That was the unorthodox prescription the keynote speaker offered to nearly 500 attendees at the Hawaii Business Leadership Conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Williams, a globally recognized expert on innovation, urged executives to move beyond their fixation on ROI — return on investment.

“Equally as important, perhaps more important these days, is return on learning,” Williams said at the conference in late July. “Every organization in America needs to accelerate their rate of learning. If you can learn at the pace of change, you have an advantage. But if your learning falls below the pace of change, you fall further and further behind. And that’s where we get into real trouble.

“So in order to accelerate the rate of learning, you need waste.”

The author of “Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business” cited a litany of companies that went bankrupt or lost their edge because they failed to keep innovating.

Williams said so-called “disruptive thinking” among employees leads to uncertain results, and not all ideas need to be implemented right away, or ever.

“But you’ve got to break the cycle of incremental thinking,” the idea that today’s successful ideas will continue to serve you well into the future.

In an interview after his speech, Williams expanded upon the idea.

“Disruptive ideas, if the advantages are clear, they’re no longer high risk,” Williams said. “They’re really risking the thinking time, and that’s a matter of priorities.

“I think of different currencies in a business. We often think of money as the main currency, but there are different currencies. I want businesses to see ideas as their most valuable currency.”

Williams challenged attendees to go back to their companies after the conference and to encourage all of their employees to start rethinking everything about their businesses.

“If you don’t have new ideas, you don’t innovate, you can’t grow,” explained Williams who is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Particularly in mature economies like the U.S., they’ve got to get themselves in a position where they’ve got more ideas to spend than their competitors.

“That means as circumstances change, we’ve got more options. We can do A, B, C, D or E depending on how circumstances change, so we’ve got better optionality than our competitors.”

Williams insists no new technology needs to be invented for companies to thrive and grow.

“My message is everyone in the organization needs to have a comfortable fluency moving between the core business and introducing new business ideas,” Williams says. “That’s why I talk about discourse. It’s not the device that’s important, it’s the discourse.”

“Ideas beget ideas,” he says.

So how does a guy who tells others to endlessly innovate keep his own creative juices flowing? After all, Williams has more than 30 patents for product designs and is constantly pushing his mantra — innovate or perish.

He scoffs at the idea of waiting for some creative bolt of lightning to spring from casual imagining.

“I’m a big believer in deliberate creativity,” Williams says. “I don’t believe in shooting water pistols and getting people to take off ties and sit on bean bags. It’s exercising a muscle.”

He has recently gotten back in touch with a creative outlet he pursued when he was younger: drumming.

“I find that really helps with creativity,” Williams says, adding: “It has actually engaged different parts of the brain. … I think my aspiration is to be a jazz musician at some point. Jazz has a lot to do with creativity and improvisation.”

Most CEOs can recall their early business failures — and the lessons that helped shape their later success. For Christine Camp, president and CEO of Avalon Group, it started the summer before high school.

After making the cheer pep squad, Camp faced a setback: her family couldn’t afford the uniform.

To raise funds, she and her teammates sold pans of King’s Hawaiian sweet bread door-to-door in Pearl City.

Their coach encouraged them to say whatever it took to close a sale. Camp quickly learned rejection was part of the process — she heard four to seven no’s for every yes.

By summer’s end, she realized it took about 10 tries to sell just two pans. The lesson: every no brought her closer to a yes.

That lesson stuck. The reminder, “every time you don’t try, you already lost” now defines her approach to business, she told attendees at Hawaii Business Magazine’s 12th Leadership Conference in Honolulu.

Since founding Avalon in 1999, Camp has overseen a $300 million portfolio of statewide properties and raised close to $3 billion in capital to develop its projects. Even as Hawaii Business Magazine’s 2024 CEO of the year, she says failure hasn’t disappeared — it’s just become more consequential.

But for Camp, failure isn’t final. It’s a signal to pivot. Decades into her career, she’s still failing — and still pivoting.

Accompanying her on a panel entitled CEO Chronicles was Micah Kāne, CEO and president of Hawai‘i Community Foundation and incoming CEO of Parker Ranch. In a discussion led by moderator Yunji de Nies, journalist at Hawaii News Now and PBS Hawaii, the duo shared how they embrace failures to succeed.  

Yunji addressed a critical question for visionary leaders: When plan A through D fall apart and there’s no room left to pivot, then what?  

According to Kāne, rising after failure requires attention to your inner strength, your support system and the team you move forward with.

