GSB and a better future

I can't close this week without a mention of the newly relauched Guardian Sustainable Business website, which "marks a significant step in the Guardian's efforts to help build a better future", as Jo Confino says in a blog-post. "The free GSB website will act as a hub of the best information and debate on the subject available across social media ."

The website includes news on sustainable business topics, the sustainable business blog, a focus on the Global Cleantech 100, a useful series of sustainability (mainly envronment) profiles of leading companies and more. You can also register to join the Guardian community, complete surveys and win points to be redeemed at Amazon. Yeah! The site also contains a twitter stream including yours truly, humbled to be in company with other outstanding tweeps such as @fabianpattberg, @davidcoethica and @futerra. Fabian also blogs for the site - see his excellent inaugural post on the events which have changed corporate sustainability in the past 12 months. You can follow GBS on Twitter at @GuardianSustBiz.  

What I like most about the Guardian Sustainable Business site is not only the content, and that's pretty good!, but the fact that this is brought to us by a company that walks the talk. There are so many companies, vendors, actors, players in the sustainability space that preach but do not practice. They are more than happy to advise others, but do not engage in sustainability from within. The Guardian has demonstrated quite clearly that Sustainability means Business for them, as well as values, and they have embraced sustainability practice, including  excellent, transparent, sustainability reporting which is groundbreaking progress for a media company. Somehow, sustainable news is more interesting when it is delivered by a sustainable company.

GSB is one of my go-there-every-day-websites. I recommend that you make it one of yours too!

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness,  CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Jo's Gems - Confino in action!

Today, I had the most wonderful of days hosting Jo Confino of the Guardian. Jo was interviewed by a leading daily business newspaper in Israel, The Marker, spent an hour talking to about 20 editors and journalists of The Marker in an open discussion about sustainability and the media, and  further two hours or so talking to a large group of CSR and sustainability professionals from the Israeli market. All in all, a fascinating day loaded with insights from the inspiring, multi-faceted, values-led and sustainability-minded Jo. Before I summarize the key insights, here are the fotos (especially for those who would scroll to the bottom first in any case):

Jo being interviewed for a front -page story in The Marker

Jo in full flight

Part of the audience enjoying Jo's insights

 

Ok, that's the easy bit over with. Now for some of Jo's Gems. Jo's talk was a fascinating mix of philospophy, the expression of values, the business case for sustainability, the difference sustainability can make to the Guardian and vice versa, and some practical tips and advice for companies. Below are just a few of the insights Jo shared.  

On Life and Zen

Everyone has to have meaning. Even someone who buys paperclips can have as much meaning as journalists.

A Zen Buddhist Master told me that "we are eating our children" (but neglected to say whether this is after they have been seasoned with organic herbs) (sorry, couldn't resist that last comment).

On values

Integrity is not just a physical thing. You must also have integrity on the indside.

There is a point at which you can hide from truth and change, and a point at which you cannot.

You have to have a sense of purpose.  

On Web 2.0 and a new approach to journalism

We are opening ourselves up, allowing others to see what we are doing and get involved. Once, a newspaper printed an article and put it out there, and that was that. Now, putting the story on the website is just the beginning. It's like saying: Here's the article, now let's have a conversation.

The web is about sharing and becoming a hub, and not being proprietorial.

On Sustainability Strategy
It all depends on how you frame things. Once we started thinking in terms of "How can sustainability help ensure the long term success of the Guardian?", a whole new world of possibilities opened up. This was a positive framing of the issue, rather than the negative framing we usually hear (stop doing this, don't do that, reduce this, change that etc.)

Businesses can now see that they can make money from sustainability and that it can be a core business benefit. 

CSR is like the American Cavalry Bugle for businesses. Years ago, the only thing that  businesses knew what to talk about was money, there just wasn't a vocabulary of sustainability.

It is hard to envision exactly what the future will be. We can't see beyond the current system. But you have to set goals, even if you dont know how you are going to achieve them.

On Sustainable Consumption
We are on a runaway train to hell .
We are using 5 planets.
Sustainable consumption may invite a lot of cynicsm, but all the major companies are now talking about this.

On Sustainability Reporting
Good reporting should be a force for change.
It is important to have an independent verifier. For the Guardian, this was critical because of the Guardian's independent voice in the media and the desire not to compromise that.

On the role of the media
Companies are very fearful of the media, but if you are open and honest, you gain more respect.

On the future of the printed press
We have to accept that eventually, the printed newspaper will become a niche product. The only thing that will keep newspapers going is the lack of technology to provide adequate alternatives.

On the Guardian's Prokect in Katine

We wanted to tell the real story about the way community development took place in a local community.. not just tell the good news .. but tell the truth. We wanted to focus on one project and "get under the skin" of what's happening and leverage this in a transparent way. The success of the project wasn't the success of the project. It was how successfully we managed to bring out the true story, day by day. Our commitment was demonstrated by having two Ugandan journalists, one actually living in Katine, covering the progress and events on a regualr basis.  

On Leadership:
The biggest Agent of Change is the leadership. The leaders have to "get it".
It is important to get the leaders on board, but then you have to create structures to make things happen.
One of the core challenges at the Guardian has been to ensure Directors set their own measurable targets in the areas they manage.

