Guided by Governance: Follow These 5 Best Practices to Build a Business for Good
How to Walk the Fine Line Between Aspirations and Reality
Creating a business that balances purpose with profit requires a sturdy foundation—a structure that varies for each business, and one hat can adapt over time. While there is no single blueprint for this structure, the process of becoming a Certified B Corporation can help, and the B Corp community serves as a important resource.
Read on for five lessons learned by B Corps honored in 2018 as Best For The World: Governance honorees—those that exemplify how to build a company’s values and mission goals into its everyday operations and practices.
1. Build it into your foundation.
A company committed to having a positive social impact has to walk the talk in everything it does — something that’s much easier said than done. Putting that commitment at the core of operations can make it more manageable and keep it front and center.
Creating a clearly defined mission or set of values helps align work, people, and brand and serves as a ballast. Articulate that mission and brand guidelines so anyone who joins the employee team understands they are built into the company’s fabric. Reinforce this by weaving them into external messaging, such as websites, social media, or sales collateral, and make the mission part of staff performance reviews.
2. Make tough decisions quickly.
If an impact initiative isn’t working, move on quickly. This can be difficult, but the risk in not doing so could be devastating to your organization. In a mission-driven, for-profit company, the resources necessary to fund your impact initiatives typically come from profit margins.
That’s why it’s critical to quickly cast off initiatives that don’t work so you can focus remaining resources on those that do. Whether it’s dealing with a challenging employee, rethinking your corporate giving, or shutting down a project that hasn’t generated results, make a decision, take action, deal with the consequences, and move on. The sooner the better.
3. Be prepared to pivot.
In her TedX talk, Nadya Zhexembayeva notes that because of ongoing disruption, the average company must now reinvent itself every 3.5 years. But during the height of the Industrial Revolution, these transformations happened only about every 75 years. This quicker timeline is particularly challenging for mission-driven companies because every pivot requires you to reassess the resources necessary to maintain both margin and mission. It’s inevitable that some of your impact-focused efforts are going to fail. That’s OK.
As noted above, companies that embrace organizational agility and continuous learning can pivot quickly. Failing fast and moving on or evolving efforts to produce better results reduces company resources and saves money. Devising lean, data-informed practices will ensure you reach (or, better yet, exceed) goals over time.
Consider this approach:
- Once you have defined an impact project, also define the organizational success (and failure) metrics that will frame your efforts.
- Identify small steps forward, measuring progress each step of the way.
- Use captured data to inform how best to improve the project.
- Make those improvements and resample your data.
- Lather, rinse, repeat — or pivot when necessary.
4. You are the company you keep.
Use the promise of doing business better to vet clients. After all, the people you choose to partner or work with are a reflection of your values. Some companies only work with individuals or organizations that have a positive social impact.
To create meaningful client relationships, work with other companies that have similar values and are kind, imaginative, and accountable to their stakeholders and communities.
And this goes far beyond the work you do. As a business owner and leader, it’s the advisors you engage with, the pet projects you take on, the friends you confide in.
5. Keep it simple.
Finally, the importance of simplicity in these governance efforts cannot be overstated. Don’t enact complex company impact policies that require their own manual to enforce or follow. Stakeholders, especially employees, want to engage with initiatives that are clear, easy to understand, and simple to act upon.
Certified B Corps have a collective goal of using business to create a shared and durable prosperity for all society — a lofty goal, to be certain. Creating this prosperity for others requires practicing self care first. Knowing what you can realistically accomplish with existing resources, then communicating that clearly to stakeholders is critical for long-term success.
This article features information from articles by MightyBytes and LimeRed Studio, which are part of the community of Certified B Corporations. Read more stories of people using business as a force for good in B the Change, or sign up to receive the B the Change Weekly newsletter for more stories like the one above, delivered straight to your inbox.
