Jeffrey Hollender2013-06-19T05:31:02-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=jeffrey-hollenderCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jeffrey HollenderGood old fashioned elbow grease.From Environmentalism to Regeneration: What We Need to Do Differently This Earth Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14442642012-04-22T17:29:42-04:002012-06-22T05:12:02-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
We live on a sick planet. Our topsoil is degraded, our fresh water polluted, our bodies poisoned with toxic chemicals, and our oceans stripped of the fish we will so desperately need to feed future generations. There is little about this current state of affairs that we will want to sustain.
Sustainability, a state we never came close to achieving, is no longer enough.
Regeneration is what is required.
What is it? Regeneration is a biological concept that explains a process of renewal, repair, restoration, and re-growth. Think cradle-to-cradle, versus cradle-to-grave. The approach makes cells, organs, organisms, and ecosystems resilient to natural fluctuations, or events that cause disturbance or damage. Every species is capable of regeneration, from bacteria to humans.
Regenerative design integrates the needs of society with the integrity of nature. We see it in architecture, for example. The Brattleboro Coop, in my home state of Vermont, gives the community a regenerative grocery store, one that integrates with the local food and farm economy and environment.
Yet, renewal, repair, restoration, and re-growth, are not ideas we see on a grander scale. How many products or companies have any of these words in their mission or vision? Not many. In fact, nowhere near enough.
But, there are a few. Here are some of my favorites and a few of the reasons why I consider them regenerative businesses.
Organic Valley. Organic dairy products, grown by family farmers, organized as a cooperative business.
Namaste Solar. Another cooperative business (worker ownership is essential to creating a just, equitable and regenerative business) that installs solar panels. Namaste's mission is to propagate the responsible use of solar energy, pioneer conscientious business practices, and create holistic wealth for itself and itscommunity.
The Grameen Bank. Despite the critics of micro-enterprise, Grameen has lent $11.35 billion to more than eight million extremely poor borrowers, 96 percent of whom are women. Grameen changes lives, eliminates poverty, and restores dignity and in process reduces domestic violence, and increases the likelihood that children attend school.
Dr. Hauschka uses predominantly pure organic, biodynamic grown raw ingredients for its medicines, cleansers, toners, and moisturizers. Visitors to the garden are asked to switch off their cell phones to avoid disturbing the harmony of nature. Biodynamic farming is a system that builds the health of the soil. The original owners gave up their stakes in 1986, creating a foundation that is legally owned by the German public, and hence can never be sold.
John Todd Ecological Design regenerates wastewater into water pure enough to drink. Using only plants and fish, Todd's wastewater systems are able to naturally purify the most toxic, contaminated water.
This Earth Day, we need to make a commitment to asking a new set of questions about what in the past we accepted as "good," but should be more appropriately defined as "less bad."
I challenge you to ask yourself: What is a good product? A product from a company committed to renewal, repair and restoration?
About Jeffrey Hollender
Jeffrey Hollender is is the founder of Jeffrey Hollender Partners, a business strategy consulting firm and the co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. He is the Board Chair of the Greenpeace Fund US and a board member of Verite as well as the co-founder and Board Chair of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog.]]>A Safer Way to Catch Tunatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12918252012-02-22T11:48:04-05:002012-04-23T05:12:01-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
We have already seen major shifts in other parts of the world, most notably the UK, where every major retailer and tuna brand has now pledged to transition to less destructive fishing methods. The methods receiving the most support are pole-and-line, where fishermen actually use individual poles and hooks to catch tuna and FAD-free purse seining, where large nets are drawn around free-swimming schools of tuna. The benefits of both of these capture methods are that they are far less destructive to the oceans ecosystems themselves.
A FAD (fish aggregating device) is a floating object that serves to attract nearby marine life. When a net is set around a FAD, it ensnares not just its target tuna, but many other types of animals as well. In fact, it is estimated that ten to fifteen times as many sharks, rays, juvenile fish, and other animals are killed when these vessels use FADs as compared to when they do not.
The transition to a better way of fishing is thankfully not limited to just the UK market. US retail titan Safeway announced on February 10, 2012, that it was transitioning to 100% FAD-free tuna for its entire own-brand "Safeway Select" line of light tuna. Safeway sells about 4.5 million cans of this type of tuna every year -- if you were to take these cans and stack them one-by-one on top one of another, you would build a tower of tuna about ninety miles high.
Greenpeace, where I serve as a Board Chair, has been running a campaign targeting Chicken of the Sea, a tuna company that is heavily dependent on FAD use, for several months now. While Chicken of the Sea continues to deny the problem, it is becoming more difficult for the company and others like it to hide from the reality of what is happening to our oceans.
Safeway is the first major US supermarket to make this change, but will almost certainly not be the last. Already rumblings from within the retail sector indicate that others may soon follow, either towards FAD-free product or to pole-and-line. Either way, it is a change that has come not a minute too soon -- there is no denying that our oceans are in grave peril, and the conventional tuna industry now must make a choice: fish more sustainably, or lose market share to those who do.]]>Cancun Occupiedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11444572011-12-13T07:11:26-05:002012-02-12T05:12:01-05:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
As with all Occupy camps, discussions were central: Sam Graham-Felsen, President Obama's Chief Campaign Blogger, led a discussion on how to effectively use social media; Philippe Cousteau, environmentalist, journalist and filmmaker, led a discussion about how to use the power of this large group for the greater good.
How and why did this gathering get such attention?
For one thing, these grassroots organizers had created cooperative enterprises that, if considered together, would be the ninth largest economy in the world: $1.6 trillion in annual turnover. One-hundred million people are employed by these companies, ones that don't trade on any stock exchange and care equally about people as they do about profits.
Cooperative enterprises are experiencing a resurgence, repeating the We/Me cycle that peaked in the 1930s and 1970s. It's a trend we are excited about as it promises a more holistic and human way of managing out economic structure. Cooperatives are rooted in the notion that "We" can and have to do something about the status quo. The pattern can be seen in the US, the UK, Finland and Tanzania, among many other countries. It's related to the Occupy Wall Street movement -- and probably to the Tea Party, too.
The International Co-operative Alliance is the global voice for the values-based business model of the cooperative, uniting co-operatives worldwide and providing a forum for knowledge and concerted action. ICA was established by co-operatives in 1895. It has members in almost 100 countries representing one billion people worldwide.
The timing of the UN's International Year of Cooperatives is apropos. The United Nations has declared 2012 the International Year of Co-operatives. With its theme of "cooperative enterprises build a better world", the Year is an opportunity to raise awareness of how cooperatives are successful values based businesses owned by their members. More information is available at www.2012.coop.
By Walden Swanson Walden@CoopMetrics.coop and Jeffrey Hollender.
