• Get grounded in principals of good corporate citizenship
• Learn from what other firms are doing to create well integrated and strategic approaches to corporate citizenship management
• Leave with management tools that will help you better assess the stakeholders and issues that are material to your business
• Connect – and share insights and learning – with managers from other companies who are wrestling with similar corporate citizenship management challenges
• Improve your ability to secure buy-in and engagement from executives and others inside the company who are critical to your success

Visit our website now to learn more about how the Institute on Corporate Citizenship can make you more effective in your role. Register by Dec. 21 for a special rate at the Conrad Miami hotel where the Institute is being held.

The Institute on Corporate Citizenship is one step toward earning a Certificate in Corporate Community Involvement Management. For more information on the Institute or our certificate program, email Karen O’Malley or call 517-552-1553.

Amid the financial struggles, the executive body of the European Union, the European Commission, recently published a new policy on corporate social responsibility that recognizes the role that CSR or corporate citizenship can play in an economic recovery. In explaining why the commission is presenting a new strategy now, the introduction to the commission’s report reads: “The economic crisis and its social consequences have to some extent damaged consumer confidence and levels of trust in business. They have focused public attention on the social and ethical performance of enterprises. By renewing efforts to promote CSR now, the Commission aims to create conditions favorable to sustainable growth, responsible business behavior and durable employment generation in the medium and long term.”

As part of the strategy, the commission offers a new definition of CSR as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society.” It contends that complying with legal and regulatory requirements  is a prerequisite for meeting that responsibility and that to do so fully requires companies to “have in place a process to integrate social, environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders, with the aim of: maximizing the creation of shared value for their owners/shareholders and for their other stakeholders and society at large; and identifying, preventing and mitigating their possible adverse impacts.”

The commission goes on to present an action agenda for 2011-2014 that covers eight areas:

• Enhancing the visibility of CSR and disseminating good practices
• Improving and tracking levels of trust in business
• Improving self- and co-regulation processes
• Enhancing market reward for CSR
• Improving company disclosure of social and environmental information
• Further integrating CSR into education, training and research
• Emphasizing the importance of national and sub-national CSR policies
• Better aligning European and global approaches to CSR

No doubt Europe’s economic crisis is reverberating in all corners of the globe. It will be interesting to see how a renewed and unified approach on the responsibilities of business in Europe will influence the practice of corporate citizenship in the United States and elsewhere.

Among the images that present the contrasts between these percentages, one of the most widely reported was of the group of affluent citizens attending a cocktail party on the balcony of the legendarily exclusive Cipriani’s during the first week of the protest (now into its third week). Attendees were filmed sipping champagne, looking down on the thousands of protesters, and even snapping photos of the throng with their smartphones. That moment has been compared in the press to the Roman circuses and the comparison is sobering given how apt the analogy seems and how the Roman era ended. Though the protest seemed to be well contained during my visit to the city, more than 780 people have been arrested since it started on September 17 – more than 700 of them for obstructing the Brooklyn Bridge this past weekend.

The fact that the occupation/movement/protest (leaderless non-specific expression of a broad cultural zeitgeist of disaffection) has drawn so many is significant. Similar actions are taking place in multiple cities.  As significant as the numbers drawn is the fact that despite having a diverse set of complaints, the local foci of the protest in all of the cities where the movement has taken hold are the symbolic centers of commerce – in Boston, the Federal Reserve; at the epicenter of the movement, Wall Street, which is symbolic of – if not synonymous with – business in the U.S.

Media interviews with participants reveal a collection of people of disparate backgrounds – a 60-year-old unemployed veteran, grandmothers, average workers, college students and recent grads – drawn together to channel their shared anger over the trend of income inequality and the corruption of the American way into advocacy for our collective well-being.