Under his leadership, Hawaii Community Foundation has grown from $500 million to $1.2 billion, carrying lives through challenging times, including natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic. Hawaii Business Magazine’s 2020 CEO of the year, Micah Kāne said he works on improving himself every day through a three-minute mindfulness practice.

“Think about the things you have, the mistakes you made the day before and commit to yourself to try not to make those mistakes again,” Kāne said. “Since 2012, I may have missed five days where I don’t take that time in the morning, and I can tell you, it’s been the best advice. Whether you’re a manager, an employee or you’re trying to strive to be a leader, the thicker and stronger that inner pole is, the easier you will get through.”

Beyond restoring confidence, Kāne continues to lose with dignity and win graciously, he said, grounded by the relationships that remain steadfast in his triumph and loss.

Camp echoed his perspective, knowing her success wouldn’t be possible without the people who believed in her before her goals were a reality.

“What I learned again was the people who would come out to help introduce you to the others who could lend you money, to refine my pitch and learn what I should and shouldn’t do,” Camp said. “I made my company better, and I brought people who believed in me. I really had a slew of cheerleaders who truly trusted my vision to actualize their investment goals.”

For Kāne and Camp, creating an environment that encourages colleagues and employees to take risks is vital to their momentum and success.

“I want my employees making decisions just outside their authority,” Kāne said. “I want them to be ethical decisions, I want them to be well thought-out decisions and to be legal decisions, but after that, you go for it, and I’ve got your back.”

By reframing failure as fuel, these local leaders in business are not just bouncing back, they’re building forward.

“If you’re going to fail – and I recommend you do in fact – fail forward,” Camp said. “Maybe you learn something from it. You are going to fail, so fail fast, because you have to pivot. There are a lot of people depending on you.”

That’s why we launched our weekly email Personal Finance Report and held the Money Matters conference on Nov. 9, with 17 sessions covering a vast range of personal finance topics. Over the next few months, we will be publishing condensed versions of some sessions.

The opening session at Money Matters offered an out-of-the-box approach to personal finance planning that I found helpful for goal setting, risk assessment, alignment and decision-making. I talked on stage with Hawaiian Airlines Chief Administrative Officer Shannon Okinaka, who has held financial leadership roles at the airline for two decades. The theme: how HA’s planning and processes provide guidance and best practices for you and your family’s personal finances.

The starting point for the airline – and your household – is goal setting. Okinaka recalled that many years ago, HA’s strategy “was this list of 150 items. And that’s not really a strategy, it’s just a list of things we wanted to do.”

Guided by Four Pillars

Instead, she said, the airline created four pillars – broad aspirations that guided their specific goals and planning. Four seems a reasonable number of “pillars” for your personal finances too.

Forty years ago, the financial pillars my wife and I set were frugality and saving for our first home. Frugality has been a constant (both of us are journalists, so frugality is more a requirement rather than a choice), but after we bought our first and then our current home, we added three pillars: paying for and maintaining that home, investing in our two children’s education and saving for retirement.

Our pillars remained constant, but short and medium-term goals shifted with time and circumstances.

Okinaka said Hawaiian Airlines went through the same process. Ten-year goals were broken into shorter goals and milestones to ensure success. “Some of the hardest parts of that goal-setting process was alignment among the departments, because you had finance saying, ‘We have to be prosperous and stable,’ and operations saying, ‘No, it’s most important to run a good airline, because that’s what will make us prosperous and stable,’ ” and every other team offering perspectives, she said. “But we had to walk out of the room aligned because we knew there were going to come times when we had to prioritize and say no or not now to something.”

Not an Easy Process

Reaching alignment on goals involved some of the most stressful and recurring “discussions” (actually arguments) of my marriage. Maybe in your family too because financial discussions are often emotional.

A big focus of the Okinaka-Petranik conversation was risk assessment – at the airline and in our personal finances. “My job was a lot of things but primarily two things: risk assessment and process,” she said. A big part of risk assessment is figuring “what’s the risk of making a wrong decision? A former boss said, ‘Is this a bet-the-company decision? Like, if we make a wrong decision, the whole company goes down? “Or is this a decision where, if we get it wrong, it hurts a little, but we’ll move on?”

Adopting that mindset allowed her to stop being terrified of small risks. Assessing your own level of risk tolerance is crucial. For a long time I had 100% of my retirement funds in equities, knowing I had a long time horizon and that, over time, equities have provided a better return than many other investments.