Jeffrey Hollender is is the founder of Jeffrey Hollender Partners, a business strategy consulting firm and the co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is the Board Chair of the Greenpeace Fund US and a board member of Verite as well as the co-founder and Board Chair of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog. ]]>What the World Needs Now: Social Innovationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11169892011-12-06T09:20:24-05:002012-02-05T05:12:01-05:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Whatever we don't like about the world we live in, whatever doesn't work the way we think it should, has, believe it or not, been designed to work pretty much exactly that way. Unproductive meetings, products that break, pollution, inequity, even war and poverty are the symptoms of poor design, design that is also usually devoid of social innovation.
We used to think that politicians, business executives, NGOs or even religious figures would save the world. The truth is that we have entered a new age, an age in which it will be designers that solve our toughest problems.
We are all, or can learn to be designers. If you organize a meeting, your design for the meeting affects the outcome. Designers create products, businesses, processes that attempt to bring peace to the Middle East and figure out how to get corn to grow with little or no water.
By building in positive social (and environmental) outcomes to the design process we learn to do everything we do in a way that helps make the world a better place. Seventh Generation, the company I co-founded two decades ago, was a pioneer in this process, designing products that attempted to solve or mitigate environmental problems. We practiced this in a hands-on, learn-as- you-go way but today, just as one can get an MBA, or an MD, one can now learn to become a social innovation designer.
It was developed by Cheryl Heller, who helped Seventh Generation with some of its toughest design challenges and convinced me that this new discipline at SVA was one I should lend a hand to as an advisor. In its inaugural class, a carefully select a group of 25 individuals will master this discipline in real life settings.
I can't wait to see what they dream up.
Having spent many days over the past two months with the newest generation of social entrepreneurs at Pop Tech, the Kauffman Foundation and the Social Innovation Boot Camp at NYU and Columbia, the excitement of hope and new possibilities provided a stark contrast to the news about Europe's impending disintegration, poverty statistics in America that are worse that we had previously calculated and worse that expected contamination from the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan.
By adding design to social innovation the likelihood of success will rise dramatically.
Jeffrey Hollender is is the founder of Jeffrey Hollender Partners, a business strategy consulting firm and the co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is the Board Chair of the Greenpeace Fund US and a board member of Verite as well as the co-founder and Board Chair of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog.
]]>PopTech 2011: Food for the Mind and the Spirittag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10328722011-10-26T17:40:16-04:002011-12-26T05:12:01-05:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/PopTech is often called the "other TED."
This is meant as a compliment, but it's actually a disservice to the gathering in Camden, ME, that celebrates social innovation. PopTech is so much more.
A smaller, more intimate gathering, (650 as opposed to more than 1,500 people); a more affordable price ($2,500 vs. $15,000); and a gathering that hosts presenters, who hang out to talk with an audience eager to pursue what doesn't get covered within the short, 20-minute presentations (PopTech calls it "the genius in the whitespaces").
Sitting in the Camden Opera House, one can't help but reflect on how little we know, and how many more problems the world faces beyond those about which we worry.
One also cannot help but be inspired by those seeking to make positive change:
• A thirteen-year-old shares his innovation for improving the effectiveness of solar installations by mirroring the placement of leaves on a tree.
• A blind man has developed the capacity of his visual cortex by sensitizing it to the sound waves that bounce off objects well enough to ride a dirt bike through the woods.
• The President of Iceland shares how his country has returned from the brink of total collapse without laying the burden of financial malfeasance on the backs of his citizens.
• Two high-ranking military officials describe a new national plan for security and prosperity that mitigates threats through a better-educated citizenry and a public that demands purposeful participation in our democracy.
Though I enjoyed by many of the presenters, I was particularly inspired by the science and social innovation "fellows." Each year, PopTech selects a small number of high-potential, early- and mid-career fellows working in areas of critical importance to the nation and the planet. They are selected from across the globe for their early stage, vitally important, and often cutting edge work. They receive only 5 minutes each, but they were the best 5 minutes of the day.
One of those fellows is Rose Goslinga, who leads the Syngenta Foundation's Kilimo Salama (which means "safe farming" in Kiswahili). It's the first micro-insurance product available to smallholder Kenyan farmers to insure against extreme weather.
Leveraging mobile technology, it cost-effectively and sustainably administers insurance and collects and distributes crop production advice. Currently, more than 21,000 farmers have experienced the benefits that come with insurance, resulting in positive steps toward increased investment, productivity and food security. (More on this innovative tool in this New York Times write-up).
Michael Murphy, another fellow, leverages architectural design for social change. Through MASS Design Group, which he co-founded in 2007, his team provides design services for underserved populations in Rwanda, Liberia, Burundi and Haiti. Combining low-cost, locally-available construction materials with innovative and appropriate design, Murphy's team has reduced the in-hospital transmission of air-borne diseases, and improved learning opportunities for construction trades.
Regardless of background or focus, the connecting thread that ran through each conversation was the need for resilience, to reframe our challenges, rebalance our lives and priorities, to restore our sense of hope, recreate possibility and rethink what really matters.
The strands of the new system that must emerge to ensure the survival of humanity as we know it are present in their wonderful simplicity and complexity. The challenge of weaving together hundreds of new possibilities is addresses by new approaches to food, energy and money that enable abundance in a resource-constrained world.
I was heartened and inspired by the conversations -- and action -- taking place within PopTech's network of change makers. ]]>The Future of Job Creation in Americatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9507032011-09-07T16:55:12-04:002011-11-07T05:12:02-05:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
However, champions for job creation can look to many bright spots in the US that are not widely known, but have the potential to become an important part of America's economic strategy and growth engine. New forms of business are emerging in communities throughout the US focused on job creation and economic growth. Some highly successful companies are effectively deploying policies that increase jobs for, and are significantly beneficial to low-wage workers, offering decent wages and benefits, and the chance for upward mobility.
Examples abound. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland operate a 'green' laundry, and other 'green' businesses that employ people living in some of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods through a partnership with local 'anchor' institutions. Integrated Packaging Corporation and Homecare of Rochester, two of the businesses highlighted in 'the Pioneer Employers Program' of Hitachi Foundation, "have achieved strategic advantage by offering better than average wages or employee stock options, and exceptional training for their workers... by creating genuine opportunities for employees to move up the economic ladder, they secured a sustainable competitive advantage through increased productivity, revenues from new market segments and improved quality of product or service."
In addition to providing opportunity to the broader workforce, some of these efforts also target people with particularly high rates of unemployment, who face barriers to entering the workforce that result from low levels of education, histories of incarceration or homelessness, or disability.
