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In 2007 Booz Allen Hamilton set out to help small nonprofits in the Washington, D.C. area gain access to expert advice and guidance on management and fundraising that was otherwise unattainable for them due to cost. In the four years since, the Booz Allen Hamilton Nonprofit Development Conference Series has grown exponentially and now successfully serves more than 400 unique nonprofit organizations with top tier guest speakers from around the metropolitan area who provide the sorely needed advice and guidance.
Conference Exclusive: Learning from the best
By Sylvia Kinnicutt, Research Associate, Boston College Center
Do you have ego maturity or optimistic passion? How about collaborative empathy or peripheral vision? These are just a few of the terms discussed in the conference session, “What will it take? Corporate Citizenship Competencies for the 21st Century.”
A competency is a personal characteristic that leads to outstanding performance in a job. The Boston College Center has been working in partnership with the Hay Group, an HR consultancy and leader in developing competency models, to apply this common business technique to the corporate citizenship function. When moderator Chris Pinney asked us how many of us had created our own job and written our own job description, more than half of the people in the room raised their hands. In this “pre-paradigmatic” field, the job of a corporate citizenship manager or director is still being shaped.
A competency model is one step towards professionalizing the role of a corporate citizenship leader. What are the requirements of this person? What are the goals and performance metrics? How does one know if they are doing a good job? Panelists Dave Stangis, VP of CSR at the Campbell’s Soup Company, and Bo Miller, Director of Corporate Citizenship and Global Contributions at Dow Chemical, have navigated their way through these unchartered waters for several years.
Telling the audience that building trusting relationships is the key to making any progress, and that they never expect to receive the credit for their great efforts, Stangis and Miller exhibit some of the key competencies the Center and the Hay group have identified. This new breed of leaders must not only be knowledgeable about social issues and stakeholders, they must also intimately understand the business, and communicate through business speak. They also need to be passionate about their goals and optimistic that their company will improve. Corporate citizenship is no place for the faint of heart or the impatient, as audience members commented on the high degree of resiliency they have developed and their ability to be motivated by small “wins.”
Competence for corporate citizenship requires many of the characteristics needed to lead change. The leaders in this session have defined the unique space of corporate citizenship through their experience and in so doing inspire leaders in all roles to develop competencies that will lead to positive change in 21st century companies.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:35 PM
It is quite common to receive more positive feedback and praise outside of one’s company than from the inside. On the plus side, this provides a good indication that a program is gaining some traction. On the negative, it can seem that one’s efforts are not paying dividends in terms of career advancement. “Resiliency” is nice sounding word for “bring a real thick skin” to work with you”.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:11 PM
[...] associated with performance–are the focus of a new research project now under way at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. The study distinguishes between skills and abilities, and identifies eight inherent [...]