Among business conversations I've witnessed over my career, the topics of corporate social responsibility and sustainability have tended to invoke a collective yawn. Yes they're important, but such concerns were frequently considered a bore, separate from the business of doing business. An extra, a luxury--not suited to the every day pressures of business. I know because we at HBR spend our lives discussing article ideas along those lines, and our obligation to readers and authors is to give them something they can get passionate about. Until recently, it took some effort to work up the passion for these themes. They were too vague, too high-minded, and too hard to wrap your arms around, and not enough about the numbers. To be honest, vague and high-minded are boring to me as well.

But yesterday, I had the opportunity to participate in a business event where the passion around this topic was palpable. CEOs and other top management thinkers from around North America gathered at the Drucker Institute at Claremont College to discuss their renewed sense of purpose and responsibility to a local and global community. I came away convinced that key business leader are, in fact, actually trying to make the world a better place.

Yesterday's conversation was energizing. It was the kickoff of a series of events highlighting the contributions of management guru Peter Drucker, a tireless advocate of responsible management who would have turned 100 next month. Hosted by Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley and cosponsored by the Drucker Institute, the conversation was structured around the four unique responsibilities of the CEO as outlined in by Lafley's HBR article, What Only the CEO Can Do and sprung from Drucker's early musings on the topic a year before his death in 2005. As is his habit — learned from Peter Drucker — A.G. Lafley concluded each discussion segment with a question: What will you do differently on Monday?

The answers from this group of business leaders were inspiring. Participants spoke fervently of a renewed passion for purpose and values, a sense of responsibility to local and global community, and of a new generation entering the workplace with what appears to be a level of desire to serve and give back to a degree we haven't seen since the 1930s and 1940s. Warren Bennis has dubbed them the "crucible generation," with good reason. After a period of relative peace in the United States, these kids entered adolescence fearing terror and war, along with the uncertainty associated with the breakdown of the global economic system--not to mention the frightening implications of global warming. Little wonder there's an activist sentiment brewing. Francis Hesselbein told the group that these youngsters give her hope — hope that they'll fix the messes brought about by their predecessors.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised by this particular conversation.

To be clear, this was a self-selecting group, Drucker devotees, preaching to the choir. But I suspect that the conversation was inflamed such passion at least partly because, thanks to a few years of grim revelations about business misdeeds and environmental realities, we can talk with a solid context as well as much more specificity and detail about what businesses can and have to do — and have done. The meltdowns also encouraged businesses to explore solutions with tangible business benefits — we heard, for instance, stories at the Drucker event from attendees about helping troubled teens with their studies and supplying them with work-study jobs, resulting in dramatic improvements in high-school graduation rates and in turn developing employees who stay around with the company much longer than the average (saving recruiting and training costs), as well as future customers and potentially emerging leaders who know and are attached to the company. Vague and sweeping declarations are boring. Specifics and tangible solutions are inspiring.

The group consensus (or maybe more accurately, hope): Drucker would be proud. His advocacy of concerns that rise above corporate interests still resonates, and appears to be embraced by the up-and-coming leaders who will be running business in a couple of decades. Maybe I'm naïve, but socially responsible ideas seem to be penetrating business conversations in a way that feels earnest and even game-changing.

It looks like the bank-small business dynamic might be changing.  After months upon months of small businesses being unable to get loans, the Royal Bank of Scotland is trying hard to have them give it a call.

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