October 27, 2013

Change Starts at Home

October 27, 2013/ Ashley Jablow

Change starts at home

I realized recently that it's been a year since I last wrote on The Changebase. While I don't like to make excuses, I think I've got a pretty good one: motherhood. In January 2013, my husband and I welcomed our wonderful little boy. Little did we know what a journey we were about to embark on.

Over the course of my first nine months as a parent, I've reflected often on the topic of community. When I started this blog, I set my focus and intentions around communities of change – high impact, innovative people and organizations doing great work out in the world. When I went on maternity leave last December, my own personal community of change was redefined, becoming infinitely smaller, tighter and ultimately much more meaningful than I could have imagined.

I've always believed in the 'it takes a village to raise a child' mentality, and I've learned firsthand that my child is truly a village baby. We're incredibly lucky that our inner circle of family and friends have stepped up and supported our little baby and our little family during this daunting, scary and amazing time of transition and change. There's no way we could have grown into the happy trio we now are without the love and support of our greater community.

This past weekend I went to the Net Impact conference in San Jose and spent much of my time there continuing to reflect. Last year at the conference I was 7 months pregnant; now I am mother to an almost one-year old! And yet, like always I felt wrapped up in the warm arms of that incredible community.

The theme of the conference was Change Starts Here. Each of the keynotes focused on various elements required to create lasting change: leadership, a network, dialogue, an idea. As I sat in the keynotes and many of the sessions, I thought about the kind of change I want to create in the world, and what I need in order to get there. Like any new mom, I face the internal (and sometimes very visible, external) struggle of balancing my career aspirations and dreams with an almost-primal urge to soak up every moment I can with my son. Let's just say that while the conversation about work-life balance for working moms has been carrying on for decades, all of a sudden it feels very relevant to me.

What I'm learning is there's no resolution, no end-point to this conversation. Rather than a period, it's a comma – or maybe a run-on sentence that twists and turns and never lets you know where it's going. Some days work feels like my #1, my purpose and my focus. But then I come home, racing in the front door in time for playtime and bath time, and I think to myself: how could I possibly miss this? What could ever be more important than this moment, right here and now?

In the end, I'm starting to see that there's a ebb and flow to this new way of living. A give and take between any number of identities that I hold true and core to me, to Ashley. I'm a mom – and I love being a mom. I'm a professional – and I find fulfillment through working. And I'm lots of things in between. Sometimes one part of me shines through more than the others, but these parts of me are always there. Working in tandem to make up the whole.

No where was this more evident than at Net Impact's three-day conference. For two of those days, I poured myself into the schedule, the networking and the learning. I was inspired and energized, and eagerly awaiting day 3. Yet as I pulled into my driveway at the end of a long second day, I turned inward and asked myself, "if I could do anything tomorrow, what would it be"? The answer rang loud and clear: family. So, on day 3 of Net Impact – while my twitter feed hummed with conference insights and learning from just down the road – I stayed home with my son and husband for some time together. And it was a great day.

When I think about where change starts and how it happens, I agree: it starts with leadership and networks and a big idea. But in my definition of change, it also starts with my family. I'm not yet sure exactly what my mark on the world will be, or how I'll create my own community of change, but I do know that investing in my son, helping him grow into the person he's meant to be and building a community around him is one big way I'll get there. Change may start in many ways, but sometimes – in my world – it starts at home.

Over the course of my first nine months as a parent, I've reflected often on the topic of community. When I started this blog, I set my focus and intentions around communities of change – high impact, innovative people and organizations doing great work out in the world. When I went on maternity leave last December, my own personal community of change was redefined, becoming stronger, tighter and ultimately much more meaningful than I could have imagined.

I've always believed in the 'it takes a village to raise a child' mentality, and I've learned firsthand that my child is truly a village baby. We're incredibly lucky that our inner circle of family and friends have stepped up and supported our little family during this daunting, scary and amazing time of transition and change. There's no way we could have grown into the happy trio we now are without the love and support of our greater community.