Protesters have numbered in the several thousand over the weekends. On the Monday and Tuesday when I observed them, there were a few hundred. Where had those protesters gone? Many probably went back to work at their jobs in corporations. Going back to a corporate job after protesting against Wall Street might seem incongruent. It seems that this is an inherent condition of modern human experience. Just as Google Circles allows us to share different facets of experience with people who inhabit each sphere of our lives, so must we think long and hard about what we project and protect, through action or deed in all of our citizenship domains.

Corporations are ultimately groups of people connected by implicit and explicit contracts and covenants.  When the interests of the corporation and the individual are in sync, there can be tremendous potential for positive impact. I heard a powerful example of this on the same trip to New York at the Commit!Forum from Jeffrey A. Joerres, CEO of the ManPowerGroup. He recounted that after the tsunami last year, the Japanese government realized its capacity to generate power sufficient to restart manufacturing operations was 30 percent shy of what was needed. Collectively, Japanese corporations turned off all of the lights in their high-rise offices during the day and all non-essential night lighting (think Times Square on a massive scale going dark except for street lights). Households participated as well. With this collective action, Japan was able to conserve and redeploy almost all of the electric power required to restart the manufacturing so vital to its economy. Individual companies put the interest of the entire economy over the interests of their own firms.

Seeing the protesters on Wall Street made me wonder if we have in this country the collective will and ability to focus our actions in a disciplined way toward a common goal. At the Center, we talk about citizenship as a combination of rights, obligations, privileges, and responsibilities – and we focus on corporations as the unit of analysis. In the United States, there is cultural emphasis on the rights of individual people or entities to act freely, to compete, and to win status, resources and power, to the fullness of their ability, and to exercise privileges resulting from successful efforts. Our cultural focus on rights of individuals seems increasingly out of balance with ensuring that basic needs are met for a growing number of disaffected and increasingly disadvantaged people in this country. The focus on competition and individual achievement doesn’t seem to improve our well-being or happiness. With one of the highest GDPs in the world, the U.S. does not rank at the top of any of the global indices for educational attainment, health, or happiness.

At a time when national employment and poverty statistics paint a picture of greater want for more people than at any time since the War on Poverty in the ‘60s, we cannot rely on corporations alone to solve significant social and environmental problems, nor can we blame corporations for all of the significant problems that we face.

The perspectives of greater numbers of individual citizens seem to indicate that we are living in a world that we don’t like or want.  Recent Gallup polls put approval ratings of big business and Congress at the lowest levels that they have ever been (each near 15 percent).  This is a world of our own making.

Individual and corporate citizenship co-exist in the U.S., and one cannot substitute for the other. Both must be exercised in order for our system to work.  As individuals, we must stop looking to institutions to solve our problems.  Good corporate citizenship is necessary and should be expected of firms, but it typically and appropriately addresses the question, “What kind of world do we want to do business in?”

Many firms engage in good citizenship and contribute positively to our civic and social environments.  Employees of corporations should support these initiatives and act as ambassadors for the good works that their employers can accomplish with and beyond profit-making. This employee involvement, however, should not be mistaken for personal civic engagement.

The rhetoric of occupywallstreet.org may not represent my perspectives and values, but if I do not participate in an alternative collective, I deserve what I am served. Corporate citizenship does not replace personal individual action nor can it answer the question, “What kind of world do I want to live in?”  As individual citizens, we must make sure that our institutions seek the outcomes that represent, as nearly as possible, the answer to the latter question.

“All too often, corporate philanthropy involves dropping a wad of money on organizations that are doing work on an issue that the corporation ‘cares’ about, and then saying goodbye,” wrote Fast Company Assistant Editor Ariel Schwartz. “But sometimes, corporations actually bring their know-how and human capital to bear on a problem, in addition to just giving money. The global pharmaceutical company Abbott is taking the second path, focusing on long-lasting initiatives that can grow local economies in struggling areas. Case in point: Abbott’s work to combat severe malnutrition in Haiti.”

