In the discussions within companies around risk management and indispensable moves towards more sustainable processes and business practises, there’s habitually unmentioned elephant in the room, namely: Where, in all what needs to be done in the corporate world, does the responsibility of the individual factor in?
Historically speaking, in many cases only the one igniting the flame of the ultimate landslide towards change – good or not-quite-so-good – remains recorded in history books: Mahatma Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mikael Gorbatchev to name a few of the 20th century. Or maybe more recently: Malala Yousafzai, Michael Woodford or Mohamed Bouazizi.
While all of the above mentioned have put – voluntarily or not – their own lives on the line, a fact that gives the term ‘personal responsibility’ an interesting connotation, it is often forgotten that they are, in reality, just that: the hand that ignites an already filled petrol tank. In other words, they bring a long brewing situation finally to explode. Not always on purpose as is the case for Rosa Parks for example.
Those often forgotten about though, are the many that have taken it into their own hands, on smaller or larger scales, to drive change forward. For example, while the British government may talk amply about ‘Big Society’ where citizens take over – unpaid – tasks and activities to relieve the government of its burden, it is in fact the many volunteers within communities that ‘make things happen’. Whether it is a new box scheme with locally grown food or workshops for children on how to recycle, save energy, or grow veg patches in their back yard or on their balcony. Hence, it is the many, many unnamed individuals who decide to take action personally, and spend their time in order to move the ball just a single step towards the overarching goal that – taken together – have the largest impact. They feel it is their very own, very personal responsibility to do something about it.
Now, there’s little guessing as to why I mention these examples: if one wants to make change happen in a company, develop more long-term risk awareness, a breathing culture of sustainable business behaviour, every single employee, ultimately, has to become one of those possibly unnamed individuals that take the cause on as their own. And there will also need to be champions: the executive management without a doubt. But, more importantly, one among the many who is happy to be the public face of this change, and stand in for it when executive management cannot for one reason or another.
Pesonal Responsibility Diamond ((c) Ivor Hopkins & Bengt Skarstam)In a book to be published during this year 2013, Ivor Hopkins and Bengt Skarstam introduce a tool, or call it a reference mode, useful to evaluate one’s individual position as an agent of change.
Hopkins and Skarstam break the concept of ‘personal responsibility’ down into four primary dimensions:
- Values: are (internal) beliefs, possibly a mission, or a philosophy that is meaningful to a person. They are entirely individual, change from person to person. It is, if you want, how the individual sees the world, and what his or her main priorities are in life. The values, overall, do not really change much over the course of a lifetime. Values may, or not, coincide with what is socially acceptable in the mainstream, i.e. societal values.
- Ethics: Is the individual’s (internal) ‘personal’ philosophy which determines his or her beliefs about morality, i.e. about what is wrong and what is right. Ethics is playing its part when rationalising actions that have been taken in the past, or when preparing to take them. Again, the ethics of an individual may coincide, or not, with that of society at large.
- Stakeholders: A person, group of persons, or an organisation, with a vested interest or concern in something, such as a business, a social issue, or community. The list of stakeholders can be objectively verified.
- Process: A series of actions or steps taken to achieve, ultimately, a goal. Again, like the stakeholders, the process is objectively verifiable.
A successful agent for change within any setting, but very specifically the corporate setting, hence, is not only aware and conscious of his or her own values and ethics, but also a) who other stakeholders are, b) what their values or ethics may be, and c) knowing that, how to ‘nudge’ them towards the desired change.
