Sustainable Harvest takes things even further. Given the nature of his business (it's essentially a liaison between coffee farmers, roasters, and retailers), David Griswold has been able to establish an extraordinary level of accountability with every party he does business with. He personally sources the coffee he imports, forming long-term relationships with the small family farms and cooperatives that are his growers. He's even gone so far as to break down the standard 152-pound bag of beans into 50-pound boxes made from recycled materials so that growers and roasters alike will have an easier time lifting his merchandise. "We go for a level of transparency -- lay it out with your customers and suppliers," he says. "We consider what everyone needs to be profitable, looking at the other side of the fence: 'What do you need? This is what I need."
Wild Planet Toys also presents a comprehensive model for openness -- in this case, inside the company. For starters, Wild Planet uses open-book management, which means that everyone has access to all the company's financial data, except for figures on equity ownership (though everyone does receive stock options) and salaries. "Jack Stack [president of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. and an early proponent of open-book management] has this great motto of sharing his kingdom with everyone," says Grossman. "I don't know how widely that happened in the 1980s companies. I know that happens here. It's a very valuable tool. People don't have to whisper and wonder, 'Gee, are we really making a profit? What does our bank account look like?' Profits, margins -- it's all right there."
In addition, since its inception in 1993, Wild Planet Toys has conducted annual social assessments of its inner and outer workings to make sure that the company is adhering to its stated values. Those values extend from "We believe in providing positive influences for children" to "We emphasize teamwork and make decisions as a team" to "We get involved in our community, particularly in partnerships with kids."
"I think the people who came out of the '60s were a little less democratic in terms of some of the things that they implemented," says Grossman. "I'm not judging or faulting them, but I think that their view was: 'Hey, we're leading a revolution, and the people who work for us have to understand these issues. We will help them understand those issues; we will bring them along the path. But this is the way it's going to be.' That's definitely not my style; sometimes to a fault it's not my style. It's the psychic rewards that are the most important. Not just 'Do you have a channel for dissent?' but 'Are you engaged in the company? Are you part of crafting the path to the future?"
Nick Gleason, who spent time working on the shop floor of the airline-engine plant of Pratt & Whitney, has an eminently logical take on running a democratic company. "One of the things I learned from working in manufacturing companies is you should push decisions out to their furthest reasonable place," he says. "The CEO should make certain decisions, and certain decisions the person on the assembly line should make. The issue is what decisions should be made where. I shouldn't be running projects; the projects team should be running projects. I should be facilitating decision making around fund-raising and working with investors. And if you get too far off the appropriate decision-making roles, then you get confusion or ineffectiveness or lack of preparation."
Do the best you can at the time
In today's socially responsible businesses, understatement is the name of the game. In keeping with that sentiment, the founders hold the following guidelines in common: Don't make promises you can't keep or claims you can't stick to. Be scrupulously honest.
Seth Goldman was very clear in explaining that the peppermint leaves he buys from I'tchik Herbal Tea are not grown on the Crow Reservation but are bought from still another source, and that he can't make claims about the labor conditions under which the company's herbs and teas are grown, because he hasn't visited the farms. Aaron Lamstein was totally up-front about the fact that he can't vouch for every condition under which workers manufacture his products, since the factories he uses are spread out across the United States, nor can he claim that all the components that accompany WorldWise's goods are recycled or organic.
"Before we go into a product agreement with anyone, we have extensive discussions -- first about environmental issues, second about social issues," says Lamstein. "Tremendous numbers of components are produced for our products: the box, the label, the product itself, the instruction sheet -- each could be made in a separate place. We don't visit the component manufacturers of every item. We don't have the answer to every question. Like all businesses trying to be on the cutting edge, we're learning as we go along. Our philosophy is that we need to do the best we can in as many places as we can. We also need to provide value to the customer."
Jeff Mendelsohn acknowledges that since New Leaf Paper is a rapidly growing company with only 10 employees, its priorities are developing its customer base, expanding its product line, and providing its customers with top-notch recycled papers and its employees with a fair and fulfilling work environment. "There are a number of social-responsibility issues that will become part of our agenda as we grow," says Mendelsohn. He notes that one of the mills that New Leaf Paper used recently closed its doors. "We were really sad for the employees, but we had no control over the situation," he says.
