Trust and purpose are essential for better companies and a better country

Trust and purpose are essential for better companies and a better country

At the “Business and Society” conference, organized by ICARE, there are certain elements that the speakers—whether business owners, executives, academics, municipal representatives, union representatives, or representatives of social movements—seem to agree on: trust and organizational purpose appear to be essential for having more and better companies, as well as a better country.

As companies, we are called upon to play a leadership role in shaping the future. ““It’s time to reinvigorate our ability to drive development, to highlight the value of entrepreneurial purpose, and to place the value of trust at the heart of business,” says Carolina Altschwager, a member of Icare’s Business and Society Circle and a founding partner of Almabrands.

Carolina introduced the session “The Most Demanding Social Expectations Challenge,” during which Américo de Paula, Head of Solutions Architecture at Amazon, highlighted that among the company’s 16 leadership principles, one that has been added recently is “to be the best employer in the world,” which reveals the importance the company places on its employees.

The executive adds that the concepts of “innovation” and “failure” go hand in hand, providing employees with opportunities to experiment—and that trust is essential in this context.

In that regard, and to reinforce the above, Carolina Altschwager considers it remarkable to have an organizational culture that is centered on customers and employees and that also encourages innovation and the acceptance of failure as a process of growth.

María Teresa González, general manager of Statkraft in Chile—a leading international company in clean energy generation and the largest developer of renewable energy in Europe—highlights how crucial it is to dramatically accelerate the use of clean energy this decade. However, we are facing “an impatient society that, amid this energy transition, demands that we figure out how to do things better. We go into these communities with the intention of staying there for the long term, and in some cases we’ve held as many as 400 meetings with certain communities. We put ourselves in others’ shoes, seeking to understand the communities’ worldview. These are costs we have to bear.”

Roberto Alvo, CEO of the Latam Group, spoke about what it meant for the airline to resume flights to Easter Island after the pandemic: “Not out of charity, but out of a sense of responsibility—which allowed us to reconnect people and families.” He added that for some time now, the company has stopped thinking of customers as mere clients and instead views them as citizens—people whom, in addition to serving, they must also support.

Cristián Vergara, CEO of Essbío, notes that “they are working toward a goal that lies at the heart of their strategy, and one that meets such a broad international standard (regarding disasters, climate change, etc.) that we have become invisible. People take good service for granted.”

Amparo Cornejo, Teck’s vice president for South America, adds that it is essential for mining companies to establish long-term relationships with indigenous communities—not only for the communities’ sake, but also for the sake of business development.

There are cultural elements that need to be deciphered, requiring a collaborative and long-term perspective; to achieve this, very robust social teams are necessary. He recounts how the relationship with the Huatacondo community changed drastically when the community requested that some overhead cables be rerouted to run underground, which resulted in a significant delay in the project as well as additional financial costs.

The Business & Society Circle worked for a long time to organize this event and to document the challenges and courses of action we face in this changing and increasingly demanding environment, with the goal of becoming better companies and companies that are increasingly socially responsible.

You can download the document at this link.