The Motley Fool posted a fantastic article on socially responsible investing yesterday that I would highly recommend reading: Stocks With Scruples. Given the site’s focus on investing, the commentary is accordingly well balanced and informative from an investing standpoint. Recent SRI developments are noted and the author makes a nice comparison between three leading SRI vehicles and the broader market.

The author does a nice job of providing a brief overview of socially responsible investments and what purpose they may serve:

“SRI refers to blending one’s financial decision-making with one’s perception of its impact on society. Naturally, this notion is jam-packed with personalized value judgments and not without a certain morally infused attitude. Well, so, too, are most of our daily activities. SRI can take various strategic forms. Some investors use screens to avoid what they perceive as “sin” stocks. Others may use their shareholder power to challenge management on current practices.”

Here’s an interesting statistic the article cites in relation to SRI’s growth and popularity over the past decade:

“According to the Social Investment Forum’s fifth biennial report on investment trends, which was released in January, SRI investment assets have grown faster since 1995 than all other managed assets in this country — more than 258%.”

I don’t know if it is fair to extrapolate the presence of an even greater popular interest in SRI from the following statement, but it is sure nice to hear nonetheless:

“You can judge for yourself the movement’s impact as we begin monthly reports highlighting performance and interesting developments.”

TAGS: SRI | Motley Fool | Investing | Mutual Funds | ETF | KLD | Calvert | Domini | Socially Responsible Investing

Dr. Terry F. Yosie wrote an excellent column at GreenBiz.com on corporate social responsibility and how it should fit into a corporation’s business strategy: Corporate Social Responsibility: What the Smart CEO Needs to Know. Dr. Yosie covers five things every CEO should know about CSR and his or her company’s business strategy:

1. Recognize that demands for corporate social responsibility reflect a shift in society’s priorities.
2. Manage social responsibility challenges as part of corporate governance.
3. Look upon corporate social responsibility as a strategic challenge and not as a series of high profile initiatives.
4. Measure society’s expectations as part of the business process.
5. Define success for the company.

TAGS: CSR | Corporate Social Responsibility | Corporate Governance | CEO

I haven’t posted about business strategy in a while, but based on a recent experience with a moving company, I thought I would pass on a new methodology I gleaned from the process.

If you are interested in losing customers, take the following steps:

1. Agree to an appointment at your potential customer’s residence at a certain time on a certain date;
2. Don’t bother to call and confirm the time and date with the potential customer as the appointment approaches;
3. Don’t bother arriving on time;
4. Provide a quote in writing, but do so by sending an email that is an embedded image (why bother with a text image or an attached PDF?) that not only might not be readable by your potential customer’s email program, but that also prints out terribly;
5. Make the estimate somewhat vague, but provide a seemingly good estimate for the job;
6. When the potential customer phones to book your services, make sure to throw in a sizable “administrative fee” ($500+ works well) to process the transaction;
7. Remember to NOT include the “administrative fee” in the original estimate;
8. When the potential customer asks why the added fee was not part of the estimate, blame it on your fairly new employee that performed the estimate;
9. Do NOT make any attempt to waive the fee, explain it further, re-draft the estimate, or take any other further action;
10. Be sure to leave your potential customer wondering whether the “administrative fee” will be the first or last added charge that did not appear in the estimate; and,
11. Make sure to repeat the process with each new potential customer.

TAGS: Business Ethics | Business Strategy | Integrity | Ethics | Moving | Customer Service