CSR: Learn not Teach

One of my sons has come of the age when he has to make the choice to study further or plunge into the world of business. So far he has been a good son, an outstanding student and a very responsible citizen of the world. His teachers at the Ateneo de Manila University do take note of his performances and they have rewarded him with the right accolades and scholarships too. In life, he seems poised correctly to take off from being a good boy to a man to be respected. I take pride in this fact but claim no credit. As far as I am concerned, he is a self-made man already.

While driving about town, sometimes, we have healthy conversations about business, politics, social issues, life and about living gracefully. I must confess that I, more often than not, pick up more lessons than I think I give out.

One particular Sunday morning, just a week after I made a presentation at the Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR] in Manila, I was telling him about how people across the world are waking up to the realities of the rampage we have created, in the guise of development and growth, we have created on earth. I was also telling him how happy I was that thousand of individuals and organizations in the know are now doing the right thing by healing the earth, nurturing the needy and educating the ones not in the know. “People,” I said, “are essentially good, and when given the freedom and the resources will most likely do the right and the noble thing.” I was happy, I said, that many large business groups do not regard the concept of CSR just as marketing and a business strategy but more as a way of life. On other occasions most of our conversations had been, of course, about developmental work and study opportunities in the USA or Europe for him. His city of choice, to live, work and or study, he’d mentioned many a times to me, was San Francisco. Today, he just sat and heard me out quietly.

A few days after that one-sided chat, we were back in the car again.

“Pa,” he said “there’s this professor at school who was telling us about this developmental assignment in one of the remote provinces in the Philippines.”

“What about it?”

“It’s an eighteen month teaching assignment for high-school level kids in a village where there is no electricity and potable water.”

“And?”

“Well, I am seriously considering taking it up.”

Without thinking and very carelessly, I blurted out, “Why?”

Allowing no pause and with a quick frown on his good-looking face, he exploded, “What do you mean, why?”

That shut me up good for the rest of the drive. Again, instead of teaching, I’d learned. Likewise for CSR, I realized I need to learn not teach, do and not talk, live it and not just employ it as a business strategy.