Innovation + Responsibility

Well, it's here. Sun's inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility report. A large group of people worked pretty hard over the last three and a half months to pull this together (no less than 35 people had a hand in some aspect of this report!) and I have to say, I think it turned out quite well. Is it perfect? Of course not. It's not even one of the best. But here's what it is: it's an important step in Sun's evolution into a socially and environmentally responsible company. At first I thought that reporting was something you do after you have a robust program up and running. And given that I am prone to thinking I know everything, it was hard to shake me of this notion. But in the process of pulling this report together I realized that reporting before you have it all sewn up is probably more useful because it forces you to basically take your inventory (not like when you take your inventory in AA!) and use that to guide your actions and set goals for the future. Even if those goals are as basic as, "develop waste management measurement and tracking system," or as complex as, "build privacy checks and balances into all products by 2010."

Innovate. Act. Share. That's the theme of this report, because that is the guiding force behind Sun's social and eco responsibility programs. Incidentally, this is also the guiding force behind Sun's business, which is why I am so optimistic that our CSR/Eco initiative has any chance of long-term success (though I am also optimistic because the team of people working on it day-to-day is pretty incredible and because Sun's employees are so fired up about it!)!

Sure, Sun has been doing many of the "classic" CSR activities for years - ethics as a top priority, charitable giving, focus on diversity. And of course Sun has been at the forefront of other things that do not fit the mold of "traditional" CSR but nonetheless address the pressing social and environmental needs of our times, for example:

*using our core expertise as technologists to create computing solutions with a reduced environmental impact;

*being the largest contributor to open source in the world; and

*developing and sharing assistive technologies to expand Network access for the disabled.

But in a number of areas we still have a fair amount of work to do, whether in creating relevant CSR programs, measuring and tracking our progress or, in some cases, both. That's what makes this report so exciting (if you are someone who gets excited about these kinds of things. Which, incidentally, I am. Which is probably why I have this job!). Sun is putting our stake in the ground. We are claiming a role in the broader CSR community and we are asking our stakeholders to hold us accountable - that means we want them to hold our feet to the fire when we fall short of our commitments, and - importantly - to give us credit when we rightfully deserve it. We also want them to work with us as we continue to evolve our CSR/Eco initiative.

One thing I have noticed in the few months I have been here at Sun - when the company decides to do something, we do it with vigor. Ths CSR report is just the latest physical manifestation of this spirit!

I am pretty excited today - we are getting ready to send our final edits on Sun's first CSR report and I expect to have the fully designed PDF of the report some time tomorrow. That means that starting Monday, all interested parties will be able to download it at sun.com/aboutsun/csr.

In time, this site is going to be where we do the bulk of our reporting - we want to move away from printed reports and we are hoping to be able to update our reporting more frequently than the traditional once-a-year standard.

The report is Sun's chance to put a stake in the ground with respect to how we define corporate responsibility for our company. The best thing about the report, in my opinion, is that we actually do just that - we define it in a way that makes sense for our business. Whether acknowledging our responsibility to create energy efficient products, or owning up to the fact that our employees do a lot of commuting and so we have a responsibility to help curb that, or highlighting our commitment to doing what we can to eliminate the digital divide, whether enabling access and participation for people with disabilities or making the Network available in often overlooked or impoverished communities around the world.

In otherwords, we clearly lay out a very Sun-specific view of CSR. That means that we are not putting out a generic report that sticks to the usual CSR script. Granted, it's our first report so all of our tracking and measuring is not yet in place. But we do have in place several public commitments that require us to get these systems set up.

We may be new to CSR reporting, but, as I am learning is typical of Sun, I suspect we will soon leapfrog ahead. I for one am looking forward to it!

I have CSR conference fatigue already and I have only been to one CSR-themed conference since joining Sun! It seems that every day I get a mailing - and by the way, these usually are hard copy mailings, so much for environmental consciousness - about some new conference related to social and environmental responsibility. Many of the environmental conferences make sense to me, since those often seem to have sessions or tracks that are designed to deliver tangible tools that people can take back to their companies to start implementing positive change.

The problem with the CSR/Corporate Citizenship kinds of conferences is that they have the same general speakers list as each other and the sessions are almost like infomercials for the featured companies. Sure, you can learn from the experiences of the other companies in your industry, and of course the networking is valuable, too. But how many times do I need to hear the same company tell the same story before I have had my fill? And how many times can I get the same business cards? And, by the way, these conferences are not cheap at $1700 - $2000 a pop - and that does not even include travel!

I would much rather see regional events, roll up your sleeves working sessions, where people like me - the worker bees - get together and hash out some of the challenges facing companies that are doing their best to adopt and implement credible CSR strategies and programs. I am envisioning some case studies featuring real-life problems encountered in the course of a CSR practitioner's day, and a free-flow of ideas and suggestions about lessons learned and how best to deal with such challenges.

Let's say such a conference existed and I was presenting a case study. I might deliver a presentation about the challenges associated with creating a company's first CSR report. I would lay out the scenario as transparently as possible, including some the difficulties as well as the smooth sailing!, and spend time talking about lessons learned. Then the audience would, undoubtedly, have a lot to say about things that could have been done better/differently, as well as some steps they may have taken that might be useful to me and everyone else in the room.

Imagine a whole day of these kinds of working sessions - people learning from each other and sharing best practices, providing support and walking out with a bunch of business cards of people who spend much of their time every day just like you do - trying to initiate positive, lasting, meaningful change at their companies in a way that is sustainable over the long life of the organization.

Why doesn't anyone put on this kind of conference? I understand it is less sexy - less of a platform for companies to feature their CSR-focused executives and deliver their CSR messages to a friendly audience. But it seems infinitely more useful.