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Best Practices

Truffling out a Diamond in Better Cotton

Like a diamond in the rough, you only come across those most precious of websites through digging around and having an open mind.

Actually I’ve always preferred the image of a pig digging around for truffles, but a) pigs don’t have a particularly good press, despite being a highly intelligent and social creatures; and b) truffles have nowhere near the kudos diamonds have. Ah, such is the way public perceptions drive our lives!

However, if you want a diamond (or truffle) of a sustainability website, you should have a look at the website for The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

It doesn’t matter that this is an NGO’s website rather than a commercial organisation’s.  How it has its information organised and presented is what matters, and BCI excels at this.

For starters, the homepage is wonderfully straightforward.

“The Better Cotton Initiative exists to make global cotton production better for the people who produce it, better for the environment it grows in and better for the sector’s future”.

These are the only words on the homepage, and I doubt any proponent of sustainability could put it any more succinctly. [Read more…] about Truffling out a Diamond in Better Cotton

Life After The Financial Crisis Inquiry

The US’ Financial Crisis Inquiry has concluded with a set of damning conclusions (PDF). These are:

  • it was totally avoidable and caused wholly by people’s catastrophic mistakes
  • failures in regulation and supervision had a devastating effect
  • failures in boardrooms were a key cause
  • excessive borrowing, risk and a lack of transparency were all exacerbating factors
  • the US government’s ill prepared response added to the turmoil
  • there was a systematic breakdown in accountability and ethics
  • mortgage standards were the trigger (but not the cause)
  • the removal of the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives was a significant contributing factor
  • failures in the credit rating agencies drove the crisis forwards.

This is nothing short of a manifesto for regulatory reform along CSR lines.  The question is, will it happen?  After all, with a lack of regulation being the second item on the list, can business trust the government to give it the medicine it needs?

Unfortunately, it also raises huge questions about the ability of businesses to self-regulate and take steps where government doesn’t direct them.  So can we trust corporations to do this now?  That seems almost as unlikely as getting strong CSR based legislation.

Now it may seem unfair to tar all politicians and all businessmen with the same brush, especially when the crisis is focused very firmly on the financial sector and treasuries alone.  The trouble is that in a capitalist based society this is the heart of all other activity.  These are the leaders others follow and attempt to emulate: so even if you’re a follower at least some of the tar from the brush has probably spattered you. Us. Us all.

So here are some key things (in no particular order) I believe should come out of this as lessons learned:

  • it’s not all about money; non-financial reporting now has to be seen as just as important as financial reporting; attempting to squash everything into the pounds and pennies bottom line quite simply doesn’t work
  • regulation should no longer be seen as the lowest common standard; compliance must cease being a box ticking exercise; the legal framework should be seen as a foundation to build upon, not an exercise in pseudo-morality
  • transparency has to become the new watchword of politics and business alike; commercial confidentiality can no longer mean keeping everything secret except mandatory disclosures; instead, everything has to be disclosed unless there is a clear case that it will compromise patents etc; competitiveness must now be about the delivery of quality services and products, not backroom deals
  • no company must ever be too large to fail; a resilient and sustainable economy can only be built around smaller organisations which are independent from one another and yet networked closely together; as soon as a single point of failure presents itself it must be removed forthwith; this may mean a decrease in overall efficiency but if it builds in long term stability and reliable growth what’s the problem?

I’m perfectly aware this is me firing off a few rounds from a 12-bore shotgun and that there’s plenty of contentious issues in what I’m saying.

So please, rather than just taking issue with what I think, let’s talk about what you think.  Where should the business and financial world go from here?

Picture Credit: Phoenix by David Armano under Creative Commons Attribution License.

Does an excellent CSR report mean an excellent website?

Elaine Cohen is a prolific CSR blogger and the chances are if you’re reading this you should already well aware of the excellent content she puts out without ever appearing to flag.

On Christmas Day she published what she considers to be the Top 10 CSR reports for 2010.  Trusting her judgement implicitly, and following my usual MO, I decided to have a look at these companies’ websites and see whether their excellence in reporting extended to their websites, picking up a few hints and tips on the way.

To put it another way, do they get one thumbs up or two?

I’ve addressed the companies in the same order Elaine did, and she makes clear this is in no particular order whatsoever.

Danisco

A Danish food, clothing and chemicals conglomerate whose 2010 CSR report also won a top award in Denmark.

A well presented website with good granularity content touching on many issues to a surprising depth.  Topics are presented simply but with further information always available.  Further links take the reader on to the latest report for greater detail and performance figures.  The only shame is that those figures aren’t available immediately on the website.

Alling Henning Associates

A small US marketing agency which, among other services, produces CSR reports and communications.

An exceptionally innovative one-page online only report which reports facts and figures only.  Programmed in Flash, little speech bubbles and other interactive widgets pop up as you browse through it and once you’ve spotted the ant on the apple core you can’t help but smile.  Just a shame I couldn’t find a link to it from their main webspace!

Impahla Clothing

A small clothing manufacturer from South Africa, part of Puma’s sustainable supply chain.

