2012 To Be A Big Year For Somebody

The things I love most about doing what I do are the amazing people I get to meet, no two days are even close to being similar and the exposure to a countless stream of world changing ideas.

I’ve always been a natural connector and constantly looking to learn from new and strange sources. The Coethica  social media rollercoaster of the last few years took me from a pretty isolated laptop to a whole new global community of friends, colleagues and connections – all with that similar values set that I’d craved for so long. It’s only now comfortably coming to terms with how to have a productive relationship with so many people!

Occasionally though, it takes a perspective on the entire planet to stumble across fantastic people and concepts much closer to home.

Meet Chris Arnold (@CJASmallerEarth), a Liverpool based entrepreneur that is responsible for Your Big Year,

Football CSR Team Talk at Responsiball

This week for no reason in particular my attention has been gravitating towards football. It may well be a returning passion after recovery following eight years worth of burn out. Behind the media hype  I’m constantly on the look out for any beacons of hope in the form of CSR related developments to really begin to justify the overused ‘Power of football / sport’ cliché. One such emerging gem may well be Responsiball.

My football radar started pinging last week with Gary Speed’s sad and untimely death through what appears to a result of depression, then watching a resurgent Liverpool FC remind ex-team mate Fernando Torres what a good team is against Chelsea FC in the Carling Cup, next I saw the news break about a former Everton FC colleague, Communications Director Ian Ross, departing the club in strange circumstances, then it was a formal yet enjoyable discussion about Coethica steering a to remain unnamed Premier League Club toward a more strategic CSR path, and finally rounding things off today just in time for the Euro 2012 draw.

But the highlight of my footballing diary this week had to be the conversation with Daniel Cade at Responsiball.

Football loses Gary Speed

photo via The Guardian

Rest in peace Gary Speed MBE, I hope you’ve found the tranquility you were looking for.

Gary was a great professional player, national team manager, true ambassador for the sport of football and an incredibly humble and genuine person. Football will remember and miss you deeply.

Petulant prima donnas, designer labels and glamorous girlfriends usually dominate popular perceptions of an industry more than happy to revel in its position as the world’s most popular sport. How can anybody on the surreal wages commanded by top players possibly struggle with mental illness? Depression has yet to be positively confirmed as an element of Gary’s death, but for a 42-year-old fit and healthy man to be allegedly found hanged at home surrounded by his family, has to suggest a deeply troubled, if apparently successful role model of a professional athlete.

I was lucky to have briefly met Gary a couple of times during my days at Everton FC, and also a certain Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne. Of the two I can’t think of anybody that would have bet a single penny on Paul out living Gary, but the world is a crazy place sometimes, often making no sense. The solitude of depression and its ability to completely debilitate outwardly appearing robust people should never be underestimated.

The Secret Footballer wrote in Friday’s Guardian Sport Blog, a scarily premonitory post about the “darkness behind the limelight” offering a glimpse into a hidden world of mental illness in an alpha male world.

The sheer scale of the shock and devastation across sport may lead to Gary being remembered as much for the cause of his final moments as his sporting talents.

New EU Definition and Strategy for CSR

The European Union publishes 2011 – 2014 strategy on CSR

The new definition of CSR in the eyes of the European Union is

The responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society.

It’s only a fifteen page document and well worth a read as another stake in the ground for the accelerating development of CSR as a core business consideration. It never goes as far as many stakeholders would have liked it to, but then again it never was. For me it’s a pretty well balanced carrot and stick approach that owes much to work already done for ISO 26000.

There is one particular paragraph that sums up the ethos of CSR beyond the above definition:

To maximise the creation of shared value, enterprises are encouraged to adopt a long term, strategic approach to CSR, and to explore the opportunities for developing innovative products, services and business models that contribute to societal wellbeing and lead to higher quality and more productive jobs.

…which sounds scarily like my usual description when defending CSR.

The rest of the document outlines the alignment with

CSR for SMEs – A New Place To Share

Smaller businesses are the lifeblood of any vibrant economy. Small is not only beautiful, it’s essential.

Last week at Coethica we created a new CSR for SMEs LinkedIn group. The main reason for this was an overdue project to better facilitate discussion for a too often overlooked sector when considering responsible business. There was also an ulterior second reason.

