MBA Course: Closing the Corporate Connection Gap
By Craig Bida, an Executive in Residence and Senior Fellow in Social Innovation at the Lewis Institute.
Most companies, particularly big ones, have gotten the memo by now: they’re taking steps—in some cases big, in others small—to leverage their assets in support of important social and environmental issues that they, their employees, and other stakeholders care about.
Unfortunately, though, many companies are still falling short on connecting with their stakeholders in meaningful ways around their corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social value-focused investments. They’re burying important stuff they’re doing in dense CSR reports that few people ever read, hesitating to boldly project their voice and values, and failing to invest in communicating their CSR and social value commitments and accomplishments. Companies need to get focused on this, and fast: By failing to connect, they’re missing out on a major opportunity to unlock emotion, build awareness, foster trust and affinity, and create engagement.
I recently experienced firsthand this important gap between stakeholder expectations, and the ability and appetite of companies to connect and engage about their work, while working with Cheryl Kiser to help teach an intensive, Babson MBA elective, Leading for Social Value. Focused on the multiple ways organizations can create both social and economic value in a world where the purpose of business is being challenged and redefined, this course invited into the classroom major companies and corporate foundations doing some pretty amazing things to unlock simultaneous social/environmental and economic value. As it turned out, many of these companies were also struggling to connect with and engage their stakeholders, and effectively tell their respective social/environmental impact stories.
It’s no longer news that consumer expectations of companies to “do good” are at all-time highs. Or that, more and more, employees—especially those just entering the workforce—simply won’t work for companies that fail to meaningfully integrate values, purpose, and social/environmental impact into what they do. As Project ROI, research conducted by IO Sustainability and Babson College’s Lewis Institute in 2015 showed, meaningful corporate responsibility investments can nurture, grow, and protect brand and reputation value—potentially by up to 11 percent of a company’s total value. This, provided among a few other core things, that companies leverage their CSR investments to connect in deep and meaningful ways with their key stakeholders.
So if connecting is so critical, why don’t companies do it? Some of my favorite reasons that organizations offer include:
- We don’t want to brag—that’s not why we do what we do…
- We let our work speak for itself…
- We’re a values-based company; we don’t like to talk about what we do…
- We do too many things; it’s hard to pick just one thing to talk about…
- We’re not Patagonia…
- If we talk about it, and something goes wrong, if it is not perfect, people will criticize us…
- We’re an engineering-driven culture; communicating isn’t natural to us…
During the classroom experience, it was gratifying to see that Babson’s sharp, passionate students had great insights and creative solutions to some of these challenges. Cheryl Kiser, the creator of this course, set the bar, putting it simply to one of our corporate guests that “leaders have a responsibility to lead” when it comes to connecting with stakeholders on important social and environmental issues.