It is a phrase drawn from our origin story: “falling from grace” is for some a reference to Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. In more contemporary usage, it refers to any time someone with power, wealth, or fame experiences the loss of those things, either because of their own fallibility or because the world around them is evolving in ways that change their status.

Between the #MeToo movement and the normalization of Black Lives Matter, there are lots of visible ‘falls from grace’ happening around and amongst us. The announced resignation of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this week is just the most recent high-profile example. And while it isn’t only happening to white men, it is mostly happening to them. In this moment, it seems important (and only fair) to recognize that the phenomenon is NOT occurring because white men are inherently wrong or more prone to misbehavior than the rest of us. It is occurring because they have benefitted from being in control of power and wealth and fame for a very, very long time.

That some falls have taken a century or more (Robert E. Lee comes to mind), while others happen with blazing speed (my friend and former U.S. Senator Al Franken might be an example) adds to the challenge for those at risk of a fall from knowing just how to conduct themselves. Those who have broken the law and gotten away with it (I’ll go out on a limb and suggest POTUS 45) should be counseled that they are likely on borrowed time, reputationally speaking. Those who have treated others badly, but gotten away with it, because of power differentials need to be thoughtfully assessing when and how best to take responsibility for the misuse of power and make amends (and this is a category filled with plenty of women, it must be noted).

For me, both as a woman who has been on the receiving end of chauvinistic behavior and as a consultant to many powerful men, the hardest navigation is for those who have simply been beneficiaries of the old order for so long that they honestly cannot recognize their privilege – or cannot calculate how best to advocate for an equitable redistribution of the benefits they have received (and which they believe they have earned). I’m reminded of the story from a college psychology course about a frog in boiling water: If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it quickly and instinctively does the right thing and jumps out. But if you put a frog in a pot of water and then turn up the heat, the frog will sit, not recognizing the danger until it is too late and will expire in the boiling water.

Those of us with colleagues, partners, spouses and children who have been beneficiaries of the old order (or who increasingly recognize our own privilege) need to be thinking about the capacity for grace in this time of reckoning. Giving up power or wealth, ceding the advantages of fame, stepping out of the range of privilege takes a great deal of courage: if you’ve always had a net underneath you, how confident are you that you’ll perform exceptionally without one?

It is true that some are going to need to have their privilege just yanked out from beneath them: the consequences of allowing them to live in an increasingly unsustainable bubble of elevated perception are too high for the rest of us to keep paying. But acknowledging that we have lived generations as white, patriarchal societies should enable most of us to approach the inevitable changes ahead with some measures of grace. Loss is a profoundly human experience, and acknowledging the humanity of our brothers who are on the losing end of the redistributions of power now underway seems to call on us all to allow for graceful landings whenever possible. Godspeed.

ESG factors have become a well-discussed topic in board rooms and investment committee meetings. The acronym, of course, refers to the emerging significance of monitoring the environmental, social and governance practices of organizations. Investment advisors have been perfecting their metrics and analysis of these factors over the past thirty years – triggered by a 1988 article in the American Journal of Sociology called “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” which challenged the long-held doctrine of Milton Friedman and others that ‘self-interest’ is the only consideration for maximizing economic returns. Pressure grew as coalitions began using their leverage to encourage companies and capital markets to incorporate societal impacts into their decision-making. Then in 1998, business consultant John Elkington is credited with coining the phrase ‘triple-bottom-line,’ and a whole new suite of consulting was born: advising, tracking, incentivizing and penalizing organizations for their social responsibility, or lack thereof.

For most of the past three decades, the vast majority of corporate communications efforts assessed ESG considerations in either a defensive way – aiming to avoid criticism, or as a component of their organization’s community relations, more recently the ‘corporate social responsibility’ function. As the value systems of millennials and Gen Z increasingly shape the marketplace narrative, however, the ‘upside’ of reputation management with ESG has become increasingly clear. People want to do business with ‘good companies,’ and ESG frameworks are creating effective ways to develop and distinguish one brand from another in terms of commitments to sustainability, in particular. Next up, I predict: effective ways to ‘judge’ organizations’ real impact on racial equity. Talking about commitments to equity and to dismantling the consequences of racism won’t be enough for organizations looking for strong ESG scores: we’ll be looking to document progress.

We’ve begun to counsel our clients to think about ESG factors in the same ways we talk about risk:

The clear emergence of ESG expectations for all organizations can be a fantastic opportunity for brands to truly distinguish themselves as aligned with stated values that they are prepared to be measured against. But getting the work designed and effectively communicated to key stakeholders will be essential. Let us know if we can help you think it through.

Businesses have long had the challenge of looking to influence governmental oversight that creates the guardrails for markets, without crossing ethical lines or raising public criticism. The hyper-partisanship of our present landscape—and the speed and power of digital media—are creating new levels of reputation risk on a long list of policy topics. And as globalization transformed so many aspects of business, the challenges also became more complex. Current examples seem worthy of review and reflection.

The pressure being put on Georgia-based publicly traded companies in the wake of that state’s passage of restrictions on access to voting is bringing into vivid focus a dilemma long overdue for more public contemplation: given the power and influence of major corporations in the economy and in our political systems, how should or can they be held accountable for a lack of progress in dismantling systemic racism? As additional states in the U.S. contemplate tightening access, businesses need to anticipate tough questions from customers, employees and public officials about how business can or should engage. And the global response to the death of George Floyd a year ago is an important insight into the reality of racial and class disparities in so many markets around the world.

Corporations are not, of course, the creators of the discriminatory economic construct that has fueled economic growth for hundreds of years. But many of them have been beneficiaries of it—or are the present-day descendants of the businesses that benefitted in earlier periods of history. As so many thoughtful leaders—in public roles, in philanthropy, in academia and yes, in corporate roles—grapple with how best to move ahead given the reckoning underway, it seems inevitable that the authenticity of business’s efforts to be part of the solution will face extraordinary tests. Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola and Home Depot are on the front lines of this emerging expectation.

Meanwhile, the New York Times today carries a front-page story on the tough choice facing clothing manufacturers and retailers: human rights activists have led the fight to purge the use of cotton coming from China as the result of forced labor, but China is fighting back. Their 1.4 billion consumers are being encouraged to threaten boycotts of H&M, Nike and other clothing retailers, creating what the Times called ‘the mother of all conundrums’ for manufacturers.

Corporate social responsibility is a well-developed concept within the largest and most sophisticated global entities, but as the world continues to get more interconnected and interdependent, even the most thoughtful of those value-constructs will come under pressure from both domestic political activities and nationalistic swings across global markets. Shareholders and institutional investors relying on the progress of ESG (environmental, social, governance) work, too, should be preparing for a new level of scrutiny and assessment.

How to prepare?

1. Have a robust approach to issue identification – looking out at the horizon and around corners.
2. Ensure an openness to being challenged, to see issues in new light. This will take both leadership and practice.
3. Acknowledge that perspective is impossible to maintain from within an organization (especially at the top). Hire a firm like Tunheim to reach beyond traditional sources and access objective insights.

If you’d like to see Tunheim’s methodologies work for you, please contact us at https://tunheim.com/contact/.