Last week, The Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv) held its 2008 annual conference. These conferences can be deathly boring and it’s always a question of what value they have to my daily work. But I’m happy to say that this was well worth attending. The theme was Corporate Social Responsibility, or “Doing well by doing good”, as they called it.

It was good to see that the overall standard of communication was high. Also interesting that two of the guest speakers were writers – Zac Goldsmith and Tor Nørretranders. Who else but a writer would tell a story about “One man’s crap is another man’s food” as Nørretranders did? That aside, they kept excellent company alongside the Danish Prime Minister and an Olympic gold medal coach.

The highlight for me was Ulrik Wilbek’s talk. He is an exceptional sports coach whose handball teams have won Olympic gold medals, World Championships and European Championships. He spoke for half an hour on “Management and Winning”. At the top of his agenda was communication, and this actually anchored his entire talk. Wilbek reckons communication is a vital management tool.

The fact that Wilbek himself is a communicator made his claim all the more believable. He delivered his talk fluently – without notes – and with skill, confidence and assurance. His winning mentality came across loud and clear, and there wasn’t a hint of the famous Danish modesty. Take note, Danish companies out there!

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, delivered his talk with little modesty. Key points in his talk were that Denmark needed to be more competitive in the global market and that Danish businesses need to continue acting responsibly. He claims that CSR is a branding parameter for Denmark. We’re keeping a close eye on that, Mr Rasmussen.

His claim was however backed up by Zac Goldsmith from The Ecologist magazine. Goldsmith had apparently read the Danish Government’s newly released action plan on corporate social responsibility. He referred to the style and tone of the writing, which made it positive and interesting to read. (I’m not sure how he managed to read it because I haven’t yet found an English version.) After his positive words, I look forward to reading it myself.

So there were several highlights and it was an afternoon well spent out of the office. However, I do have one major gripe. What’s with the tagline “Doing well by doing good”? Why does it need to be in English? The entire conference is aimed at Danish businesses and all the speeches were in Danish (except of course Goldsmith’s). It’s all about Denmark, so it makes no sense to have an English tagline. Did they fall into the trap of wanting to appear hip?

One of the big problems was that it sounded out of place when people said it in the middle of a Danish sentence. Especially when pronounced “Dooing vell by dooing goood”. This was one of the few instances where the high communication standards of an otherwise good afternoon slipped.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 10:06 am by David Hoskin and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.