I actually wore my Birkenstocks to Net Impact – but only in the car. Business school is a huge change of culture for me, so the weekend in Portland – like all of Core – was about learning to speak a new business language.
Like Garth and Matt, and arguably everyone at the conference, I chose sessions I hoped would teach me to communicate with impact. One such session that really surprised me was on Friday afternoon called “Cross-Sector Partnerships: Community Impact Case Studies.” I was excited by the title but somewhat skeptical of the panelists: PepsiCo and Timberland?? I am definitely not enthusiastic about a career in the corporate world.
At least, I wasn’t. Amy Chen from PepsiCo was my highlight panelist of the weekend. I care a lot about sustainable food and community development, so it was easy for her to excite me by introducing her initiative at PepsiCo: the Global Nutrition Group and a social enterprise called Food For Good. Although I never would have said it four months ago, there is undeniable value in housing a social enterprise with business profits as a secondary goal within a money machine the size of Pepsi.
At a weekend I dedicated to learning to communicate with impact, Amy stood out as a powerfully skilled communicator. She, and her co-panelist from Timberland, who was also great, spent the panel reminding us that effective, sustainable partnerships were rooted in open communication and respect for partners large and small.
It can be easy to fall into vocabularies of intangible benefits and generalizations when making a case for sustainability, but she (and oh so many others at the conference) brought an enviable fluency to her arguments, making the business case for environmental and social sustainability.
And it didn’t take metrics or technical vocabulary to convince me of the value of partnerships and social enterprise. The big lesson here was the power of thoughtful, passionate, educated experience as a driver for successful change; familiarity with the languages of financial accounting or corporate strategy was evident, but they obvious key to their success lied elsewhere. These women were speaking an accessible language, and that is what made them successful as corporate partners to individuals and grassroots community organizations. “Setting transparent expectations” is valuable for a corporation entering a risky agreement with a potentially unstable community group, but it is just as valuable for the neighbors who may fear a corporate invasion of their local resources and goals. Design thinking came up as an effective tool to bring corporate resources to effectively implement relevant solutions to local problems, bridging gaps in perceived needs and values of the different partners.
These claims are easy to accept at a human level, but they are just as effective to make a business case for partnerships in communities. I took away equally important lessons in communication as I did in methods for establishing successful business relationships, but I’ll end here with a few of the latter:
- Set transparent expectations appropriate to the project’s and partners’ scope with self-sustaining goals for longevity beyond the partnership, with benefits and metrics to track the project’s impact
- Remember that humility is key; respect the realities of your potential partner’s abilities, as well as valuable knowledge and power in the community.
- Plan for sustainability beyond your project’s timeframe; you might leave the community as a partner, but the community will stay there and you can’t leave it hanging, as will the memories of your company’s involvement.