This past weekend I went to the Net Impact conference in San Jose and spent much of my time there continuing to reflect. Last year at the conference I was 7 months pregnant; now I am mother to an almost one year-old! And yet, like always I felt wrapped up in the warm arms of that incredible community.

When I think about where change starts and how it happens, I agree: it starts with leadership and networks and a big idea. But in my definition of change, it also starts with my family. I'm not yet sure exactly what my mark on the world will be, or ultimately how I'll create my own community of change. But I do know that investing in my son, helping him grow into the person he's meant to be and building a community around him is one big way I'll get there. Change may start in many ways, but sometimes – in my world – it starts at home.

October 23, 2012

Designing for Business Impact

October 23, 2012/ Ashley Jablow

On OpenIDEO, our global community tackles a variety of big challenge topics, from improving maternal health using mobile technology, to providing accessible voting for citizens with mobility or language restrictions. Each challenge topic brings with it the chance to explore, learn about and design for social and environmental impact in a new and different way.

As I gear up to attend the 2012 Net Impact conference, I can’t help but connect the dots between our current OpenIDEO challenge and the 3,000 or so passionate, driven and connected MBAs and professionals who’ll be gathering in Baltimore, MD for this year’s event.

OpenIDEO’s Business Impact Challenge focuses on designing tools, resources, incentives and other solutions to help for-profit companies innovate for world benefit. At its core, this challenge centers around a topic that was (and still remains) very near to my own heart while I was in business school: doing good and doing well.

The sponsor for our challenge, the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value at Case Western Reserve University, has set its sights on creating a Nobel-like prize to not only recognize current business innovations that have made our society and environment better, but also to spur and catalyze future innovations that drive our world forward. Their intention for this OpenIDEO challenge is to collect inspirations and ideas from around the world that they can incorporate into their own effort toward a vision they call “Business as an Agent of World Benefit.”

Our challenge has opened its Concepting phase, where everyone is invited to collaboratively design ideas to inspire, recognize and enable businesses to innovate with world benefit in mind.

So from your own experience, what do you need to help you do this work better? How could you collaborate with the OpenIDEO community to design concepts that enable your organization to develop these kinds of world changing innovations? To help guide everyone’s efforts in the Concepting, we’ve put together a few tools – Challenge Themes and a Brainstorm in a Box toolkit.

If ever there were a conversation meant specifically for Net Impacters, this is it.

At conferences, it can be so easy to keep the conversation up in the clouds, to speak in what if’s and theories, rather than in the practical and the tangible. This week, why not balance out the theories with some real-world designing? Join our Business Impact Challenge and create concepts to support each of us as we move the needle toward businesses that innovate not just for financial return, but to change the world for the better.

See you on OpenIDEO!

And PS - this Saturday I'm speaking on a panel at the Net Impact conference about breaking into the impact sector and finding a job with purpose. I hope to see you there!

Our challenge has opened its Concepting phase, where everyone is invited to collaboratively design ideas to inspire, recognize and enable businesses to innovate with world benefit in mind.

For many of the folks attending Net Impact (or following along at #ni12), this concept – business innovating for world benefit – is already integral to your thinking, approach and outlook at school or at work. So from your own experience, what do you need to help you do this work better? How could you collaborate with the OpenIDEO community to design concepts that enable your organization to develop these kinds of world changing innovations?

To help guide everyone’s efforts in the Concepting, we’ve put together a few tools – challenge Themes and a Brainstorm in a Box toolkit. Check them out, and join our challenge.

If ever there were a conversation meant specifically for Net Impacters, this is it. At conferences, it can be so easy to keep the conversation up in the clouds, to speak in what if’s and theories, rather than in the practical and the tangible. This week, why not balance out the theories with some real-world designing? Join our Business Impact Challenge and create concepts to support each of us as we move the needle toward businesses that innovate not just for financial return, but to change the world for the better.

September 17, 2010

Making an Impact at Work

September 17, 2010/ Ashley Jablow

Britta Durtsche One topic that comes up often in CSR discussions is social intrapreneurship (in fact, it’s something I’ve written about previously on The Changebase).

Lots of people want to do CSR work, but not everyone is lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time to land that perfect CSR job.

