Corporate Conundrum

During my placement at O2, I thought about how both Social Enterprises and more traditional businesses can benefit most from working together.

What do big organisations want?

Corporations work hard and spend a lot of money to find out what their customers are thinking. In addition to understanding what services their customers need now, corporates are trying to predict the needs their customers will have in the future to help them design and improve their products and services.

The UK government is starting to act and move resources to the idea that communities can be better agents for change than government acting on their behalf. Insight and knowledge of community is a valuable and expensively acquired resource for private and public business, but Social Enterprises have geographic, social or ideological communities at the heart of what they do. This understanding of their communities is a tremendous asset.

What is the opportunity?

Corporates are big, very big. They have huge reach and potential to unlock resources. However, corporates are feeling the financial crisis too. Investing in innovation and producing new products is expensive and large companies can often be restricted in what they can do without risking their share price. Even fierce competitors are using collaboration and partnership to provide what customers want without betting the farm.

Social Enterprises can add value to corporates because they have insight and practice that other businesses need to improve their services. Social Enterprises do the responsive, community focused thinking and doing that corporates find very difficult everyday.

In return, corporates can provide the exposure and reach that Social Enterprises need to grow and increase their impact.

What not to do?
Don't assume that, because it's a corporate, they will have a lot of money to spend. Much of their spending will be tied up in untouchable budgets promoting their current products/services.

Don't assume that the social benefits your organisation delivers alone will ensure a partnership. Your aims may align with their CSR policy and with their brand image, but they will receive lots of partnership offers that may do this and more.

What to do?
Corporations are always looking for new ways to add value to their traditional offers. A few ideas are to:

• Design a new product just for them. Elvis and Kresse are experts at this, as evidenced by their work with Apple and Brompton Cycles
• Offer to work in partnership with them; don’t ask for sponsorship. Corporates have spent a long time building their business, and they didn’t do that by giving money away. Work out a way to help them to make money while contributing to your aims.
• Help make their staff happy. Replacing staff is a costly business. Lots of people in big companies wish that they could be doing more. Find opportunities to give these intrapreneurs access to the great stories and results you create.
  

If it doesn’t work out this time?
Don’t despair, keep trying and remember to help the people that have helped you! If you have got a meeting in a corporate, it’s most likely because of someone working within that organisation who believes in what you are trying to achieve. The chances are they will be taking a risk/doing a lot of work to get your voice heard.

There are many reasons why large organisations don’t do things. It may be nothing to do with your offer or the work you and your advocate have done.

Stay positive and stay in touch; you may get another chance at a different time.

Escaping to Social Enterprise- with On Purpose

On Thursday evening Tom, current associates Stephanie and Ann, and fellow Harriet spoke at an Escape the City event on social enterprise. We all shared how we 'escaped the city' then answered numerous questions about On Purpose and social enterprise. Check out the main take-aways from the event below (or in the embedded link), written by Rob from Escape the City.

Escaping to Social Enterprise- with On Purpose

A massive thank you to Tom Rippin, Stephanie, Ann and Harriet for a fantastic Q&A and talk at last night's 'How to pursue a career in social enterprise'.

Hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Here are 5 areas that struck us as being useful to think about if you're interested in transitioning into the social enterprise sector...

Any remaining questions / comments / connections you would like to make please just leave a comment below and we'll see if we can help you out.

1. Myths about Escaping from Corporates

There are a few myths / preconceptions that are hard to fight if you're considering leaving the corporate world:

• Will I find something as stimulation elsewhere? You can - not everywhere, but there are plenty of places and change itself can be stimulating!
• Will my skills apply to a new sector? Some will some won't but it's also a chance to learn new skills. Think carefully about how your existing skills can apply
• Will I work with as good and dynamic people as I currently do? Great people exist everywhere and if you search them out, you can find them. No one company has a monopoly on them!
• Should I stay for another 6 months to get that promotion/pay-rise/project finished? Before you know it, this turns into 6 years. Think instead of where you could be in 6 months' time in a new place

2. When is it time to move?

Write down your motives for why you took you current job. If you've already ticked those boxes and your motivation for being there is waning. Move. If you don't want your boss's job or their boss's job. Move.

3. Skill-set insecurities

You can apply your corporate experience to social enterprise sector: measuring impact, analysis, transferable skills. Don't feel that you are committed to your sector. The majority of your skills can be put to work in a social enterprise setting. Not to say you will need to learn new skills too - but that's half the excitement!