I had to take frequent deep breaths during the Great Recession and Covid pandemic, but I mitigated my risk by investing heavily in index funds rather than picking stocks and sectors. It paid off but you know the saying: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Hawaii Business Magazine won’t set goals for you, but we will do our best to help you reach the goals you set.

His Mission: Alexander MacGregor earned his master’s in occupational therapy at Loma Linda University in California in 2016 before moving to O‘ahu to serve the island’s injured workers. He and his colleagues help people with workplace injuries like carpal tunnel; sciatica; and neck, back and shoulder pain, and also provide education on healthy ergonomic practices that can prevent these musculoskeletal conditions.

“While working in occupational therapy and clinics helping others recover from injuries, I came to realize that a lot of the conditions I was treating were attributed to the client’s profession,” MacGregor says. “They were spending upward of 40 or more hours a week completing office work at a computer workstation, which for many working in an office, seems relatively safe – but improper posture and poorly designed workspaces can really result in painful conditions over time.”

His Work: MacGregor began working as an Ergonomic Consultant for Hawaii Ergonomics in 2018. The company offers virtual and in-person ergonomic assessments and information sessions to educate clients on best practices for healthy workplace efficiency and how to reduce injuries. They assess work-fromhome and office workplaces, reviewing computer, desk and seating arrangements.

“I’ll usually make any required adjustments that I’m able to do and also educate the client on how to better improve their ergonomic body positioning to maximize comfort. I also bring along a bag with some ergonomic equipment options for them to try. Ergonomics isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach, so after spending time with the client, we then create a personalized report and highlight proper ergonomic positioning and the most appropriate equipment and vendor recommendations for them.”

Ergonomics: He offers an example. “If a worker’s keyboard or mouse is not positioned at the correct angle or height, it can cause added strain on the wrists in the form of a compressed nerve, which limits oxygenation and blood flow to the muscles. It starts as discomfort but develops over time and, in the long term, it can become a painful and debilitating condition, resulting in decreased workplace productivity and absenteeism.”

While some clients consider short-term solutions like massage, chiropractic treatment or even surgery, he says that by redesigning workspaces, the company helps workers to be more comfortable and efficient, as well as more satisfied with their jobs.

“The employees usually report that they’re more engaged and they make fewer mistakes. It’s good for business’s bottom line.”

Correcting Myths: MacGregor says social media is an unreliable source for ergonomic information. “I might walk into an office and find somebody is sitting on a medicine ball expecting that what they read online will help improve their comfort at work. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there on social media as far as what’s best for ergonomic standards, but we know all the science behind the education we’re providing.”

Impact: “When we find clients the perfect office chair, or if they report back, ‘Hey, I haven’t had any discomfort this week with my new setup,’ it really just keeps me motivated to keep spreading the word about our services. It’s good for businesses to have employees who are comfortable, healthy, happy and productive on the job, instead of coming home fatigued and in pain. A lot of people want to work really hard so they can enjoy their retirement, but we say, ‘Don’t let discomfort lead to disability.’ ”

This approach is especially critical for small and medium-sized businesses – which can no longer assume they’re not big enough to be targets. Think of a well-planned cyber resilience strategy as part of your business continuity plan, just as you plan for disasters like major storms.

Here are seven ways to strengthen cyber resilience.

1. Develop a Comprehensive Incident Response Plan

The plan should contain clearly defined steps for detecting, containing and mitigating threats. It must include roles and responsibilities across the organization, from IT teams to executive leadership, ensuring that each stakeholder understands their part in mitigating damage and restoring systems. Ensure that you have role clarity by establishing an incident response team to handle the cyber incident and business continuity leaders to manage communication and keep essential services running.

2. Clear Communication Plan With Preapproved Messaging

Having preapproved messages for a few scenarios will increase transparency with your customers and keep your staff apprised of the situation. For instance, external communications will tell customers you are having a service outage and will send updates at a specific time, while your internal communications would focus on what teams need to be activated and what employees should do.

Example of a message to customers: “We are currently investigating a cybersecurity incident affecting some of our systems. Our business continuity plan is in effect, and essential services remain operational. Further updates will follow as more information becomes available.”

Example of a staff message: “We have detected a potential network breach. All employees must disconnect from the network immediately. Incident response teams please report to your locations immediately.”

3. Prioritize Data Backups and Disaster Recovery

A strong disaster recovery plan is essential for cyber resilience. Businesses must prioritize regular data backups and establish “failover” systems that automatically take over when main systems go down, ensuring data integrity and accessibility. Cloud-based systems and hybrid solutions can provide redundancy and ensure continuity, even if primary systems are compromised.