Thankfully that doesn’t mean that you can’t still make an impact at work.

I recently sat down with Britta Durtsche, a true social intrapreneur who found her CSR calling in a most unexpected way.

Interestingly, Britta never expected she’d work at a big company like Best Buy.

A self-proclaimed “anti-corporate” college student who’d been active in causes like sustainable clothing and social enterprise, Britta never guessed that an internship with the consumer electronics giant would have such an impact on her professional career. But it did.

In 2004 as an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Britta decided to “test the waters of a corporate environment” by accepting an internship with Best Buy. By the end of the summer, she says, she was hooked on the company’s culture and energy.

After graduation Britta joined Best Buy as a Demand Planning Analyst in the Marketing group, and even though she spent most of her time in spreadsheets and forecasts, she loved it.

Soon after starting, Britta heard about a new group being formed at headquarters by a fellow employee named Hamlin Metzger. The goal was to get Best Buy employees engaged and active in an internal movement to integrate sustainability into their everyday work routines. Hamlin was looking for help, and Britta jumped at the chance to get involved. Soon after, in 2006 the Best Buy Social Responsibility (BBSR) team was launched.

From working with Facilities to improve recycling programs, to hosting a company-wide energy-themed film festival, Britta and the BBSR team worked hard to create buzz and generate excitement internally. In addition to these highly-visible initiatives, the BBSR team also hosted smaller informational meetings to provide employees the chance to learn more about how they could personally get involved.

And the most amazing part? Britta, Hamlin and their colleagues accomplished all of this in addition to their regular day jobs. In fact, according to Britta, it really just started as “little grassroots things I could take on in addition to my role” in Demand Planning.

Today, more than 200 employees are part of the BBSR team and it seems inevitable that this number will grow with time.

Britta attributes the program’s success to the fact that the BBSR team taps into employees’ personal interests and allows them to “bring their hearts” to work – even if their jobs aren’t directly related to corporate social responsibility.

The other crucial success factor, Britta says, was engaging Best Buy’s senior leadership every step of the way. Through personal, one-on-one outreach with VP’s and other leaders, Britta and the team secured buy-in from key influencers throughout the company – a strategy she believes helped to “carry the legitimacy” of the BBSR team’s efforts and model the way for others to join in.

Although she has since left Best Buy and the BBSR team, Britta has continued to work with social intrapreneurs who want to identify ways to bring sustainability into their workplaces and schools. Today Britta serves as the Impact Programs Manager at Net Impact, where she provides resources, tools and support for professionals and students who want to make a difference in their organizations.

For many Net Impact members and recent MBA graduates, working in sustainability or CSR is an important goal. Often, however, those jobs are tough to find and can be very competitive.

Nonetheless, Britta’s story reminds us that we don’t need “CSR” in our job title to make an impact at work. By finding a company she loved; volunteering to help with an issue she cared about; and engaging with employees at every level, Britta was able to meaningfully participate in and help guide Best Buy’s sustainability journey.

Clearly Britta’s story serves as a great example of finding ways to contribute to your company’s sustainability goals, even when you’re not working in the CSR team. But why tell her story now?

As you may know, Net Impact’s terrific annual CSR conference is taking place October 28^th through the 30^th at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and I want to encourage everyone to attend.

This year’s theme is “2020: Vision for a Sustainable Decade” and, given Net Impact’s own interest in social intrapreneurship, I have a hunch it’ll be a great place to learn more about how to get involved in your own company’s CSR journey.

They’re still announcing speakers and sessions, but trust me: the networking is great, the energy is contagious, and the learning is invigorating.

And the best part? For another week you can take advantage of early registration! So: what are you waiting for?

April 01, 2010

The Basics of Fair Trade

April 01, 2010/ Ashley Jablow

How many of you have heard of Fair Trade? I’d imagine many of you have. But how many could actually define it, or discuss it, or even promote it? My guess is not as many.

That was the case for me until recently. Recognizing that I’d heard a lot about Fair Trade but that I couldn’t actually talk about it at length with anyone, I felt the need for some information and education.

