Innovation + Responsibility

Net Impact Conference - Nashville, TN
I have been thinking about writing this blog entry for a few weeks now - after attending the Net Impact conference in Nashville in early November.  The conference was good - Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, was the opening keynote and he was nothing short of spectacular. It does not cease to inspire me when I listen to a successful business person live their values - actually, live my values! - and realize success, in all its meanings.

I was there to speak on a panel about trends in CSR.  I think my panel
went okay.  I generally enjoy public speaking (since my older sister
went on to become a professional actor, I needed some other way to get attention!).  In any case, I think the panel was well-received.  We all got very good
feedback from the audience (and, as a sidenote, I thought our moderator was fantastic. That's not an easy role and I thought he was superb.).

The audience members asked insightful questions and made astute observations; they seemed quite engaged. All of us on the panel (myself, someone from eBay
and someone from KPMG) stressed the value of pursuing careers outside
of the CSR "department." Instead, we encouraged the audience (mostly MBA
students) to take their CSR perspectives into traditional job
functions, like operations, finance, marketing, you name it.  Because the CSR jobs are few and far between and if we are really going to see companies evolving into organizations that integrate CSR principles into every facet of their business, it will be because every facet of their business is run by/staffed with people who share a commitment to doing business responsibly.

Since all three of us pushed this message, I am hoping it sunk in. Although the truth is, I got the same advice when I was getting my MBA and I ended up ignoring it (but in my defense, I wanted to go into a job in the finance industry until I took finance as a first-year MBA and realized it would be a futile effort!). 

At the evening cocktail event a first-year MBA from UCSD named Marc approached me.  He said that he was thinking about what I had said and wanted to talk more about taking CSR into the operations function of a company.  We had a good chat about it and I was pleasantly surprised when he emailed me a few day later to follow up and asked to be connected with someone at Sun who could talk to him more about the connection between CSR and operations. I hope he is serious - I hope he is one of many current MBAs who is looking at his career and trying to see how to combine his sought-after skills with his personal values and make positive change in the business world.

"I want to go into CSR because I don't want to work too hard."
I left Nashville early to get back to San Francisco because I needed a few days to prepare before leaving again to Asia (where I am now.  I am here to witness/participate in some factory visits with Sun suppliers who have signed our Code of Conduct. More on that later.).  I was sitting at my gate waiting for my flight when a young woman (I can say that now that I am officially in my mid-30s!) approached me.  She had been in the audience for our panel and wanted to talk a bit more about it. As we chatted she told me that despite our recommendations, she wanted to find a CSR-specific job. Of course, I can relate - that is the path I chose to follow and the job I currently do for Sun. 

But as we talked more about why she wanted to work in CSR, she said something that stuck in my head (and in my craw!).  She said, "Another reason I want to work in CSR is that I don't want to work so hard - I am getting married soon and I want to have a family, and I want balance." I found this troubling for a few reasons:

**Why do women go to business school if they are not really interested in working hard to pursue their careers? Seems like an odd amount of money to spend to not put it to good use.
**And since when are working hard and having balance mutually exclusive? I work my tail off and still find time to have a satisfying personal life - training for marathons and triathlons, spending time with friends and family, traveling.
**And, what in the world makes her think that people in CSR jobs don't work our butts off?!  I can't think of a time in my life when I have worked harder - and I had some pretty intense jobs before this one!

The implication that a CSR job won't require her to work too hard is laughable. I look around - at myself, my colleagues at Sun, at our peers at other companies - and I see people who put their hearts and souls into their jobs.  CSR jobs are tough. I don't say this to have anyone feel sorry for people in these roles - I think I am the luckiest person to be able to have a job that I feel good about every single day, a job that enables me to live my values and create truly positive change. 

But a job in CSR is no cakewalk. There is so much to do, yet usually there are few people to do it. Many people still don't understand what we do or why our company has dedicated resources to it.  Speaking of resources, companies usually do not dedicate very many resources to the CSR function - despite putting a lot of demands on it.  I bet these factors are true for lots of different jobs - in finance, strategy, product development, operations - not just CSR.  But people do not believe that, as a rule, these are not jobs that require hard work. 

So I ask, why is there this notion that a CSR job is not a "real" job?