Leadership

Wall Street’s costly reputation problem

November 3, 2011

Not since the Great Depression have Americans harbored so much ill-will against what were once called “the monied interests.”

This should worry Wall Street and the big banks.

The latest evidence: Bank of America’s decision this week to drop its plans to charge customers $5 a month for making purchases with their debit cards, in the wake of a customer revolt.

Jay Leno

On change.org, a 22-year-old Washington, D.C., activist named Molly Katchpole started a petition against the BofA fee that gathered 306,000 signatures in less than a month. Politicians chimed in (for better or worse) and even Jay Leno got into the act, saying on Halloween night:

One kid wanted to charge me five bucks to give him candy…I said, “Who are you supposed to be?” He said, “Bank of America!”

BofA reversed itself after rivals Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Sun Trust and Regions Financial said they’d drop customer tests of new debit fees. Analysts say this will cost the banking industry as much as $8 billion in foregone revenue.

In other words, the banks are giving up billions of dollars because people don’t trust them to do the right thing.

[click to continue…]

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Starbucks: We are indivisible

October 30, 2011

I’m not much for patriotic displays, but I’m proud to wear this red, white and blue wristband inscribed with the word INDIVISIBLE.

I hope you’ll wear one, too. They’re available, beginning Tuesday, at Starbucks, for a donation of $5 or more to a project called Let’s Create Jobs for USA.

The program aims to create thousands of jobs across the country, by investing community development financial institutions (CDFIs) — mostly credit unions and community banks — that will then lend to small businesses, nonprofits, housing and commercial developers, micro-enterprises and the like, all to spark the economy and create jobs.

I’m a fan of this project,  for several reasons.

First, there’s no more front-of-mind issue in America today than jobs. So this a great example of how a big company can help tackle an important  problem–while enhancing its reputation as a business that supports its communities.

Second, Let’s Create Jobs for USA underscores the fact that, despite the rhetoric from politicians, jobs are best created by the private sector.  If you’re anti-business, you’re anti-jobs.

Ben Packard

Third, although credit for the campaign ultimately belongs to Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, Let’s Create Jobs for USA unfolded as it did because of a connection between Ben Packard, vice president of global responsibility at Starbucks and Mark Pinsky, president and CEO of the Opportunity Finance Network, a national network of CDFIs. Ben, Mark and I serve together on the board of Net Impact, a great organization of students and young professionals whose purpose is to inspire and equip young people to use the power of business to make the world a better place.

Let’s Create Jobs for USA is very much in the spirit of Net Impact. [click to continue…]

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Campbell’s Doug Conant: “How can I help?”

October 27, 2011

Douglas Conant

Ten years into his career in the food industry, Douglas Conant was fired from his job at General Mills. He had two small children, a big mortgage, and a feeling of bitterness. Then he called an outplacement firm where the man on the other end of the line answered as he always did: “Hi, it’s Neil McKenna. How can I help?”

That moment–in a new book, Conant describes it as a “touchpoint”–shaped his approach to leadership. “Leadership isn’t about you,” he says. “It’s about them.” McKenna became a mentor and friend, and Conant saw how seemingly small interactions can have a deep impact on people. He went only to a long career at Kraft, Nabisco and as CEO of Campbell Soup, where he led an impressive turnaround before retiring in July.

I met Conant this week in Washington to talk about his 10 years at Campbell and about the book. In Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments (Jossey-Bass), Conant and his co-author, consultant Mette Norgaard, argue that “the daily interruptions that leaders face in nearly epidemic proportions are actually the moments where the greatest leadership opportunities lie.”

They write:

Each of the many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or low point in someone’s day. Each is an opportunity to establish high performance expectations, to infuse the agenda with greater clarity and more energy, and to influence the course of events. Each is a chance to transform an ordinary moment into a Touchpoint.

“The soft stuff is the hard stuff,” Conant likes to say. [click to continue…]

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BSR’s Aron Cramer: Leaders need to listen to weak signals

September 26, 2011

Aron Cramer

Today, I’m pleased to publish the second in a series of guest posts about redefining leadership from Aron Cramer, the president and CEO of BSR. BSR (formerly Business for Social Responsibility) works with its 250 member companies to promote a more just and sustainable world, through research, consulting and industry collaborations. Aron, who’s a longtime colleague and friend, has worked all over the world on business issues ranging from labor rights in global supply chains to Internet freedoms in China to the meaning of “sustainable consumption.” Here, he writes about the importance of listening to and learning from voices at the margins.

