I'm just outside Midway, Utah at the Zermatt Resort (feel sorry for me?) to attend the first annual Public Innovators Summit sponsored by The Harwood Institute and Fast Company. The Summit is supported by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
The list of attendees represents a cross section of leaders in business, government, education and non profit organizations. The driving force behind the Summit is Richard Harwood, founder of The Harwood Institute. You can easily understand the reason for this Summit when you understand the Institute's mission. This is from their website.
Rich Harwood founded the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation to help people imagine and act for the public good. For almost 20 years, he and his colleagues have been evolving both the ideas and the practical approaches for changing the negative conditions in society that too often divide people and keep them from making progress in their neighborhoods, communities, and the nation as a whole.
At The Harwood Institute, we seek nothing less than to spark fundamental change in American public life - so that people can tap their own potential to make a difference and join together to build a common future. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works within a long tradition of small, catalytic, and public-spirited organizations in American history that have sought to improve public life and politics.
We believe there is enormous potential to unleash in America if we can pursue an alternate path for ourselves, our communities, and this nation.
What attracted me to this Summit and my desire to be selected as a participant is part personal and part professional. One of the drivers of our company is to help our clients get on the path to becoming what we call Citizen Brands. We believe it is now a must for corporations to be engaged in helping to improve society, not just sell their products and services. That is my professional reason for being here.
On a personal note, I love the idea of spending a couple of days engaging with other people who share a common interest of figuring out how to make a difference in the world and to help convince others to do the same thing. Not to mention, I'm back in the mountains for a couple of days.
I look forward to sharing some of the discussions that come out of the Summit.
One key attribute of a Citizen Brand is open communication with everyone inside or outside the organization. Southwest Airlines is one of my favorite brands and it is a company that has always been open in all of its communications.
Right now, for example, Southwest has been in the news regarding a potential change in their open seating policy. If you have never flown Southwest Airlines, then you may not know that there are no assigned seats. You board in three groups - A, B and C - and you take whatever seat you want when you get on the plane. It has become part of the Southwest culture and an important part of their ability to operate more efficiently than other airlines.
Not everyone likes it of course. In fact, some people will avoid flying Southwest just because there are no assigned seats. I personally like it. But the fact that there are customers who don't means Southwest has to listen.
So what do they do about it? Do they just suddenly change their policy and then try to spin some kind of announcement to make it sound good? No, they don't. Instead, the CEO of Southwest is discussing the issue on the Southwest blog. There has been no decision made, yet here is the CEO talking direct with customers about the issue and its pros and cons. Refreshing.
Too bad it seems refreshing instead of being the norm in business communications.
More on this at Andy's blog.
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