Schwartz goes on to tell the story that began almost two years ago when Abbott sent a team of people to Haiti to check out Partners in Health’s production facility for Nourimanba, a high-protein, high-calorie fortified peanut-based paste. Not long after the trip, however, Haiti was struck by an earthquake and Abbott had to think about building the factory from the ground up. Undaunted, the pharmaceutical company and Partners in Health got to work planning everything from the type of equipment that would be used to a diagnostic process for Nourimanba that tests for local toxins.

Schwartz reported that the Nourimanba facility is about to break ground with construction and operation performed by local workers. The peanuts will come from hundreds of local farmers and eventually the facility could also be sued to sell regular peanut butter to locals with proceeds going back into production, ensuring Partners In Health could continue giving away Nourimanba for free.

“We want to make sure that organizations have the tools to make a real change,” Kathy Pickus, VP of global citizenship and policy at Abbott, told Schwartz. “If only every corporate philanthropy took such care with its projects.”

Corporate citizenship professionals are often asked why their firms should make investments in the community and environment – and there is then often a scramble to find a financial return justification. It is neatest when we can do well by doing good, but that is not always possible. Sometimes the return on community investments is not immediately quantifiable (on the quarter) and sometimes returns are purely social. They may create a more welcoming or more manageable environment in which the business can operate, but the firm might be just as profitable without having made them.

The empirical link between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) has been investigated for 35 years. In 2009, researchers from Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Berkeley analyzed 192 effects revealed in 167 frequently cited studies (Margolis, Elfenbein, Walsh). Their analysis revealed that positive corporate social performance correlates to small but positive financial performance effects in all but 2 percent of the studies they analyzed. Their conclusion: while these social investments yield typically only very small if any financial returns, they have not been shown to diminish value to shareholders. The major implication of this research is that Milton Friedman’s (1970) widely adopted concern about social investments reducing value for shareholders is likely misplaced. The data indicate that companies are not penalized for social investments. The data also reveal that firms that do well are more likely to do good (i.e., strong financial performance is a better predictor of strong social performance than the other way around).  Penalties seem to accrue only to firms that do wrong and perhaps only if they are caught. Analysis also suggests that firms might benefit from communicating more about their good works.

The association of positive effects is strongest for the specific corporate social performance dimensions of charitable contributions, and environmental performance, and when the actions were reported by observers or self-reported by the firm. The association is weakest for the dimensions of corporate policies and transparency and when CSP is assessed more broadly through third-party audits and mutual fund screens.

Correlation between revealed misdeeds and negative performance was also observed. Though not included in the study, it is worth mentioning that an interesting characteristic of this type of effect is that it can be contagious beyond the firm that has conducted the misdeed, think of oil spills and oil stocks; toxic CDOs and financial stocks, etc.

Given that the data seem to prove that corporate social investment can’t hurt and it just might help on the margin, perhaps the question we should be asking about firm investments in social issues is “Why not?” In their article, the scholars identify questions that will only become more important to understand as we work as a society to manage our limited resources and distribute our limited wealth,

“The impact that organizations have on our lives, along with the meaningful purposes that people (employees, customers, citizens, and investors) seek to pursue through them, implicates a much larger question …. How do we live with organizations that shape the distribution of costs and benefits, advantages and burdens within society? How do we live with organizations that infuse our lives with meaning, or fail to?”

Last month, Gallup released its annual poll on the confidence of the American public in institutions. Big business received consistently low scores with fewer than 20 percent reporting a great deal or quite a lot of confidence from a 1975 high of 34 percent. Only banks and politicians have seen more precipitous declines during the same period and only Congress rates lower currently. Even from a perspective of enlightened self-interest and risk-management, it would seem reasonable to be concerned that sustained levels of distrust and low confidence will not continue to occur without consequence.

Forty-five years ago in his Cape Town speech, Robert F. Kennedy issued a call to action to the youth of that era (now two generations removed). He talked of the danger of allowing personal ambition and financial success to create a sense of complacency that promulgated the status quo noting: “We must act effectively.  We must deal with the world as it is (AND) …idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems.”

