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Conversations on the Future of the Field

Dave Stangis | Sunday 1st March 2009

Last week was quite a week and I expect the trend to continue into next week as many of the leaders in the industry are in NY for the Financial Times/JustMeans Sustainable Business, Responsible Investing Conference. The conference organizers did a great job of putting together a very strong agenda with very relevant presenters. I'm lucky enough to be on the opening panel with some long-time colleagues in the fieldRob Frederick, VP, Director of Corporate Responsibility, Brown-Forman Corporation; Bennett Freeman, SVP Social Research and Policy, Calvert; and Gavin Power, Deputy Director and Head of Financial Markets, United Nations Global Compact. I think it's a safe bet the conference will be a success even with the approaching winter storm trying to keep people away.

Last week was full of discussions about the future of the CSR and Sustainability profession. I still see two major trends at play.

The first track is the drive for the next best thing from a green perspective or perhaps the coolest innovation in public private partnerships. I believe we see much of this in a community like JustMeans due to the audience and passion of that audience. I saw that level of interest in my exchanges this past week with a group of students from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs that are working on a project for Campbell Soup - as well as in a discussion I had with a future Pepperidge Farm associate who will be joining us in June. These are very important efforts because they drive the creative spirit of the profession and outline some of the possibilities for the non-profit and social sectors.

Secondly, there is a real desire among the long-time leaders in the field to continuously improve the management of the function. This is an area that I have always been pushing on and based on my conversations this past week, I'm not alone. Speaking from my own perspective, I have been hard at work building a set of leadership organizations to drive CSR and Sustainability at Campbell's from a set of strategic imperatives - not initiatives. I've been sharing some of my plans and perspectives in the meetings I had last week. There seems to be some good thinking going on among the large consulting firms E&Y, McKinsey; some of the membership organizations BSR, BCCCC and even a couple authors I exchanged some ideas with (you've seen them in the community - (Climb the Green Ladder). My conversations with BCCCC involved a couple sessions at their upcoming International Citizenship conference in March about the alignment of reputation and CSR as well as competencies that are needed to excel in the field.

I believe that there is a broad mix of people that use JustMeans in different ways. I've seen global representation, leaders and new entrants to the field, consultants and academics. I'm interested in how the split goes in this community. It seems that there is much more interest in the first track I described above - creative projects and less in the second - leadership, change management and the future of the profession. I'll keep an eye on it and welcome your perspective in the discussion.

In my next post, I'll try to share some of the strategic imperatives I'm building into the Campbell Soup Company's CSR and Sustainability strategy.

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