Bayaud Enterprises in Denver operates a document scanning business that employs people with disabilities, people who have been homeless, and others with barriers to work. Workforce, Incorporated in Indianapolis employs ex-offenders in Recycleforce, a waste recycling company. REDF -- a venture philanthropy in San Francisco -- invests in six companies that deliver fresh-cut produce, staffing services, street cleaning, maintenance, recycling, and property management services while employing young people and adults who have been homeless or incarcerated, involved with gangs, or deal with mental health, addiction, and other issues.
We now know that many people whom we assume will remain unemployed actually want to and can work when given the opportunity, training and oversight to do so. Most Americans want to see this happen.
Historically, unemployment rates for these populations -- approaching fifty percent or more in some cases -- are a long-term drag on the US economy, reducing tax revenues in low-income communities where public investments are needed most, and resulting in ongoing costs that are increasingly unaffordable -- for welfare, unemployment insurance, and disability payments, prisons, and safety net services.
Social impact businesses offer the possibility of making jobs play a much more significant role as not only safety net, but springboard, creating a much larger working population in our country that is significantly more self-sufficient.
The broader economic sector of businesses that are focused on job creation for low-wage workers is not well-known, and developed capital markets are not yet in place to help take them to the scale required.
What's needed now is expanded access to capital and more widespread replication of the best practices of a three-pronged business creation strategy:
Mainstream private sector companies that implement outstanding human resource practices for low-wage workers -- developing significant numbers of jobs, offering decent wages and benefits, and cultivating talent and career pathways..
Businesses that are owned cooperatively, through employee stock ownership, or by community development corporations. These companies build the assets of low-wage workers while also creating jobs with decent wages and benefits (see the Evergreen Cooperatives Field Study at www.capitalinstitute.org)
Nonprofit-owned businesses (often termed "social enterprises") that provide both long-term and short-term 'transitional' employment to people with psychiatric, physical and developmental disabilities, people with histories of homelessness and incarceration, young people disconnected from school and work, and people who receive welfare (see AbilityOne, and REDF).
Together, these businesses employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, with the potential to grow to employ millions more. Innovations in capital deployment are helping them start and expand. More needs to be done to leverage these business strategies so that they influence the broader economy, and achieve the scale required to tip the balance toward significant job growth.
Jeffrey Hollender & Carla Javits Carla Javits is the President of REDF, a venture philanthropy that helps to create and grow 'double bottom line' enterprises that earn income while employing people with high barriers. She also oversees REDF's efforts to build the field by broadly sharing the results of its extensive, multi-year effort to measure the outcomes that demonstrate the effectiveness of social enterprise in helping people with histories of incarceration, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and/or limited education to successfully retain employment.
Jeffrey Hollender is co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is a board member of Greenpeace US and Verite and also co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog. He can also be found on Twitter (@jeffhollender) and on Facebook.
(1) "High-growth start-ups are the best generators of new jobs (the Kauffman Foundation, an American outfit devoted to entrepreneurship, calculates that between 1980 and 2005 nearly all net job creation in America took place in firms that were less than five years old). They are also the firms most likely to raise productivity, a basis for economic growth. They create jobs that did not previously exist and solve problems that people assumed were part of the natural order of things." (The Economist, February 24, 2011)
]]>In Search of Business That Cooperates: What We Can Learn From the World's Most Successful Worker Cooperativestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9362232011-08-25T16:24:28-04:002011-10-25T05:12:01-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/"That ... cooperatives have grown so large is somewhat a mystery since, unlike capitalist enterprises, cooperatives are not expansionist by nature ... Capitalist enterprises tend towards growth because increased scale generally leads to greater returns for a concentrated ownership ... Contrast this with the economics of a typical worker cooperative. In a worker cooperative, those profits not reinvested are divided among the workers who generated the wealth."
--Tim Huet, GEO #30--
In an industrial, and now post-industrial age, that has turned people into disposable assets, into tools at the service of capital, it is hopeful and heartening to experience business at scale that chooses to honor the essence of humanity over the accumulation of wealth in service of capital.
The success of worker cooperative models in Italy and Spain present a compelling model for building a new sustainable economy in the United States. My recent tour of cooperatives in both countries left me eager for the possibilities of applying these models to our own economy.
Italy
Cooperatives in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy are so pervasive they are virtually invisible. In fact, no one could point me toward the 20-story-high office building housing the regional offices of Legacoop, Italy's biggest cooperative, despite the fact that it's situated in one of the tallest buildings in the city. Other than the "Coop" grocery stores to be found every few blocks, the cooperative business structure is so deeply woven into the culture as to go unnoticed by most inhabitants. It's not branded, advertised, or promoted -- remarkable when you consider that these consumer cooperatives have been in existence since 1854.
Today, the movement includes three primary organizations: Legacoop, AGCI and Confcooperative. Collectively, they represent 43,000 cooperative businesses generating an astounding revenue of 127 billion euros, or 7% of the Italian GDP. Their 1.1 million employees represent 6% of the total population. They are flourishing.
Of the 43,000 cooperative businesses in Italy, 14,500 belong to Legacoop, which employs 485,000 people. Legacoop represents businesses in every industry from banking and insurance to retailing, construction, agriculture, travel and manufacturing. Its role is to advocate, represent, protect cooperative values, build the movement by developing new businesses, and advocate for laws that provide preference to cooperatives, nationally and internationally.
Spain
In 1941, a priest named Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta arrived in Mondragon after finishing seminary school. Though he showed little talent for the pulpit, he displayed a strong interest in social issues and movements, which led him to organize social support services, athletic leagues and a medical clinic through defunct organizational bodies of the church. His success in developing these programs created a base of support that allowed him to continue building institutions in the region for the rest of his life -- the apotheosis of which was Mondragon.
Mondragon was built on the firm belief that the only way to understand and experience democracy was through the creation of cooperatively-organized business. Yet, there was no domestic model of democracy or democratic management to grasp onto in a society controlled by a Franco-fascist dictatorship. Despite the odds, Mondragon prospered.
At the end of 2010, it was providing employment for 83,859 people working in 256 companies, generating total revenues of 14.8 billion euros, making it Spain's fourth largest industrial and seventh largest financial group.
Mondragon holds fast to its founders' beliefs -- it honors democratic methods in all aspects of business and management and in the process of dialogue that precedes every major decision. This commitment is specifically expressed in real terms, such as in compensation, where the maximum salary differential from the lowest to the highest paid worker is now 7-to-1. Never in Mondragon's history has any worker been laid off for financial reasons.
What We Can Learn
My visits to the cooperatives in Italy and Spain left me with powerful impressions of what's possible when you put people before profit. These are just some of the lessons that we can bring to life to create a more sustainable future.
We are all owners and protagonists. As an owner, everyone is responsible to advocate for his or her own point of view. No one's voice is more important that another person's.
