Inc. Magazine: How Entrepreneurs Can Maximize Their Social Impact on the Planet
Ways to make sure your company helps for the long term.
We all have an impact on the trajectory of our world. This truth multiplies when we put things into the perspective of entrepreneurs who lead companies big and small. However daunting our planet’s problems become, from war to climate change to poverty, there is space for business leaders to shift how their organization chooses to leave its mark on the world. It starts when entrepreneurs are willing to assess how their business affects the world.
As a leader, you may be wondering how to figure out where your organization stands. The S&P’s Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment is a notable methodology that more than 8,000 companies currently rely on to read their social impact. This assessment examines more than 60 different points of examination, including social, environmental, and governance criteria.
For example, how they comply with OSHA’s health and safety standards shapes their social score; their recycling strategy influences their environmental score; and their code of conduct becomes part of their governance score — and this all comes together to create their ESG score.
While assessments like these represent a rise in corporate consciousness around the big issues, they don’t always engage everyday stakeholders and get everybody on board to change the world.
I had a chance to speak with Amanda “Kazzy” Cryer, a social impact influencer, award-winning filmmaker, and co-founder of Big Change Makers. Her expertise as an activist brings insight that can help you understand how to turn your ambition as an entrepreneur into action for a better world.
Empowering Stakeholders
Entrepreneurs must be able to take ownership and responsibility for the collective well-being, setting an example so that their team can follow suit.
The concept of being a co-creator can help you counter the hopelessness and overwhelm that may come when you look up at the mountains that our world has to climb. You can’t pass the buck off to someone else — but at the same time, these problems don’t rest on any single person’s shoulders.
To instill ownership, Cryer recommends that we anchor ourselves in universal values — such as compassion or dignity or love. We call this our stand, and we can use it as a renewable source of power.
So with ownership of the impact we have, what can positive activism look like?
Social Impact Projects
In a world where activism — especially in the entrepreneurial world — is often made up of empty platitudes touted in flashy marketing campaigns, real change is often tough to find. If we don’t understand the source of the bleeding or infection, we won’t solve the problem.
Big change requires that we address root causes in addition to dealing with symptoms. So as you look to find ways to create a positive social impact, consider if you’re truly getting to the heart of an issue or if you’re simply kicking a can down the road.
Many of the projects put on by Big Change Makers participants are a good case study in this principle. Asking Cryer about the work being done, she lights up with excitement to explain how sports are being used as a vehicle for education in Kenya, a new media platform is being used to address extreme polarization in America, and a new business network is being built to help entrepreneurs design offerings and operations around universal values, among many other projects.
Each is designed to get to the core of a problem. Educational initiatives are a great example of good projects to implement, as they plant seeds of knowledge that can prevent future problems before they even happen.
Culture of Contribution
All this builds into what Cryer calls a culture of contribution. She explains that to create change on the scale that the world needs, we need to shift the way that we view contribution.
“So often we see philanthropy or giving as a ‘selfless’ act of personal generosity,” Cryer explains. “It makes us feel good about ourselves.”
Doing this creates an imbalance between the giver and the receiver. We should see the contribution as a privilege that is available only through the grace of the receiver. The ability to give is a gift.
Instilling this concept of contribution into our hearts and minds reinforces what we’ve already done to take ownership of the issues and seek tactile ways to get to the heart of them.
As an entrepreneur, you have a social impact. Your team, your customers, and your conscience expect great things from you — it’s time to maximize the social impact that you have on the planet.
