Ranking & Measurement // CSR Perspective

Best of the Best: Naked Men in Locker Rooms

I originally published this post in October 2009. The analytics for CSR Perspective from that week definitely proved my point that focusing on a single metric might not bring you the information or the value you want. I wonder if it will have the same effect this week?

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SMART Objectives are a popular management tool in business and have been for some time now. If you are not familiar with the concept, SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound. Typically, SMART objectives are metrics cascaded through an organization that set objectives for individual employees. They …

BT Recognized by Newsweek and Computerworld as Green IT Business Leader

The leaves might be turning orange, but for BT this autumn has been all about green. In the last month BT has been recognized by two major news organizations for their commitment to ‘green’ business practices.

The Newsweek/Daily Beast report ranked companies on their overall commitment to green business practices. BT was the highest ranked ICT provider in 6^th place and recognized for its commitment to setting sustainability goals and meeting them consistently, for funding alternative energy sources, and for being the Sustainability Partner for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Since I wrote about it last, Newsweek has …

It’s really a guessing game

Saturday morning, I read this quote in an article about the Japanese Earthquake in the Washington Post from Dave Wald of the US Geological Survey.

“It’s really just a kind of guessing game, and Mother Nature never really puts up with those guessing games”.

The article also referred to detailed measurement and analysis of the impact of the earthquake that was absolutely predicted to occur, but elsewhere in Japan.

I immediately thought of the book Black Swan by Nassim Taleb that I read recently – it is not just earthquakes where we get caught by these uncertainties – it is in every …

Scorecards and Corporate Responsibility

I am speaking today at the CSR and the Sustainability Scorecard 2010 conference in San Francisco. My views on the topic of scorecards and measurement are contrarian to the mainstream although hopefully not too much. Most of these views have been shared on my blog addressing various issues of measurement and corporate responsibility here, here, here and here.

In our field of CR, we use scorecards for rankings, ROI, KPIs, targeting employees, measuring project impact, labeling products and assessing vendors. But is it effective? I believe that measuring and scoring raises a dilemma for CR professionals—one that can …

When Transparency Becomes Counterproductive

Attending a customer’s sustainability stakeholder meeting; considering stakeholder input for BT’s sustainability report for next year; looking at reports from analysts, at rankings and at indices….I sense an overemphasis on data points in the name of transparency.

Many indices and rankings compete on who has the most data points. Do you have a climate change policy? yes=1, no=0. What if I have a policy but my policy is that climate change is not man-made, how are you going to score that?

Lets add an additional data point to make our study more comprehensive. Do you have a policy on whaling? yes=1, …

How Numbers Mislead

I met Kai Robertson for lunch earlier this week at Northside Social, a wonderful coffee house in Arlington, Virginia with a great sustainability theme running through its menu. Kai is with BSR and we were discussing a range of corporate responsibility and sustainability issues. While we were talking, I was approached by a reporter.

This was a great venue to be interviewed by a reporter from a local news channel, News 7 – On Your Side, about my views on coffee. I was asked how my coffee drinking habits would be influenced by knowing that a new study indicates that …

To Measure or Not to Measure – The Dilemma Continues

Einstein said ‘everything that counts cannot be counted and not everything that can be counted counts’. But common wisdom has it that ‘you cannot manage what you cannot measure’.

Much of human nature and most of the business world thrives on the measurable. The stock market is after all the most quantified of company success measures.

And herein lies a key dilemma for the corporate responsibility practitioner; for CR to succeed within the business we need to demonstrate our value to the business with measurable outcomes. But for businesses to fully embrace corporate responsibility within the wider world, the business …

Do consumers want more data?

I don’t think so.

At a smart meter event hosted by Google and The Climate Group in DC a few weeks back, much of the discussion was on how much information consumers are going to have on their energy usage in the future and how they are going to act on that information to have their washing machine run at midnight, unplug their appliances when not in use and use their PDA to switch off lights remotely when the kids leave them on. I don’t see it that way.

There are iPhone apps to scan barcodes. So apparently, we …

And the winners are…

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists from yesterday’s PR News CSR awards. For readers of this blog, Frank Mantero, Director of Corporate Citizenship Programs at GE and a guest blogger for CSRPerspective last year, won Executive of the Year – Public Relations. Congratulations Frank!

I was honored to give the keynote at the event yesterday. The main theme of my address was that to gain trust, we have to establish authenticity. Authenticity will be established by the consistent application of our values. So we have to take the values declared in our corporate responsibility and in particular in our …

Are You Happy?

I have noticed more reports than usual about happiness and wellbeing in recent months. Carol Graham’s excellent piece in the Washington Post in January basically concludes that happiness is linked to stable relationships, stable health and enough (but not too much) income.

Gallup’s Happiness poll identified that “Americans’ happiest days of 2009 were on or close to holidays, consistent with previous mood index scores showing that days with more-than-normal time dedicated to socializing with family and friends enhance people’s happiness and enjoyment.”

The recently published 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman concludes that fundamental ‘circumstantial changes’ (moving house, getting a pay …