4. Leaving isn't as scary as you think.

There are a range of orgs that do social enterprise work... from v corporate ones (O2) to "classic" social enterprises to those on the charity end of the scale. Have a think about where on the scale you would most like to work. Narrowing it down will help you search and you will be more specific in your applications. Also think if you have a preference for how big or new an organisation is.

5. It's a broad sector. How to find what you're looking for?

There is so much information / advice / events out there. Start researching!

• Obviously On Purpose itself: http://www.onpurpose.uk.com/
• You can also find them: @onpurposeuk, www.facebook.com/onpurposeuk
• Robert Ashton - How to be a social entrepreneur.
• UnLtd - a charity which supports social entrepreneurs
• The Guardian Social Enterprise Network
• The RSA - lots of talks on social issues
• ClearlySo - hub for social enterprises / social businesses
• School for Social Entrepreneurs
• Social Enterprise London
• Social Enterprise Live
• Social Enterprise Coalition

Check out the Social Enterprise Coalition's 'Work in Social Enterprise' PDF by clicking here.

More about On Purpose...

• Application guidelines::

We're looking for high-achieving people with 2-5 years' work experience in any sector. You need to have great leadership, problem solving and communication skills and a lot of motivation and persistence.

You should also have a track record of social (enterprise) engagement, though we understand this may well not be in a professional capacity.

• See here for more detail:

http://www.onpurpose.uk.com/what-you-can-do/become-purpose-associate

To express your interest in applying (our online application site will be up soon), please email recruitment@onpurpose.uk.com

• Advice for applicants:

If in doubt, apply! And don't forget to tell us why you want to work in the social enterprise space

• Deadlines:

Application deadline will be at the end of August (exact date TBD).

Cut the fluff and climb

Seeing a well established, NASDAQ-quoted carpet manufacturer on the list of On Purpose placements, one might be forgiven for asking if On Purpose has any clue what social enterprise is about. Yet after taking a closer look, the person could be shocked again to find out that there really are examples of corporations that are serious about placing “doing good” at the centre of their core business.

Since the early 1990's Interface, the carpet manufacturer, has been climbing Mount Sustainability. Long before green wash tide flooded billboards and annual reports, Interface launched its expedition to reach zero negative impact on the environment by 2020. And as the slopes became steeper closer to the summit, they started realising that there was a social element, too, and it would have an important part to play in getting to the sustainable top.

Working for InterfaceFLOR on innovations around social sustainability has been a great learning experience. It is refreshing to see a profit maximising corporation of a decent size and age being dead serious about its mission to become fully sustainable; to experience the culture of the mission, starting with visionary leadership and cascading down to the very bottom; to hear the chairman always focusing his speech on the long-term mission and to find out that almost every single employee has a clear opinion of what it is about and is proud to be part of it. Sounds nice, but still a bit old school, top-down way of steering things? Sure, that's the legacy. But Interface is slowly finding its way towards greater participation by employees and the general public as well. It understands its culture must become open and inclusive if its mission is not to be a joke.

The credibility of the culture is only reinforced by the company's strong push towards transparency and measuring impact, or, as their marketing department would say, “Cut the fluff” and show the product life cycle data. But it is not just the product impact data that they try to make transparent. Their reporting on their progress towards the 2020 mission might make some charities feel ashamed. So, has Interface found the holy grail of social enterprise: earning healthy profits by focusing on “mission first”? Well, no.

Interface comes from the profit making side of the line, and profit needs to be sustained. They are working hard to find the points of synergy where mission and profit reinforce each other, but it is tough and no one really knows how it actually works. In practice it means that whenever a new project proposal is assessed, there is a question about how it delivers on each of the two dimensions. And often it costs extra time and investment. Yet somehow, the money and effort spent on the mission seems to be coming back - in the good will of people and stakeholders, in employees' loyalty, and in the end in sales.

Interface has no doubt a long and tough climb ahead of them, and there might be only few in the expedition with a clear vision of the summit and beyond. Yet there is one achievement none can take away from them. However half blind, clumsy, and exhausted they might appear on the slope of Mount Sustainability, they have pulled up with them whole industries quite some way up from the lowlands of indiscriminate destruction. No, Interface is not a poster child of a social enterprise, but it is an example inspiring confidence that some corporations might actually become one day genuinely restorative to their human societies and more-than-human ecosystems. And that is what social enterprise should be about, isn't it?

Can Social Enterprise supply corporates?

Here's an article from the Guardian Social Enterprise Network. It quotes On Purpose's involvement with O2 as a success story of a partnership between a corporate and social enterprise.

We're proud of the fact that O2 is now working with us for the second year running!