A Framework For Deciding What Social Causes & Polarizing Topics Your Company Should Invest In

What should you be investing in and saying and how should you decide?

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Recently a big debate has been brewing in the business world when it comes to organizations investing in social causes or speaking up around controversial and polarizing topics. Specifically, what should they be investing in and saying and how should they decide?

A recent post published by the WSJ titled Companies That Embraced Social Issues Have Second Thoughts, highlights some of the challenges. One of the companies featured in that article is PPG a global paint supplier. I actually interviewed their former CEO and now executive chairman for a new book I have coming out called Leading With Vulnerability (more on that in the coming days.)

Their current CEO Tim Knavish is quoted in the article as saying:

“We run a business. We don’t run a political organization. We don’t run a religious organization, and we don’t run a social organization. “However, we recognize that we operate in a society. We hire employees with opinions and views. We work with customers that have opinions and views. So we have to take all that into account.”

In the article Tim says they use a scorecard to make these types of decisions.

In today’s polarizing business landscape executives are all trying to figure out what they should do and how they should do it. This is a trend that has been going on for a few years now and leaders are trying to play in the “grey area” for fear of upsetting people.

But the big fear that leaders should have isn’t that someone is going to disagree with them, it’s that customers and employees don’t know what the leaders and the company stand for to begin with!

No longer can leaders dwell in ambiguity or silence. They must assume a firm stance – either articulating their viewpoints, investing in causes, or explicitly choosing not to do so, with a rationale to support their decisions.

Below is a framework I’ve been working on that can help leaders decide if they should invest in a social cause or publicly discuss a polarizing topic.

I encourage you to use this as a template that you can build on top of.