One is a cook who spends almost every free minute at a children’s hospice, trying to ‘bring a smile to the faces of these terminally ill children’.

The second is a married mother of three who serves as a surrogate mom to babies given up directly after birth in a so-called ‘baby flap’ (drop-off box). She has already nursed eight babies, each for two months, until each baby could be adopted. Her family supports her in this 24/7 job. She just wants to “be the mom to them that each one of these babies deserves to have”.

The third is a rocker who ‘used to solve problems with my fists – now I solve them with my heart’. After losing his own young wife to cancer at the age of 28, he convinced his motorcycle gang to create and operate with him an adventure park for sick and disabled children – there is even a tree house with wheelchair access!

These three silent heroes are volunteers – coincidentally, 2011 was the European Union’s Year of Volunteering. Our societies could not exist without the giving spirit of volunteers – giving generously of our time, our skills, our dedication … our hearts.

Li Edelkoort, one of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters, has predicted the end of Western-style individualism, and a (re-)turn to a communal sense of identity.

Here’s wishing you a peaceful end of the year and a caring start into 2012 — Season’s Greetings

On the occasion of this series of conferences, a Global Corporate Volunteering Good Practice Case Book will be introduced to which I have contributed. It consists of 10 case studies from multinational companies, including IBM, GlaxoSmithKline and Volkswagen, as well as essays from international experts like Bea Boccalandro and Chris Jarvis. After having presented at the Vienna conference, I am now posting my own essay here: Understanding Permeable Boundaries_The Future of Strategic Employee Involvement_V Scheubel 2011. I argue for no longer creating a split between Employee Volunteering and Corporate Community Involvement, a split between sectors, and a split between company and society. I argue for competency-based secondments of employees towards innovative Corporate Community Involvement partnerships.

An abbreviated version (shorter case examples) will be published in the case book in April 2012. The casebook will be published in English, German and Spanish and will be available in digital format via its own website. You can already pre-order a free copy of this Global Corporate Volunteering Good Practice Case Book: Casebook_Bestellkarte

My contribution engages with stakeholder expectations and their view of corporate performance, and with the opportunity for communications professionals to engage in stakeholder relationships (also through social media) and allow stakeholders to become sustainability consultants to the company.

Read the full article here: Engaging stakeholders around the topic of sustainability VScheubel Oct 2011

My main points were about how the topic of sustainable organizations (not just companies) becomes more and more important to stakeholders, and how communicators, as the first to engage with stakeholders, need to go beyond the classic ‘communication push’ towards engaging in real, dialogic relationships with stakeholders. I expanded on the benefits of using social media – for getting known in the community, receiving lots of useful information, and creating valuable connections with stakeholders.

Also got a chance to recommend a few fellow CSR tweeters!

Watch a short post-event video interview here: http://www.vimeo.com/28377548/

The debate was broadcast live on the web – here’s the link: http://bit.ly/k6fxDm

City 7TV showed a summary of the debate, with interviews – watch it on You Tube, min. 4:15 – 7:57: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nNW1RxI9Io

I was also interviewed live on the topic of CSR on Dubai Eye business radio that same morning – listen to the podcast: http://uk.zawya.com/radio/default.cfm/sidDE110706064730269761

And then it happens – sometimes only after a couple of years, sometimes after a few months. The unexpected. Your client’s (new) boss gets in the picture: “My (new) boss wants to meet you.” Oops – up until now you may not even have realized there was a boss you might have to deal with. Or you had a rather good connection to the ‘old’ boss, and wonder what that new person is going to be like.

Ideally, you’d like to follow your tried and trusted approach here: getting to know that person, and allowing that person to get to know you – taking time to build familiarity and trust, and then contracting on how to do some work together, before even starting to do the work.

Only, it’s not going to happen. What do you get? If you’re lucky, one ‘meet and greet’ with the boss – and if you’re lucky, the two of you ‘click’, and you get approval to continue your work with your client. If you’re less lucky and you don’t ‘click’, that boss may look at you with a bit of suspicion.

If you’re even less lucky, the boss ‘gets in the way’ – does not like your approach, knows better than you, or finds your rates too expensive. All of those are not good news. They may mean less or no work for you with that client in the future.

Which – each and every time of going through this experience, as many of us have – leads to the question: Who is the client, really? Is it that person with who you have established that nice working relationship? Or is it really that person’s boss, who can decide whether you’re the person they want to work with and whether they want to give you work at all?

Sometimes, you may keep the work, but whereas your initial client treated you as a partner, the (new) boss might be more inclined to just give you orders top-down.

As consultants, we don’t want to be agency people, we don’t want to be just service providers – as David Maister says, we want to be ‘trusted advisors’ (http://amzn.to/lac9xl).

So what can we do? Well, there can always be surprises – and new bosses coming in. We may always have to consider how to make the best of the situation, where to compromise – or whether to quit.

However, whenever possible in the initial relationship building and contracting phase, it helps to ask: ‘So who’s your boss? How is her/his involvement with this work? What are her/his priorities? How may what she/he needs from me differ from what you need from me? Would it make sense to have a three-way meeting early on?’

That way, hopefully, you can build that collaboration – rather than being ‘confronted’ with each other rather late in the process and potentially experiencing a sense of mutual exclusion rather than early inclusion.

What are your thoughts about this? What have you experienced – and what did you make of the situation?

