As a corporate citizenship professional, your goal is to get your company to accept citizenship as an essential part of business strategy and integrate it into the processes and policies that underlie business practice.

How does any executive catalyze movement around a particular business dynamic? By becoming a change agent in the company.

"Change agents are the invisible hands behind the scenes that turn vision into action," writes Ken Miller in his best-selling book, The Change Agent's Guide to Radical Improvement. "They are a leader's best friends. While it is true that you can have change agents and not have success, you cannot have success without change agents."

Whether in a large company or small, a goal as large as organizational change can be a daunting task. How do corporate citizenship managers catalyze energy and momentum for system-wide change?

For two and half years, as part of The Center for Corporate Citizenship's research project known as the Executive Forum, we looked at the efforts of eight North American-based companies to integrate corporate citizenship. The practitioners we observed recognize that systemic change often begins incrementally and that working one small part of the system can catalyze new, often unpredictable, opportunities in other areas. They understand that organizational change is not always a linear, rational, top-down process and relies on a network of individuals throughout the company, and that organizational change can and should be generated from multiple points and levels in the company simultaneously.

As a whole, these professionals navigate the process by virtue of their masterful ability to listen for, identify, and act on opportunity. "Change agents are individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and tools to help organizations create radical improvement," says Miller. "Rarely in a position of authority, they achieve results with their keen ability to facilitate groups of people through well-defined processes to develop, organize, and sell new ideas."

The practitioners observed for this project relied on three fundamental elements of integrating, aligning, and institutionalizing corporate citizenship:

• Build relationships, leadership, and connections. Collaborate with key people in the organization — for their knowledge, potential to motivate, and ability to produce action.

• Build knowledge/know the business. Study the strategy and interests of the company to show how corporate citizenship is relevant to future business needs.

• Take strategic action. Choose actions that will provide learning, demonstrate the value of corporate citizenship, and foster behavior change.

A pragmatic approach to change

Many models of corporate citizenship advocate a top-down approach that simultaneously addresses a company’s risks and opportunities and is grounded in organizational commitments such as values and culture. Corporate citizenship is designed to be executed from the top down and encompasses different parts and levels of the company trying to accomplish very different types of work (for example, human resources, supply chain, design, sales, or manufacturing).

The professionals we observed operate with a more pragmatic and effective approach. They identify and seize opportunities with the intent of demonstrating success rather than establishing and adhering to a strict overarching strategy with prescribed steps and activities.

"It is important to start where you are and build on what already exists," said Petro-Canada's Sharon Mulligan, who participated in the Executive Forum project. "There are a lot of components in place, and knowing that dictates how to fit in the new pieces."

This incremental and emergent strategy allows for variability in organizational readiness in different parts of the company, senior management buy-in, and functional differences throughout the company. This strategy also welcomes the notion that change involves a network of people in a company and is generated from many directions, not just from the top down.

By focusing on building connections and leveraging experience gained, practitioners can create momentum around company-wide corporate citizenship alignment without waiting for senior executives to generate an overarching plan. In fact, practitioners have found that when executives can respond to successful corporate citizenship initiatives, this strategy has helped produce more robust senior management 

Passion, pragmatism, and patience 

The managers observed for the Executive Forum project demonstrated determination that is driven by a more strategic vision for corporate citizenship in their companies, even when such a vision was not well defined. For many, their passion is quite personal and not confined to their designated professional role. Indeed, many feel their professional role provides an opportunity to demonstrate a more personal set of commitments.

With such a strong sense of purpose, these managers are able to persist through setbacks and slowdowns. They are pragmatic about the realities of corporate culture and organizational change. Most explicitly recognize that initiating and building momentum for corporate citizenship in their company is slow work.

“This is a slow-moving train,” says AMD’s Allyson Peerman, global community affairs director. “You don’t expect to reach your goals overnight. This work is about coalition building, and that takes a long time. But at the end of the day, the results should be stronger and longer lasting than a fleeting program.”

Says Theresa Fay-Bustillos, vice president of worldwide community affairs for Levi Strauss & Co. “I was patient and figured out what was right for the company and pushed that agenda,” she says. “I never gave up. When I saw my Plan A falling apart, I was still intent on achieving my objective. I just knew I needed a different approach. It’s a results-driven mentality.”

Referring to his experience producing AMD’s first sustainability report, Philip Trowbridge, member of technical staff, worldwide EHS says: “You’ve got to have patience. None of this is going to move quickly. And by patience, I mean that it takes people a certain amount of time to get comfortable with divulging information or providing information, particularly external to the company. And that’s a comfort level you can’t force on them. You can push the edge, but you can’t force it.”

Develop allies for guidance, learning, and inspiration

Initiating and building momentum for corporate citizenship in a company becomes exciting work for managers who are passionate, but it also can be hard and slow. Managers sustain themselves by developing allies and support networks, both within their own company and with peers from other companies.

Kevin Callahan, director of global citizenship and policy at Abbott, points to the importance of this type of support, even though he has a formal title and mandate. “You have to pull together a group of people, externally and internally, whom you can use as a sounding board to start testing some of your initial strategies and thinking about action,” he says.

In addition, most of the managers participating in the research acknowledged the benefits of having a group outside their company to provide broader perspectives, best practices, and benchmarking and to serve as a reality check and means to recharge their enthusiasm for their work.

These managers recognize their role as agents of change, the nature of the work in which they are involved, and the organizational reality within which they are executing their roles. Their passion for corporate citizenship fuels their commitment. Their understanding of the landscape in which they operate makes them effective in terms of both choosing appropriate actions and finding ways to sustain their energy through developing internal and external allies.

This article is excerpted from The Center research report, Integration: The Critical Link. Download this publication to learn more about strategies for integrating corporate citizenship and to read cases and stories from eight companies.