Our world is better today in some dimensions than it was then and worse in others. Our successive generations have not done all that we can, certainly, but we will make no additional progress if we do not answer Kennedy’s call to envision a better world and ask, “why not?”  Studies show that it can’t hurt.

Having data like the studies cited is one of the reasons the Center recently introduced our Research Briefs – a new knowledge product that provides summaries of recent or seminal research findings from corporate practice and academic study. Our goal is to provide you with information that will help you demonstrate the value of your work and how it ties to company management and performance.

Margolis, Joshua D., Elfenbein, Hillary Anger and Walsh, James P., “Does it Pay to Be Good…And Does it Matter? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Corporate Social and Financial Performance” (March 1, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1866371

The Global Education Research Network symposium hosted by the Center for Corporate Citizenship opened with a panel titled “Looking at the Big Picture of Non-Financial Reporting.” Moderator Brad Googins, associate professor at the Carroll School, was joined by Steve Lydenberg, partner, Strategic Vision, Domini Social Investing, and Michael Sadowski, vice president, SustainAbility Inc. Googins asked the pair of experts to roll out a crystal ball and give their take on where CSR reporting is headed.

Lydenberg wasted no time sketching his view of the future. “In my view,” he said, “CSR is headed toward mandatory reporting.” But he added that big questions remain about the relationship between mandatory and voluntary reporting.

Sadowski shared a few topics that are on SustainAbility’s mind of late:

1. Driving greater value from reporting for companies and users
2. Broadening the notion of integrated reporting to include targeted communications to specific stakeholder groups (e.g. consumers, employees
3. Engaging mainstream investors and analysts on sustainability issues
4. New models of assurance that focus on how “future-proof” companies are rather than validating past information and efforts.

Googins asked Lydenberg what trends are out there that make him see mandatory reporting on the horizon.

Lydenberg said that while more companies are voluntarily issuing CSR reports and there was an increase in first-time reporters last year, he feels actions by government and market authorities indicate that mandatory reporting is coming to the United States in the next three years. He cited moves by authorities in France, South Africa, Denmark and Singapore toward mandates around reporting and noted political reasons in the United States.

He pointed to the swinging pendulum in the balance of power between government and business in the United States that saw corporations operate with free reign as they came into being late in the 19^th century and in the late 1970s swung back as government controls were at their most extreme. Since then, Lydenberg observed, businesses and the markets have been allowed to reassert control. But with the financial meltdown of 2008-09 and the problems it caused, he said, government is more involved again and may push for CSR mandates as a form of soft law.

Sadowski agreed that momentum is pushing toward mandatory reporting, though he expressed his hope for reporting frameworks to be industry specific. He also remarked that while mainstream investors have shown interest in and a commitment to sustainability, few have started to act on this on a daily basis, including how they allocate their capital.

Who gets value out of reports?

When asked about the value for companies in reporting, Sadowski responded that the fundamental case has not changed since SustainAbility began its work on reporting in the early 1990s: reporting helps companies manage their efforts, drive strategy and build trust with stakeholders. Over time, reporting has well served particular stakeholder groups: socially responsible investors, NGOs and others. We now see leading companies experimenting with new formats and channels to engage new audiences and derive greater value from reporting.

Lydenberg said that a Harvard Business School study of the use of CSR data by market analysts found that companies with good CSR data received more positive findings from analyst. Googins interjected that in a 2008 joint study by McKinsey & Company and the Center for Corporate Citizenship – “How Virtue Creates Value for Business and Society” – analysts told researchers that they saw value in CSR data but didn’t see it communicated very well which made them wonder how much they should be interested.

Reporting methods and approaches

Addressing the issue of third-party assurance of reporting, Sadowski discussed the differences between formal, “accounting-style” assurance and informal, stakeholder-driven assurance (e.g. report review committees). Both have value, but companies must ask who they are trying to influence or convince.  Sadowski added, “It is important that assurance of either kind provides stakeholders with a high degree of comfort that a company is prepared to compete in a future in which they will face significant environmental and social challenges and opportunities.”

