Gulf Oil Disaster - Reflect or Deflect?

On June 9, 2010, CSRWire Talkback orginally published the guest post below that I wrote to appear on their site.

There is a lot of anger at BP right now resulting from the Gulf oil disaster. Someone told me recently that she was so angry she could think of nothing else and was unable to sleep - and she lives in DC, far from the immediate impact. But I question whether this anger is being harnessed in the right direction.

I watched four fishermen being interviewed on TV last weekend. They were angry at BP for polluting the Gulf and harming the fish stock. They were gassing up their boat and motoring on round to the Texas coast to see if the fishing was better there. What an irony and what better example of allowing anger to deflect attention from one’s own complicity in the event.

I learned recently that 10% of our transport fuel needs are met by oil coming from deep sea drilling. Less gassing up of our boats and cars would go a long way to obviating the need for deep sea drilling. Our pursuit of the lowest priced gas every time we fill up is an incentive for lowest cost exploration and production and for taking short cuts. As consumers we have a share in responsibility for the industry that serves our needs and in how our buying behavior incentivizes it to act.

I have no doubt that in the fullness of time and due process, it will emerge that BP, and perhaps other companies and government, should have done things to avoid the disaster or to respond more effectively. I doubt though there were many, if any, people walking around in BP cognizant of the likelihood of this particular incident and maliciously or even consciously ignoring it. There is absolutely a value in media and public attention to punish ‘bad behavior’ in organizations. But what we must be sure of is that we are not allowing ourselves to blame this on a particular set of circumstances at one company, such that we can isolate this as an aberration and conveniently not reflect on our own organizations.

In my mind, the right channel for our energy is not endless anger at BP. Instead use that energy for everyone in the corporate world, and indeed in non profit and governmental organizations, to be thinking to themselves, what catastrophic event of equivalent consequence, that could be caused by a failure in my organization or in my sector, have I unconsciously overlooked – social, environmental, or economic? Of course it is difficult to know what you don’t know, but if ever there was a motivator for thinking creatively, the Gulf oil spill should be it. It may not even be anything to do with your job, but as employees we have the obligation to create the right culture by raising and addressing those questions.

I recall reading once that identifying sometimes irrelevant circumstances that are different from our own is a psychological method we all use subconsciously to distance ourselves from the personal tragedies we read about in the papers each day. It is tempting to think “that company” is different. But I have friends and colleagues at BP and they are good people.* Wherever you are, by definition the unexpected could happen at your organization too.

None of my comments should in any way be seen as reducing the responsibility of the main parties in this tragedy. The question I ask is how best should we channel our desire to see change? How are you using your frustration and anger from this disaster, to reflect or deflect?

* In the interests of full disclosure I should declare that I worked for BP in a sales engineering role from 1987 to 1989.

Kevin Moss is Head of Corporate Responsibility for BT in North America. He shares his thoughts about the intersection between business and sustainability on his blog, CSR Perspective. The views reflected here are his own and, as such, may not necessarily reflect the views of BT, or of any former or future employer

Readers: Take up Kevin Moss’ challenge. Tell Talkback how your company or sector can prevent catastrophe.

Ethics Trumps Sustainability

I posted a blog in January "sustainability is over-rated" in which I posited that sustainability was just one of the principles against which Corporate Responsibility can be judged and practiced. A number of people commented that we should focus on action and not worry too much about terminology. Call me obsessed, but I cannot let it go at that. I believe more and more that ethics underpins sustainability and that we must be able to speak to ethics to be able to resolve some of the most challenging sustainability issues we will face in the future.

The broadly accepted principle of sustainability asks that we use resources in a manner that satisfies current needs without compromising the needs or options of future generations. Who says that the needs of the yet to be conceived, their children and their children’s children ad infinitum, are valued equally highly with the needs of those alive today? The answer is that our predominantly accepted code of ethics tells us that.

If being sustainable turns out to be easy, this might not matter. However, if being sustainable turns out to require behavioral change and perhaps sacrifice, we will need to be able to articulate and defend the ethical foundation on which it is based. To illustrate, I like to look at another view of the world……..

