Management Questions

For many companies, achieving social advantage will require fundamentally rethinking their social and business strategy. Executives who want to lead their organizations into this unfamiliar territory might begin by posing the following questions to their management teams:

• What are the social and ecological costs generated by our current business model?
• Who bears these costs and what are the likely consequences? How sustainable is our current business model?
• How structurally robust is the level of trust that we inspire in our employees, customers, suppliers, and regulators?
• To what degree are our company’s social contributions integrated into our core business mission and purpose?
• Where are the opportunities to renew critical resources or goodwill, to profitably meet the social expectations of our customers, and to address new social markets?
• What obstacles are impeding these opportunities and what traps could we fall into?
• Where can our company shape the industry ecosystem and gain social—and business—advantage?

Source: Social Advantage by Martin Reeves, Dieter Heuskel, Tom Lewis | Boston Consulting Group (BCG)