Lydenberg commented that reporting is an easy first step that allows investors and other stakeholders to engage with companies. But he added that the reporting process is as important as the actual report and “good reporting is built on good engagement.”

Sadowski touched on the concept of open data reporting, in which raw data on operations is made available for stakeholders to interpret and manipulate. While still nascent, and practiced primarily by government agencies, he said, open data could prove a valuable tool to unlock greater value from reporting.

Lydenberg said that while the range of communication is broad he sees two types: market and public policy. Communications aimed at the market get to the point of purchase with vehicles such as labeling to reach consumers and integrated reports for investors. Most advanced companies, Lydenberg said, report in the more difficult public policy sphere about social outcomes as opposed to company outputs. As an example, he cited Campbell Soup setting a goal to reduce obesity by 50 percent in 10 communities around the country near its operations.

Regarding a move to integrated financial and non-financial reports, Sadowski remarked that integrated reports won’t have the “litany” of content now found in CSR reports but he said they will have core information that people will read. “The more targeted and focused it becomes the better,” he said.

Reporting for the future

Lydenberg and Sadowski agreed that the information being reported by companies must become more relevant. Sadowski said that what is reported by a company may be fine, but what is not reported is even more important and there needs to be an assessment of what is missing.

What a company is going to do in the future is an important second part of reporting, Sadowski said. “How are they positioned for future issues?”

Lydenberg said that much of the dissatisfaction with reporting stems from the fact that reports from individual companies do not offer a view of the larger picture. “What do you want: a sense that a company is headed in the right direction or whether society is headed in the right direction?” He added, “What difference does it make if one company is doing well but overall society is not.”

The origins of Target’s corporate responsibility philosophy began many years ago out of a modest-sized department store called Dayton’s Dry Goods. At that time, our founder, George Draper Dayton, proclaimed that our business must maintain “the higher ground of stewardship.” It was at that moment when Target’s reputation for dependable merchandise, fair business practices, and a generous spirit of giving was born. Ever since then, we’ve taken that philosophy and expanded on it—we not only believe we must maintain “the higher ground of stewardship,” but we also believe we are Here for Good.

For Target, being Here for Good goes beyond giving our guests the highest quality products for a fair price. It means we believe in providing the tools and resources for our team to lead healthy lives and enjoy fulfilling careers, demanding safe working conditions and ethical practices from our vendors around the world and paying attention to the impact our business has on the environment by making sustainability commitments we can keep. Ultimately, it means continuing our investments in communities. Ever since 1946, we’ve given 5 percent of our pretax profits back to the community. Today, our 5 perecent giving program invests more than $3 million a week in hundreds of communities throughout America.

We are extremely proud of our hard-earned reputation of dependability, fairness, and generosity—and every one of Target’s 355,000 team members work hard to make sure we never take it for granted. As part of my participation at the 2011 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, I presented some rules that every organization can use to be mindful of their reputation—rules that may be unconventional to some.

A New Reality

I proposed these rules because, as leaders and practitioners of corporate responsibility and citizenship, we face a new reality. We now live in the age where a single, misplaced Tweet has the potential to set off an incredibly destructive chain of events—a chain of events that can vanquish any organization’s hard-earned name and reputation.

If you remain unconvinced, just imagine the following scenario:

From the moment you began reading this article, every email that your organization has on a server somewhere—email messages from your CEO, senior management, personal and confidential messages—are showing up in chat rooms, message boards, and websites all over the Internet and piquing the interest of every news organization in the world.

Seems pretty far-fetched doesn’t it?

It’s not. It recently happened to HBGary Federal, an information security firm working with the FBI to investigate the pro-Wiki Leaks group “Anonymous.” Incidents like these are becoming the new norm and organizations can no longer control their corporate reputation or image the way they’ve done so in the past.

