When
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, hit the stage in June to announce the
company’s new mission to a hall filled with community group heads in Chicago,
Illinois, it was obvious that something revolutionary – or at least, profound –
was about to happen.
The
tech-entrepreneur told Facebook users across the world – all 2 billion of them
– that the company is doing what it has not done in 10 years – it is changing
its policy direction from its mission to develop a platform to ‘make the world
more open and connected’ to one that has a broader value proposition: ‘Give
people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.’
In a 3,000
word treatise that followed, Zuckerberg took time to explain the rationale
behind the company’s move stating that rather than moving away from its mission
of connecting friends and family, Facebook is simply embarking on a social
mission broadening its focus to enable people connect with ‘meaningful
communities’. He said communities help users find common ground, which helps
people engage with new perspectives and become aware of different issues.
Groups also offer individuals personal support, which gives them bandwidth to
look outward and address the biggest human problems, like climate change,
global health issues, domestic violence, substance abuse, and more.
Essentially
Facebook is on a mission to help people across the world gain perspective by
providing them a platform to engage in groups.
“We’ve been
thinking about what our responsibility is in the world,” Zuckerberg said in an
interview. “Connecting friends and family has been pretty positive, but I think
there is just this collective feeling that we have a responsibility to do more
than that and also help build communities and help people get exposed to new
perspectives and meet new people — not just give people a voice, but also help
build common ground so people can actually move forward together.”
Many private
organizations across the world are increasingly seeing the need to engage in
activities that are traditionally the sole prerogative of public institutions
and governments. We are increasingly seeing brands who consider impacting the
lives of citizens and communities as a mission that must be accomplished with
or without the collaboration of government or its institutions.
Like
Facebook, other companies like Chivas Regal which organizes ‘The Venture’ – an
international contest open to social entrepreneurs using business as a force
for good – and the Union Bank Centenary Innovation Challenge – an initiative
set to impact Nigeria by unearthing and supporting innovative ideas for
addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in entrepreneurial ways –
are taking Corporate Social Responsibility a notch higher by taking on far
bigger national and global challenges.
RED, the
media company which I co-founded with my partner, Chude Jideonwo perhaps takes
it a bit further by placing its core-growth ideology around inspiring and
enabling young people to engage towards inclusive growth and active
nation-building.
With this
shift in approach, it is increasingly apparent that companies are realising the
need to step beyond the laser focus on profits, eschew the tokenism that has
hitherto been regarded as CSR, and invest resources in directly impacting the
lives of people and communities around them for the greater good. It is hard to
argue against this business philosophy as the way to go moving into the future.
Here are
some benefits derived by companies who dare to exhibit some humanity while
taking care of business.
Brand
differentiation: Brands with a focus on innovation and impact tend to, on the
medium and long term, build a reputation among potential customers, consumers
and stakeholders as the go-to entity when they need practical solutions to
their problems.
For example,
brands with established initiatives towards enrolling children displaced by
insurgency in the North-west of Nigeria or that which invests massively in
providing entrepreneurial training for start-ups across the country would have
succeeded in not only building top-of-mind awareness in solving nagging
societal challenges, but also gathering a groundswell of goodwill with which
they can draw from in the future.
Heightened
brand appeal: We only do business with brands we like. And if the brand in
question appeals to your emotions by offering quality services while taking
care of collective challenges – even better. It’s therefore little wonder why
financial institutions such as GTBank and its likes invest resources in
lifestyle engagements. This is clearly to position itself as 360-degree brand
with a focus on satisfying the daily needs of the rapidly increasing, highly
dynamic, attention challenged, digitally-active customers.
Good old
trust: Looking closely at the Facebook’s example, it is clear that the global
company has chosen the path of trust. With its new mission, the brand has taken
another important step in deepening its relationship with users who interact
and share information on the platform daily.
Positioning
your business as a purpose-driven entity with the sole objective of building a
better future etches its essence on the minds of customers and stakeholders
alike as a partner, rather than a faceless entity with no soul.
Regardless
of the size of your brand, it is becoming a growing imperative to adopt ideals
that reach beyond profitmaking. The real path to growth is exploiting the
values that lie in caring for the holistic wellbeing of the next person. As
Zuckerberg maintained in his address: “We have to build a world where everyone
has a sense of purpose and community. That’s how we’ll bring the world closer
together. We have to build a world where we care about a person in India or
China or Nigeria or Mexico as much as a person here. That’s how we’ll achieve
our greatest opportunities and build the world we want for generations to
come.”
The future
starts now.
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