Organizations have a rich potential to contribute to social change. I can’t help but call to mind the occasions in which nonprofit executive directors testified that the apex goal for their organization was to become irrelevant. Their irrelevance would mean such things as low-income school-age girls having ready access to period products, equitable and respectful maternal healthcare for Black women, and every family stocked with an adequate supply of quality food. Even for-profit organizations can make vital contributions through equitable and talent-discerning hiring practices and the creation of markets that widen the opportunity space.
The key to realizing social impact dreams is making a commitment to establish, maintain, and enhance—constructive relationships. Organizations are unique entities with respect to both their dependence on constructive relationships and in their ability to translate constructive relationships into game-changing impacts to our way of life. Constructive relationships are born when individuals from different backgrounds and with different temperaments and perspectives rise above what divides them for the sake of causes that unite them. Constructive relationships are less about getting your people in line and more about getting your people to invest.
In a social world that is conveniently primed for fragmentation (at the same time that the ultra-wealthy work to be free from accountability), getting your stakeholders to fully invest is a real challenge. Every interaction—since they are the building blocks of relationships—is significant, a potent opportunity to connect authentically. Interactions done right inform, recognize, and motivate. Individuals invest willingly once the vision is clear, once their role and who they are is recognized, and when the milestone ahead is worthy enough to merit a stretch on their part.
In the everyday life of organizations it is easy to lose track of how critical everyday interactions can be, positively and negatively. The sum of interactions shape the current state of your stakeholder relationships, whether they can be objectively classified as compromised, conventional, or constructive. Guess which relational states will win the future.