CRO POV: CRO’s Prospects in Europe, Part 1—The Environment
In IBM’s stylishly Spartan Thames-side HQ in London, I recently sat with Celia Moore, IBM’s European corporate citizenship. I was there to share Moore’s front-line views of the state of Corporate Responsibility in the newly-expanded European Union. With Bulgaria and Romania, the EU is now a 27-country club.
Moore, a corporate stateswoman with equal parts polish, expertise and energy, is a leader in the established thought-leadership group Business in the Community, which was formed several years ago under the auspices of the EU itself. When I asked her opinion of the issues at the top of her Corporate Responsibility agenda, she immediately said it was the environment. This was the obvious choice. Even as we sat in Moore’s office, global warming was dominating 17 sessions of the World Economic Forum simultaneously underway in Davos, Switzerland. Further fanning the flames of corporate environmental awareness were Europe’s recent bout of freak storms, snow-less weather in the Alps, and the recent popularity of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. In France, the environmental agenda was pressed by popular TV celeb Nicholas Hunot. The documentary TV star had proposed to run for president and split the vote unless the leading candidates backed his environment-as-top-priority platform. When they all jumped on, Hunot withdrew back to his TV studio.
As I write this column, the January 23, 2007 Wall Street Journal Europe’s front page headline reads: “Industries weigh more emissions cuts after taking more responsibility.” Moore cheekily explains a little-understood reason that environment is corporate concern #1 across the pond. “Because we are unburdened by Sarbanes-Oxley like our friends in America, we European corporate leaders can focus on stuff that is really important.”
In the frenzy around the topic, carbon offsets have become big. Carbon-offset entrepreneurs (some call them “CO2nies”) are moving into the space quickly, with offerings to offset everything from airplane travel to car mileage to heating oil usage with fee-based services to plant trees, build wind turbines or generate water power. Consumer and business advocacy groups are saying “caveat emptor,” due to recent reports of scammers and flim-flammers of all flavors. Regardless, companies and consumers alike are glomming on to the feel-good schemes.
IBM’s Moore is also a great example of a difference between European and US CR leaders: Compared with US CROs, European CR leaders have a much closer relationship with their environmental regulators both in-country and in Brussels. Moore and her CRO colleagues across the Global 1000 in London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Madrid all seem be on a first-name, email, and home-phone-number basis with the environmental ministers in both their home countries and in BXL (hint: if you want to be Euro-trendy, you need to use Brussels’ airport-code name). US CROs could learn a lesson or two from Celia Moore.
IBM’s regular appearance on the list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens (the 2007 list is being published by the CRO February 14) confirms Big Blue’s commitment to leadership in environmental issues and the other 7 or 8 Corporate Responsibility hot buttons. And as long as IBM has wired-in leaders like Moore—who has served ably for many years on VP Corporate Citizenship Stan Litow’s team—peer companies can continue to look to Big Blue’s example for CR success stories.
Tomorrow’s CRO Point Of View: What Can SarBox Teach Europe?