BSR Report 2010: Redefining Leadership
Table of Contents
Letter From the CEO
The State of Sustainable Business
Our Impact and Case Studies
Our People
Videos
Financial Statements
About This Report
Download the Report
Our Challenges
We start this section with a review of our performance in areas we highlighted in the BSR Report 2009.
Finances
After a flat (and difficult) year financially in 2009, we had an exceptionally strong 2010. We attribute some of this to external factors: the stabilized economy and ongoing interest in sustainability.
Organizational Focus
We also believe that the time we invested in refining our strategy in 2009 paid off in 2010. As part of our effort to increase our focus, we spent time strengthening our proficiency and efficiency in the offerings that are most in demand by our member companies, and we dedicated staff to leading our efforts on topics such as human rights and climate.
Global Integration
As we look back on 2010, we are proud of our many successes and equally mindful of the hurdles we face in achieving our mission. They fall into two broad categories: structural barriers to progress and BSR’s own shortcomings. Last year, we also reported on our challenges. In 2010, we made progress in surmounting some of them, and we continue to work on others.
We made good progress toward a more globally integrated organization in 2010. Early in 2011, we decided to add our Asia and EMEA regional managing directors to the core management team. We also aimed to reinforce the “One BSR” model by phasing out the notion that San Francisco is our headquarters, moving to an organizational model that relies on all of our offices as hubs that work together through integrated project and functional teams.
Measuring Our Impacts
We did not pursue systematic efforts to measure our impact in 2010, although we have established a more comprehensive and consistent approach to implementing feedback from project reviews.
Board Diversity
In 2009, we identified the need to increase the diversity of our board. This is an area where we did not make progress in 2010, but we expect that new directors in 2011 will contribute to a more diverse board.
We continue to face additional challenges concerning our internal operations.
Managing Growth
We have been fortunate to add to our capacity in recent years, enabling us to make further progress toward our mission. Growth, of course, also brings challenges, especially in the area of systems and shared-services support. For example, we are not yet able to invest in a fully functional video-conferencing system, even though that would be tremendously useful for our globally integrated organization. We are also outgrowing our current model, in which our shared-services functions are centralized in one location, but we are not big enough to invest in resources in all locations. We also face the need to maintain and refresh our culture, as well as promote a shared sense of community and purpose across the different BSR offices.
Operating a Hybrid Organization
We firmly believe that a mission-driven organization working with business can deliver great results. As we have discussed in the past, we choose to maintain our hybrid model because we believe that a membership organization that delivers top-flight consulting along with research and collaboration opportunities is well-positioned to solve the diverse challenges of building a just and sustainable world.
Each day, we make decisions about how best to balance these activities, and we inevitably have to make trade-offs. For example, in 2010, our Research team faced growing demands to lend its expertise to consulting projects. This offered the chance for direct impact but also meant that we deferred some of the research we had hoped to complete. In 2011, we have addressed this by refocusing the Research team on sustainability futures, and we will be devoting more resources to the team to deliver on that strategy.
Knowledge Management
We were slower than anticipated in 2010 in improving both our systems and our culture of knowledge-sharing and management. We did make progress, however, and have reinforced that by adding a new position overseeing operations for our project teams. As we continue to decentralize our teams, the importance of knowledge-sharing and management grows.
We also continue to face multiple challenges in the external environment. Two issues in particular stand out.
Focusing on Public Policy
The great optimism of 2009, in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit, has now faded, and many have lost hope that policy makers will provide reliable frameworks to support sustainable prosperity. Adding to this, business’ influence over public policy too often prioritizes short-term needs over policy structures that favor long-term sustainability. BSR will continue to make clear in all our activities how important public policy is to the achievement of sustainability goals.
Shifting Away from Consumption-Based Economies
Most economies—and businesses—continue to measure their success and well-being based on consumption-based models. In 2010, numerous polls showed that consumer interest in sustainability continued to wane from its pre-recession heights. We launched our sustainable consumption initiative in 2010, and we continue to research and advance the concept as “the new frontier in business success.” Progress is, however, admittedly slow.