Ensure that you know how to contact your breach coach, a lawyer who specializes in cybersecurity and data protection law, through your cyber insurance policy, and have nondisclosure agreements in place with appropriate outside client services such as general counsel or public relations firms.

NDAs are necessary to ensure confidentiality in case of a breach. While it may be necessary at a certain point to notify impacted parties or make a public statement, you want to maintain control over the communications timeline so you have all the facts before engaging with stakeholders. Any details leaked too early could fuel speculation or false narratives.

4. Conduct Regular Verification and Validation Assessments

Cyber resilience is not a set-it-and-forget-it concept. Regular verification and validation assessments, such as running tabletop drills and tests of employee compliance, are critical to maintaining strong defenses and identifying gaps that may require IT upgrades. To prepare for communication disruptions during an incident, ensure you have printed copies of employees’ phone numbers or an alternative messaging system for emergencies.

5. Engage in Continuous Employee Training

Employees are often the weakest link. Frequent training sessions focused on recognizing phishing attacks, practicing good password hygiene and following data protection protocols can help minimize human error. Consider running simulated phishing attacks to gauge employee readiness and improve response protocols.

6. Leverage Automation and AI for Faster Detection

Cyberattacks often go undetected for weeks or months, allowing bad actors to do more damage. AI and automated systems can improve detection rates and flag suspicious activities in real time. Automating incident response protocols can also reduce downtime and improve recovery speed.

7. Collaborate With Third-Party Experts

Cyber resilience requires an ecosystem of expertise. Collaborating with cybersecurity consultants or managed security service providers can offer external assessments and strategies tailored to your industry. These partnerships provide an extra layer of vigilance and bolster internal IT resources.

After more than a decade working for different companies, my son is starting his own business for the first time. My daughter has worked for the same company since college graduation and is able to save money and invest despite living in high-cost San Francisco. My wife retired last year but has worked part time on several projects since then. And I am still working but planning for retirement and part-time work in a few years.

None of us are in what I think are the most difficult decades of the typical personal finance journey, when seemingly everything financial hits you at once: paying down a home mortgage while raising children while saving for their education while saving for your retirement while (add your needs here).

No matter where you are on that money journey, two of Hawaii Business Magazine’s latest initiatives can help. In September, we launched a free weekly email newsletter called the Hawaii Business Personal Finance Report that aims to provide advice and information from local and national experts.

And on Saturday, Nov. 9, we’re holding the all-day Money Matters Financial Conference at Mid-Pacific Institute. You can choose from five tracks depending on where you are in your personal finance journey: Getting Started, Getting Back on Track, Small Business Owners, Retirement Planning, and Kūpuna. Register at moneymatters.hawaiibusiness.com.

Advice for Your Financial Success

In the opening keynote session, Shannon Okinaka, until recently the longtime CFO at Hawaiian Airlines, and I will have a conversation about the many important personal money management lessons we can all learn from Hawaiian, including how an airline handles incredibly complex operations and the accompanying uncertainty, price volatility, customer demands, black swan events and more. Virtually everything you face in your personal journey, airlines deal with constantly – and their responses and coping strategies can help you build your own strategies.

Each workshop is designed to give you important information and actionable advice. The topics cover a wide range and here are just some of the sessions:

• The Possible Dream: Buying Your First Home in Hawai‘i
• Budgeting to Get Back on Track
• Family, Fraud & Finances, a session aimed at kūpuna but open to anybody
• Financial Management 101 for Small Businesses
• Best Strategies for the 401(k)/ IRA Novice
• Protect Yourself from Sneaky Schemes, Scams and Fraud
• Leveraging Your Assets for Loan Power
• Building Your Credit from Scratch
• Balancing Act: Strategies for Generating Income from Retirement Savings
• YOU Matter! Do You Have a CareReceiving Plan?
• Annuities and Self-Directed IRAs as Part of a Retirement Strategy

Defining Goals and Steps to Take

Our closing keynote speaker is national financial expert Colin Ryan, who’ll talk about “Embracing the Human Side of Money.” His goal is to help you define and achieve your vision of financial success so you can have the life you want.

I’m confident that no matter where your personal finances stand, you’ll learn plenty at the Money Matters Financial Conference. Tickets are $50 for the entire day and include free parking at Mid-Pacific Institute in Mānoa, access to any session you choose and a bento lunch. Register at moneymatters.hawaiibusiness.com.