Enter my local Net Impact chapter and the event they hosted this week featuring Rodney North, self-proclaimed “Answer Man” from Equal Exchange.

Equal Exchange is a 24 year-old organization started by three guys trying to answer a question: “What if food could be traded in a way that is honest and fair, a way that empowers both farmers and consumers?”

As the founders saw it, there were three key problems they felt needed to be addressed:

Chronic, generational poverty amongst the tropical farming population, especially coffee farmers. Interestingly, they noted that while coffee farmers kept getting poorer and poorer, the industrialized nations that drank the coffee kept getting richer and richer.
Exploitative and undignified working conditions in the U.S., which they felt warranted the creation of a new democratic and cooperative business model.
Uninformed and disempowered consumers that were unaware of the environmental and social problems present in various production supply chains and marketplace systems.

With all of this in mind, Equal Exchange set out to create an organization that would tackle these three crucial issues.

Today, Equal Exchange sources fair trade coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas, nuts and berries from farmer-owned cooperatives in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. In their own words:

At Equal Exchange, we’ve created a different path to the market – one that brings farmers closer to you, and delivers more of your dollars to their communities. We do this by partnering with small-scale farmer co-ops that are democratically organized, which means they make decisions on their terms. Through this model, we believe food can become a delicious and powerful tool for creating Big Change for small farmers, their families and communities.

According to Rodney and the Equal Exchange website, Fair Trade encompasses a number of practices and ideals meant to provide adequate protection and support to growers, as well as increased assurance and certification for consumers. Some of these include:

Direct purchasing from the farmer cooperatives themselves – ie: no middlemen
Agreed-upon floor pricing for commodities so that even in times of financial crisis, farmers earn a living wage
An extension of credit by Equal Exchange and other importers so that farmers may invest in new resources and technology to grow a higher quality product
A fee paid by importers and wholesalers to cover the costs associated with Fair Trade certification
A seal attached to each and every product ensuring certified status to the consumer.

As Rodney put it so cleverly: “We don’t teach a man to fish. We just stop stealing from him.”

And whether it’s through the fair prices they pay farmers, the kind of cooperative organization they’ve created, or the partnerships they’ve built with consumer and faith-based organizations, it’s clear that Equal Exchange is pushing forward with its mission of creating a “more equitable, democratic and sustainable world”. fair-trade

As the talk wound down, Rodney touched on a couple of points that I thought were worth sharing.

When asked about Equal Exchange’s goals for the future, Rodney said that the organization’s explicit purpose is to be an example for others to follow. As an organization, Equal Exchange can only buy so much coffee itself! So its goal is to create a model that others can emulate. And, he said, the one good thing about our economic system is that organizations copy models that work.

He pointed to McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Ben & Jerry’s as examples of companies that have gotten into using Fair Trade products. While most would argue their intentions are purely based on maintaining or growing market share, Rodney still sees this as a success – because regardless of their intentions, they're still supporting Fair Trade principles and practices.

Finally, and I thought very insightfully, someone brought up the topic of the “Local Food” movement – that is, the idea of eating locally to promote more sustainable agriculture and food production.

“How does Fair Trade,” the attendee asked, “align with or diverge from the goals of eating locally?”

After admitting that the idea of eating locally can be problematic for Fair Trade proponents, Rodney said the best Equal Exchange can do is provide information and education to consumers looking to learn more. He also pointed out that some products – like coffee, for instance – just can’t be sourced locally.

So, while a neighborhood coffee shop might want to serve sustainably-produced beans, their best bet is to stick with fairly-traded, overseas products versus anything artificially produced closer to home.

All in all, a terrific night of learning, conversation, and food for thought (no pun intended). I encourage you, the next time you’re wandering the grocery aisles, to think about where your bananas or nuts or chocolate came from.

By being thoughtful and educating ourselves about the origins of our food and the people who produce it, we can go a long way in supporting the important mission of organizations like Equal Exchange.

Happy grocery shopping!