THANK YOU to Jo for giving of his time and thoughts so generously. Thanks to the local CSR organization, Maala, for working so hard to organize this event with us. Thanks to the local office of BBDO (Gitam) for hosting the event with Jo. Thanks to The Marker newspaper for their interest in what Jo has to say and for, we expect, great coverage of his visit in the local press. And thanks to all those who attended Jo's talk.

This was a great event and Jo was an inspiration to all, despite the fact that he didn't mention Chunky Monkey even ONCE in all the time he talked.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen   on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Is the Guardian Sustainable?

Not too many daily newspapers around the world report on sustainability. In fact I dont think any others do. In this respect the Guardian seems to me to be unique. It is also unique in that it has Jo Confino, the passionate and committed champion of the Guardian values. It's no coincidence that I decided to post about the Guardian's report(ing) at this time. You see, Jo Confino is coming to visit us in Israel this month, and we have organized, in partnership with Maala, the local BSR affiliate, a meeting of members, clients and the general public,  for Jo to share his insights, experience and achievements at the Guardian, and talk about the role of the media in supporting (or not) sustainable business practices. We are very proud to host a true Sustainability Celebrity. I am expecting he will teach the Israeli press a thing or two!

The Guardian has been producing Sustainability Reports called "Living our Values"  since 2003 but I am going to fast-forward and stay present with the 2010 Living Our Values report. I guess it's not easy to be a print newspaper in this digital on-line-everything age when the world has become one big citizen-journalist and headlines reach Twitter before most have even realised they are headlines.  A report in the Media Guardian in June 2010 talks of  overall decline in newspaper circulation in 20 out of 30 OECD countries, with a 30% decline in the USA and a 25% decline in the UK between 2007 and 2009. Sales of the Guardian fell by 10.5% in the year ending May 2010. So the first question that springs to mind whilst reading a newspaper sustainability report is whether this is actually an unsustainability report, for a business which is slowly becoming an anachronism. If that's not a material issue, I don't know what is. (OK, I do, but I'm not telling).

The Guardian, or GNM at they like to be called (Guardian News and Media) deals with this. They say "The current business model does not work for newspapers any more. So we will have to build a new one that does" Pretty straight-up, I guess. This is how the Guardian plans to do it:

** A new revenue stream through  the creation of the Digital Agency which is producing websites for clients, rather than just selling them advertising.
** The creation of Guardian Sustainable Business, a venture aimed at supporting companies in acting on their social, environmental and economic impacts.
** Investing in new software to enable optimisation of  online advertising revenues
** Recruiting like-minded web businesses to Guardian ad Networks, which take advantage of scale and special skills in selling to big advertising agencies
**Opening up new licensing models and new platforms, such as subscriptions on Kindle and the Sony eReader. Both the iPhone app, which is paid for, and the iPad photography app, which is free because it is sponsored by Canon, are making a positive financial contribution. The iPhone app sold 121,000 in its first 16 weeks on sale.
**Significantly expand international operations, given that the overseas audience represents more than half of  total audience, but only 7% of  revenues .

But what about he fact that everyone is now a journalist? The answer appears to be "collaborate or dry up!" The Guardian recognises that "preaching to 21st century stakeholders is no longer the answer". Engagement with stakeholders is the name of the game and the Guardian does this well.

The core theme of the report is well in line with its concept and title - living the values. Perhaps this is best demonstrated in the section relating to the engagement of employees and the commentary about the employee survey. This is a fine example of good disclosure relating to empolyee practices and includes some self-criticism. Other aspects, such as fair and free journalism are discussed at length, including the position of values related to earning from advertising which is in conflict with editorial principles.

I must confess that for a simple soul like me, the online format of the Guardian Living our Values report is a little confusing. It all looks like the Guardian newspaper-on-line and untill the penny (sheqel) (cent) dropped, that all the Sustainability Report content pieces are dated 6th Juy, it took me some time. The Sustainability Report even has an Editorial, which is not run-of-the-mill CSR report lingo. Alongside the actual report bits, there are also actual archived news bits. I like a simple life. I like to see reports in a clearly defined location, distinct from the rest of the corporate communications.  However, I cannot deny the advantages of this format, which facilitates buzz-up of every page, and invites comments from the general public on each individual article which makes up this report. It's a bit like how to eat an elephant. You can digest the Guardian Report one bite (byte?) at a time. A nice touch is for those who really can't stomach an elephant, no matter how many bites, is a save-the-elephant  15-minute digested read providing the basics of the report in an Executive Summary.

I also struggled with navigating this report. There is no content index, and finding specific information requires some digging. Side-navigation bars disappear when you go to read specific articles. I think that, whilst the concept of a newspaper making a Sustainability Report look like a newspaper is quite neat, in practice, I think I would prefer it to look like a report. However, for the general Guardian readership, this may well be the best way to get the report noticed.

This being said, the pioneering Guardian is serious about sustainability as their fine set of targets and reporting against those targets shows. There is well considered thought about materiality  and stakeholder engagement is covered off nicely. The journalist-Guardian-article style format has broad readership appeal and is less dry than some of the report doing the rounds today. And the report is assured.  There is no doubt that  values are alive at The Guardian and intgrated into the core business model.. Oh, and if you don't know what mutualisation means (guilty!), here is your chance to find out.

PS: The Guardian Media Group is owned by the Scott Trust. That's an interesting story. Check it out here.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict, author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)