In five years, what (new & better) problem do you want to create?

"What problem are you trying to solve?" 

"What will success look like for this problem ten years down the line?"

Last night, I attended Chicago Green Drinks. The topic was "Premature 10th Anniversary: Looking Back on the Next 3 Years."  For those of you who don't know, Green Drinks is a monthly event sponsored by the Foresight Design Initiative.  Every month, they organize an event around a certain topic (ex: Social Enterprise, Wind Energy or Sustainable Food) and hold a speed-networking session before the event. I always enjoy the speakers but this session was different. This session focused on the future of Foresight Design Initiative. While some of it felt like I was crashing the third hour of a "Mission Planning Session" for a non-profit board, Peter Nicholson (Executive Director of the Foresight) was asking some very interesting questions.

Peter says he likes to start discussions with partners and clients by asking: "What problem are you trying to solve?" "What will success look like for you ten years down the line?" The really interesting part came when Peter asked the second question of himself. His answer was something like "I want to create new problems. I want people to say 'we have new problems because of Peter. He helped us solve our old problems and now we have new more evolved problems.'"

That made me think. Five years down the line, what new problem do I want to create? As a CSR practitioner, I want to create the problem of too much employee engagement.  I want companies to have CSR initiatives that are so engaging, so transparent and so measurably valuable that employees find new purpose from the initiatives and customers are inspired by these initiatives.  Employees and customers what are too engaged in what you are doing?  That seems like a nice problem to have.

What problem do you want to create five years down the line?

Thoughts from UC Berkeley talk by John Anderson, Levi Strauss CEO, “A New Way of Thinking About Companies, Society and Sustainability”

I recently returned from a visit to my alma mater, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Along with meeting with some of the wonderful people at the Center for Responsible Business, I got a chance to relive some of what makes Haas so extraordinary.  I attended a talk by Levi Strauss CEO, John Anderson entitled “Levi Strauss & Co.: A New Way of Thinking About Companies, Society, and Sustainability.”

Anderson started by going through the greatest hits of Levi’s social responsibility performance and commitment to profits through principles.  He mentioned

• Keeping employees on after the damage of CA Earthquake of 1906
• Integrating factories in the South long before any other manufacturers
• Developing a comprehensive strategy to support employees with HIV/AIDS long before any other brands
• Setting up the Red Tab foundation to support current and retired workers
• All the way to the current matching grants for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti

While all of these achievements are laudable, Anderson stressed what makes Levi Strauss a socially responsible company is the consistency of these actions.  He talked about the trust that Levi Strauss has built with its customers as an authentic brand.  He was candid about how Levi Strauss had to trade of that trust when Levi Strauss lost their grasp of what products the consumer wanted.  He says that Levi’s values bought them the time to figure out what consumers want and deliver on that. 

Overall, there were no groundbreaking insights or ideas that came out of Anderson’s speech.  It was more of going over what we already know about Levi Strauss but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, I think that it is a good thing.  It means that (with this audience at least) Levis is doing an effective job communicating their CSR and sustainability goals.  I think the goal of Anderson’s speech was more to inspire MBA’s and show that Levi’s program has top level executive commitment.  I wonder what else they could have done with this platform.

What do you think?  If a company is already doing a good job telling their story, how should they push the envelope in communicating?