Natural Logic's Gil Friend has just posted his Declaration of Sustainable Business Leadership - a cogent statement, well presented. It strikes me as a practical tool for engagement with businesses seeking a way of making such a declaration.
The fact that it is not 'owned' by a business - i.e. it's not BP's declaration or Xerox's etc - could be particularly useful.
In talking to businesses about how they create and present statements of intent on corporate responsibility or sustainable business practice, I generally use existing examples from leading businesses. However, this sometimes elicits a response along the lines of 'but we're not a [insert sector of choice] company, what can we learn from them?' This declaration might get round that issue.
The presentation matters too. There is a lot of information there - often a major headache for communications professionals addressing CR and sustainability ('can't we summarise it and put the rest in an appendix?' etc) which, by their nature, are complex and wideranging. Friend gets round this through effective use of colour and five bold, positive introductory statements that lead the reader through the argument for sustainable business and present a solution too:
Because:
We envision our company, suppliers and customers, and our community doing business in ways that:
To do this we will:
We will measure our progress by the trends our:
We will persue these steps with a commitment to:
Definitely worth a look.
Link: Gil Friend.
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