One person, one vote. This is foundational to the cooperative movement and a principal that must never be violated. It stems from the original notion of democracy and safeguards the role of each and every person in a world where money and power often drown out our individual voices.
Self-management. There is a basic assumption that the best type of management is always self-management. You are an owner you think about what is best for the whole and act accordingly. Does everyone always manage themselves as well as possible? Of course not, and there are processes for training to build capability where needed. But everything flows from the assumption that we are all capable of managing ourselves.
Decentralized organization. Mondragon is the opposite of centralized, top-down, command and control management. Often, this is painfully slow and can lead to decisions that may be less than optimal. But is doesn't stray. Each cooperative business makes its own decision. Each has its own board and while they may be encouraged by Mondragon leadership to move in a particular direction, all decisions, including the decision to pack-up and leave the Mondragon group, is their own.
Italian coops engage in a decentralized strategy, creating "flexible manufacturing networks" comprised of the highly-skilled work forces of small and mid-sized manufacturers. This approach has helped Italian cooperatives take advantage of labor flexibility and, as Tim Huet pinpoints: "Cooperatives are particularly adept at fostering the critical relationships because of their collaborative cultures. The small size of the productive plants in flexible manufacturing networks facilitates robust democracy for cooperatives involved."
Training, education, innovation. Second to mission and values, education emerges as the second most amazing aspect of Mondragon and profoundly differentiates it from cooperative movements around the world. "Training must precede the establishment of a cooperative! Trained people will build better companies. To enter a cooperative you must value the community ahead of yourself," my guide explained. Mondragon understands the critical role of technology and innovation in a highly competitive global market. Its creation of thirteen universities is a testament to its commitment.
Re-prioritization. As a Board member of an individual coop you must understand the 'whole' of Mondragon. This requires often a reprioritization of your own values to place the 'whole' above the needs of your own coop.
The involvement of everyone in management, ownership and results. Everyone learns the basics: Rules of the board, history, business concepts, how to read a P&L statement and a balance sheet. They also learn how to with one another through teamwork, delegation, sharing, communicating efficiently, being able to explain why a decision was made to other members of the coop, developing priorities, and analyzing data.
Developing leaders. Leadership skills are also taught so members may be better able to manage internal democracy, handle conflict management, and know how to reconcile for the short- and long-term, the local and the global, the balancing of the heart and the head. Finally, they learn the power of generosity. "If you don't have generosity you have nothing," our guide explains.
Advocating for change. Legacoop's role is to advocate, represent, protect cooperative values, build the movement by developing new businesses, and advocate for laws that provide preference to cooperatives, nationally and internationally.
Values. Family. Education. Solidarity. History. Members learn about the significance of the company they are becoming a part of. And it is not without reflecting on the good and the bad, that members learn from the past. As my guide recounted: "Mondragon went through a period of huge growth for 15 years until 2008. Now, we face a time of crisis. When we had growth we paid less attention to our values." That highlights the importance of corporate values to a company -- it's the one thing that will help a company survive through thick and thin -- training employees to pass on those values ensures that the next generation of the business will maintain its commitment to purpose.
About Jeffrey Hollender
Jeffrey Hollender is co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is a board member of Greenpeace US and Verite and also co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog. He can also be found on Twitter (@jeffhollender) and on Facebook.]]>What's Wrong With This Picture?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9271862011-08-15T14:08:43-04:002011-10-15T05:12:02-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Consider this incomprehensible and troubling dichotomy: while the luxury market continues to boom, cheaper mass-market brands are shrinking product to offset consumers' dwindling wallets.
Tiffany's first-quarter sales were up 20 percent to $761 million. Last week Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) reported sales growth in the first half of 2011 of 13 percent to 10.3 billion euros, or $14.9 billion. Last week, PPR, the French multinational holding company that specializes in retail shops and luxury brands including Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, reported a luxury segment sales gain of 23 percent in the first half of 2011.
The incredible laundry list grows longer: BMW doubled its quarterly profit from a year ago with sales rising 16.5 percent; Porsche's first-half profit rose 59 percent; and Mercedes-Benz 's July sales of its high-end S-Class sedans -- some of which cost more than $200,000 -- jumped almost 14 percent in the United States (Source: Bloomberg).
At the same time, The New York Timesreports that: "Wal-Mart is selling smaller packages because some shoppers do not have enough cash on hand to afford multipacks of toilet paper. Retailers from Victoria's Secret to the Children's Place are nudging prices up by just pennies, worried they will lose customers if they do anything more."
I can't repeat these sad facts often enough:
Just 1% of Americans own 40-50% of the wealth. Annual income for the wealthiest soared from4 million in 1974 to35 million on average in 2007.
The richest 400 Americans average270 million in income and pay only 18% in federal taxes. In 1955, the country's most affluent made far less money and paid 51 percent of their income in taxes.
Inequality in America is worse than Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen.
Tax rates on executive pay, have been cut in half since 1970.
We've just concluded a failed debate on America's future. We have averted a short-term financial disaster by making the long-term outlook grimmer than ever. The so-called agreement to raise the debt ceiling and reduce America's debt over the next ten years is a sham. The numbers just don't add up. With GDP growth falling from a projected 3-4% down to a rate of 1-2%, we'll generate more debt than we originally forecasted, wiping out any reduction before we even start counting.
Our president failed once again to provide the leadership I expected when I voted for him. Leaving the capital for the first time in a month to celebrate his birthday in Chicago, he avoided making his case for a sensible economic policy to the American people and instead wasted weeks locked behind closed doors negotiating with Republicans and his own party, who he already knows are simply unwilling to make responsible decisions.
Barack -- please, start making your case to your own citizens before it's too late for all of us. Stop playing the inside game, hiding in the Beltway instead of standing out in the open. When was your last Town Hall meeting? It's time to have an open conversation about the issues and put sustainable solutions in place before our economy completely crumbles. What are we waiting for?]]>The 10 Top Sustainable Business Trends & Investment Opportunities for the Next Decadetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8889102011-07-20T11:05:08-04:002011-09-19T05:12:02-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Whether you're looking for a new career, an investment opportunity, or thinking about starting a new business, these are the areas to watch:
Desalination
Water purification
Alternative energy
Energy efficiency
Weatherization
Local, organic, and Fair Trade food
Technology supporting small-scale agriculture
Engineering and consulting firms specializing in supply chain management and infrastructure development
Equipment providers to farming and infrastructure development
Disaster relief
Mobile technology and applications
Let's take a tour of these opportunities.
Desalination & Water Purification
Water is already worth more than petroleum in many parts of the world. As global climate change and poor agricultural practices combine with our growing population and increasing affluence, water will increasingly be in short supply. Wars will be fought over it, companies like Coca-Cola will risk their license to operate as they suck aquifers dry and prevent local farmers from accessing the water required to grow their crops; a profusion of toxic chemicals will pollute much of what is left. In 2008, the Stockholm International Water Institute calculated that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, industrial, municipal, and environmental needs of all. That number is expected to rise to 1.8 billion by 2025.
