Using Superpowers for Good
How to build trust through social innovation and doing good.
Fifteen years ago, I started a journey to enable brands to build trust. I believed then — as I do now — that trust is the social bond that ties people together. As the reciprocal emotional quality that says ‘I rely on you, so you can rely on me’, trust creates a powerful connection — between people to create communities; between communities and companies to create markets; and between citizens and the institutions they rely on to create societies. Without trust and confidence, markets cannot operate efficiently and people cannot organize and express themselves effectively.
As a result of this career adventure, I’ve discovered a few consistent themes that, when applied, engender trust. I’ll be exploring these themes over a few posts.
Today’s theme: Social Innovation & Using Superpowers for Good.
===Part One: The Origin Story===
I first heard the idea from one of my mentors, Jason Rzepka, while he was leading MTV’s public affairs team. The idea is to tap into your organization’s unique powers to help people overcome the challenges that they face in their lives.
Using your Superpowers for Good means tapping into your unique powers to help people overcome the challenges that they face in their lives.
Recently, I’ve seen how the idea fits into a broader concept called ‘Social Innovation’. Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business describes social innovation as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than present solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.”
The social part of this definition is one of the most important elements, especially as societies face challenges that can be addressed through social interventions. The World Bank recently found, in its report “Mind, Society, and Behavior”, new insights into how people actually think and make decisions, and that often social solutions can help government and civil society more readily tackle such challenges as increasing productivity, breaking the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next, and acting on climate change.
===Part Two: Why?===
Using your superpowers for good — and weaving social innovation into your business model — is central to building trust. I see three main reasons for this:
Builds salience. People are busy. For most organizations, it’s a big challenge to compete with the tonnage of messages that are all vying for people’s attention. By engaging in meaningful work to help your audience overcome their challenges, your organization can emerge as an important and noticeable part of their lives.
Energizes stakeholders. When your stakeholders have a vested interest, you will find that they want to co-create programs that help people. This collaboration with stakeholders creates both reciprocal loyalty and energizes people — from your own staff to customers and users — around the mission that you are advancing.
Explains your brand. Social innovation helps to put your brand, product, and service in a broader societal context. Beyond having a positive impact on people’s lives, these types of initiatives help to explain how your product improves society — an important message, especially for critical audiences.
===Part Three: 5 Steps to Using Your Superpowers for Good===
To build trust and confidence, this type of social innovation must be authentic. It cannot be manufactured or astroturfed. With this in mind, I offer a few steps to using your superpowers for good:
- Assess Your Organization’s Superpowers.
Companies and organizations have all different types of superpowers. For some, these superpowers may be the ability to reach a large audience. It may be technology that enables people to connect and share, or the utility that their products play in people’s everyday lives. For others, it may be so-called ‘thought leadership’ — the ability to push our collective thinking on the issues that matter to people.
Whatever it is, do an honest assessment of your organization’s superpowers so that you can focus on unleashing it.
2. Weave Social Innovation Into Corporate Strategy
Repeat after me: This is not just corporate social responsibility. Many leading companies are already working on social responsibility initiatives. However, what these organizations don’t recognize is that the opportunity stretches far beyond being responsible members of their community; it is about fusing corporate strategy and citizenship into one.
Social innovation is not an afterthought. It’s a central part of your business model.
3. Find Partners
Social innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s the product of deep collaboration with a variety of stakeholders to your organization. You’ll find these allies inside and outside of your traditional sector: philanthropy, non-profit, government, academia, and commercial.
Find your natural allies. Those that share your objective on a particular issue and who can add something (read: their own superpower) to the mix. For example, if your organization excels at thought leadership, find allies that can tell great stories and spread your ideas to the masses.
It’s also important to seek out the people and organizations that have worked in this space. Design firms like IDEO have created practice specialties around social innovation.
4. Make the (Business) Case
Over the years, I’ve seen so much evidence proving that doing good lifts the perception metrics that drive behavior and brand affinity. Still, many people need proof — they need more of a reason other than doing-good-in-the-world to invest in this type of work.
Be sure to make your case strongly, directed at whatever goal your organization is focused on hitting. For some, these goals might be to better explain their brand to a broad audience; for others, it might be to counteract negative perceptions. Whatever the goal is, make the case for how social innovation and using your superpowers helps achieve them.
5. Check Your Risk Aversion at the Door — If You Have Superpowers, Use Them.
One of the biggest barriers to this type of work is the comfort associated with more traditional ways of operating. It can feel risky to advance affirmative agendas that are not tied directly to core product functionality. Casting your brand into a larger societal discussion can make some feel vulnerable, especially as some critics may not agree with your point of view. Do your best to overcome this aversion to risk. Start small and move quickly to learn how this work impacts your organization.
The world needs heroes and, I believe, most organizations have superpowers that are meaningful and that can have a lasting impact on the communities that surround them.