Coethica recently lead an application by a consortium bid (with partners Liverpool Vision and Appreciating People) to a EU tender asking to address “Networking for better CSR advice to SMEs”. An engaged LinkedIn group was a perfect opportunity to begin crowd sourcing the widest possible understanding of the biggest challenges and opportunities for CSR in smaller businesses.

With nearly 100 members and over 60 high quality comments within a week the group is already looking like a valuable resource for anybody participating in the small business space.

Current hot discussions include:

• What are the biggest CSR issues / opportunities for small businesses?
• In your experience can you think of can you give an example of the best CSR work you have seen or undertaken?
• From the perspective of a SME how would you want to work with a charity?
• What would you call CSR for small businesses?

The vision that created Coethica was to stimulate scalable CSR advantages across a huge potential audience for hopefully significant overall improvements in social and environmental impact. We hope that by working together with Liverpool Vision and leaders of Open Space Technology and World Cafe techniques, Appreciating People, and combining our individual strengths with the exciting upcoming Global Entrepreneurship Congress heading to Liverpool in March 2012 we get the chance to deliver something uniquely innovative.

Here’s a few previous SME posts to whet your appetite and stimulate your suggestions:

• Small Business CSR Mistakes
• 10 Top CSR Tips for Smaller Businesses
• 5 Reasons Against CSR from Smaller Business

If you’re a European based CSR adviser to SMEs watch this space. We find out in December if we were successful and we’ll be looking to invite 100 advisers to Liverpool for a fantastic knowledge sharing event.

Regardless of EU application success, we hope that we can all use this group to further develop a deeper awareness, appreciation and active engagement throughout the millions of SMEs across the world.

Head over to the group (below) to check the latest discussions from a rapidly growing community of active leading practitioners and small business themselves.

Click here to join in the conversation in the CSR for SMEs LinkedIn Group

 

Integrated Reporting Gets Closer

“The world has changed – reporting must too.”

When the economic crisis hit many more than a handful of people became harbingers of CSR and Sustainability doom, how wrong they were. Not only has the disasters at the hands of financiers and governments cemented the responsibility agenda at the heart of mainstream business philosophy, it specifically lit the fuse on a new group with one thing on its mind.

Today the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) launches it’s ‘landmark approach to corporate reporting‘, and calls for feedback on their Discussion Paper called Towards Integrated Reporting - Communicating Value in the 21st Century.

The IIRC is a group of global businesses, investors, academia, civil society, UN leaders and His Responsible Highness The Prince of Wales (see video below) aiming to update the way businesses demonstrate their accountability.

What is Integrated Reporting you ask?

Integrated Reporting brings together material information about an organisations strategy, governance, performance and prospects in a way that reflects the commercial, social and environmental context within which it operates. It provides clear and concise representation of how an organisation demonstrates stewardship and how it creates and sustains value. An Integrated Report should be an organisations primary reporting vehicle.

Lt. Columbo investigates Best Buy’s Sustainability Report

I love technology; always have, always will. After all it could help save our planet one day, ably abetted by passionate real people of course.

When I was three (according to my parents) I took apart my first clock to find the tick-tock. Some things haven’t changed in 36 years. Last week I spent 5 minutes on the Dell support website then had my laptop open to clean it. Yes it needed cleaning but that wasn’t my reason for opening up my ageing trusty workhorse. I even took a degree in Technology Management on my meandering career path just for the pure tech geek in me.

As I get older and more comfortable with my inner geek, my adventures in CSR increasingly gravitate toward tech related issues and last week’s #CSRchat format Twitter event with Best Buy promoting its sustainability wares was an event I wasn’t going to miss. I forcibly wedged the Livestream session into a maniacally crammed Outlook calendar and also agreed to a conference call with the Best Buy video stars of the webcast the following day.

For those who haven’t taken part in a Twitter chat, especially the #CSRchat, you should; they can be an exhilarating combination of intelligent comment, foresight, learning and fun – if you can keep up the conversation threads that is.

