I’ve seen time and again that founders/CEOs set corporate culture from the top down by their behaviour. If you work for a boss who seems to care about things beyond profit, then it’s likely the company will be inherently socially beneficial by the way it operates and its culture. If your boss only really cares about profit, it won’t…!
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Anna makes a great point about metrics. Hand in Hand is seeking to establish a business case for societal innovation across several partnerships, but the key is evidence, and alignment on what success looks like. In our work with Visa, we are developing a model for accelerating women-led businesses which is specifically tailored to bottom of the pyramid entrepreneurs. Our aim is to support these businesses to access capital, increase their turnover and create jobs - essentially stimulating small business growth post pandemic. Watch this space: we’ll be publishing our learning from this project and other women-centred programmes later this year.
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Schulman, P. (1999). Learned optimism. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 19 (Winter), 31-37.
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Just building on the “what’s in it for me” idea, I often try and I think in terms of (and please excuse the poor use of English here; “what’s in it for we” - which can also be thought of around alignment of collective and enlightened interests.
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Seligman, M. E. P. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist 55(1):5-14
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As a smaller NGO in Africa, I am happy to share the barriers we often face when approaching businesses and companies seeking partnerships and cross sector knowledge:
a) Those companies we meet who would like to be involved and affiliated with our work often lack capacity or vision to do more than to donate funds. I would love to see more involvement, capacity building, and sharing knowledge.
b) Convincing board members both on the NGO side and on the business side understanding the need to collaborate and spending resources on this. This is often a result of boards being conservative and lacking vision.
I’ve seen this being talked about in terms of flipping from am extractive mindset to a regenerative one. The B Corp climate justice playbook talks a bit about this flip: Climate Justice Playbook for Business — B Corp Climate Collective
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Excelente Asa, thanks for the links. We absolutely have to get in touch with them, we are working on housing and energy insecurity, aiming to bring sustainable business models to the 50% most vulnerable individuals in the region.
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Therein lies the elephant-sized challenge: it costs more and takes longer to embed social innovation. This is why we are often talking about value and trying to expand what value is valued in a company and, if possible, measure and monetise the non-financial value created. There are solutions in sustainability linked finance (eg: social impact bonds) or where social and public sector partners co-fund projects (eg: PPP).
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I am Joshua Kanyi Njoroge. I am a finalist student at Kenyatta University pursuing a degree in Education.
Glad to be in the platform.
Nina do you often find that NGO bosses don’t want to work with business and vice versa because of cultural differences or prejudices about the ‘other side’? I’ve certainly found this working with NGOs in South Sudan, Rwanda, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea…
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I would agree Nina, but I think this is changing quite rapidly with NGO boards especially starting to recognise the potential benefits of private sector partnerships at the local level.
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If a board of Directors or an equivalent governance/incentive structure is also in place then this can also help drive the direction of travel, as well as how they themselves are incentivised and measured.
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From Sakib Imran Ali: I believe we can do some prolong case studies. In addition, we the case study needs some focus group discussion (FGD) and also need to talk with Key Informant People
From Katie Davis: “this is SO important… especially in organizations where social innovation thinking requires teams to think and work outside the traditional structures. really welcome any suggestions on how to do this… entirely breaking existing systems is likely not an option, but hoping to push around the edges”
Yes Nicholas ! Clearly, the head of the ship must be an example, however when he is not the owner, he also has to convince the owners / shareholders / financers who put him in place. This is were metrics remain useful, and they need to be completed with long-term vision and commitment. What if the management of ownership changes?
Our third question today:
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The incentives structure point is spot on. Why we now see CEOs having social impact targets in their own personal KPIs for receiving bonuses, which I personally support.
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Question 3: What are the strategies and tactics that can enable us to bring social and climate innovation together - to deliver wins for society, for the climate and for business?
Strategies:
- Embed societal innovation into the business model, strategic management processes and organisation culture
- Need for robust monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) systems for tracking the impact (offer multiple benefits – everyone wins). Is the innovation yielding desired multiple benefits (e.g. for Twiga Foods)?
- Society (improved incomes for farmers and vendors)
- Climate (waste reduction)
- Business (business growth)
- Government (job creation, poverty reduction, increased taxable base/revenue)
- Change management to align everyone in the organisation towards social innovation
- Embed technical back-stopping to the initiative
Tactics:
- Prudent project identification that delivers multiple benefits and is part of the core business of the company
- Co-creation of the solution with the key stakeholders
- Implementing continuous learning and adaptation processes:
- Are we achieving the desired results?
- What is working?
- What is not working?
- What needs to change, how and by whom?
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To get the buy-in we need to speak the language of the person we would like to engage with. So, usually at CEMEX we present a business case.
To get there, our leaders have negotiated budget for low-cost and low-risk experimentation and iteration of ideas.
Other elements come to play a role to succeed: you need people with the right skills to do this, people who is familiar with the development agenda, who understand our business priorities and who speak the comercial and financial language. You don’t need a person who does all of these, but a team. And of course, a Process, from incubation to scale.
Happy to discuss further and exchange more ideas.
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