Whether its entities like WikiLeaks or Anonymous or hidden-camera tactics like those used against ACORN and National Public Radio, external forces are now playing a role in defining what organizations represent to the world like never before. Because of these forces, we now live in a world that forces radical transparency.

Adapting with Defense

Maneuvering in this new world still requires everyone to be part of defining their reputation in the traditional ways. It’s all about pitching in and making a good name for your organization. It’s what makes for a good offensive posture in this new world. But when good deeds and responsible stewardship aren’t enough, adding a defensive element to your citizenship strategy may just do the trick and help organizations to adapt.

This may seem counterintuitive, but I firmly believe incorporating a defensive element into corporate citizenship can help identify vulnerabilities, avoid surprises, and prepare organizations for the day they become the subject of scrutiny.

So where do you begin? How can your organization create this defensive strategy? One way to start is by applying four rules to your corporate citizenship framework.

RULE #1 – Assume Nothing Is Confidential

How many people that you work with believe confidentiality is achieved by merely looking around them to see who is nearby? Or mistakenly believe that placing a “do not forward restriction” on an e-mail assures secrecy? Today, confidentiality cannot be taken for granted because, with every technology advance promising security and confidentiality, there have been equal advances in covert surveillance and electronic intrusion. Therefore, it pays to be cautious. In fact, assume nothing is confidential.

RULE #2 – Find Your Halos

Halo effects are tricky things and are unavoidable. When a person establishes a long history of positive contributions to friends and neighbors, he or she creates a reputation of goodwill—one that may or may not be true upon inspection. The same is true for organizations.

For example, an organization can create a halo effect based on its giving practices. If an organization donates heavily to Kids’ causes, then subsequently in the mind of the public, your business is Kid friendly and not participating in practices that may harm children—hopefully this is the case, but these actions can be interpreted broadly and one misstep or misinterpreted business practice can create challenges.

Thus, in order to avoid facing this realization in the public square, determine what halos your organization has already. Make a list, evaluate their risk, decide how to handle them, and do it soon. Remember rule #1—assume nothing is confidential—including your halos.

RULE #3 – Discover Your External Stressors

External stressors are the opposite of halos. They are the unintended, negatively perceived impacts that result from doing business. For example, most retail businesses rely on providing open and public access to property, parking lots, and buildings in order to attract consumers who will hopefully spend money in their stores. But doing this also creates external stressors. With public access to property, poorly lighted parking lots, expensive merchandise, and a high volume of pedestrian traffic comes enticement—for shoplifting, car accidents and car thefts. These, in turn, cause external stressors on law enforcement to respond, patrol and react to the crime occurring on the property of a retail store.

At Target, we are aware of the external stressors we create for law enforcement and the resource we can be for public safety. To address this, we help create extensive public safety partnerships to strengthen neighborhoods across the country, including:

• Partnering with law enforcement ahead of problems and building relationships.
• Sponsoring safety awareness and education activities in our communities.
• Using our own resources to assist law enforcement, wherever possible.
• And using our expertise to provide a resource to public safety officials, both law enforcement and emergency management.

To find the external stressors in your organization, you’ll need to dig into your business model and identify the burdens you may place on others that aren’t part of your extended business operations—places where what you do may send the wrong signal and leave your hard-earned reputation vulnerable. When you find them, figure out how to minimize or eliminate them or identify ways you can make up for them.

RULE #4 – Know Your Reputation

Right or wrong, a good or bad reputation will play a role in any organization’s ability to do business. In short, your reputation matters. And, ultimately, this is probably the hardest rule for organizations to follow. When an organization’s image is threatened, executives often become distracted with arguing about who is right and wrong versus trying to figure out how the organization’s reputation may influence the outcome.

We saw this at Target, but we learned from it.

The influence of our reputation came to light after our highly publicized proxy contest in 2009. It was then we discovered how our superior reputation with our long-term investors secured votes in our favor.

And rather than rest on the laurels that performance had afforded us, we immediately sought to understand the specific drivers of our reputation across stakeholders and then developed specific reputation-based strategies, and we continue this practice to this day.

