By Brad Googins

These times are certainly not for the timid or small thinkers. Confronted with perhaps the greatest challenge of our lifetime, we face the urgent task of reinventing the future for our businesses and our society.

This has led me to recall a much earlier time in my life when President Kennedy declared the goal of putting a man on the moon within 10 years. Maybe that is why I was quite taken by an article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review by Gary Hamel, one of the more sage management gurus. In the piece, he describes how he brought together a distinguished group of management scholars and business leaders to lay out a road map for reinventing management.

Their immediate goal was to create a list of make or break challenges that should be the focus of energy for management innovators everywhere. He referred to these challenges as “management moon shots” and acknowledged that he was inspired by an exercise by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering that proposed 14 grand engineering challenges such as reverse engineering the human brain. Why shouldn’t managers and scholars commit to equally ambitious goals?

So I immediately thought corporate citizenship professionals should use these extraordinary times to envision our own moon shot. Will there ever be a better time to capitalize on the uprooted markets and the cracks in the foundations of finance and capitalism? How could their be a more perfect time, a more propitious environment where questions are trumping answers and where leadership and vision are in such short supply?

Is this not the best time to think boldly and creatively around the game changing that we have for a long time felt was necessary for a sustainable capitalism and for achieving a just and sustainable world?

What emerged as Hamel’s management moon shots reveals that the time for citizenship is before us. Just look at the first two that were formulated:

• Ensure that the work of management serves a higher purpose. Tomorrow’s management practices must focus on the achievement of socially significant and noble goals.
• Fully embed the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems.

I might have expected these results from a retreat of corporate citizenship practitioners and academics – but from management gurus? What this really tells me is that the underlying essence of corporate citizenship has now become critical to business success. Maybe we have come a lot farther along on our journey than I had thought, or maybe the time has really arrived for citizenship.

In any event these findings suggest several things to me.

1. Integrating and aligning corporate citizenship is critical to the success of business.
   We have talked about this for some time. But while the awareness and understanding of strategic integration has made its way into the literature and rhetoric, it has not been deeply embedded in the frameworks and practices within companies. We need to accelerate our translation of the aspiration and the desire into the planning and implementation of citizenship, and build it into the core of the business. The time has come to lift up citizenship and drive it into the business at a time when others are finally coming around to understanding the value proposition.
2. Branding corporate citizenship
   I am not convinced that most folks, including those in senior management, really understand corporate citizenship – from its value proposition to its usefulness to both business and social goals. We have been aware for some time now about the confusion (Isn’t corporate citizenship an oxymoron? Isn’t it about philanthropy and obeying the law?). Consequently, without a platform of awareness and demonstrated value, it becomes virtually impossible to jump into strategy, value creation and integrating citizenship into the business. So while the opportunity is here to raise citizenship to new heights, there remains significant work to be done on the foundation.
3. Readiness
   I am not convinced that corporate citizenship professionals in most firms are ready to assist management in this moon shot. Too few understand the business. Most have not created effective relationships with key internal stakeholders and have not articulated the vision and voice of leadership that will be necessary for moving into the next circle. Although great strides have been made over the past few years, there is no established game plan for just the occasion that is now emerging. The wind of change is blowing all around us but we’ll never reach the distant shores if we don’t have the savvy to tack and fill the sails of corporate citizenship. What a shame it would be if, as the conditions shift in our favor, we are simply not ready to take advantage of the circumstances.
4. A call to arms
   Now is the time for the corporate citizenship community to come together so we can create our moon shots. In front of us lies a historic opportunity that we may not see again. In short, this is an opportunity to create visionary goals that will inspire, stretch and mobilize us; that will inspire us and pull in the growing crowds of folks from many places who are trying to find new ways to create a more just and humane society. Finding the new balance between economic and social goals and between the success of the company and the success of the society is both the challenge and the opportunity. Are we ready? Anyone out there want to help pull this together?

I will continue to address this theme in future blogs and focus on the new set of challenges that are facing corporate citizenship managers dealing with this volatile and unforgiving business and economic environment. I’ll also be suggesting a few possible moon shots that could launch corporate citizenship into the future.

In the meantime, I would love to know what moon shots you might envision.

Tags: corporate citizenship, economy, moon shot
This entry was posted by Brad Googins on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 10:52 am, and is filed under Director's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.