Alternative Energy, Energy Efficiency and Weatherization The use of fossil fuels must be dramatically reduced if civilization as we know it is to survive. Though global fossil fuel consumption subsidies fell from $558 billion in 2008 to $312 billion in 2009, the reduction was largely a result of changes in international energy prices and domestic pricing policies, rather than from subsidies being curtailed. In addition, governments provide domestic fossil fuel production subsidies aimed at bolstering domestic supply, valued at an additional $100 billion per year. This is simply unsustainable both economically and environmentally.
Solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, co-generation and even mechanically generated energy (you on a treadmill) will experience an explosion of growth as, inevitably, carbon is taxed and fossil fuels run out. Whether driven by the negative health implications, whether that disrupts business supply chains, or the environmental disasters of getting it out of the ground - the age of oil, gas and coal will come to a much more abrupt end that most of us can imagine.
Local, organic, and fair-trade food and the technology to support small-scale agriculture Since 2000, organic farming has experienced a 150 percent increase in practice: it is now done on 37.2 million hectares worldwide, a 5.7 percent increase from 2008 (Source: Worldwatch Institute). In 2010, imports of Fair Trade coffee grew 62 percent over 2009, cocoa imports grew by 67 percent, citrus imports grew to 96 percent and sales of Fair Trade sugar increased by 60 percent. (Learn more about how Fair Trade Certified Organic Products are skyrocketing).
The world is already unable to feed itself, and there will be about 25,000 more people arriving for dinner tonight. We'll be growing more food locally - on rooftops (already projected to be a $100 billion industry in the next decade) on the sides of buildings, in community gardens, in greenhouses build in inner cities. Lettuce simply can't fly business class from Beijing to New York for much longer.
Engineering and consulting firms specializing in supply chain management and infrastructure; development & equipment providers to farming and infrastructure development
The whole world wants to live like we do. Eat beef. Drive cars. Live in oversized houses. Much of that development we simply won't be able to stop. At the same time, as the next billion citizens emerge out of poverty they'll want roads, electricity, running water, bridges, and dams.
Disaster relief
Three words of explanation are all that's needed: global climate change.
Mobile technology and applications
Seventy million people are playing FarmVille. You can check in at the airport with a boarding pass on your mobile phone. Soon you'll deposit checks by scanning them with a mobile device. Landline phones are heading toward swift extinction. Mobile technology and social media present us with an incredible communications medium, but also a novel and new way to solve societal issues with apps and tools for public health, energy and aid. Being connected to the world brings us one step closer to changing the world.
Some of our society's greatest problems require problem-solving in the form of new businesses and careers. It's remarkable to think that you can change the world by simply deciding what you want to do when you grow up.
About Jeffrey Hollender
Jeffrey Hollender is co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is a board member of Greenpeace US and Verite and also co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog. He can also be found on Twitter (@jeffhollender) and on Facebook.
]]>A World of Cooperation and Shared Ownershiptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8711432011-06-07T14:06:46-04:002011-08-07T05:12:02-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
It's possible by embracing the idea of economic democracy.
Traditionally, economic democracy represents a socio-economic arrangement in which business enterprises are democratically managed and worker-owned. Think Organic Valley, the $500 million leader in the organic dairy industry, which is also a cooperative of family farms.
Cooperatively-owned businesses can range from small-scale local companies to multimillion dollar global businesses. While form and structure varies (worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, producer cooperatives, purchasing cooperatives and credit unions), these businesses share a common goal: to primarily benefit a group of stakeholders rather than primarily outside investors.
Shared ownership helps diversify rather than concentrate wealth. It roots the value it generates in communities, keeping assets and resources from being transferred from local communities to multinational corporations and their owners. Organic Valley's farmers have a tangible financial stake in the co-op, amounting to 5.5 percent of each member's annual sales. Each member farmer also is entitled to a single vote in decision-making.
These economic institutions exist in all sectors of our economy, from banking, finance and insurance to education, manufacturing, retail and agriculture. Economic democracy exists within capitalist economies and does not reject the role of markets, but rather limits the primacy of the profit-maximization motive that currently drives the way in which most businesses engage with the market.
Today, throughout the world, cooperatives already employ more than 100 million people and have more than 800 million members. In the United States, cooperatives have more than 120 million members and employ more than 850,000 people, and indirectly generate more than 2 million jobs. Additionally, according to the National Center on Employee Ownership, approximately 13.6 million employees in the United States are employee-owners through their participation in 11,300 employee stock ownership programs (ESOPs). Combined employee assets held in these ESOPs exceed $900 billion.
The breadth and depth of co-ops in the United States can also be seen in the following figures. Today, the more than 29,000 co-ops in the United States:
Have total assets of 3.1 trillion;
Operate at more than 72,000 establishments nationwide;
Deliver telephone services through 255 co-ops to 964,000 households;
House more than 1.5 million households through 6,400 co-ops; and
Provide financial services through 7,486 credit unions to 91.76 million member-owners, with total assets now exceeding 925 billion.*
Well-known cooperative businesses range from the aforementioned Organic Valley to Nationwide Mutual Insurance, an 80-year-old Fortune 500 company, with more than $135 billion in statutory assets; Land O'Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned food and agricultural cooperative with $12 billion in sales; Unified Grocers, the largest wholesale grocery distributor in the western United States with over $4 billion in sales; and Amalgamated Life Insurance Company, founded in 1943 with more than $800 million in annual premium, premium equivalencies and fee-for-service.
In Europe, Italy's Legacoop and Spain's Mondragon multi-sector cooperatives have been able to both reach significant scale and demonstrate long-term sustainability. Legacoop, founded in 1886 in Milan, now has more than 15,000 member cooperatives and employs more than one million people. Mondragon, founded in 1956, now holds 33.3 million euros in assets and employs more than 85,000 people internationally.
A world of cooperation and shared ownership is not only possible, but critical to address the chronic unemployment, the dangerous concentration of wealth and the environmental destruction our world currently faces.
Let's make the possible tangible so we can put our hands to use building our economic future.
Resources for additional information about economic democracy:
*Sources include industry reports (e.g., 2010 CUNA data on credit unions), a 2009 USDA-financed study, authored by Steven Deller, Ann Hoyt, Brent Hueth and Reka Sundaram-Stukel of the University of Wisconsin, and "Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century" by Nicholas Luviene, Amy Stitely and Lorlene Hoyt.