Before the live video & chat I set off in search of an updated understanding of Best Buy and their version of  sustainability. If you want to read their full report yourself click here to be taken to the Best Buy Fiscal 2011 Sustainability Report website and provided with a clear and well presented report, if a little light on raw data to interpret yourself. Not an integrated report by any means and nothing earth shattering impressive but a decent commitment delivered in an accessible manner. The school report would say

Irish Innovation Wins The Imagine Cup 2011

When you’re asked to judge six entries in a student technology competition it could be easy to not relate to the more than 350,000 first round entries from across the entire globe. Wait a few hours and throw in appearances by the Salesman Mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg and Eva Longoria and the cream of student technological innovation at an extravagant Awards finale and you really aren’t able to miss the big picture.

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s student competition encouraging innovation through technology  in order to solve the world’s toughest problems. This year following feedback from students themselves the Millennium Development Goals were offered as inspiration for the teams to focus their efforts on.

I’d agreed to take part in judging the finals in New York City and ended up seeing the Imagine Cup world the wrong way around. I arrived in to cast my eye on the best and then got to see the rest of the 400 invited students at the event Showcase at the Lincoln Center the following day.

I’ll always offer whatever time I can to support or encourage young people of every circumstance to strive to make an impact for a better world. It also usually a fantastic environment for perspective and inspiration. I recently participated in a very similar event as a judge for Societe Generale’s Citizen Act, but with more of an obvious financial focus. I will guarantee that a social impact leader will emerge from either if not both events, and most others like them.

The Imagine Cup 2011 goes to the winners in the Software Design category, my judging task, and was awarded to Team Hermes from Ireland (pictured right and in the video below) with their approach to improve road safety.

3BL Media Steps It Up A Gear

Today 3BL Media proudly announced the acquisition of Justmeans.

I’m glad the news is out as I’m no good at keeping secrets!

3BL’s CEO, Greg Schneider, has a powerful entrepreneurial drive to make a commercially successful company in the niche area that CSR is, and hopefully beginning climbing away from into bigger ponds. This to me demonstrates a step change in the maturity of CSR communications specifically in the social media channels, i.e. the first substantial consolidation within a profileration of smaller news / opinion sources and portals.

I was a fan of Justmeans when it launched, and even short time CSR Editor (for a whole month) so it’s personally fulfilling for me to be so involved with the integration and future development of both organisations. The combined strengths and the additional opportunities that this deal creates will be keeping us all busy at 3BL for many months, if not years to come.

Without doubt this move consolidates the clear water lead between 3BL Media and all the other players in the CSR content distribution field. The challenging debate internally is how 3BL strategises the exploitation of the newly gained additional assets into new complimentary and profitable channels. Watch this space!

In addition to the technical assets and new client base Justmeans CEO Martin Smith joins 3BL as Chairman reinforcing the depth of the strategic management team.

The announcement of the deal has already generated a strong positive response from the online and client communities with audiences of both companies very being supportive, if maybe initially a little surprised.

My first task is to take over the reins of Justmeans’ Ethical Sourcing and Certification conference in London on September 16th. Please take a look at the microsite and get signed up for the first public event from the 3BL / Justmeans combined team.

Here’s a link to this mornings press release if you’d like more of the details.

I would be really interested in your opinions of what this market needs and how 3BL Media combined with Justmeans can service those needs?

L’Oreal – Because Sustainability Is Worth It

If beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, nobody has told L’Oreal.

They have 66,000 employees, sell 161 products every second in 130 countries and produce 5.4 billion products every year.

Yesterday saw L’Oreal step up its sustainability engagement with the first of four planned global stakeholder engagement forum events, with the first held in London.

My expectations were similar to those before the Microsoft Accelerator Summit I was invited to last year, i.e. not huge due to minimal information sent beforehand, me being a busy 3BL Media bee and L’Oreal never over energetically communicating their activity, all against a backdrop of a couple of  slippery issues including animal testing and the acquisition of Body Shop part of their history.

Much more information on their sustainable development approach is available online here, but I’ll give you a brief perspective on the event and some of the key issues below.

The headlines include the company looking to double their business by 2015 whilst reducing CO2 by 50%, waste by 50% and water use by 50% (across the period 2005 – 2015).