I’m excited because there’s so much I want to learn from the experts in these sessions. Frankly, there will be a couple of times when I’ll want to be in two sessions at once, so I think my wife and I will be splitting up to cover more ground.

Unless you are a member of the richest 1%, I suggest you save that Saturday for a valuable day of learning. The payoff could be enormous.

The latest figures from the 50/50 women on boards Gender Diversity Index show that women comprise only 29% of board seats on companies in the Russell 3000 index, which represents 97% of the public equity market.

The percentage of women on corporate boards continues to increase, but the rate of growth has slowed in recent years, says Jennifer Reynolds, CEO of the global nonprofit Women Corporate Directors. “As much as we’ve been talking about this for decades, we have to continue talking about it because we’re not where we should be,” she says.

WCD is the world’s largest network of female corporate board directors, with more than 2,500 members serving on more than 8,500 public and private boards around the globe. Its Hawai‘i chapter was launched 10 years ago to help support local women who serve on corporate boards and those who are strong candidates for board membership.

Barbara Tanabe, who has served on the boards of many organizations, including Bank of Hawai‘i and the East-West Center, was the key driver in the founding of the local chapter. She emphasizes that placing women on boards requires a group effort, and not just from women.

Communications executive Barbara Tanabe founded the Hawai’i chapter of WCD, and has helped get men involved in advocating for female representation on local boards. | Photo: Dana Edmunds

“We can’t be the sole voice. We need everyone to participate,” Tanabe says. Part of that is inviting male speakers – who can help spread the word about local candidates – to WCD Hawaii events.

“When they see the level of experience and achievements of the participants, most of them are quite impressed,” she says. “They realize that there is a cadre of groups in Hawai‘i with the experience, knowledge and desire to fulfill directorships on various boards.”

Enriched Conversations

Chapter meeting topics have evolved over the years, says Catherine Ngo, chair of Central Pacific Financial Corp., the parent of Central Pacific Bank. Ngo noted that earlier topics centered on board governance-related topics, such as the importance of board member independence and compensation committee responsibilities. Now they have broadened into discussions about hot topics such as artificial intelligence and cybercrime.

Ngo joined the chapter in 2015. As Central Pacific Bank’s new CEO and a member of a public company board, she was looking for mentorship and support from other women who had reached the top of their careers, as well as camaraderie. Now a member of the chapter’s executive committee, she credits Tanabe as a trailblazer.

Central Pacific Bank chair Catherine NGO joined WCD Hawaii in 2015; in the past decade, she has seen the number of under-40 members grow significantly. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

“In the same way that she paved the way for us, it’s time now for us to step up to do the same,” she says.

That means strengthening the pipeline for future female board members. In the last 10 years, the share of WCD Hawaii members who are 40 or younger has increased from 20% to 35%, says Ngo. “Our Hawai‘i chapter has been very intentional about using our meetings to provide more networking opportunities and advice to our younger women attendees on setting a path to an eventual board seat.”

Expanded Eligibility

That same focus has led to greater flexibility in the criteria for inviting new members in health care and nonprofit organizations, she says. “We may invite a woman who currently is not sitting on a corporate board, but whom we believe has strong potential to be appointed a seat down the road,” she says, adding that women on the rise in their careers are not only strong board candidates themselves, they can also influence the advancement of other women within their organizations.

WCD Hawaii has shared its influence with other chapters as well. Last year, guests from WCD Japan attended a luncheon meeting of the local chapter, where they discussed the challenges they faced in advancing board membership for women. In response, WCD Hawaii members shared how they go about it: “We told them that we actively engage not just with our women leaders, but also our male leaders, so that we have a broad group of leaders here keeping women’s interests top of mind,” Ngo says.

Reynolds notes that several studies have proven the business case for board gender diversity. For example, a 2021 Harvard Law School Forum that addressed diversity in Fortune 500 boards cited a McKinsey & Co. report that says companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to deliver above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

Additionally, ISS Corporate Solutions’ research shows that, in areas at the forefront of growth in a post-pandemic economy – corporate sustainability, socially responsible investing, government, sales, marketing and technology in the workplace – women have more skills and experience than white men, who are a dominant presence on American boards.

Reynolds says that, in the face of rapidly evolving technological, environmental and social issues, the case for diversity should be clear. “These are very challenging things, affecting the way we work, what companies survive and fail,” she says. “… If you think about it that way, you need diversity.”

