To add to this concept of not keeping social responsibility limited to impact-driven organizations, you can't cure a disease by only addressing its symptoms. One needs to stop the disease from spreading and address it at its root. Otherwise, it's a never-ending battle focused on the optics.... 😌
Love this article. I align with your analysis. Funnily enough I initially thought you were going to talk about division of labour actually, in the context of ‘impact’ and especially the division of ‘creative labour’ as I wonder how truly aligned many businesses can be to their values when they delegates their values/vision definition to those meant to express and communicate them (agencies/dedicated departments). To the same conclusion: too many stories to tell at all levels, not enough real value creation.
That's a very interesting observation about the distance between those managing the communications vs those managing the operations of a business - and how those two groups may have differing incentives. I'm sure this leads to all sorts of misalignment (greenwashing, for example). In my previous essay, I actually got into this a bit, where orgs can obsess over a specific "impact metric" they defined (for example, garbage removed from city sidewalks), and boosting that metric can become it's own independent goal completely divorced from the values that led to the definition of the impact metric in the first place. In that example, the intention behind wanting cleaner streets may have been to improve collective wellbeing in urban environments, but in order to boost the "garbage removed" stat (which they communicate to donors / investors), they may overwork / underpay their cleanup team, dump the garbage into ocean to dispose of it cheaply, or any number of actions that certainly don't support "collective wellbeing", but boost that impact stat. I propose a different way to approach impact that I think addresses some of those issues. Here's the essay, if you're interested! : https://vsanchezgomez.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-values-oriented-approach
To add to this concept of not keeping social responsibility limited to impact-driven organizations, you can't cure a disease by only addressing its symptoms. One needs to stop the disease from spreading and address it at its root. Otherwise, it's a never-ending battle focused on the optics.... 😌
Love this article. I align with your analysis. Funnily enough I initially thought you were going to talk about division of labour actually, in the context of ‘impact’ and especially the division of ‘creative labour’ as I wonder how truly aligned many businesses can be to their values when they delegates their values/vision definition to those meant to express and communicate them (agencies/dedicated departments). To the same conclusion: too many stories to tell at all levels, not enough real value creation.
Glad you enjoyed it Marion!
That's a very interesting observation about the distance between those managing the communications vs those managing the operations of a business - and how those two groups may have differing incentives. I'm sure this leads to all sorts of misalignment (greenwashing, for example). In my previous essay, I actually got into this a bit, where orgs can obsess over a specific "impact metric" they defined (for example, garbage removed from city sidewalks), and boosting that metric can become it's own independent goal completely divorced from the values that led to the definition of the impact metric in the first place. In that example, the intention behind wanting cleaner streets may have been to improve collective wellbeing in urban environments, but in order to boost the "garbage removed" stat (which they communicate to donors / investors), they may overwork / underpay their cleanup team, dump the garbage into ocean to dispose of it cheaply, or any number of actions that certainly don't support "collective wellbeing", but boost that impact stat. I propose a different way to approach impact that I think addresses some of those issues. Here's the essay, if you're interested! : https://vsanchezgomez.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-values-oriented-approach
Oh very interesting, I’m glad you’ve explored this too! Definitely going to read it💡I’m really wondering how we’ll overcome this issue