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CONSCIOUS CLICKS - The Blog

News and analysis on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder engagement, and Internet and other digital marketing and communications. You'll even get some very practical tips on these topics that you can put to immediate use!

March 23rd, 2009

How do you go about assessing the authenticity of a company’s claims to be green?

My response to the above LinkedIn question:

There are many ways to weed out greenwashing from the genuine, but no ubiquitous standards, unfortunately — it’s more of a what does “green,” “sustainability” and/or corporate “social responsibility” (CSR) mean to you? How do you go about determining what organizations are genuinely engaged in this area? And how should what you learn affect your relationship or potential relationship with those organization(s)?

There are dozens or maybe even hundreds of third-party certifications in the green arena, including such common ones as USDA Organic, Fair Trade and LEED for buildings. These are a quick way for organizations in certain industries to get credibility and for their stakeholders to note. We’ll be putting out a white paper on third-party certifications soon.

There’s the Internet and social media. The social media universe, including the blogosphere will generally vet greenwashers pretty quickly. Setting up a Google Alert is one easy, free way to monitor what people on the web are saying about a brand that claims to be green.

There are also reporting standards, including the Global Reporting Initiative, to which many of the Fortune 1000, and some smaller companies, adhere when issuing sustainability or CSR reports.

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March 23rd, 2009

Obama & the USA: Maybe two steps forward, one back…

So, I hadn’t seen Leno or watched the video after my last blog post, last week. Sounds like a surprising stumble by Obama on a politically incorrect joke.

Also, despite my encouragement by efforts to take high ground in foreign policy, can’t help but wonder about handling of AIG bonuses (did Obama miss a chance to inspire in this area, as Thomas Friedman suggests?). Also, wondering why the money for bank bailouts couldn’t be used to directly benefit those who would be most harmed by large banks going under, with greater leveraging tools to boot (note: not executives, not shareholders, but bank depositors, supply-chain vendors, borrowers, etc.).

Anyway, I remain optimistic. Enough on politics for the time being.

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March 20th, 2009

Truly New Days of Great Leadership?

This video is truly remarkable. I was as encouraged by this video as I recall being dismayed by reading the last administration’s early, but serious rumblings toward Iraq not longer after 9/11. I also believe there are great lessons here for corporate leadership, long-term planning, courage and transparency.

I have always admired Theodore Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick”, interestingly taken from a West African proverb (according to Wikipedia). While this phrase has been criticized as “realpolitik” with Machiavellian undertones, I believe that’s based on interpretation, as well as some of Roosevelt’s actions, that the “big stick” was meant as a threat.

I’ve always liked to interpret this quote to mean that you should make and keep yourself strong, so you can most effectively act from your heart and love, rather than your head and fear. (Growing up, that seemed to me to be the philosophy of the buddhist and taoist martial artists increasingly depicted in both esoteric and popular media, such as TV’s original Kung Fu series.)

In my opinion, the U.S. has not had to prove anything to anyone, as far as its military strength and ability to effectively use it, at least since the end of the cold war in the early 90s. So, we’ve been in an amazing position to do what Obama is doing now, but which has taken at least 20 years too long.

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March 13th, 2009

How Social Media will Enhance Sustainability Strategy

I just answered a great question on LinkedIn: Can social media drive corporate sustainability strategy?

The inquirer, Katie Fry Hester, clarified that she’s “been testing the idea that companies can derive real business AND sustainability value through online communication and collaboration. For example, testing new eco-products in Second Life, launching a sustainability report on JustMeans, crowd sourcing customers for product improvements, monitoring blogs for stakeholder feedback, using twitter for a more direct line to journalists…”

She added: “How is your company deriving business/sustainability value from these new technologies? If you have any examples and/or evidence, I’d love to hear them…” [so would I!]

So, my enthusiastic answer:

“Yes” is the short answer. I also believe it’s potentially “game changing”, as one commenter put it recently. Social media is perhaps the biggest cause for the increasing transparency in the corporate world. It will continue to play an important role in corporate social responsibility’s (CSR) evolution.

Major themes of the way social media will benefit companies involved in CSR include: (1) greatly facilitating meaningful dialogue and collaboration with various stakeholders; (2) tracking and “officially” reporting their CSR efforts; and (3) using the information gleaned from the reporting process to communicate CSR efforts in an more accessible way to a broader audience than CSR report readers and watchdogs.

Some examples of organizations benefiting can be found in a report we did last year and a more recent article I wrote for the LOHAS journal (pdf format).

Social media is still in its infancy and the sustainable business crowd, like most others, has just begun to touch the surface. Your examples are good, and we’re in the process of looking more closely at SM’s use specifically in the development of CSR communications, with a new paper due out soon. Please do ping me if you’d like me to let you know when that’s available.

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March 2nd, 2009

Funny New Video on "Clean Coal"

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