At least one regulator agrees. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved listing rules requiring board diversity to be included in annual disclosures starting in 2022. Nasdaq-listed companies must have at least one diverse director by 2023, and two diverse directors – at least one woman and at least one member of an underrepresented community – by 2025. If a company doesn’t meet that requirement, it has to explain why. Potential penalties include delisting the company after a grace period of 180 days of noncompliance, or the company’s next annual meeting, whichever is later.

Inclusivity and Community Impact

Reynolds says that companies need to take diversity and inclusion on their boards at least as seriously as they take their stakeholders, and that while political pushback might have cooled public rhetoric around diversity, companies are still doing the work. “The community wants companies to show representation from them. Employees want to see that. Companies can’t really ignore this,” she says.

Jennifer Reynolds is CEO of the global nonprofit Women Corporate Directors, which works to increase representation on public and private boards. | Photo: Trish Mennell

WCD maintains a database of board-ready female candidates as a resource for boards and circulates board seat openings to its members. Member benefits include continuing education on board governance; networking events; and mentoring programs like BoardNext, which prepares a new generation of board-ready leaders through training and by introducing them to CEOs, board directors and chairs of nominating committees.

Reynolds says chapters in Minnesota, Florida and other states have successfully launched initiatives to advance women of color. She notes that these programs have had an overflow of qualified candidates from the start. “We’ve had multiple cohorts in those chapters go through, and many of them are getting on boards,” she says.

Once women are recruited, the real work of inclusion begins, says Reynolds. “It’s not just ticking a box to say, ‘I’ve got three; that’s enough, that’s all we have to do.’ That concerns me. The question then becomes, ‘Were you really thinking about changing the dialogue? Did you really want to benefit from these new voices?’ ”

As a longtime member of several corporate and nonprofit boards, Tanabe was originally drawn to the idea of board gender diversity after attending a WCD event in Singapore. She saw a supportive, enthusiastic community of high-achieving women in competitive industries sharing ideas, and envisioned the same for Hawai‘i.

“We tend to become insular if we only look at ourselves and our peers,” she says. “We really need to be able to look outside, try to figure out how we can use the best practices, and adapt it to our style.”

After learning that she needed a minimum of 12 members to form a chapter, she launched her campaign to gauge interest from the local business community in January 2013. WCD was supportive of the idea and the Hawai‘i chapter formally launched in October 2014. But to get there, Tanabe had to overcome some challenges.

WCD requires that its members represent companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million, which is difficult because it limits the state’s candidate pool. “The minimum revenue requirement was the biggest hurdle. This caused many potential members to decline,” says Tanabe.

But she had support from international business icons and WCD leaders with Hawai‘i ties. One was Merle Aiko Okawara, a former Hawai‘i resident and chair of JC Foods, the first woman-owned company to be publicly traded in Japan. The other was Phyllis Campbell, former chair of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. operations in the Pacific Northwest. Okawara founded the WCD chapter in Japan, and Campbell, who traces her family roots to Maui, did the same in Seattle. Campbell also later served as vice chair for WCD Asia and Hawaii.

Tanabe credits Okawara for coming up with the idea for the chapter and Campbell for helping her establish it. But Campbell downplays her and Okawara’s roles. “Merle and I were just accessories. I was simply an advocate saying, ‘I think it’s a good time for this.’ ” Campbell noted that other WCD leaders shared the vision of the Hawai‘i chapter as a bridge between members in Asia and the U.S. mainland, but it was up to Tanabe to make the case to leaders of the global WCD organization.

Tanabe justified easing the minimum revenue requirement for Hawai‘i due to its smaller economy – with a GDP of just over $100 billion, it’s less than 1% the size of the Los Angeles metro economy. WCD eventually agreed, allowing the state’s leading companies to be invited even if they fell short of the $100 million revenue requirement. And while not every qualified business was able to join, that decision helped Tanabe to gather the 12 founding members needed for the first phase: creating the chapter.

Growth and Evolution

To further grow the chapter in 2019, Tanabe petitioned for nominees from private, multi-generational, family-owned companies to have membership dues waived on a case-by-case basis. “She knew that these businesses are really the heart of Hawai‘i,” says Campbell. “She really went to bat for them, and she was spot on.” As of 2024, this waiver has helped to expand the chapter to 26 members.