When I was researching my book Sustainable Excellence, Nike CEO Mark Parker told me that he manages by the principle that “there are a lot of smart people in the world, and most of them don’t work for me.” And while Parker is duly proud of the people he does have at Nike, he points to a central truth: Valuable insight and knowledge is now held in more hands than at any other time in human history.

As we consider how leadership is changing, it is clear that today’s most effective leaders have the ability—and willingness—to listen to weak voices they would have considered irrelevant to their business a generation ago. Indeed, these leaders are able to see across multiple disciplines, perspectives, and geographies.

Historically, leadership used to be exercised by people (usually men) who  had a corner on information, and who would speak with unshakeable authority. They were expected to have all the answers. Today, those who lead do so through their ability to find  all the answers. As Stewart Brand famously said, “information wants to be free.” In a world which is drowning in data, no own can monopolize knowledge; but smart leaders can win by listening to voices that others ignore and by mining the data  for fresh insights. [click to continue…]

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Stewart Brand, Peter Kareiva and 21st century conservation

June 29, 2011

Stewart Brand

Several days ago, Stewart Brand, the longtime environmentalist and author–please read Whole Earth Discipline: An Eco-Pragmatist’s Manifesto if you haven’t–hosted a talk by Peter Kareiva, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, in San Francisco. It was called Conservation in the Real World, and Stewart summarized it on his blog. I liked Stewart’s account, so I asked him for permission to reprint it, which he kindly granted. Here goes:

Peter Kareiva began by recalling the environmental “golden decade” of 1965-75, set in motion by the scientist Rachel Carson.  In quick succession Congress created the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act—which passed the Senate unanimously.

Green influence has been dwindling ever since.  A series of polls in the US asked how many agreed with the statement, “Most environmentalists are extremists, not reasonable people.”  In 1996, 32% agreed.  In 2004, 43% agreed.  Now it’s over 50% who think environmentalists are unreasonable.

Kareiva noted that as the world is urbanizing, ever fewer people grow up in contact with nature—current college freshman have less than a tenth of the childhood experience of nature as previous generations.  And there’s a demographic shift toward multiethnicity, with whites already a minority in California and soon to be a minority in the whole country.  Asked to describe a typical environmentalist, current grade school students say it’s a girl, white, with money, preachy about recycling, nice but uptight, not sought as a friend.

In general, environmentalists have the reputation of being “misanthropic, anti-technology, anti-growth, dogmatic, purist, zealous, exclusive pastoralists.” [click to continue…]

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Marks & Spencer: Sustainability, profits and a carbon-neutral bra

June 22, 2011

No company approaches sustainability more comprehensively—or more creatively—than the British retailer Marks & Spencer.

M&S is the UK’s largest clothing retailer and a big seller of food too (market share 3.9%). It operates about 1,000 stores and employs about 78,000 people. Its supply chain includes 2,000 factories and 20,000 farms. Some 21 million customers visit the stores each week, and revenues last year were £9.7 billion ($15.7 billion).

The company’s sustainability effort, which is called Plan A – because  there’s no plan B to protect the planet — touches executives, rank-and-file employees, customers and suppliers. Executive pay is based, in part, on meeting sustainability targets.  Store managers compete to save energy and waste. Factories and farmers that sell to M&S are rewarded for going “green.” Increasingly, customers invited to get involved, too.

“Plan A, at heart, is a change-management tool,” says Mike Barry, head of sustainable business for M&S.

I met Mike this week at M&S headquarters in London. M&S is making demonstrable short-term progress towards big long-term goals (about which, more below) but what stuck in my mind were these examples of how Plan A is changing the way the retailer does business:

Cleaning out the closet: M&S and Oxfam have teamed up to reward shoppers for recycling unwanted clothes bought at M&S. The clothes are donated to Oxfam, which raised about £3.3 million ($T.K million) by reselling them. Anyone donating an item of M&S clothing to Oxfam gets a £5 voucher to use on a purchase of £35 or more on clothing, homeware or beauty products at M&S. This develops brand loyalty, and points to the circular economy of the future, where stuff is recycled and make into something else instead of being thrown away. [click to continue…]

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Timberland’s Jeff Swartz: “This is hard.”

