February 13, 2019
THE BIG STORY
Purpose + Corporate Activism = A Winning Formula
A new paradigm for defining “success” is spreading throughout the business community. It’s a formula that combines a socially aware strategy with corporate activism, directed by the C-suite and backed by boards. The sum of this equation is a holistic measure of achievement, one that values social impact as highly as financial performance. What’s more, companies are finding profit in promoting purpose.
The latest evidence marking this historic shift is a Deloitte report that finds growing support for a broader, social view of a company’s mission. “More than one-third of the more than 2,000 C-suite executives responding to the survey rank ‘societal impact’ as the most important factor their organizations use to evaluate their annual performance, more than those citing ‘financial performance’ and ‘employee satisfaction’ combined,” says Punit Renjen, Deloitte Global CEO. “This year our research finds executives and their companies are strongly committed to improving the world as they embrace Industry 4.0. Our research suggests that business leaders have embraced the belief that doing good also makes good business sense—and organizations are beginning to put actions behind their words.” Read More >
– John Howell, Chief of Thought Leadership and Editorial Director, 3BL Media
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
CSR Strong in Food Retail, Fashion, and Technology Industries
Beneath the big headlines about a fossil fuel free energy future and commercial flights to space are those daily interactions with products and services that are changing the way we live. From getting dressed for work, to grabbing the morning coffee and breakfast health bar, and opening the laptop, we all connect every day with large industries that are adapting to new consumer trends. It follows that the fashion, food retail, and technology industries would attract a good deal of consumer concern about their practices and purposes. Read More >
Money Matters
If this newsletter mentions the big ideas more often than the bottom line, be assured that profits are never far from mind. Purpose must be supported by investment, the markets, and finally, sales of products and services—that is the basic description of business, after all. Recent financial news shows that the money is closely following the transformation of contemporary business to include a triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) definition of success. Here’s a sampling of how the investment community is changing its practices to confirm profits amidst the increasingly sustainability-driven strategies of companies. Read More >
C-SUITE COMMENTS
“At the beginning of the year, we hired our first director of culture. His full time job is to ensure that culture is nurtured throughout the organization everywhere. Messaging. Communications. Training. Onboarding. Living up to our values in everything we do.”
—Eugenio Pace, CEO, Auth0
Excerpted from Chief Executive
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
Else Bos has been appointed to the Board of Directors of The SASB Foundation, an independent non-profit responsible for the funding and oversight of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.
Bos currently serves as the executive director and chair of Prudential Supervision at De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank of the Netherlands. Bos joined De Nederlandsche Bank in July 2018 after serving as CEO of PGGM, the pension provider for PFZW, the second largest pension fund in the Netherlands. She also held various board positions at PGGM, such as Chief Institutional Business, Chief Executive Officer Investments, and COO Investments. Prior to this, she worked for NIB Capital Asset Management and ABN AMRO. Bos is also a strategy advisor to the board of FCLT Global, a non-profit organization working to encourage sustainable practices in business and investment decision-making, where she was a board member until the end of 2018.
David May has been named chief communications officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. May is an advertising industry veteran who held senior management posts in recent years at Goldman Sachs and AIG. He is based in Washington.
Marc Slater has been promoted to the post of Executive Director of Raphael House, the largest and only privately funded family homeless shelter in San Francisco. Slater joined Raphael House as director of development in 2016. The issue of homelessness has become a key corporate responsibility issue for Salesforce and other San Francisco-based companies.
Jay Livingston has joined Shake Shack as CMO, a new position. Formerly CMO at Bark, Livingston will take over for Edwin Bragg, marketing and comms VP, who left Shake Shack in June.