Impahla don’t have a website so it would inappropriate to comment, other than to say they gained a lot of coverage as the carbon neutral manufacturer of several African nations’ kit at the 2010 World Cup.

Coca Cola

The US based world-bestriding drinks manufacturer.

An excellent example of arranging hardcopy report information in an imaginative way which allows the user to skip between sections at will. There’s very little which is technically groundbreaking, but the design just works really well.  I especially like the way the Data Summary’s been put in the top right corner, always available but not dominating proceedings.

Campbell Soup

A worldwide food and drink manufacturer from the US .. not just soup any more!

Another great example of reworking a linear report into the more dynamic web environment.  Specific data is embedded within the individual items and section headers have a java scroll of pertinent individual examples.  My only quizzical moment is when realising a section header lists the contents both in the left sidebar and at the bottom of the page, the latter seeming to be unnecessary.

(Part 2 of this post will follow next week)

Picture Credit: thumbs up by anthony kelly under Creative Commons Attribution License.

Three tips for communicating CSR on your website

Just before Christmas the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published a quick glance at three companies which had implemented “Better Corporate Philanthropy” and highlighted why these in particular were trailblazers in a new way of doing things.

Intrigued, I wondered how well these companies had communicated their trailblazing attributes through their websites.

Nike : leveraging strategic focus

Too often companies seem to just give money to the nearest, most deserving charity.  One which has always puzzled me has been a certain international airline which picked a South American tribe.  Why?  Well, because they’re an international company you see and this tribe is, well, overseas from corporate HQ; international, foreign.

Five years ago Nike launched The Girl Effect project which aims at introducing and improving living standards and opportunities for adolescent girls worldwide.  Nike looked at their “core competencies in consumer insights and market segmentation” and this is where it led them.

Adam Day, Nike’s Senior Portfolio Manager, explains this in the HBR article: “The focus on adolescent girls is truly authentic to our fundamental belief in the power of human potential”.

And that’s the best explanation I’ve been able to find.

Undoubtedly the strategy of using something you already know about to drive your CSR efforts is darned sensible and if you think about it Nike will know a lot about adolescent girls and releasing their potential (“Just Do It”).

But nowhere is there an explanation of why girls are important to Nike from the strategic point of view, meaning many people will assume they’ve picked the issue out of a hat (well, it’s not that obvious).  A shame if the HBR is right and they really are trailblazers in this regard.

Goldman Sachs: building to scale

It probably goes without saying that the larger the business you are the greater the impact you’re able to have.  However not all businesses are willing to take advantage of their size, preferring instead to do a minimal amount in order to satisfy an obligation they are either irritated by or don’t fully understand

Not so Goldman Sachs, it would appear.  In 2008 they shifted from the usual round of annual grants to (dare I say it?) a more sustainable model of corporate giving and CSR.  This was done by committing $100m over 5 years to a single programme designed to turn promising women entrepreneurs around the world into economic powerhouses within their communities.

The programme is called “10,000 Women” and it delivers a variety of courses to these entrepreneurs from short week-long affairs to more in-depth six-month programmes.

Now $100m isn’t a particularly large amount of money (the company is throwing around over $1bn on other CSR projects).  However what caught the eye of the HBR was the support structure the company had put together in order to deliver this money on the ground, including 43 universities and 30 NGOs in 20 countries.

This is a truly impressive network the company has thrown together, especially as it’s happened in less than two years and has already trained 2,000 aspiring entrepreneurs.

How would you communicate this achievement on your website?  That’s a rather tricky one, but as this is a trailblazer perhaps in the company’s thought leadership section?  It’s not mentioned there and (to be picky for a moment) the whole “Ideas” section of their website seems a little disorganised.

What would be really great to see is this programme published as a Case Study.  It must have taken a lot of hard graft to get the network up and running, especially in such a short amount of time.  I’m sure there are a good set of lessons learned and best practice tips companies of all sizes can use to improve their own CSR programmes.

Intel: measuring outcomes

It is perhaps no surprise that a technology company should be a little more obsessive about statistics than most other companies, or “rigorously numerical” as the executive director of Intel Foundation, Wendy Hawkins, would have it.

So it is that in one of Intel‘s flagship CSR programmes, Intel Teach, the company doesn’t just measure outcomes, but the outcomes of those outcomes: the true impact of their efforts.

Intel Teach is about training teachers in the US and around the world about how to use technology in the classroom.  However they don’t just sling the teachers and equipment out of the door once the training has completed, they go back every year to find out how effectively the training is being implemented in the classroom and whether there are any local conditions which may be impacting its delivery.

In this way Intel is measuring not just how effectively it is delivering these professional development programmes, but also what impact those programmes are having further down the line and whether there are any further obstacles they can use the programmes to overcome within the wider society.

There is an impressive list of case studies, reports and white papers on the Intel Teach webpage, stretching back to 2003.  However, the latest annual survey available appears to be from 2005, which is a little disappointing.

Top Tips

So, taking a lead from these three institutions, here are some top tips for website content you ought to include in your sustainability section:

  • explain how your chosen strategy reflects your company’s core strengths and competencies and isn’t just a charity picked out of a hat
  • show how your strategy uses the resources at your disposal to their very best effect and isn’t just throwing money out of a passing car
  • understand and measure the true impact of your strategy, publish those results and feed them back into the strategy as appropriate
  • This will help both your CSR strategy and your website to be ranked as among of the best in your industry, and perhaps even the world.