June 14, 2011

It’s the end of an era at Timberland, one of the most socially-responsible companies in America.

Family-owned since it was started in 1953 by Nathan Swartz, the grandfather of the current ceo, Jeffrey Swartz, Timberland  is being sold for $2 billion to VF Corp. VF is one of the world’s largest clothing and shoe companies; its brands include The North Face, Vans, Wrangler and JanSport.

What this means for the New England company’s well-known commitment to environmental responsibility and social justice remains to be seen.

Uncertain, too, is the future of  Jeff Swartz, perhaps the most passionate advocate in corporate America for the idea that companies have a moral obligation not only to generate wealth for shareholders but to do good for the world.

“This is hard,” says Jeff told me when we spoke yesterday. [click to continue…]

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Jonathan Lash is leaving World Resources Institute

May 11, 2011

Jonathan Lash, one of America’s most respected environmental leaders, is leaving the World Resources Institute to become president of Hampshire College, a small liberal arts college in western Massachusetts.

Lash, who is 65, has been president of WRI for 18 years. Only two people have led the Washington-based nonprofit: He succeeded Gus Speth, who ran WRI for 10 years.

WRI is often described as an environmental think tank, and, in fact, it is trusted as an independent, nonpartisan, science-based organization. So when General Electric’s Jeff Immelt announced the company’s EcoMagination initiative back in 2005, Lash was by his side.

But WRI also gets involved in the nitty-gritty of environmental problems around the world. Its work on establishing the value of ecosystems helped the nation of Belize protect its coastlines. Its expertise in public transport has helped build bus networks in India and Brazil. It helped developed the protocol used by U.S. government agencies to manage and reduce their emissions. WRI’s got a dozen people in China. This isn’t glamorous work, but it matters.

In an email to staff, Lash wrote: [click to continue…]

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Helen Clarkson: Beyond incrementalism, five steps to sustainability

April 10, 2011

Helen Clarkson

Today’s guest post comes from Helen Clarkson, US head of Forum for the Future, a London-based nonprofit that works with business and government leaders to “create a green, fair and prosperous world.” Helen’s got an interesting background: She trained as an accountant because she wanted to work in the international aid industry. “It’s quite boring, but you learn so much about business,” she told me. She spent six years at Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), doing stints in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria and the Congo, where she saw first-hand the intersection of economics, health and environment. She joining Forum for the Future in 2007, and opened its office in New York at the beginning of this year.

As you read the green business news over your morning (Fair Trade?) (organic?)  coffee, there’s  lots to get excited about in the world of sustainability.

2011 is shaping up to be the year of the electric car. Clean tech appears to be thriving. Innovative thinking brings us everything from greener cleaning products to new business models such as Zipcar.

But while these announcements promise more sustainable ways of doing things, turning to the science pages can quickly undo your positive mood. Put simply, water, forests, soil – all the essentials of life – are becoming depleted and degraded at a dangerous rate, and our climate is changing at a speed and on a scale far beyond anything modern humanity has ever experienced.

This is an unprecedented challenge. And when you put the scale of the challenge next to the scale of solutions being undertaken you realize that all is not that rosy in the world of sustainability. [click to continue…]

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Seventh Generation’s new CEO: John Replogle

February 13, 2011

Seventh Generation, the pioneer of the “green cleaning” industry, needs to become more stylish and innovative in order to grow.

So says John Replogle, the former chief executive of Burt’s Bees who was named CEO of Seventh Gen last week.

“We makes the best products in the market,” Replogle said. But the competition is intense, from companies like Procter & Gamble, SCJohnson, Method and Clorox’s GreenWorks.

To grow, Seventh Gen will need to update its tired packaging and continually improve its offerings, Replogle told me when we spoke by phone last week.

“We are going to out-innovate the competition in terms of meeting consumers’ needs in an environmentally-friendly way,” he said.

This means changes are coming to the Burlington, Vt-based firm. In a press release, Peter Graham, the company’s board chairman, said that Replogle’s job is

to ensure that Seventh Generation’s untapped growth potential [emphasis added] is fully realized in the years ahead, both financially and in our continued efforts to make our world a safer place for our children and the next seven generations.

Replogle, who is 45, is an interesting choice to lead Seventh Gen. [click to continue…]

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