This year, as a benefit to all members, Tanabe received approval to halve their annual dues, regardless of revenue. Tanabe explains that annual fees had been split between the chapter and the global organization to cover expenses. Key member benefits included two live monthly sessions: WCDirect, covering investor engagement topics, and Peer Exchange. Unfortunately, they were scheduled at times convenient for East Coast members – typically before dawn in Hawai‘i.

“I had lobbied for years for WCD to give Hawai‘i a discount, since we were unable to receive the full benefit of WCD membership. This past year, they finally agreed – our dues are 50% of national,” she says. “Along with the discount – annual fees are now $400 instead of $800.”

Tanabe says the chapter’s growth reflects reality: Hawai‘i now has more women on public and private boards than it did even in the recent past. Today, “there’s a heightened awareness that women will raise questions that cause the board and the company to look at issues in ways that align with business objectives,” she says.

Campbell says inclusivity and community-mindedness have been part of WCD Hawaii’s makeup since its founding. As the featured speakers for the chapter’s launch, she and Okawara say they were impressed that half of the business and community leaders in the audience were men. “That was very different from most WCD chapter meetings at the time,” she says. “Barbara saw that the men of Hawai‘i would play a key role in helping make all these connections and growing the influence of WCD Hawaii. That’s something a lot of chapters have now copied.”

Campbell says WCD Hawaii has an opportunity in the next 10 years to help diversify the state’s economy by helping out-of-state investors understand the importance of building relationships and honoring Hawai‘i’s culture. Any one of WCD Hawaii’s members “would be fantastic advisors, mentors or peers to foster that understanding and help open the door for new businesses to thrive and grow in Hawai‘i,” she notes.

Here are five steps to ensure successful CSR.

1. Define Your Purpose and Values.

Your CSR should be rooted in the collective vision and mission of your organization. Your leadership team should align in this vision, and if needed, take steps to improve internal and external behaviors to set the foundation for your CSR.

2. Conduct a Sustainability Assessment.

Engage key stakeholders such as employees and customers through a comprehensive sustainability assessment that evaluates the priorities of your staff and the needs of the community. This assessment should consider the environmental and social impact of your operations and gather insights to make informed decisions.

3. Set Specific and Measurable Goals.

Define measurable CSR goals that align with your purpose and priorities and determine how you’ll assess your progress. Establishing clear metrics is crucial for tracking progress and showcasing the impact of your initiatives. This approach fosters a sense of purpose and accomplishment among your team and ensures alignment with the principles and values of your organization.

4. Integrate CSR Into Your Business Operations.

Eventually, your CSR goals need to meet the reality of running your business. An effective CSR framework is integrated throughout the company and among employees, and not as an isolated initiative. Establish employee-led CSR initiatives which can spur your team into action and inspire team engagement and leadership opportunities.

5. Collaborate and Communicate.

The best CSR strategies are fortified through collaboration with likeminded local organizations. That heightens the strategies’ impact and nurtures broader community engagement.

Effective CSR programs also emphasize transparent internal communication, which means sharing successes, challenges and plans with your employees. This establishes trust within your team and with the people you serve, reinforcing your reputation as a responsible and socially conscious organization.

It isn’t easy being a local retailer: If you survived the Covid shutdowns, you still have to compete with other stores in your neighborhood and on your island, plus online retailers like Amazon and superstore chains like Walmart and Costco.

To gain insights into their successes and challenges, every two years, we conduct a survey of local retailers – large, medium and small. It’s a survey within the overall BOSS Survey of business owners and executives from across the Hawaiian Islands.

The retailers are asked all of the questions that we ask everyone else, plus specific questions designed to understand what’s happening within the retail industry. Here are highlights of the survey we conducted in April and May of this year.

Revenue, Profit and Staffing

On the three main measures of performance – revenue, profit and number of employees – the retailers we surveyed are doing slightly worse overall than the other businesses we surveyed. We asked everyone: What happened on these three measures of performance at your company? Did they go up, hold steady or decline from the year before?

This chart shows the percentage of businesses that said they suffered decreases in these key measures of performance. In each case, a higher percentage of retailers suffered declines than other types of businesses.

Holiday Season Sales

For many retailers, the most important time of the year is the holiday season, from around Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. So every time we survey retailers, we ask about their latest holiday season and compare it to the previous holiday season. Did sales go up, hold steady or go down?

This chart compares what retailers told us in the latest survey and what retailers said the last time we surveyed them. The results were almost identically gloomy. I had to go back to a BOSS Survey conducted in 2009 to find worse results from retailers.

Customers

We asked the retailers if the overall number of their customers had gone up, held steady or gone down in the past year.

