The Case for Kindred Membership

This year, it isn’t just our society’s weaknesses that are on full display, but our corporate systems’, too. And as it turns out, many companies are not ready for their close-up. We had to do something. 

• Trust in our institutions is on the decline. 66% of people do not have confidence that current leaders will be able to successfully address the country’s challenges. And 56% say that capitalism does more harm than good.  [Source: Edelman]
• Employees want to work for a company that shares their values. 89% of Americans believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for large companies to hit “reset” and focus on doing right by their workers, customers, communities, and the environment. [Source: JUST Capital]
• Consumers want to buy from brands that take a stand. 87% of the public believes that stakeholders are more important to companies’ long-term success than shareholders. [Source: Harvard/Edelman]
• COVID-19 has exposed socioeconomic and racial inequality both in our communities and within our companies. 31% of American people say they’ve experienced problems paying the rent or mortgage, or for food, utilities, credit card bills or medical costs as a result of the coronavirus. Among African-Americans, that number climbs to 48%. Among Latinos, it’s 46%. [Source: Axios]
• Distributed workforces have led to internal unrest, and diminished trust in leadership’s ability to manage. Anxiety at work is very high for employees who are monitored “closely”, with 49% often or always anxious when carrying out their job. Further, 29% of employees wish organizations would act with more empathy. [Source: HBR]  

The fact is, companies have lacked accountability for their impact on society for far too long, yet are being asked to fill the gaps that government inaction has created, through a pandemic nearly everyone was unprepared for.

Of course, there has been a lot of talk about what needs to happen; there was a more than 80% growth in discussions of “inequality” alone in US corporate documents in Q3 2020. 

Yet most companies haven’t yet bridged the gap between talk and action — even as stakeholders and shareholders are ready to reward it.

Why? What is standing in the way of the necessary actions on these and other social issues? Why aren’t business leaders starting by changing the systems they actually have control over — their own?

Rewarded actions start with informed decisions. And informed decisions must be made by informed leaders, yet leaders have never felt less prepared for accountability as they are right now. As recently as June, 72% of U.S. chief financial officers (CFOs) say that responding to COVID-19 with better resilience and agility will be a key factor to their company’s improvement in the long run. But 55% of CFOs don’t feel very confident in their company’s ability to retain critical talent. Only 45% of CFOs feel very confident in their company’s ability to build the necessary skills for the future. [Source: PwC]

We’ve got to take this moment in time to accept and recognize that businesses are going to be rewarded financially for taking the necessary steps to move society forward by improving their own systems — and that’s ok. It means that the incentives are aligned.

Remember how seriously (or not) we took “digital disruption”? How it took over boardroom conversations? Our current social issues are bigger than any boardroom, even though they’ve taken root in our (home) offices and corporate culture.

With so many workers’ lives upended, it’s impossible to keep corporate culture and popular culture separated; they are on a collision course. This has made societal issues even more disruptive to business-as-usual; which presents an even greater opportunity if we get things right.

Shift happens. This is how capitalism works. As economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, the “gale of creative destruction” describes the “process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”.

As the rise of the internet “creatively destroyed” systems — and even companies — that existed before it, many organizations realized that they needed “digital transformation” to adapt. What we are seeing now is that the status quo of corporate culture will be changed as well, thanks to a new era of societal and civil reckoning. Those who don’t adapt will not only struggle to thrive but may not even be able to survive.

So what is a leader to do?

It starts with accepting that companies don’t make decisions — people do. It takes people to change companies. The speed of their decision-making makes governments look slow by comparison, and it will take speed to address urgent issues urgently.

But leaders, even those who are ‘experts’ in their specific areas, don’t have all the answers to adapt to a society that is constantly evolving and demanding more action and accountability. Real leaders know that they, too, are always learning.

As we spoke with hundreds of corporate and nonprofit leaders, we learned that the most important tools leaders need right now are; education from ESG experts, access to data and research to make decisions more quickly, and support from other leaders on similar journeys.

But there was no solution that provided leaders with always-on access to all of this.

That’s why we built Kindred.

Kindred is a membership built to prepare executives for the future of socially responsible business. We help organizations more intelligently and urgently close the gap between intent and action through an infrastructure that provides their leaders with the education, access, and support necessary for better decision-making ability related to issues that they are generally not experts on.

We believe that if more leaders at more companies make better decisions, this will not only benefit their employees and customers but also the communities they live in. And at a time like this, that’s never been more important.

Kindred’s members will be leading the way as they work to improve their organizations. They will be lifting up others as they pave the way for the next generation of diverse, empathetic, innovative, thoughtful leaders. They will be setting new standards, implementing new frameworks, achieving new heights. I cannot wait to see what they do together.

As of today, Kindred’s doors are officially open—and our 100+ Founding Members from some of the world’s most important and remarkable companies and nonprofits are all walking through them into a more responsible, more resilient future, together.

If you are ready to accelerate your evolution as a leader; if you are ready to become not just a force for change, but a force multiplier; if you are ready to apply lessons learned from the most brilliant experts on the planet; if you are ready to bridge the widening chasm between intent and action; then we welcome you to apply for Kindred membership today.