The Clean and Green Club

Dealing with the Tough Stuff: Practical Wisdom for Running a Values-Driven Business, by Margot Fraser and Lisa Lorimer (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

Every business faces challenge like revenue crunches, supplier issues, personnel problems, and of coure, stress. For socially conscious businesses, the challenges re multiplied by the need to address these problems in ways consistent with the company’s social and environmental commitment, even if that’s not the easiest path.

In this latest entry in B-K’s excellent Social Ventue Network series, Fraser and Lorimer, past CEOs of Birkenstock USA and Vermont Bread Company, resectively (with substantial help from Carol Berry of Putney Pasta, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Yogurt, Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines, Marie Wilson of the Ms. Foundation and White House Project, and Tom Raffio of Northeast Delta Dental) show solutions that worked, and solutions that failed.

The book will be very useful to companies with at least a few employees and revenues in the seven to nine figures, and particularly those facing rapid changes in their market or corporate identity (from products going out of fashion to challenges in getting financing without onerous strings attached, to dealing with rapid growth). One section that will apply just as clearly to much smaller and perhaps larger companies is the last chapter, on how to exit from the business while still maintaining not only the viability of the company but also its core values. Even social entrepreneurship pioneer Ben & Jerry’s got burned on that one.

Learning from Ben & Jerry’s mistakes, Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg describes how he held out for the right buyer, one who would take the ownership burden while leaving him with decision-making power. It was a long search, but he did find his buyer. Birkenstock’s Fraser was not as fortunate; transfer of ownership to her employees was a disaster, and the company had to be regrouped and sold off to its German parent, even as the German company was gong through management transition of its own.

Some advice comes though consistently in chapter after chapter:

• Understand the numbers and what they mean
• Use a board of outside advisors (including ten great tips on how to set up and work with your board)
• Heart, head, and gut all play important roles—but you also need a reality check
• Don’t undersell yourself, don’t overcommit yourself, and yet don’t be afraid to take on big challenges
• Avoid getting trapped by your own “socially responsible mindset arrogance” (as Lorimer puts it)—but don’t let the nay-sayers stop you from bringing those values into every aspect of your business; as Fraser says, you don’t have to give your vision away to make quotas
• Hire people who know more than you—but don’t let them push you into decisions you’ll regret

While the book spends a fair bit of time on the grim realities, it also offers hope that companies who maintain their high standards of ethics and social/environmental responsibilities are often well-placed to survive the challenges of the corporate world and the marketplace, and come out stronger as a result.