Opting IN!

I just returned from Pepperdine's Women Work Life Balance conference, a fabulous 2-day event with quality presentations all based on research.  I was fortune to be on a panel of four women and I represented the professional woman who "opted out" of the workforce.  As I told my story, I shared with the audience that, in fact, perhaps we need to reposition our orientation around "opting out." This terminology implies a perspective from the work side of the equation.  Instead, I believe that we should be thinking about this subject as one of OPTING IN - that is, opting in to life and living. With this orientation that the notion of "opting" isn't from the perspective of work, but rather from the perspective of life, it opens up the mindset.

We learned from the conference speakers, and research has shown us that many women really do not feel like they have the choice when they opt-out, and yet the word "opt" means to have choice and the option (Ms. Pamela Stone, guest speaker).  If we reframe the orientation to one of "opting in" to life we begin to believe that we do have choices, that our abilities and options and experiences are vast and can take us in many different directions.  So, I shared with everyone this analogy.  When we think of work-life balance, I have an image of a balance beam in my head and one is either on the balance beam, moving linearly, up or back, or is off on one side or off on the other.  If we think of work-life as an integration, I have an image of a giant hamster ball, in which we roll around.  We can move in any direction and we can accelerate or slow down.

As I shared my story, I believe that when I left the work force, I "opted out" and felt very much like I had wounds to lick and an identity to repair.  However, what happened next has been profound.  I pursued activities that I would have never thought to pursue had I remained working, that have made my life exponentially richer in experiences than otherwise.  And the single lesson in switching the mental frame from one of "opting out" to one of "opting in" is that I adopted a learning orientation and an adaptability to change that enables me to keep growing, being challenged, and living a fulfilling life.

As professional women trying to find significance, we tend to look at building a sense of significance according to traditional rules of working, and certainly that path cannot be discounted entirely.  However, it is possible to build our significance from what we share and bring into this world and through the development of our passions (plural).  We build our significance when we embrace the weave of different textures in our lives.  We build our significance by thinking about "giving it forward" every day.  And work is but one part of the weave, and one aspect of all the choices we embrace in life.  In fact, we have many choices.  So, rather than looking at the subject as "opting out" of the workforce, we can choose to orient around "OPTING IN" to the life force.

CSR is Like Teenage Sex!

"Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is like teenage sex. Everyone says they are doing it, but only half are really doing it, and of the half.... only half are doing it the right way." Sarita Bahl (consultant to government, NGOs, the private sector, and multinational corporations in the fields of communications, crisis management, training and advocacy for over 22 years) passed these words of wisdom to me last year, and from the literature on corporate sustainability/citizenship/responsibility, I think it poignantly summarizes the current state of corporate presence in our global community.

While there are still many companies paying lip-service to sustainability/corporate citizenship/corporate social responsibility (CSR), others are in the progressing stages of learning how to do it the right way.  Then there are quite a few that have emerged as role models in developing the kind of sophisticated CSR platform that leads to meaningful triple bottom line impact.

Unfortunately, many of these examples fall outside of the U.S.  In 2009 Gjolberg found that corporate America fell in the bottom five (out of 20 countries studied) in terms of results-oriented, meaningful, and impactful CSR initiatives, and yet Grayson's study in 2008 had identified American consumers as being the most interested of six western countries in socially and environmentally reputable corporations.  Therefore, there is much to be gained by studying the global corporations who have figured out how to develop the sophisticated CSR platform, herein after called itCSR, and even more opportunity for American companies.

As a result, my research focused on systematically identifying which U.S. Fortune 500 global corporations are doing CSR the right way and learning from them why they do it and how they do it.

From this research, I have developed a case for a new organizational development model.

Interested in learning more?  Go to the "ItCSR Development" page at the top right of this blog to read my dissertation abstract and follow me at www.deniseberger.com.

Image from ayushveda.com