How Corporate Leaders Can Practice a New Social Mindset for Today’s Movements

An ever-growing portion of today’s consumers shop with their conscience, becoming intensely loyal to (and advocates for) companies whose values and purpose align with their own. Most significantly, the public generally understands that we cannot achieve a better society if companies remain on the sidelines.

Consumer expectations of how companies should add value to society have never been clearer than they are today in the midst of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. The public is holding companies responsible for working toward solutions and, at the same time, is calling out brands that do not live up to their stated social values.

Designing goods and services with an understanding of their effects on society at the core of the process is not just the right thing to do anymore. It is a requirement. Neither is it an either/or decision, as was noted in this recent New York Times piece,  “C.E.O.s Are Qualified to Make Profit, Not Lead Society.” Using a corporate social mindset serves all stakeholders, including shareholders. However, to do this well, company leaders must have a corporate social mindset.

Acting with society in mind

To lead with a corporate social mind and have true influence on social issues that affect consumers and employees, companies move the question of their impact on society into real-time, daily decisions.

Ru?diger Fox, CEO of Sympatex Technologies GmbH in Germany, explained: “I think the main difference is that we put our social/society efforts in the first rank of priorities, which is a radical shift from companies that just add it on.”

For example, a social mindset at IBM is present at every stage of a product’s development, which includes ensuring the new tech has a real role to play in creating a better world, says David Raper, director of Corporate Social Responsibility North America & Social Impact Fund. 

Though the social issues getting the most attention will ebb and flow, a corporate social mindset can be applied to the integration of any social issue and any new opportunity for a product or service. If companies listen to consumers’ needs and concerns – from education to health to climate – applying a corporate social mindset can actually lead to new and better products and opportunities.

This is what happened at Mondelēz International. The company was already being socially responsible by buying certified cocoa from Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade when Christine McGrath, vice president and chief of global Impact, went to see the cocoa farms for herself. What followed was a 10-year profit-and-loss plan that dramatically altered the company’s impact on both the environment and cocoa farmers. “It was just like a new product innovation, but instead of calculating how many packages of cookies run off the production line, it was, ‘How many tons of cocoa do we need? How much yield do we get per tree? How many trees need to be planted to rejuvenate the farms? How much farmer training is needed?’” she said.

The company listened to consumers, who want to know where their snack ingredients come from. Then it listened to cocoa farmers and discovered what they needed to have better lives. As a result, Mondelēz created sustainable processes that benefit everyone in the supply chain, all the way to the consumer.

Companies with a corporate social mindset decide why they exist in society, then identify how their existence impacts people, places and the planet. In turn, this informs their approach to problem solving, design thinking, workforce development and the application of all the other attributes within its assets and talent pool.

Profit Relies on Societal Benefit Today

The time for thinking of profit and societal benefit as mutually exclusive and presenting profit as the sole purpose of business is past. A growing body of research demonstrates that today, a company’s profit is directly linked to its social issue involvement. 

More than 60% of the public wants companies to engage in social issues. Customers not only expect that the companies they buy from are concerned with their impact on the world, but are more loyal to companies that align with their own personal values. Implementing a corporate social mindset into a company’s decision-making structure isn’t easy, but it yields significant dividends. 

By leaving societal benefit out of the profit equation, corporate leaders aren’t presenting a true picture of the company’s strength and sustainability. 

Now is the time for companies to consider how their existing innovations can be applied to societal challenges. The pandemic will end. Other social issues will make headlines. If companies keep their ear to the ground to understand what the consumer is dealing with beyond their company-customer relationship, they’ll recognize the next social hurdle consumers are jumping and be ready to act. 

Consumers demand this level of social issue engagement. Companies that infuse societal impact into their business models perform better and are more profitable than those that do not, so the fear of losing revenue is no longer an excuse. This isn’t a question of if a company should do something, but what they can do and how soon they can do it. 

Visit thecorporatesocialmind.com  to download the research and book.