March 21, 2010

Engaging Your Employees in CSR

March 21, 2010/ Ashley Jablow

In the grand scheme of things, Corporate Social Responsibility is still an emerging field, which means that everything – from general strategy to best practices – is still being solidified.

One of the questions that is still debated quite often in the CSR community concerns the “business case” for this kind of work.

In a world where business decisions need to be justified through sound reasoning and quantitative measurements, it can be tough to explain why “doing good” is important.

I’ve tried to tackle this question in past posts, and the fact that I’m bringing it up again I think is proof that the jury’s still out on this one. Nonetheless, I did just hear one perspective on the topic that I thought was worth sharing with you.

Bob Willard is a sustainability author whose “claim to fame” (as he put it) is the quantification of the bottom-line benefits that companies can enjoy through CSR. He recently presented his ideas on the value of CSR as part of a Net Impact Issues-in-Depth call that I was lucky enough to listen to.

Bob started by laying out his general framework for the case for CSR, otherwise known as The 3 R’s:

Risks
Responsibilities
Rewards

The first category, Risks, is pretty obvious and serves as the most direct justification for engaging in CSR. From managing regulatory changes to preparing for the potential depletion of certain natural resources, corporations must consider what risks they face and how CSR might help mitigate exposure to those risks.

The next category, Responsibilities, really speaks to the new wave of expectations surrounding corporate involvement in the community and the environment. Whether from consumers, the media, NGO’s or even employees, there is clearly pressure being put on companies to be active and engaged in society – with reputation, loyalty and credibility at stake.

Yet it was the third ‘R’ – Rewards – on which Bob focused. As Bob put it, “There are surprisingly big rewards for taking up responsibility expectations and mitigating risk”.

In fact, according to Bob’s calculations (which he called conservative), these rewards can be sizeable for both large corporations and small-to-medium businesses, who can expect to earn at least 38% and 66% more profit, respectively, through CSR programs.

Not surprisingly, the biggest area of CSR reward comes from the eco-efficiencies created in sustainability programs (ie: saving water, reducing waste, etc).

What comes next? Interestingly enough, the second biggest reward opportunity comes through employee engagement in CSR programs. Whether through reduced recruiting and attrition costs or increased employee productivity, the HR benefit of CSR is not to be overlooked.

Now, we all know anecdotally that CSR improves morale, reduces turnover, and generally leads to more satisfied employees. What’s cool about what Bob has done is that he’s actually put numbers behind these assertions and provided the calculations that prove these rewards.

Admittedly, I’ve never been great at statistics – but when Bob presented a regression analysis showing a correlation (R² = .57) between employee engagement and CSR activities, I just about swooned!

While I’m not going to repeat everything Bob presented, you can check out his website to see presentations and spreadsheets that show the numbers behind his ideas. In general, Bob's overall point was that employee engagement drives business results (after all, happy employees beget productive employees) – and that CSR is one big way to dramatically improve the recruitment, retention and satisfaction of employees.

happy employees Thus, in essence, CSR leads to engaged employees which leads to increased returns for business. And voila - the business case for CSR in a nutshell!

As a job-seeker and future engaged employee, this assertion rings true for me. Nonetheless, if you’re still doubtful, I’ll leave you with some of Bob’s statistics as food for thought:

Recruiting

40% of MBA grads rated CSR as a an “extremely” or “very” important company reputation measure (Hill & Knowlton Jan 08)
MBA grads will sacrifice an average of $13,700 in annual salary to work for a socially responsible company (2003 Stanford University study)

Retention

83% of employees in G7 countries say their company’s positive CSR reputation increases their loyalty (GlobeScan 2006)
57% of employees say their company’s CSR reputation is a factor in retaining them (Towers Perrin-ISR global survey 2007)

Productivity

Fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues (Hay Group website, May 2009).
At Best Buy, a 2% increase in employee engagement at one of its electronics stores corresponds, on average, to a $100,000 annual rise in its sales (Business Week, “The Case for Optimism,” August 13, 2009).

So what do you think? Is employee engagement a compelling motivation for CSR at your company? Is this an argument that wins over senior company leaders? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

The Changebase

Ashley Jablow

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