At BSR last year, many others and I listened to an inspiring plenary highlight by Zhang Yue Chairman and CEO of BROAD air conditioning in China. We all felt so good listening to a fantastically successful Chinese businessman talk about all he achieved through his environmentally friendly business approach. But you could hear the sharp intake of Westerners’ breath when he stated that of course he fired any employee who had more than one child, because more than one child per family was not consistent with a sustainable population and planet. This contrast in values is fundamentally an ethics question.

I recently read Practical Ethics by Peter Singer. It provided me with a structure to step back from my inherited values and look at them from an external perspective. I have not changed my views (that much!), but I understand them and their heritage much better. I also learned that our approach to sustainability is rooted in ethics and that some of our most difficult dilemmas, in particular when two good outcomes compete in a zero sum game, need to be sorted with the help of ethics, before we can apply sustainability correctly.

Guest Blog Post: The Boeing Company

Veronica Cavallaro directs Research and Measurement activities for Global Corporate Citizenship at The Boeing Company, working with various stakeholders to collect and analyze meaningful data to both inform strategy and demonstrate the effectiveness of our work.

Before joining Boeing, Cavallaro served as chief quality officer at Illinois Action For Children. She began her consulting career at Arthur Andersen working in the areas of bankruptcy, forensic accounting, white-collar crime, and litigation support. She gained significant perspective and experience in management consulting and audit through her work in Europe, Asia and Mexico. Additionally, she spent several years consulting to Illinois-based organizations in the areas of workforce development, technology, transportation, education and housing. Cavallaro is qualified as a Certified Fraud Examiner.

As I sit here at the beginning of a new year, I pause to think of what we are achieving as CR practitioners and how that relates to our business at The Boeing Company. Just before the holiday break, our new generation 787 aircraft took flight. For our company, this was a major achievement in a year where good news in the business world was tough to come by.

As an employee working in our corporate headquarters in Chicago, I am not directly involved in the production of the 787. Most of our workforce on that program is located in Puget Sound (Washington). The first flight of that aircraft was a milestone in a long list of milestones for that program. But this milestone was different.

It didn’t occur to me how different this milestone was until after the plane flew. Certainly, watching the reaction of our employees as the plane took off was emotional and delivered an overwhelming sense of pride straight across all 155,000 of us. Designing and producing an aircraft is a monumental effort that takes people with varied skill sets and perspectives to bring everything together successfully. It takes time, a laser-like focus on the goal, and perseverance.

The first flight was surprising to me because of the attention it garnered from people who do not appear to have a vested interest. Friends and acquaintances from around the world contacted me offering their congratulations. It made me realize that the level of visibility of that singular event was truly global and people from all walks of life took interest.

Having grown up in Detroit where the workforce was linked in some way to the auto industry, I don’t recall a similar excitement from the announcement of a new car. Sure, everyone has their favorite car or car line and new releases are causes of delight for some, but I can’t think of another example that has caused people around the world to connect and be excited. Boeing’s products over the years have tended to do this…from the birth of the company back in 1903 to putting shuttles and satellites in space, to revolutionizing commercial aviation with the 787. It is an amazing and humbling experience to be a part of this rich history.

So, back to my comment about how rarely we have received good news this past year. Perhaps people are just looking for something positive to hold on to. Perhaps these well wishers are actually stakeholders of a different sort? Is it possible that the traditional view of stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers - is due a rethink or expansion?

Presumably, the folks who contacted me are customers of our airline customers and see the 787 as the product it is – a new generation aircraft that will connect people and places together. However, it strikes me that perhaps the interest people have taken in this plane is due to something much simpler. Maybe people have hungered for a success story and after a year bombarding us with negative news, this is the type of success story they have been waiting for.

Relating back to CR, the opportunity for people to feel good about something – as alluded to in several posts on this blog – is an important element of employee engagement. Perhaps more importantly, it is part and parcel of the human condition.