Read the full author spotlight on: http://bit.ly/lMmGW0

We also find that with the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Muhammad Yunus, Joseph Stiglitz, Nicholas Stern, Jeffrey Hollender, Elaine Cohen and Wayne Visser as authors on the same list, we’re in very good company!

Erweitern Sie Ihre Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten, um sektorenübergreifende Partnerschaften effektiv umsetzen, moderieren und begleiten zu können!

Effektive Kooperationen zwischen Beteiligten mit unterschiedlichen Missionen, Zielsetzungen, Kulturen und sogar unterschiedlichem Sprachgebrauch sind nicht immer ganz einfach zu realisieren. Es werden ein gemeinschaftliches  Verständnis zwischen Partnern, ein gemeinsam getragener Führungsansatz, ein kooperatives Verständnis von Zusammenarbeit, ein „Werkzeugkasten“ an Schlüsselkompetenzen und gleichzeitig ein starkes Beziehungsmanagement sowie strukturiertes Projektmanagement benötigt. Partnerschaften, die auf der Basis dieser gemeinsam geschaffenen Erfolgsfaktoren entstehen, können echte Wirkung erzielen. Umgekehrt werden Partnerschaften ohne diese Erfolgsfaktoren weit hinter ihren Potentialen und Möglichkeiten zurückbleiben oder sogar scheitern.

Trainingsablauf

Tag 1

Was bedeutet sektorenübergreifende Partnerschaft? – Warum sektorenübergreifende Partnerschaften? – Vorteile und Risiken von Partnerschaften – Andere Sektoren verstehen – Der Partnerschafts-Zyklus – Der Business Case für Partnerschaften

Tag 2

Efektive sektorenübergreifende Partnerschaften entwickeln – Interessenbasierte Verhandlungsführung – Partnerschaften managen und konstruktiv aufrecht erhalten

Tag 3

Typische Herausforderungen in sektorenübergreifenden Partnerschaften – Organisations-interne Hindernisse verstehen – Partnerschaften bewerten und kontinuierlich verbessern – Konkrete Planung nächster Schritte

Kursbroschüre downloaden:
http://www.thepartneringinitiative.org/docs/Germanyflyerfinal.pdf

Kursbroschüren (Druckversion) bestellen:
veronica@scheubeldevelopment.com

Online anmelden:
https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ereg/index.php?eventid=22176&

The Partnering Initiative ist ein Programm des International Business Leaders Forum in London. Mit 20 Jahren Erfahrung in der Theorie und Praxis von sektorenübergreifenden Partnerschaften begleitet The Partnering Initiative effektive Zusammenarbeit zwischen Unternehmen, Regierungen und Entwicklungsorganisationen/Zivilgesellschaft: durch direkte Unterstützung, Trainings und die Entwicklung von Standards. The Partnering Initiative hat eine Reihe von Fachbüchern und Broschüren zum Thema herausgegeben.

Veronica Scheubel repräsentiert The Partnering Initiative in Deutschland.

My ex-husband speaks three languages, used to be a Managing Director, has a background in education, has lived in four different countries and traveled the world, and has an extensive business network. And most of all, ever since he retired, he’s so bored.

Already years ago a friend of mine pointed out how the concept of retirement has become quite redundant in our times, in many countries, especially for so-called white collar workers. Decades ago, when people were working very hard physically, the concept of retirement made sense – and often, people did not even live for that many years after they retired.

Nowadays it’s all different. My ex-husband thought he looked forward to retirement – finally time to sleep in, practice the jazz trumpet, travel, read all those books. Oh well, he enjoyed it for about six months. Then he started missing work.

What is it that people tend to miss when they retire? Being in touch with other people, and having something meaningful to do – something that gives them a sense of accomplishment, of making a difference, of getting recognition.

Interestingly, still rather few retirees consider skills-based volunteering. Even more interestingly, it’s rather women than men who tend to volunteer. I also wonder how actively the NGO sector taps into the whole retiree pool for getting skills-based support. These are people who could help NGOs with their strategy, their marketing, their accounting, with fundraising, investment strategies, negotiating partnerships – you name it. This could be free consulting!

I’ve seen a few retired managers take on skills-based volunteering. I remember particularly a high-ranking manager from BMW. He spoke up at a conference where I was a panelist, and he was just glowing when he shared how much his involvement meant to him. He volunteers part-time, around 10 to 15 hours a week, and he is amazed how useful his management and leadership skills from the automobile world are to the drug counselling center where he volunteers.

Another great example to me is the high-ranking manager from a major oil company who upon his retirement got seconded to a big international development NGO, with the company even providing some compensation for his time spent there.

Why do I write about this? We read so much about volunteering, be it on people’s personal time or as employee volunteering. I miss seeing more on skills-based volunteering for retirees – something that is becoming ever more relevant in our ageing societies in the so-called Western world, and something that is certainly a triple win: NGOs get invaluable skills contributed for free. Retirees don’t fall into a black hole of boredom, instead feel fulfilled from making a meaningful contribution. And the company can still proudly report on retirees volunteering in its CR report! It ups the total numbers of participants and hours, and it provides the human interest stories.

By the way, my ex-husband found his volunteering job eventually. He’s taking care of marketing the region where he lives in France for free, just getting his expenses paid – thus helping both their trade relations and their tourism.

I’m still looking for the right kind of involvement for my Dad – his favorite would be some work in Southern Africa! Any takers?