation of business sustainability may be the answer to that question.  A commitment to sustainability uncovers opportunities to explore, develop, collaborate, and innovate both within the organization and with the larger business community. 

Our professional consulting recognizes the need for companies to step out the confines of traditional business and leverage the creativity of their employees, suppliers, and end consumers.  In doing so, we find that sustainability concepts naturally find their way into the fabric of the organization.  Interested?  Well, you better get started because these transformative actions are already finding their way into practice today.

“Leading innovators create a safe learning environment where experimentation and fast failure are encouraged, and establish forums conducive to breakthrough ideation”. –CEB Views

At Taiga Company, our business sustainability offerings are geared toward encouraging business sustainability, driving innovation, and expanding eco awareness as an asset of the organization - particularly through stakeholder engagement. We work directly with clients to capitalize on social media for sustainability as key component of a dynamic business model.

“As many of us are wrapping up our 2012 budgeting and planning process, one thing continues to worry even the most seasoned senior executives: Market Volatility. Twenty-eleven has been a year in which volatility reached historic levels, and one in which even the most experienced of global investors increasingly worried about risk as the year progressed. In this kind of market even the best spiked egg nog may have difficulty calming the fears of the investment community.  Innovation executives can’t help but worry about how the broader investment climate will affect their 2012 innovation plans.”

This excerpt was taken from the recent post, Innovation Planning in Turbulent Times, which captures the impacts of the recession on business through the actions of several global leaders.  Highlighting the links between innovation and business success, the article describes how these “super giants” viewed turbulence as opportunity.  Our sustainability takes note of this success and the post-recessionary insight:

• Improve satisfaction with your innovation investments
• Identify the breakthrough trends impacting your industry
• Optimize your portfolio to better balance breakthrough and incremental innovation
• Reduce the risk of your innovation investments

Through our direct involvement with companies and business leaders seeking to define creative and sustainable solutions within their organization, we find that aligned and motivated stakeholders  are a ripe source for new ideas. Thus, our sustainability consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employees, suppliers, and end consumer thinking.   

Taiga Company  subscribes to the belief that a focused social media engagement strategy can ensure that business sustainability concepts and innovative solutions naturally find their way into new product developments within your company.  Our sustainability consulting offers information and resources to business and individuals at every level of this stakeholder engagement evolution.