Learning your organization’s true reputation is difficult. It often requires confronting uncomfortable issues and asking tough questions. But if you do, it’ll be worth it because you’ll know what influence it’ll have in nearly every issue you face.

Starting Now

The good news is you can use these rules starting now—it’s never too late. Starting now will help guide your organization in the radically transparent era we now live in and, hopefully, help identify vulnerabilities, avoid surprises, and prepare your organization for the day it becomes the subject of scrutiny. But these rules are only the beginning. Every organization needs to find their “higher ground of stewardship,” and, more importantly, ask themselves if they are planning to be Here for Good.

In an address at the International Corporate Citizenship Conference, Boynton told his audience that to find the kind of great ideas that can change a career, a company or a community they must become full-fledged idea hunters. Co-author with Bill Fischer of the new book “The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen,” Boynton explained that “idea hunters are learning machines. They are individuals and professionals who are great at finding ideas and they are able to be more innovative and more creative than the rest of the pack.”

Boynton informed his audience that as knowledge professionals they are already idea hunters and he issued a plea that they become great idea hunters. “What you are doing is important,” he remarked, adding that the work of corporate citizenship professionals “is fundamental to how a business school and how universities and how companies should work in the future.”

Boynton explained that ideas are powerful because they drive both economic progress and personal progress. He cited Henry Ford’s mass production of cars as a great example of an idea that drove progress and helped Ford accomplish his mission of creating a car that everyone could afford. Like many great ideas, Boynton noted, the assembly line borrowed from what Ford observed when he saw carcasses being moved around a meat packing plant to remove various cuts of meat. Declaration of Independence, Microsoft’s personal computer, McDonald’s, Google, UPS and FedEx, Best Buy’s Geek Squad, one-size fits all coffee cup lids.

Boynton said an important point to remember about ideas is that “they move, they are available, and they are there for free. If only we can find them.” He added that the best ideas are those that exist elsewhere and are recombined to come up with innovative and creative insights.

Knowledge professionals, Boynton stressed, are more effective with better ideas than with better things or objects, whether they be offices, computers, or any other device they may use in performing their jobs. Idea hunters, he said, are always working to close an idea gap that is much wider than the object gap. Wouldn’t better ideas, he asked, make us more effective at creating CSR or community involvement programs, or getting buy-in within our organization? The idea gap, he contended, is much wider than any object gap.

Boynton said that to become a great idea hunter “you’ve got to know your gig.” This, he explained, means knowing your mission, your job beyond your job description, or what your life is all about professionally. “The gig fuels your hunt for ideas,” he said. “The gig is the compass which you will use to find ideas and discern which are useful and which are not.”

To figure out your gig, Boynton instructed, you need to know what you are passionate about, what are your talents, and determine if there is a market for what you have to offer. “There is a huge market for what you are passionate about,” he told the assembled corporate citizenship professionals. “This is not fad, and this is not fashion.”

Once armed with knowledge of their gig, Boynton said, there are four fundamental components to keep in mind to be a great idea hunter.

• I — Be more interested than interesting. Albert Einstein is a great example of a person succeeding because he was interested, according to Boynton, who quoted him once saying, “I have no special talents, other than the fact I’m passionately curious.” Boynton pointed to Walt Disney as another example of someone so interested in seeking ideas he once dug through his animators’ waste baskets and came up with a discarded drawing of a character. With encouragement from Disney, that character became the iconic Goofy.