Picture Credit: Armstrong 03 courtesy of Nike.

Enchantment and the Corporate Site

Sometimes – not nearly enough – I am so taken with a corporate website that I want to be part of that company. Something about the way they portray themselves, their culture or their industry appeals.

This isn’t just about the career sites, either. Some companies manage to convey something new and intriguing about themselves in the other stakeholder sections too.

Some of them, of course, deliberately set out to change people’s perceptions of the company as part of a rebranding exercise; others seem to enchant almost accidentally. Part of the enchantment, of course is delight in the unexpected, whether this is crystal-clean copy, information explaining something I didn’t know I was interested in, images showing something truthful and honest about the company culture or site architecture that connects and illuminates.

Since I spend much of my time exploring corporate sites, it’s quite hard to enchant me, so what is it that these rare companies are doing that is so persuasive – and how can others copy this effect?

I recently received a review copy of Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki so I thought I’d see whether he could cast any light on this. My copy of the book is now littered with sticky-notes; there are several ideas I picked up for my own use, but there are also key strands I’ve noted that are relevant to corporate websites. I’ve paraphrased Guy’s points, because he isn’t writing about websites, but it is interesting to see how many of his thoughts apply.

  • Imagine yourself as the person you want to enchant, and ask: what does this person want from their visit? Ideally, a website would be designed with the visitor in mind, but this isn’t always so. It’s always good to see a site set out to make it easier for the visitor to find what they need, quickly.
  • Be likeable: use clear language – simple words, the active voice. Keep it short and unambiguous, avoiding internal language, culturally-specific language, and corporate-speak.
  • Be trustworthy: help the visitor by providing high quality information; demonstrate expertise; disclose where appropriate; make it clear what you stand for, what you do, and what your goals are.
  • Smooth their path. Make it easy for visitors to interact with you and to achieve what they set out to do. Design the site to eliminate obstacles – user experience testing, anyone?
  • Tell a story; plant many seeds. Who knows when something that you say or do on the web, whether at your social media outposts or on the main corporate site, will have an effect on your visitor, and move them towards action: investing, buying from you, selling to you, working in partnership, applying for a job, writing a story about you, commenting to others… Remember to talk to the influencers of your audience too: the wider community.
  • Build an ecosystem (or community). Guy’s backstory includes working as evangelist at Apple, which has a huge community of enthusiasts who talk among themselves about the Apple products. But there’s no reason why other companies shouldn’t engage their stakeholders in discussion, encouraging criticism and new ideas, feeding back some of this discussion to the website to make it clear that the company is listening. And this is a valid approach for more than just product design or customer service.
  • Get people and your story together, whether using push or pull technologies – enabling, and optimising for, whatever technologies, browsers and devices your audience prefer.

None of these strands should be news. But this isn’t easy to implement – we know that – which is why finding sites where it is done well is such a delight.

It’s Not Easy Being a NED

I suspect that many people have no idea what a big impact non-executive directors (NEDs) can have on an organisation.

If anything, the man on the Clapham omnibus probably thinks of non-execs – if he’s heard of them at all – as white men with grey hair who get together every so often for a quick meeting and a decent lunch, in exchange for a sizeable chunk of change.

Although Boards are struggling with many issues – and diversity is one of them – this is a very outdated view of a NED. A good NED can be an extremely valuable (if often unsung) resource for the Board and for the business as a whole, and the role of the NED has become increasingly significant in recent years.

NED responsibilities include contributing to developing the corporate strategy, ensuring that reporting is accurate, and checking that the risk management system for the company is robust and comprehensive. They also work on remuneration and succession planning for the executive team. They have a role in assuring compliance with governance codes, ethical standards and best practice, as well in protecting shareholders’ interests. And because (if independent) they have no financial stake in the business other than salary, they should be able to provide an objective view.

NEDs should be able to contribute their expertise in other companies and other industries, enabling the Board to see different perspectives. Because of their experience ‘from elsewhere’ they may be able to see risks and opportunities that the executive team has overlooked. But they need to understand this business well enough that their advice doesn’t have a negative impact…

And while the Board should function as a team, executives and non-executives together, the NEDs are also expected to monitor the behaviour of the executives, and to challenge them on their decisions.

All this is a difficult balancing act; the executive team probably hold their roles because they are highly competent, strong-minded and forceful characters, with a great deal of expertise in their areas. A good NED will be able to provide a counterpoint to the existing team, while not being drowned out by it.

Why mention this? Well, the NED awards are coming up again, with awards available in 5 different categories: FTSE 100; Not-for-Profit or Public service; Quoted; AIM companies; and unquoted companies. And there’s an overall winner too: last year this was Mary Francis, Senior Independent Director (SID) at Centrica, who was commended for her role as SID and as Chair of the company’s Corporate Responsibility committee.

There are just over 3 weeks left to nominate before the October 21 deadline; is there a NED you feel has excelled this year?