Jeffrey Hollender is co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. For more than 25 years, he has helped millions of Americans make green and ethical product choices, beginning with his bestselling book, How to Make the World a Better Place, a Beginner's Guide. He went on to author five additional books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. He is a board member of Greenpeace US and Verite and also co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. Please visit www.jeffreyhollender.com to learn more and visit Jeffrey's blog. He can also be found on Twitter (@jeffhollender) and on target="_hplink">Facebook. ]]>The Harms of Regulation Phobiatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8682982011-06-02T11:55:56-04:002011-08-02T05:12:01-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Regulations are getting a bad rap in Washington these days. Despite the collapse of our financial system, financial regulatory reform has been chastised. Despite the continued need for clean air and water, some in Congress are exploring ways to prevent the implementation of rules to stem pollution. And, Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has devoted his time not to finding ways to reduce the deficit through duplicity in federal agencies, but instead by rallying against any and all regulations that large corporations have suggested they would like to see go.
These misguided efforts distract from dealing with the real issues impacting economic growth. While over-burdensome government regulations may be harmful, those which Congress is currently focusing on will not strangle job creation. This is a myth repeated by politicians and CEOs who stand to increase profits while decreasing safety if standards disappear -- standards that ensure product and food safety, protect our environment, and guarantee the proper regulation of our financial, medical, and legal industries.
Though the Obama administration recently identified thousands of non-functioning, or wasteful rules that are unnecessary and can burden businesses or agencies, responsible reform must leave in place and ensure proper enforcement of the many hard-won regulations that protect the health and safety of Americans.
The anti-regulation mania that's swept Washington conveniently ignores the positive impact that common sense regulations have on all of our daily lives, while threatening to harm the basic protections that we have come to expect. For instance:
Attempts to protect the public from salmonella in eggs faced years of roadblocks even after President Clinton proposed an egg safety rule that would have saved 1.4 billion in medical costs and prevented 79,000 illnesses and 30 deaths a year. Heavy lobbying by big agriculture interests delayed implementation of these rules from their inception in 1999 to the final enactment in 2010 -- but not in time to prevent the 2010 salmonella outbreak that left 2,000 Americans sick and led to the recall of half a billion eggs.
In 2004, in response to a request, OSHA drafted a rule that addressed the major causes of construction worker injury and death from cranes and derricks (electrocution, collapse and overturning). The final rule established common-sense standards for operator certification, crane inspection, set up and disassembly. But the rule took six years to clear bureaucratic hurdles -- a delay that resulted in an estimated 132 unnecessary deaths and 1,050 preventable injuries at a cost of more than 1 billion.
Earlier this year, the House took aim at the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate toxic air pollution. The House bill, designed to "rein in" environmental protection, would block the implementation of the agency's new mercury emissions rules, designed to prevent up to 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 heart attacks, 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma and 130,000 days of missed work due to illness. This, despite the fact that many of those members who voted to prevent implementation of the rule, voted for it in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
There are similar stories to be told about industries that affect all areas of American life. Lax regulatory supervision of Massey Energy allowed the company to get away with safety violations that eventually led to a deadly mine collapse in West Virginia. The financial industry's long campaign to escape government checks led to an epidemic of profiteering from reckless practices and an unprecedented economic crisis. The absence of stringent off-shore drilling safety regulations, and enforcement authorities that were missing in action, led to a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf that will have repercussions for years to come.
The fact is that time and again, the impact of lax regulations is felt more broadly by the country -- from the cost of a near depression to the cost of environmental clean-up. This is not good for most businesses, nor the economy.
In the short run, regulations require investment, but that does not translate into a drag on the economy -- in fact, analyses show that the economic benefits of smart regulation greatly outweigh their costs.
The Office of Management and Budget studied all the major regulations issued between 2001 and 2010, and found that compliance costs of $44 billion to $62 billion were dwarfed in comparison to the $136 billion to $651 billion of annual benefits that those rules created. The OMB in part calculates the economic benefits of regulations by assigning monetary values to the human lives saved. We would like to think that the saving of those lives alone would be reason enough to applaud, rather than scorn, the government's regulatory efforts.
Those investments also create jobs. And, if companies began investing earlier, they would reduce overall costs, benefit from early compliance and be in a position to spread out the cost of regulations over a longer period of time, thus dampening any economic impact.
While Congress engages in ways to prevent implementation of important health and safety regulations, it is sleeping when it comes to identifying real efforts that can jump start the economy, including:
Increasing capital access to small business and entrepreneurs to create jobs;
Incentivizing new forms of energy, clean transportation and other technologies that will help us lead in the 21st century instead of lagging behind our worldwide competitors;
Passing legislation that would encourage greater use of non-toxic chemicals which help save companies compliance dollars, increase worker safety and reduce costs to state and local governments; and
Leveling the playing field by precluding companies from escaping their corporate tax obligations by using tax havens outside of the United States.
Too much time has been spent on Capitol Hill arguing over one message or another. When will our elected officials stop the rhetoric, end the charge to implement everything they think their campaign contributors are seeking and start putting Americans first? As supporters and founders of businesses that have proven that we can thrive in a world that encourages a balance in meeting environmental goals, employee goals and profit, we are urging Congress to move away from the lexicon of corporate protection at all costs, and toward the lexicon of protecting the citizens they are supposed to represent.
We must work toward this: real, forward-moving regulatory reform that helps to create a new economy -- one that values people, planet and profit.
David Levine is the co-founder and executive director of the American Sustainable Business Council, a growing coalition of business networks and businesses who represent more than 100,000 businesses and more than 200,000 entrepreneurs, owners, executives, investors and business professionals, advancing a new vision, framework and policies that support a sustainable economy. Jeffrey Hollender is the co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation and the co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council. He also blogs about these topics and more at JeffreyHollender.com.
]]>The Sun Does Shine in Clevelandtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8545152011-04-27T17:10:43-04:002011-06-27T05:12:01-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Cleveland is not unlike other industrial cities that we've turned our back on through a disastrous mix of failed industrial policy, a tax system that rewards companies that export jobs overseas, regulations and public policy that reward financial gambling, and business that creates no real value at the expense of business that makes products that people can actually use, and politicians who have put themselves up for sale to the highest bidder.
Over the past two years, we've allowed banks to launch an additional attack on cities and neighborhoods already struggling with decades of decay, pulling the rug out from under homeowners who were already hanging on by their fingernails while Corporate America achieves record profits by not hiring unemployed workers.
But the sun does shine in Cleveland, and from the depths of a tragedy, a new model of revitalization and regeneration is being born.
Together these organizations collaborated on a business model that is designed to create community wealth in the city's poorest neighborhoods by:
• Leveraging procurement from local anchor institutions, like the Cleveland Clinic;
• Funding the development of a network of sustainable, worker-owned, community-based businesses linked to that procurement system;
• Developing a workforce skilled at democratic and participatory management; and
• Creating a new generation of leaders committed to rebuilding their communities.
