I have a question for all you executive coaches working in organizations. How common is it to hear discussions on “going green” and corporate social responsibility? I’m reading a lot of things right now about this:
- Harvard Business Review, September ’09: Why Your Next Business Model Must Be Green
- Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman
- Green Recovery: Get Lean, Get Smart, And Emerge From the Downturn on Top, by Andrew S. Winston
- Irresponsible Corporate Responsibility: Doing Good Isn’t Always Done Well
by Alyssa Dver on Marketing Profs Blog - CSR- So What? by Sarah Mitchell on Global Copywriting blog
- CSR: Good Ways for Small Business to Make a Positive Impact by Sarah Mitchell, Global Copywriting blog
But is corporate social responsibility something executives are serious about? Or just trying to sound good, for marketing purposes, and pleasing the public? These books make a good case based on bottom line analytics and real results from corporations such as WalMart, HP and others. But sometimes I wonder how far executives will walk their talk… comments welcome.
Inc. magazine writes about complacency & a sense of urgency in their current online edition. In this great article, Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, author of A Sense of Urgency and Leading Change, talks about how to lead during a recession
Here’s an excerpt:
John Kotter got an enviable — if unintentional — endorsement when then-candidate Barack Obama began inserting the phrase a sense of urgency into his comments about the economy. A Sense of Urgency (Harvard Business Press, 2008) is the title of Kotter’s latest book on fostering change in organizations — a subject the Harvard Business School professor has owned since publishing the seminal Leading Change, in 1996.
Kotter believes there are two kinds of urgency — and, like cholesterol, one is good and one is bad. The good kind is characterized by constant scrutiny of external promise and peril. It involves relentless focus on doing only those things that move the business forward in the marketplace and on doing them right now, if not sooner. The bad kind — to which many companies have recently succumbed — is panic driven and characterized by breathless activity that winds up producing nothing demonstrably new.
This is an article you should go read in it’s entirety because it’s full of wisdom for entrepreneurs and leaders at all levels. I love the references to our own political quagmire in Washington D.C.
If you wish to use an article about this topic of complacency and a false sense of urgency, I’ve written one you can purchase. Read more about it here: Complacency – It’s Everywhere.