• D — Diversify: Avoid the same trail as others take. The dean advised seeking a diverse set of sources for ideas. He talked about how Warren Buffett took inspiration from Ted Williams’ approach to the science of hitting in his approach to investing. Just as Williams focused on swinging at the pitches that gave him the greatest likelihood of getting a hit, Buffett stays within his circle of competence, focusing only on investments in companies he can understand.  “Investing, baseball, what’s the link?” asked Boynton. “The link was everything.” He also cited Thomas Edison, who surrounded himself at Menlo Park with The Muckers, a group of about 40 diverse thinkers from varied backgrounds to set up the “world’s first systematic invention factory.” The inventions they came up with together changed the world.
• E — Exercise your idea muscles: Boynton told of the practice of Buffett’s investment partner, Charles Munger, who “sells himself the best hour of every day to get smarter.” He observed that most successful people aren’t the smartest or the hardest workers. They are learning machines. “They know how to wake up every day a little bit smarter,” said Boynton, who noted that this supports the notion behind idea hunting that behavior trumps IQ. “It’s about every day increasing the probability that you are going to collide with a great idea.” He advised that knowledge professionals should not let work or being busy get in the way of spending time scanning the Internet, talking with individuals from other disciplines or looking in unusual places to find great ideas. “We’ve got to be busy at doing our job and learning and getting new ideas. It has to be part of who we are.”

• A — Hunting ideas requires agility: “It’s not about originality,” said Boynton. Or, as he quoted Picasso, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” He urged his audience to adopt his zealous commitment to prototyping, with a simple three-step process: 1. Build, 2. Fail 3. Learn. “What’s the byproduct of prototyping?” Boynton asked. “New ideas.”  The ultimate model of harvesting that byproduct, Boynton pointed out, was Edison, who pointed to a pile of garbage when asked what assets made him most successful. It was Edison’s failures, he said, that were his most valuable assets because the byproduct of ideas they generated changed the world.

Putting it all together, Boynton told of the idea hunting by Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim that created the Tony Award-winning play and Oscar-winning movie, “West Side Story.” He explained how an idea in 1949 that was based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and envisioned as a story of battling Jews and Catholics on the East Side of New York, was adapted to portray the conflict between Puerto Rican gangs and white gangs after Bernstein was inspired by stories of gang conflict in Los Angeles. That story came across as authentic, Boynton explained, because Robbins went out into the slums of New York to get ideas of how gangs really interacted.

“This was not just about art,” he observed. “This was about a commercial success. So they were idea hunters.”

In closing Boynton remarked, “Ideas drive economic progress. Ideas drive your company’s progress.” And most importantly, he added, “Ideas drive personal professional progress.”

This important topic was the center of a discussion hosted by Humana at the 2011 International Corporate Citizenship Conference.

Less than 10 percent of Americans believe that their employers contribute to their health and well being, said Paul Gerrard, director of corporate affairs and chairman of the Humana Corporate Social Responsibility Council. In fact, most Americans see their job as a detriment to their overall health and well being.

For companies battling for talent while fighting rising healthcare costs, comprehensive employee health and wellness initiatives can be a significant aid. Humana offers a multifaceted program to employees that includes everything from educational programs that help employees make better choices to a mandatory health screening for all employees seeking company-sponsored coverage, said Elona DeGooyer who heads up the initiative.

Ken Glover, director of Health & Wellness and Ergonomics at CSX Transportation, brought the perspective of a blue collar workforce, of which 80 percent are overweight or obese. This compares to 60 percent in the overall U.S. population. After determining that 5 percent of its workforce accounted for 30 percent if its healthcare costs, CSX is moving quickly to counteract this trend. CSX offers comprehensive health and fitness screenings for interested employees and incorporated a health and wellness goal into employees’ performance management evaluations.

LuAnn Heinen, vice president of the National Business Group on Health, said she has seen a rapid uptick in the number of corporate wellness programs in the last few years. Programs are also expanding, reporting greater impact and becoming well-known branded initiatives. Another trend is the growing use of metrics to measure impact. Organizers are focused on return on investment, just as most corporate professionals are. Heinen reports that an ROI of 3 to 1 can be expected of well run corporate health and wellness initiatives.

Just as a company works to create a culture of citizenship in your company, it should also be thinking about creating a culture of health. Healthier, more active and informed employees can bring more of their passion, talent and energy to their work, their home life, and their community.