As reported in an excellent profile written by the Capital Institute:
"Many aspects of the Evergreen Cooperatives are modeled on the Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain. A remarkable success story in worker-owned enterprise, established by an activist Catholic priest in 1956 with the goal of lifting the Basque region of Spain out of the poverty it experienced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Mondragon has grown into a network of over 120 worker-owned cooperatives generating more than $20 billion in annual revenue and employing 100,000 workers. It is now Spain's fourth largest industrial and seventh largest financial group."
"A number of trips to Mondragon were organized by the Cleveland Foundation to give community leaders a chance to observe first hand how a successful large-scale cooperative operated. Like Mondragon, Evergreen hopes to inculcate a culture of 'solidarity,' not as it is defined by the tired slogans of the communist era, but in the sense of a deep commitment to collective wealth creation and well-being."
I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the first two businesses that were launched in October 2009: the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar. The Green City Growers, a hydroponic greenhouse expects to break ground on the construction of a four-acre greenhouse this summer with its first crop ready for harvest in the spring of 2012.
The experience was remarkable in almost an endless number of ways, from the pride of workers who never in their lives imagined being the owners of a business to the extraordinary vision of Ronn Richard, CEO & President of the Cleveland Foundation, who has set the bar higher than anyone else when it comes to what we should expect from the foundation community.
Almost everyone we met was filled with hope. Surrounded by pain and suffering, they are undeterred in their belief that they'll be able to not simply rebuild some of the decaying housing stock, create a few thousand jobs, or stop the flow of wealth out of the community -- No, their vision is to return their city to a state of wealth and well-being, making it a place that families chose to remain for generation after generation.
In a world of partial solutions, incremental progress, competition for resources, small-minded ideas and the fear of big, bold possibilities, Cleveland has designed a solution that embraces all of its challenges at once and dares to say we can solve them.]]>Five Things Business Leaders Must Do in 2011tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8123912011-01-26T16:51:59-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
Six in ten respondents said corporate America didn't meet expectations in 2010; seven in ten have higher expectations for 2011.
When asked to grade how well corporate America did in 2010, 82 percent assigned a grade of 'C' or lower, and 40 percent assigned a grade of 'D' or 'F.'
Eighty-eight percent of consumers found that corporations had recovered from the recession better than American families, and 85 percent thought corporations had better prospects for the coming year.
Only 17 percent of those surveyed thought companies deserved an 'A' or 'B' for honest and moral conduct in 2010.
Surprised? No one who occupies a corner office today should wonder why Americans hold such a low opinion of them and their colleagues. Consider these facts -- eight reasons why we've entered very dangerous territory.
According to the commerce department, profits at American companies grew to an annual rate of1.659 trillion in the third quarter of 2010 -- the highest they've been since the government began keeping track more than 60 years ago.
Just 1 percent of Americans own 90 percent of the nation's wealth. For the richest among us, annual income soared from 4 million in 1974 to an average of 35 million in 2007.
Tax rates on executive pay have been cut in half since 1970. From 1985 to 2004, taxes on the top 0.1 percent fell from 42 percent to 34 percent.
Meanwhile...
The U.S. housing market is down around 25 percent from its peak in 2006. In many markets, the drop is even worse. The average price of homes in Southern California, for example, has plummeted 41 percent.
The broader and more meaningful U-6 measure of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work or who can't find full-time jobs, is currently around 17 percent.
The unemployment rate for native-born African-Americans with less than a high school education is 28.8 percent. Their U-6 measure is a catastrophic 42.2 percent.
One out of every seven Americans now rely on food stamps.
While most consumers could not cite these statistics, they are nonetheless experiencing their very real impacts each day.
They're also unwittingly suffering from our economic system's lack of full-cost accounting, which has made it perfectly acceptable for companies to "externalize" their negative social and environmental impacts and shift the burdens of these impacts, financial and otherwise, to society at large.
The result is the de facto public subsidization of harmful practices and products, a world where "bad" stuff is cheap (think coal, candy and genetically-modified corn) and "good" stuff is comparatively expensive (think organic food, hybrid cars, and higher education). Put it all together and you get the biggest challenge we face as a nation today -- a dangerously negative trajectory pulling us ever closer to the point of no return.
Twenty three years ago, I founded Seventh Generation with the idea of creating a different way of doing business, and I've spent over two decades building the company into one that many consider a model of meaningful systemic corporate responsibility.
During my tenure, I saw business make an incredible amount of progress. Milton Friedman's thesis that the only responsibility of business is to increase shareholder value has been rejected in boardrooms across the country. Today, an increasing number of businesses are committed to taking responsibility for all of their stakeholders, even if their results fall well short of expectations.
While many of you know that I am no longer executive chairman of Seventh Generation, my work in corporate responsibility from inside a company has given me a rare perspective on this evolution,. The fact remains that all businesses will need to become radically more sustainable, transparent and responsible to succeed and survive in the twenty-first century. It's no longer simply "nice to do"; it's become a business imperative.
So, what do we do about our current mess?
As we know from Americans' attitudes about business and the state of our economy, big changes are needed. The time for incremental improvements has passed, and if business leaders don't step up and make some major changes, they will risk an increasingly more aggressive and violent public response. To reverse course and avoid these outcomes, here are five things business leaders must do in 2011:
Insist on a national economic strategy (as the Chinese have) that makes tough choices about America's future. We need to regain our lead in alternative energy, rebuild a modest manufacturing base, diversify our agriculture, and spend much less on defense and much more on education, infrastructure and public transportation
Embrace transparency. There's nowhere left for business to hide anyway. Tomorrow's most successful brands will be authentic because they are transparent and able to build loyalty that advertising can't buy.
Realize that corporate responsibility and sustainability aren't departments. They're business strategies, and only strategies that are holistic and systemic will work. The age of doing good with the left hand while screwing people and the environment with the right hand is over.
Show a little self-restraint. Greed isn't good anymore. Senior management compensation is out of control, and political influence by business is killing our democracy. Start doing the right thing because it's the right thing, not because your lawyer told you to do it. It's a simple matter of survival--wiping out what remains of the middle class will leave no one to buy your stuff!
Create ownership not employment and high wage green jobs not low-wage service sector positions.
Together, these steps form a reasonable and effective way to begin promoting the politics and policies of a just and sustainable world. This is the task that I believe to be the most important and profound challenge in today's society, and the time for us to get to it is quickly running out.]]>And the Survey Says: Sustainability Key to Future Business Successtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6510142010-07-19T12:49:29-04:002011-05-25T17:05:23-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/new study on sustainability by Accenture and the UN Global Compact* affirms what I have been preaching for the last two decades, that sustainability is critical to a business's future success. The largest study of its kind showed that 93 percent of UN Global Compact CEOs agreed with the importance of a sustainability strategy for their own companies.