Online Sales

We asked retailers if their company had online sales: 62% said yes. Then we asked those with online sales a few questions.

• We learned that overall, the majority of those online sales were to local people – a result consistent with our previous surveys of local retailers.
• To gauge the impact of online sales on their companies, we gave retailers four options to characterize their online sales. Here is what they chose.

Recent Changes

Retailers were asked to select from this list of options to characterize changes they have made over the past few years. They could choose as many as were appropriate.

What Are Your Challenges?

Retailers were asked which of these challenges 19% their companies face. The percentages reflect how many of the retailers said, “Yes, we face this challenge.” They could select as many challenges as appropriate.

The top challenge for local retailers was, by far, finding good employees. In seven previous surveys of retailers, that challenge was never cited by more than 44% of retailers.

On the other hand, the pressure to reduce prices is at a low ebb. For instance, in 2012, 29% of retailers surveyed said they faced pressure to reduce prices.

Twice a year, the Anthology Marketing Group conducts two polls on behalf of Hawaii Business Magazine. This spring, the BOSS Survey contacted 407 business owners and executives and the 808 Poll reached 459 members of the general public.

Most of the surveys’ responses were published in the August print issue and online at hawaiibusiness.com, but I saved three questions about perennial local issues for this edition. This report also includes the BOSS survey within a survey of the local retail sector.

How to Deal with Hawai‘i’s Declining Population

Respondents in both surveys were presented with the following statement: After decades of growth, Hawai‘i’s population has declined for almost a decade, largely because the high cost of living induces many thousands to move away every year.

In both surveys, the differences on all responses between O‘ahu and Neighbor Island respondents were never more than a few percentage points – all well within the polls’ margins of error. However, there were bigger differences among different segments of the general public:

• Women were more likely than men – 82% to 72% – to agree that a greater effort should be made to lower the cost of living to allow more local people to afford to stay here.
• That same sentiment was shared by 83% of the people born and raised in Hawai‘i, but by only 70% of transplants to the state. Conversely, 16% of transplants favored a smaller state population versus only 7% of those born and raised in Hawai‘i.

They were asked which of the following four options best mirrored their personal view on the subject.

A greater effort should be made to lower the cost of living so people born and raised here can afford to stay

A stagnant or lower population is better for Hawai‘i for various reasons, including less strain on our natural resources and less demand for housing.

No strong feelings about whether Hawai‘i’s population increases or decreases.                                              .

We should try to gradually increase the population because a shrinking population threatens our future as a vibrant economy and society

How to Improve Hawai’i’s Quality of Life

Each respondent was presented with the following nine options and asked to select up to two that they felt would “improve the quality of life in Hawai‘i and create a more vibrant economy.” (Note: All of the 808 Poll and most of the BOSS Survey were conducted before the state Legislature passed and Gov. Josh Green signed into law a substantial cut in state income taxes.

Among businesspeople, here are the biggest differences between O‘ahu and the Neighbor Islands:

• 29% of the businesspeople surveyed on O‘ahu chose “More focus and spending on education and workforce development,” compared with only 12% of Neighbor Island businesspeople.
• 35% of Neighbor Island businesspeople chose “Less government regulation, especially on new housing construction,” compared with only 15% of O‘ahu respondents.

In the 808 Poll of the general public:

• 42% of O‘ahu respondents chose “Lower taxes so people have more money to spend.” On the Neighbor Islands, only 27% picked that option.
• Women were more likely to have chosen “More focus and spending on education and workforce development” than men – 33% vs. 22%. Men were more likely to have chosen “More investment in infrastructure” than women – 26% vs. 16%.
• College graduates were more likely to choose “Diversifying the economy” than those without college degrees – 43% vs. 28%. Meanwhile, 38% of those without college degrees chose “Greater support for small businesses and local enterprises,” compared with 19% of college graduates.

How Much Information Should Be Disclosed?

Respondents in both surveys were presented with the following statement: When people volunteer to serve without pay on public boards in Hawai‘i, they are often required to file disclosures about their income, investments and other details, and these disclosures are then made public.

Many local leaders, including the heads of several state agencies, say these public disclosures discourage many of the best qualified candidates from serving on public boards. They propose an alternative where the ethics commission searches these disclosures for potential conflicts of interest that might disqualify the candidates from serving, but do not disclose the information to the public. What is your opinion on this issue?

Disclosure forms should still be required but they should be vetted by the ethics commission without being released to the public.

Disclosure forms should always be required and made public.