The Corporate Social Mind

How Companies Lead Social Change from the Inside Out

Derrick Feldmann, Michael Alberg-Seberich

• Publisher: Fast Company Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781734324815
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

One Voice, United Efforts, and a Social Mindset ?The Corporate Social Mind introduces a new cultural and strategic approach to social issue engagement by companies. Today's social issues require a different mindset—one that builds on the expertise of both corporate social responsibility and marketing teams to achieve impact and public/consumer action for social change. This book helps corporate leaders design approaches that bring these crucial teams together by showing them how to build stronger campaigns, moments, and initiatives that positively change the world. The Corporate Social Mind helps leaders of both corporate social impact and marketing teams move beyond their own ways of thinking and come together to address social issues through a mindset that embeds key traits into daily work. Business as a whole, from research and innovation to marketing, can drive positive social change in society when it is integrated into the way we work. In The Corporate Social Mind, Derrick Feldmann and Michael Alberg-Seberich each bring together 20+ years of work on social issue campaigns, in marketing, in movements, and in social impact spaces to help companies leverage assets for positive social issue progress. You'll see how key companies have done this and how every leader, no matter the industry, can establish a culture in which this is the mindset.

CHAPTER 1

Trait 1: A Corporate Social Mind
Decides with Society in Mind

In a business with a corporate social mind, leadership ensures that societal benefit is on the table for all decisions, all the time. Decisions are never made without asking one vital question: How does this decision affect company, people, society, and the environment?

Adam Smith, credited as the father of capitalism, recognized that moral actions are part of human nature. “How selfish soever man may be supposed,” he said, “there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him . . .”¹ While Smith would be pleased with the overwhelming number of company executives who agree with him today, how many are truly putting their social principles into practice?

An examination of your own decision-making processes is imperative to embedding a true social ethos throughout your company.

FOCUS

Leaders who are responsible for decision-making processes can use this chapter to incorporate society into their management practices. Specifically, we will discuss the answers to these questions:

•When the team makes a decision, how can we incorporate and support society in that decision?

•When deciding on the best strategy to meet company goals, how will we help others understand how the approach kept society in mind?

•What is an effective decision-making process for a company with a corporate social mind?

TRAIT 1 IN ACTION

Every entrepreneur and business leader has to make hard choices regarding their company’s operations, people, and approaches to reaching key performance indicators (KPIs). Facing and responding to these challenges is what gives them the experience to lead and garner support from their employees, partners, and the consumers who buy their products and services.

Their decisions can also support what society and people within their communities desire and need to advance. Any decision operating in a silo without society in mind is one that runs counter to the symbiotic relationship companies have with the people in their communities. After all, companies depend on consumers’ livelihoods to reach most of their own KPIs.

Keeping society in mind requires empathy, argue the authors of “The Role of Social Cognition and Decision Making” in The Royal Society:

Successful decision making in a social setting depends on our ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The mirror system allows us to understand other people’s motor actions and action intentions. “Empathy” allows us to understand and share emotions and sensations with others. “Theory of mind” allows us to understand more abstract concepts such as beliefs or wishes in others . . . An important feature of decision making in a social setting concerns the interaction of reason and emotion.²

I can remember a situation quite clearly that illustrates the importance of this kind of deep understanding. My assistant texted me, saying that one of the leading brands in the country wanted me to fly to the West Coast for a private meeting—and soon.

It just so happened that I needed to be in the area anyway, so I said yes. But based on my history of advising companies on engaging the public (primarily millennials), I knew that one of two things had likely happened: the company had made a misstep or the public was denouncing a corporate policy or challenging the company’s approach to sourcing, manufacturing, or marketing a product—and either way, the brand wasn’t sure how to respond.

In this case, it was the latter.

This particular company underestimated the public’s negative response to a public issue campaign around a new product. Here’s the story:

The company was selling a product it claimed benefitted mental health. In what appeared to be a veiled attempt to boost sales, the company pledged to make a donation to a mental health nonprofit organization for every product sold. But millennials were skeptical—and for good reason. The gift and public issue were misaligned—to get the gift, someone had to buy the product—and consumers saw the company as trying to take advantage of an issue for its own gain.

As I advised the company on where the missteps occurred and the ramifications of making decisions without consulting the beneficiary—in this case, the mental health community—it realized two important lessons: First, it’s easy to make incorrect decisions when they are based on creative input without socialization. Second and more importantly, deciding without both public and private interests in mind (and putting society first) can have a powerfully negative effect on good intentions.

A Critical Question for Every Team

Being cognizant of the impact of our decisions on society puts people (employees and consumers) and communities at the table. In the process of making decisions, executives should consider society and societal benefit and, as we mentioned earlier, introduce a question during the process:

How does this decision affect company, people, society, and the environment?

Decisions have ripple effects beyond the company’s predetermined outcomes, and this question will help center leadership around the consequences of actions taken in the spirit of solely doing business.

