Jonathan Salem Baskin

If the content on company websites was complete and truthful, you’d have to conclude that we’re turning the corner on climate change and social injustice. Only it’s not, and we’re not.

Yes, corporate sustainability has a credibility problem.

While most of us think about “corporate purpose” as companies adopting programs to promote public good beyond what directly benefits their bottom lines, I wonder if a bigger, more complex transformation is at hand?

The world we knew at the start of 2020 longer exists. Covid has disrupted how we work, live, and learn, and the only certainty about the future is that we’re not returning to the past.

Therefore, it’s the perfect time to disrupt how your company (and how you) communicate.

No, it’s past time, and it’s not an opportunity, it’s a requirement. Your stakeholders require novel approaches, and your management wants better ideas that cost less money.

So, here are 5 ways you could disrupt what you do:

The Gauntlet To Mediocrity

If your sales team approached customers the way we communicators talk at our stakeholders, your company would go out of business.

The differences are shocking, and for years they’ve been evident in the different ways each department is treated:

It’s not a slogan, vision, mission, or message either.

Sustainability is what companies do, sooperating in a way that ensures that they stay in business isn’t a new idea, it’s what they’ve been doing since forever.

To stay in business, companies must always strive to meet the requirements of their markets and expectations of their stakeholders. If they’re not sustainable, they go out of business.

Those requirements and expectations change and evolve.

Clay Christensen has died. Debate about his theories should live on.

His concept of disruptive innovation is a brilliant encapsulation of the role of unexpected effects on markets and businesses, often driven by technology innovation.

Boeing’s widening woes are a warning to every communicator tasked with creating or sharing company purpose.

The headline in today’s New York Times says it all: Cascading Crisis Reveals ‘Sick’ Culture at Boeing. Recently revealed internal documents show employees regularly cutting corners, dissing one another and insulting customers, feeling remorse for having deluded regulators and, above all, obsessing about meeting deadlines and budgets.

The World Economic Forum (“WEF”) is gearing up for its annual confab in the Swiss Alps by publishing a “Davos Manifesto” about company purpose. It smacks of dishonesty and desperation.

I caught the full-page ads in the Financial Times and New York Times which, interestingly, had different headlines: The FT called it “The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” while the NYT headline just read “A Company’s Purpose…”

As many large companies prepare next year’s sustainability reports, it’s important to note that nobody cares.

Well, very few people care, and they fall into three little buckets:

First, specialized interest (or pressure) groups await the reports so they can check on how badly companies are falling short on whatever idealized goals the groups have set.