Does Social Media Fail Your Sustainable Business?
Going social with sustainability is not for everyone. In order to make social media work for sustainability’s sake, you have to see it as a long-term investment. You’ve got to truly believe you have personal or collective business wisdom to share that will forward the broader sustainable movement – even if that happens only one [...]
Corporate Sustainability’s Unsung Heroes
Two recent award announcements got me thinking about an untapped communications opportunity for corporate sustainability. One was the announcement of CR Magazine’s 2013 list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens , and the other was the “honor roll” finalist list from green marketing strategist and eco-packaging company, GXT Green. The CR Magazine list, according to [...]
Communications Provincialism: The Bane of Sustainable Business
Something is going on in sustainable business communications that makes me think of those self-help books written to make even the most brilliant of women feel comfortable talking up their brilliance. What is happening is that incredible game-changing sustainable business wisdom is developing all over the country and globe, but word of it is somehow [...]
(P)reaching Past the Sustainability Choir
Sustainability professionals these days regularly find themselves preaching to the choir. As with the development of any new frontier, the leading edge of innovators can initially be so thrilled to find a few like-minded thinkers that they seek each other out, attend the same conferences, join the same LinkedIn discussion groups and generally find themselves [...]
Do the Time: “Social” Relationship Building
Both last week at SXSW and lately, back home in Seattle, I’ve been having similar conversations about the power of social media. People marvel about how something tweeted with a hashtag specific to an industry, for example, has the potential to be seen by so many people. Often the decision is made, on that point [...]
Brand Building and Creating Shared Value: An Interview with Denise Lee Yohn
Denise Lee Yohn is a brand building expert who has been blogging, speaking and teaching clients how to “operationalize their brands” for twenty-five years. We first met in 2009 by way of Twitter and, though yet to meet, we have long valued each other’s perspectives and learned from one another’s specialties. Recently, she has been [...]
Better Together: Corporate Responsibility Grows Up
Originally published in CSRWire, December 21, 2012. You don’t have to be an octogenarian, especially in the ever-evolving business world, to sit back in amazement and think “Wow, how things have changed.” In even the past few years, we’ve gone from seeing a majority of corporations embedded in an opaque and competitive culture to [...]
Corporate Responsibility: Driven by Values-Based Leadership
If corporations want to find, nurture and keep the leaders who will drive more responsible business practices, they must focus in on something new and non-linear: values-based thinking. Their perfect recruits will be individuals who are less willing to drop at the office door the values they so comfortably use to navigate their personal lives. [...]
Committing to Good Business
A recent corporate reputation survey by CR Magazine and AllegisTalent2 shows that the majority of people, even in these tough job-finding times, would still not take a job offer from a company with a bad reputation. Specifically, the results showed that 75 percent of Americans felt this way. This fairly surprising fact should get a [...]
Game-changers for Sustainable Business Education? Coursera and edX
We are living in history-making times. Thanks to "edtech" partnerships like Coursera and edX, free, world-class university courses in a wide range of topics are now offered online. And, the potential for educating people in the ways of more sustainable business thinking (among many other topics) - and for students at any level - is [...]
Abigail Rodgers Sees Sustainability As a Corporate Leadership Beacon
While Abigail Rodgers, VP of Global Sustainability Strategy and Communication for The Coca Cola Company, had a lot of great insight to share in my latest SustainableBusinessForum piece, her idea that sustainability serves as a corporate leadership beacon my have been the most important. If they are looking for it, I'd guess that many a [...]
Outdoor Afro: Social Media and the Sustainable Business
My most recent SustainableBusinessForum piece takes a look at Outdoor Afro, the thriving social-media savvy business launched by Rue Mapp. This business, which emerged from Rue's personal passion, is now powerfully connecting African Americans with nature - and with each other - and is poised to do so much more. Here's an excerpt: As the [...]