Innovation + Responsibility

Last week was a pretty spectacular week for me (and CSR) at Sun. It definitely ranks as a highlight in my career, right up there with introducing Tipper Gore to an auditorium of more than 500 people at my undergrad university, working the Massachusetts press office at the 1992 Democratic convention (not bad for a lowly intern!), helping write a factory remediation plan for a manufacturing supplier of a major US-based athletic company, helping launch a Web site focused on reporting on the Middle East "beyond the conflict," pulling together Sun's first-ever Corporate Social Responsibility report...you get the point. Last week was a good week.

The highlight of my week was on Thursday when Sun launched our CSR Stakeholder Engagement program. Working with Ceres (an amazing partner, by the way, who made the whole thing come together and to whom we owe a great deal of the day's success), we brought together a number of Sun executives and employees, investors, customers, and environmental and social NGOs to take a look at Sun's CSR efforts and tell us what they think - how we are doing, where we are succeeding and where we might want to focus to do better.

I did not know what to expect but I sure was nervous. I mean think about it - we were preparing to open our arms and pull back the curtain on our CSR efforts for people and organizations whose purpose on the planet is to push and challenge the corporate status quo. For all I knew, the meeting was going to be tense and intense, aggressive and defensive (and any of that could be perpetrated by anyone in the room!). I only wanted to make sure all that ugliness was out of the way by the time Jonathan, our CEO, walked in at 3:30pm! But it turns out my nervousness was unnecessary because the meeting was, by all accounts, a smashing success.

Don't get me wrong - it's not like it was a big lovefest. Sun was pushed. Sun was challenged. Some of our answers, though honest and authentic, did not satisfy some of their questions. This group of stakeholders made it clear that there is plenty of room for improvement in areas like supply chain and our stated goal to "eliminate the digital divide," as well as our reporting practices (one resounding and repeated comment: GIVE US MORE DATA!).

But they also gave us props for some of what we are doing right and encouraged us to take a little more credit for some of our efforts than we have so far. They lauded our transparency, which is encouraging because it seems to be our natural way of doing things and so it's kind of nice to be recognized for something that is pretty core to who we are as a company. They liked that we (including Jonathan) are able to say things like, "I don't know," when asked why we don't have one particular kind of policy or what we plan to do about another specific environmental challenge. They also liked some of the actual programs we have in place: how we tie our CSR efforts to our core business, our commitment to open source technology, Open Work.

The best part of it for me was having all the internal Sun folks - our Chief Privacy Officer, our Director of Global Inclusion, our VP of Supplier Relations, the Director of our Business Conduct Office, our VP of Eco Responsibility and, of course, our CEO - engaged for the day (or parts of it). To think that nine months ago, though Sun had a lot of the pieces in place to make one possible, the company did not have a formal CSR program. Yet here we are, less than four months after releasing our first CSR report, engaging with a top-notch group of stakeholders because we are committed as a company to pushing our CSR efforts forward. And this is my job? Are you kidding me? What lottery did I win in my former life?

The emails I have been getting since last Thursday from Sun folks have continued to buoy my spirits. Every person who has written me wanted to let me know how valuable they thought the meeting was and how much they look forward to continuing our work together in the future. A few even wanted to talk about ways to expand the CSR connection to their work - music to my ears!

I am so grateful that these stakeholders - there were about 12 of them - volunteered their time to come all the way to Sun headquarters in California from places like New York, Seattle, even Kentucky (and though we don't believe in offsets as a corporate policy, we did offset their travel to our campus)just to help us be a better company. I only hope they got as much out of it as the rest of us did.

I plan to go into a lot greater detail about this external stakeholder engagement program as well as the employee CSR engagement program in Sun's next (fully web-based from now on) CSR report, which should be coming out around the end of September to align with our financial reporting.

Engaging with Vodafone Another high point of the week last week, which actually came the morning of our stakeholder meeting when I woke up and checked my email (a terrible habit I developed while in business school), was when I learned that Sun Microsystems was recognized as, "Supplier of the Year for Corporate Responsibility Engagement," by our valued customer, Vodafone. I was practically jumping for joy when I got that email from Roberta, the awesome woman who works with Vodafone's supplier management team.

Winning this recognition from Vodafone was extremely gratifying. Anyone who reads this blog (all two of you!) knows how I abhor the bad habit CSR practitioners have of always trying to make the business case. At Sun, we make the business case in part by acknowledging how important our progress in this work is to our customers - customers like Vodafone. The fact that Vodafone even has an award like this illustrates how CSR is near the top of customer engagement priorities for many companies. Especially fun is knowing that some of what I am doing (although it is dwarfed by the incredible work of the Sun account team and especially our supplier relations group led by Kurt Doelling (VP) and Leann Speta (supply chain CSR manager)) played a part in our selection for this recognition. Here is the citation for Sun on Vodafone's Web site:

...Vodafone's Corporate Responsibility (CR) Engagement Award went to Sun Microsystems, the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, in recognition of its commitment to Vodafone's Code of Ethical Purchasing, as Sun enhances its CR Programme. The award follows the launch of Sun Microsystems' first CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility ) report, and its support of Vodafone's CR activities.