Within the decision-making process, this question must be answered with insights and data before it is dismissed. This means companies must fully understand the impact of its decisions by assessing projected outcomes. This is key if the company is to exercise a true corporate social mind. Understanding a company’s overall impact and complete reach is imperative to ensuring decisions do not detract from the advances of society on issues of importance. This, therefore, presents a real opportunity for companies internally focused on social responsibility and community engagement to strengthen their analysis and research teams to address their impacts on society.

In traditional corporate social responsibility and philanthropy units within companies, the focus tends to be on new initiatives or assessing the impact of the company’s work against globally accepted practices and indicators. This is a starting point, however a reactive approach to assessment and not one that truly integrates forward thinking and moving the impact-on-society question into real-time decision making. It is good business planning to understand the effects of one’s decisions on society in the moment and not in the past, after decisions have already realized outcomes and are too late to amend. Changing historical corporate behaviors and operations that have become precedent is often a challenging and onerous task—the path of most resistance.

To mitigate risks to employees, community, and society, business leaders must create a new cadence of decision making within innovative practices that caters to prompt, responsive, and iterative methods of learning, design, measurement, refinement, and scale. Sometimes these practices can be in the form of risk assessments for products, services, or goods, as in the EU REACH regulation for chemicals from 2006. However, this goes beyond typical assessments at the completion of product design into formative development and decision making at the onset of product innovation.

An example of this approach is seen in Siemens’ Business to Society report, where the company effectively discusses how its new technologies and innovations impact the lives of people in the United States.³

An effective corporate leader with a social mindset will use a new cadence of decision making, as illustrated below.

Decision-making Process for Innovation

1. CREATE INNOVATION CONCEPT

Out of a desire to make/refine a product or service that impacts the consumption behaviors of the public, corporate leaders create a new concept for discovery, testing, and market introduction.

2. DEFINE SOCIETAL IMPACT

Once the concept is designed, the approach of the new/refined product/service is assessed for projected impact on people, society, and environment. The concept is refined to improve societal impact performance indicators.

3. DESIGN INNOVATION PROTOTYPE

Once the concept has been improved to enhance societal impact, the product/service is developed into a prototype for a market test or limited introduction into the field.

4. ASSESS SOCIETAL IMPACT

While the product/service is introduced into the market or within a targeted public distinct marketing area (DMA), the product is assessed for use and risk to society, people, and the environment concurrently with viability assessments.

5. REFINE INNOVATION PROTOTYPE

Once the field test is complete, the product is then refined to enhance its impact on the individual consumer or business. Leadership talks openly about the impact of the product on the desired market and society to determine additional refinements that improve impact on people, society, and the community holistically.

6. ASSESS SOCIETAL IMPACT

A new prototype is designed and reassessed for societal impact, and a final analysis should determine whether it will have the desired impact at scale. This deep analysis will include various methods of listening, interviewing, real-time data capturing, and predictive models. The assessment team will engage stakeholders (various audiences within society that have minimal to maximum exposure to the product/service) to understand societal benefit from the company’s actions.

7. SCALE INNOVATION

Once the innovation is introduced more broadly into the consumer marketplace or general public, understanding how each community and sub-audience within new markets (DMAs) react will be imperative, given the localized differences among culture, beliefs, and consumption behaviors.

8. MONITOR SOCIETAL IMPACT

Just as a product is consistently assessed for performance-related metrics, it should also be assessed for societal impact. Societal KPIs must be designed and consistently measured to determine the long-term societal impact of decisions. Ongoing iterations may be necessary to improve impact as performance innovations are implemented.

As you can see, a corporate social mindset and culture incorporates decision making with society in mind throughout the product-development process. Assessments at any point without ongoing refinements based on feedback put the company’s mission and values at risk. If the company values mutual respect and support and purports to care whether society is advanced because of its work, then this process is not just ideal—it’s necessary.

How Microsoft Decides with Society in Mind

Microsoft uses a corporate social mindset when developing and designing Microsoft devices, innovating through approaches designed to measure and assess societal impact throughout the process.

Active in more than 100 countries, Microsoft’s Devices Division is responsible for the ideation, design, development, manufacture, sourcing, compliance, packaging, and distribution of the company’s devices and related software products. Across this process, sustainability programs are overseen by experts from many industries that bring unique vantage points into product development and societal impact. They, in turn, are supported by an internal safety, compliance, and sustainability team whose mission is to ensure flawless product compliance while p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Note from Derrick Feldmann
• Note from Michael Alberg-Seberich
• Introduction: Combining Our Voices to Move Society Toward Change
• Chapter 1: Trait 1: A Corporate Social Mind Decides with Society in Mind
• Chapter 2: Trait 2: A Corporate Social Mind Lives Its Values
• Chapter 3: Trait 3: A Corporate Social Mind Uses Resources for Society’s Benefit
• Chapter 4: Trait 4: A Corporate Social Mind Listens Before Acting
• Chapter 5: Trait 5: A Corporate Social Mind Has a Social Voice
• Chapter 6: Trait 6: A Corporate Social Mind Leads Social Collectives
• Chapter 7: Trait 7: A Corporate Social Mind Measures Social Impact
• Chapter 8: Trait 8: A Corporate Social Mind Innovates for Social Good
• Conclusion: Business Value and Social Value as One Philosophy
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors