Monthly Archives: October 2006

Unpacking responsible leadership

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One of the richest papers presented at the BAWB conference was “Profiles in Responsible Leadership: Purpose, Passion and Transformative Practices,” co-authored by Keith Cox and Philip Mirvis. The authors looked at the characteristics and practices of 20 of the most successful leaders (CEOs and founders) of enterprises that are “doing well and doing good.” [Note: At the bottom of this post, I list the companies from which these leaders emerge, with links to their websites]. Some highlights follow.

First, these leaders are at heart entrepreneurs — but clearly driven by a personal, core purpose to lead social change and “‘live into’ their highest vision of themselves.” Second, they have worked to develop a more expanded worldview — enabling them to see linkages between social, political, ecological and commercial factors. They then internalize this worldview and make it part of their personal operating system (mental model) for the work they do (an example that comes to my mind — Ray Anderson at Interface Flooring). Finally, they continue to be open to learning more about this “expanded worldview,” reflecting on their insights, and using their commitment to their core purpose to fuel a passion for leading their organizations. The paper quotes one leader as explaining that their work “feeds the soul as well as the stomach” with the understanding that “the reward for doing well is the opportunity to do more.”

If those are the characteristics of these leaders, what then are the practices they undertake to transform their businesses? Cox and Mirvis point to four key ones:

  • They first repurpose the purpose of the business (“This is who we are and what we stand for”)
  • They engage a more broad set of stakeholders, through which they gather ideas, gain access to resources and develop other types of mutually beneficial relationships
  • The engage in “transformational interactions” such as regular and deep dialogue with stakeholders, helping find and support other change agents, and positive role modeling
  • And they are comfortable with “emergent organizing” — an example of which would be individuals coming together in some unplanned way and they just “made things happen.”

Leaders interviewed for this research came from the following companies: Interface, Inc.; Scott Bader; Trillium Asset Management; Nestle; Ben & Jerry’s; Wild Oats Markets; Honest Tea; Shorebank Corp.; Unilever Foods Asia; Stonyfield Farm; Seventh Generation; General Electric; Rejuvenation; Dragonfly Media; The Body Shop; AMD; Organic Valley Farms; Calvert Group Ltd.; Freeplay Energy Plc.; Green Mountain Coffee Roasters; Royal Dutch Shell; Idyll, Ltd.; Timberland; White Dog Cafe.

The real value of work

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One of the most striking themes at the BAWB Conference is just how easy it is to overlook important insights taken from the experience of developing economies. Virginia Schein, a professor of management at Gettsyburg College, presented an exploratory research study at the conference that focused on poor women in Nicaragua and the social and psychological impact of their participating in work-related groups. What did the group mean to them? And did participation result in any personal changes in attitude or behavior?

The study — “Incubators of Hope and Change: The Functions of Work-Related Group Participation for Poor Women in Developing Countries” — was based on semi-structured group interviews with 57 women across several different, small-scale work-related groups (including, among others, a group of women selling chickens and pigs, an agricultural cooperative, and a weaving cooperative). Results of the interviews were analyzed for themes related to the two research questions.

What did the group mean to them?

  • The women no longer felt marginalized
  • The group provided social and emotional support
  • The women learned group and organizing skills
  • They learned technical skills
  • They increased rights awareness

Did participation result in any personal changes in attitude or behavior?

  • They felt more positively about themselves, and more self-confident
  • Their interpersonal skills improved, affecting family and peer relationships
  • They see themselves as part of a community, and felt a desire to share successes (including material gains) with the community

Additionally, participation in the work-related groups changed organizational status (e.g., unions helped improve working conditions) and economic conditions for members and their families.

If there is a lesson in this slice of research, it is about the relationship between dignity, work and communities-of-workers. I know this can be a slippery slope — but shouldn’t it be the objective of any organization to develop an authentic understanding of the “dignity value” of the work they provide?

BAWB Conference: Reflections Part I

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The experience of the Business as an Agent of World Benefit Conference left me reflecting a bit more deeply about some of the themes uncovered in my research to understand how successful, socially responsible managers think about their role as an agent of positive social change (see my post on expert manager’s mental model).

Conference participants came together — clearly — in an effort to progress and validate the idea that the purpose of business must be recast to include positive social impact on a equal footing with positive economic impact. That recasting emerges from acknowledging some core values as central to the way we think about business organizations: e.g., peace, dignity, health, and sustainability. At an individual level, I found these values (or similar) as part of the mindset of the successful, socially responsible managers I interviewed in my research. Collectively, the entire BAWB conference membership was abuzz with the same.

My net take away: It’s all got to start with an explicit acknowledgment of how we connect to these values. As one of my table partners at the conference suggested, we’ve got to get to a point where “discussion of the matters of the human spirit are no longer silly” in the context of business and society.

Secondly, the belief in our ability to innovate (another theme in my research) was the motivational force behind the conference’s positive outlook on the issue of recasting business to be more socially responsible. The scope of innovative thinking at the conference went far beyond some of the thinking I encountered in my research with successful managers. For example: Conference proceedings included reviews of successful, non-traditional business structures — lessons from which might be used to create new types of organizations, or incorporated as positive innovations in more traditional business structures. In either case, the lesson from the conference is that widely casting the innovation net will undoubtedly yield positive results.

Finally, the importance of deeply understanding the subtleties of the context in which you operate  emerged as a consistent theme in the conference proceedings. Microfinance success cases are examples of this; the social context is as critical as the financial structure of the transaction. This resonates with a very similar theme I found in my research with expert managers. Underneath this, I am beginning to believe, is empathy. Or perhaps more useful for my interest in organizational practices — the concept of empathic design, which embeds empathy into a practice of producing a designed thing (product, system, organization).