Sustainable Enterprises
Robert (Bob) Aiken, president and CEO of U.S. Foodservice, sat down with HOW Online contributor Dov Seidman to talk about the corporate commitment to be “Your Partner Beyond the Plate.” The initiative is much more than a new marketing campaign for the company — it is a pledge to take a long view of business, building an enduring legacy by focusing on how U.S. Foodservice does what it does as a core strategy.
If you have created a culture where people are comfortable with that change, where they don’t fear it, then you’ve got a organization that’s sustainable. ... Sustainability in that broader sense makes a lot of sense.
In Part 4 our “CEO-to-CEO Corner” series, Aiken talks about inspiring employees to create a powerful competitive advantage that allows companies to achieve the next level of significance. The discussion also explores what sustainability looks like from both an environmental and enterprise-level perspective, and how U.S. Foodservice is working to outgreen the competition through behaviors that flow from inspired employees.
- Part 1 of the series
- Read Part 2 of the series
- Read Part 3 of the series
- Part 4 of the series
Dov Seidman: We pretty much have only three mechanisms to influence others: We can coerce them, either explicitly or implicitly do this, or else — fireable offenses: “Get me the report by 5 p.m., or else!” We can motivate people with carrots and bonuses and good pay and all that. And then we can inspire people.
When you use the word “inspiration,” it seems to me that you’re using it deliberately and thoughtfully. That in addition to just coercing and motivating people, you’re really focusing on inspiration, right?
Bob Aiken: We are. Our strategies really aren’t that different than any of our competitors. Much of the business world has been commoditized, and while we may have advantages over many of our competitors, the ultimate advantage is engagement of our associates. If we can engage them, we will win most every time. But the only way to really engage them is to make them feel a part of the culture, to make them feel empowered by the culture. And so when I talk about inspiration, that’s really what I mean: for people to feel like we are invested in them so that they are willing to make the investment in our customers. In our company, that allows us to achieve that next level of significance and greatness.
Seidman: When you use the word “significance,” no one’s going to achieve significance overnight. When you talk about building an enduring company, in many ways you’re focused on sustainability, aren’t you? How can we do these things in an enduring way? You use the word legacy, which is inconsistent unless your whole approach is one of sustainability.
What does sustainability mean to you, especially in a time in which people associate sustainability with green and the environment? My contention is that if you don’t have a culture of integrity, you won’t have a sustainable enterprise. So what does sustainability mean and look like to you, both from the environmental perspective and from the enterprise perspective?
Aiken: It’s interesting because two years ago I would address groups of people and talk about sustainability and I could tell that, perhaps, over half the people in the room weren’t comfortable with sustainability. I found myself, just to get everybody on the same page, spending time talking about what sustainability meant. In that context, it was about being stewards of the environment, about green products lines, about reducing our carbon footprint, about doing the things that make us a good corporate citizen and contribute to our communities. That is certainly a part of what sustainability’s all about but I’ve seen some of what you have written on the subject and agree with you that, ultimately, sustainability is broader than even that. The green initiatives are an aspect of sustainability. What you’re trying to do is to create a culture that will allow a company to continue to grow and improve, to create this trust within your organization that’ll allow people to take risks and grow.
If you can do those things, your company can change and adapt in a world that continues to change. And you have the likelihood and opportunity to be successful over the long term. We talk about six core strategies in our company, and I think those six strategies will continue to be very important in the long term. But how it is we go about executing those strategies will change.
If you have created a culture where people are comfortable with that change, where they don’t fear it, then you’ve got a organization that’s sustainable. In addition to the impacts on the environment, your community, you’ve got a company that will continue to be strong for the long term. So I think sustainability in that broader sense makes a lot of sense.
Seidman: Speaking of green, we’ve talked about outbehaving. I contend that companies are going to start outgreening the competition to not just focus on green or doing the minimum — because they’re more conscious of stakeholders out there observing who’s green and who’s not — but in fact embrace green as part of a source of competitive differentiation and therefore outgreen the competition through a set of behaviors that flow from people who are deeply inspired by the values of green and the values of making the planet and the world sustainable. How do you plan to outgreen the competition?
Aiken: Every one of our customers asks about it. We don’t even have to raise the issue because they want to know, and they’re evaluating us as compared to our competition in terms of what we’re doing to minimize impacts on the environment and help support our communities. We have a whole series of activities that we’re undertaking. We actually formed an alliance with the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the leading experts in the country on how it is you can minimize your carbon footprint, your impacts on the environment. We have instituted a whole series of changes in the way we do business. We’ve had our fleet certified by the Environmental Protection Agency for taking the actions that are necessary to maximize our fuel economy. The list of things that we have done in that regard goes on and on, and I think we are good corporate citizens.
For the most part, the vast majority of this has been easy so far because in addition to lessening environmental impacts, we’ve also been able to reduce costs. With the price of diesel fuel today, as you can imagine, figuring out how to route your trucks more efficiently to reduce your CO2 emissions causes you to burn less diesel and save money.
Seidman: Do you feel that viewing this as a competitive advantage of outgreening the competition is a fair way to capsulate the thoughts you just shared?
Aiken: I think it is. I think many companies like ours are in the early stages of these efforts. The low hanging fruit, if you will, is our focus and is a focus of many companies. It will be up to us over time to define what outgreening means, as we are able to really make progress on some of these early initiatives that we’re undertaking. We’re focused on managing our supply chain, managing our environmental footprint and doing things to lesson our impacts.
You know, the reason I think it’s so important is, ultimately, consumers do care about this. Consumers care about it more in some places than others. Today, we serve a lot of colleges and universities; they’re passionate about this. Not all of our consumers are as passionate today, but they will be over time. So outgreening, because of the role we play in the supply chain, is an easy way for our customers to do their part to manage their supply chain to help them achieve improvements in their environmental impact. If you can offer creative solutions about how we do that, and we encourage our suppliers to do it, we offer a solution to our customers that others may not.
In that context, outgreening helps us to grow our business as well as supporting our efforts to create a proud legacy and build a sustainable culture within our business — and being viewed by our employees as a company that does the right thing. So it fits together nicely both in terms of building the culture internally and building the reputation externally that we want to have as a company.
Seidman: I noticed that Dow Chemical has just told the world that they’re “the human element company.” And Chevron is “the human energy company”; Cisco is “the human network”; Toyota is “humanizing transportation”; BP is “beyond petroleum.” Now you’re “beyond the plate.” I’m struck that business is being described - and maybe even pursuing — in a very humanistic way with a real emphasis on the humanity of business. What’s that all about? Are you seeing the trend there? Is there something to the dots that I just connected?
Aiken: I think there is something that goes back to this notion that really what separates one company from another is the clarity of vision that they have, and that’s very important. If you don’t have a clarity of vision around the strategies that you’re deploying, you’re not likely to be successful, but many companies have that clarity of vision today. So then it becomes a question of how it is that you outbehave the competition. The only way that you can outbehave the competition is to engage, empower and invest in your people to make them feel a part of what it is that you’re trying to achieve, essentially to inspire them to be a part of it. If you do those things, if you build those human connections, then your people will carry those connections into the marketplace, engage their customers in a way that others don’t, and allow you to be successful. And that is really the essence of what it is we hope to achieve here.
Last 5 posts by HOW Online
• What Color is the Triple Bottom Line? - July 29th, 2010
• Bad Behavior Hurts Productivity - July 29th, 2010
• New Zealand Review: Poor Governance - July 29th, 2010
• Sustainability: Back to the Future - July 28th, 2010
• Becoming the Good Company - July 28th, 2010
January 27th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
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February 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
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February 12th, 2009 at 11:53 am
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