What was the biggest motivator for these CEOs to take action on sustainability issues? Not surprisingly, "strengthening brand, trust, and reputation" was identified by 72 percent of the respondents.
And it's no wonder, with BP and Toyota being the 2010 poster children of what can happen when core values of responsibility and sustainability aren't infused into the culture and job description of every employee on payroll. In fact, many of the 766 CEOs who responded believe that "business that is both sustainable and profitable requires efforts by people at all levels of the corporation." A fundamental shift since the last Global Impacts study in 2007, this recognition by CEOs is significant, and hopefully is the harbinger of real change to the business-as-usual attitude that we've become accustomed to seeing.
On a broader scale, the study revealed that business is taking sustainability more seriously and there is strong belief that, within the decade, a tipping point will be reached that brings sustainability from the periphery to the core. The CEOs surveyed have finally recognized that having a siloed sustainability initiative, while fodder for the annual report, will not in actuality get them very far. Instead, sustainability will need to be embedded into everything from corporate mission to operating strategy and tactical execution.
As Bill Breen and I discuss in our recent book, The Responsibility Revolution, being a genuine socially and environmentally responsible company will be the only way to compete and win in the 21st century.
Nike, one of the companies we profiled in our book, has undertaken just this kind of radical change. Nike's long slog on the road to improving conditions in its contract factories, combined with some early but limited successes in recycling and green chemistry, led it to conclude that incremental change is a woefully inadequate response to the environmental and social problems that all companies face. Thus, their sustainability team was charged with putting the sustainability ethos at the heart of what Nike does, which is innovation and design. The decision was made to create products that live and breathe sustainability.
Nike determined that the CR team needed to work at the beginning of the innovation pipeline, where strategy is set and creativity occurs, rather than at the end, where outcomes are audited and after-action CR reports are filed. They accomplished this by changing their thinking. Instead of treating sustainability as a compliance or risk-management function, the CR team acts as an idea lab that pushes innovation, but at the same time allows business units to ''own'' sustainability and include it in their day-to-day work.
Nike also took advantage of technology to help designers make sustainable choices at the beginning of the process. The company's think tank has created a predictive tool that quantifies, in real time, the ecological impact of each and every one of the designers' choices: it's a desktop program called the Considered Index.
The index allows Nike to make every designer an agent of sustainability. When they see that a better score can be achieved by reducing adhesives, which emit VOCs, they develop snap-together tooling that completely eliminates adhesives. The designers chip away at their overall environmental impact, one decision at a time.
So how does a company change gears like Nike has and move their workforce from outdated, shortsighted habits to new sustainable methods of doing business? Certainly guidance and inspiration from the C-Suite is key. But 86% of CEOs concurred that they must increase their investment in management training for sustainable strategies and operations.
One approach to delivering this type of training cost effectively is The Sustainability Institute, an online learning portal developed by Kaplan Eduneering and Seventh Generation that helps companies understand corporate responsibility and weave it into their corporate practices. Companies wishing to stay ahead of the sustainability curve and impending government mandates would be wise to research training, consulting, and software options that enable them to make the transition as swiftly and profitably as possible.
*The United Nations Global Compact is strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
Jeffrey Hollender is the co-author of the recently published book, The Responsibility Revolution. The Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Seventh Generation, and a Co-Founder of the American Sustainable Business Council and the Sustainability Institute, Hollender also shares his insights at The Inspired Protagonist, a leading blog on corporate responsibility. ]]>Exhibit A in the Case for Corporate Responsibilitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6379302010-07-07T14:42:18-04:002011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00Jeffrey Hollenderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-hollender/
I say that as a former CEO who knows just how hard it is to run a small company with a hundred or so employees and can't imagine what it's like to helm a corporation with more than 97,000 people corralling dozens of complex supply chains on multiple continents. That's a lot of coming and going, and I can see how it would be impossible to keep tabs on every single activity. With a corporate hierarchy a mile long, I doubt that before the accident Mr. Hayward knew much about the doomed Deepwater Horizon oil rig beyond the fact of its existence and suspect he didn't know what the many subcontractors on board were really up to. I could be wrong, but if his experience is anything like mine, he had a lot of things going on and could only assume that his company's many vendors were behaving well and being diligently monitored by employees honoring the rules.
Yet Mr. Hayward is the CEO, and his desk is where the proverbial buck stops. He may not have been present when safety cheats, engineering shortcuts, and rules violations doomed the Louisiana seaboard, but as the head of BP, he's responsible for everything done in his company's name and must be held ultimately accountable for every square inch of poisoned coastline.
That makes that Gulf of Mexico Exhibit A in the business case for corporate responsibility (CR). Because if Mr. Hayward had chosen to build a strong ethic of authentic CR inside BP, the disaster would have likely been prevented by employees who would have demanded doing the right thing and blown the whistle on anyone who wasn't.
But that didn't happen, and the company has seen its market valuation drop precipitously, losing more than $100 billion as of this writing. And then we should add in accounting for the actual cost of cleaning up the mess and paying for the liability, which so far is approaching $1 billion. Analysts point out this is not that much given BP's $20 billion in expected 2010 profits, but I think the longer this spill drags, the angrier people are going to get and the more blood will be demanded. When the final costs are tallied, BP could get a bill as big as the entire Gulf of Mexico and it could force the company into bankruptcy or to be sold to a competitor.
Regardless, the $100 or so billion in value already lost is significant, and it makes one of the strongest business cases I've ever seen for CR, which would have organically reduced the company's drilling risks significantly. I hate to say we told them so, but if BP had followed the advice coauthor Bill Breen and I offer in our new book, The Responsibility Revolution, it is dramatically less likely that any of this would have happened.
We believe that the key to preventing corporate outrages like these lies in adopting a new and deeper brand of CR in which higher purposes are translated into the missions and purpose of business, embedded in every aspect of corporate strategy. This new model of CR is intentionally poured into every crevice of a company's DNA to inform all the individual systems it maintains and create a conscious and conscientious culture that stops situations like the Gulf oil spill from ever getting started.
Superficial CR efforts and compartmentalized initiatives don't cut it. BP had those. The kind of CR the oil giant needs has to go deep to reach each employee and influence every decision whether it's in an office or on a rig. Everything else is just window dressing. But when a business can successfully build a genuine company-wide commitment to serious environmental and social ethics, and get the whole staff on board -- whether it's a staff of 100 or 100,000 -- great things happen and terrible things do not. In BP's case, that's a place it wouldn't have cost anywhere near $100 billion to get to. If I were Mr. Hayward, right about now I'd be wishing I'd chosen this route instead.
]]>