Have Executives. Will Serve.

Situation

Client C, a Fortune-ranked company founded in Atlanta, GA, had gone through a number of leadership changes and began noticing an impact on its local community relationships. The strong community relationships that had been built and cultivated since the company's founding, were weakening because the company's new leadership, many transplants to Atlanta, was either unaware of the relationships and/or had not gotten engaged in the community. Appreciating the importance of the local community's support and its investment in the company's success, Client C embarked on a campaign to engage its top company leaders in the community.

Corporate Community Outsourcing was hired to lead the community engagement campaign and to ensure appropriate involvement of the Client's executives. CCO was also asked to develop a toolkit and to train executives on how to be successfully engaged with community organizations.

Action

CCO began the project by determining what the Client wanted to achieve through its executive engagement. Although invigorating the company's historic community relationships was important, introducing the new executives to the community and connecting with key customers and vendor partners was also important.

With "success" defined, CCO worked with Client B to identify and prioritize which executives to engage and on which community relationships to focus. CCO then developed a questionnaire and conducted interviews to gauge executives' community interests and availability and to understand key business relationships.

Based on interview results and relationship objectives, CCO began a matching process to assign executives to community activities (nonprofit board positions, campaign or event chairmanship, speaking engagements, etc.). In some instances, CCO identified new organizations or relationships to cultivate. Once matches were approved by program participants, CCO begin negotiating involvement with the community organizations.

As involvement was confirmed, CCO built a toolkit and orientation program to provide executives with the resources and knowledge to be successfully engaged in their assigned activities. The training and toolkit were also designed to educate executives on the company's historic and current community involvement and the decision-making process for partnering and funding organizations.

Results

An engagement dream! Executives became excited and felt a sense of ownership of the company's community legacy, while the training and toolkit empowered executives to do more than just "sign-up" - they were also armed with the know-how and tools to be effective in their involvement. Executives also reaped the benefits of being able to connect with business peers, key business partners and community leaders beyond the corporate setting and enjoyed getting first-hand knowledge of the Atlanta community.

At the same time, community leaders were impressed by the company's commitment to strategically engaging its executives in the community and gave a collective sigh-of-relief knowing the new leadership would be as its predecessors.