Why Operating With Heart And Soul Is The Next Step For B Corp Businesses. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. In today’s post, I will be sharing a guest post from Paul Hargreaves, author, speaker and CEO of Cotswold Fayre and Flourish and B Corp Ambassador. Paul will be exploring what is beyond B Corp, what comes next and how businesses can get there. The growth of B Corps in the UK has been exponential, but arguably, there are now too many companies that are certifying. It can feel like an obligation in specific sectors and often happens without the necessary cultural change. So, what is beyond B Corp? What comes next, and how do businesses get there?
Why Operating With Heart And Soul Is The Next Step For B Corp Businesses
Unlike traditional businesses prioritising maximising shareholder profits, B Corps (short for Benefit Corporations) focus on using their business as a force for good. They seek to balance profit with purpose by considering the impact of their decisions on employees, communities, customers, and the environment.
My company, Cotswold Fayre, was one of the first UK businesses to certify as a B Corp in 2015, and, at the time, it was amazing to discover a group of other business leaders who believed that business’s purpose is to impact the world positively. To find others who believed that a profits-only motivation was destructive, socially and environmentally, was encouraging. I wasn’t in it alone!
I had come into the business from the charity sector, and having spent twelve years mopping up the mess in people’s lives created by business and government policy, I was determined to start a business that puts people front and centre. I had been doing that, albeit in a flawed way, for 15 years before discovering the B Corp movement. Realising that many other businesses were doing far more and in a better way than us was a revelation. We started moving forward immediately.
B Corp has been foundational in forming us as a business and essential in breathing life into our purpose. The B Corp certification remains the most comprehensive audit of how good a business is for the world. Still, I have concerns for the movement’s future, and here I will outline these but also provide some signposts for optimism for the future of better business.
The growth of B Corps in the UK has been exponential over the past few years, which is excellent. Still, there are too many companies certifying now, feeling like an obligation in certain sectors, but sometimes without the cultural change alongside the certification. I interviewed a leader from a food and drink B Corp last year, who stated that the business he was leaving had not changed culturally for the better since becoming a B Corp a few years ago, and that’s why he was leaving.
B Corp Is The Start Of A Journey
We will fail if companies certify B Corps as a destination rather than the beginning of a new chapter in their evolution. There is a danger that companies can treat the certification similarly to an ISO standard, maybe tweak a few things, but largely carry on as before. Becoming a B Corp cannot just be a box-ticking exercise and doing just enough to creep over a line; it must be the start of a journey that will foundationally challenge everything we do and how we do it. We may even decide to change our business model entirely. Suppose business will help restore our broken planet and bring radical social justice. In that case, it isn’t just a case of doing business better but about creating better, different businesses.
Progressing To The Next Stage
I can’t help but think that the B Corp movement must mean more than some tweaking around the edges; we need significantly transformative and regenerative businesses making more of a difference than we are currently doing. And, yes, the certification will change next year (2025), so companies must reach a minimum standard in 10 different areas, but how radical will this be? How do we move on to the next stage?
Excited by our first few years of a B Corp and wanting to encourage more businesses to become a force for good in the world, I wrote my first book, Forces for Good, which was published in 2019. However, in writing that book, I came to the firm realisation that if we are going to change the world for the better, socially and environmentally, then we also need to transform ourselves. It is about a new mindset and tapping into our other dimensions. We must become people and leaders with compassion, heart, and soul.
Most of us in the Global North are good at mind-level actions and strategy but less good at operating on the soul and heart level. Undoubtedly, change starts with the mind and setting new intentions for our businesses, but real change involves deepening into more love and spirituality, whatever that word means for you. It also means connecting with our inner side, nature and others in ways we haven’t experienced before. All this is only getting back to how our ancestors were, but we have become so dominated by our minds in The West that we are babies in all the other ways of being.
Operate From The Heart And Soul
I discovered these ‘other ways of knowing’ a few years ago, and my second book, The Fourth Bottom Line, expressed my desire to see leaders inspiring on another level. The first three bottom lines being the well-known motif of people, planet and profit; the fourth being the personal change required to transform better businesses into regenerative ones.
Just as in the quote attributed to Albert Einstein, insanity is defined as doing the same thing again and expecting different results; we are not going to achieve the different results many of us deeply desire by using the same thinking that resulted in the mess that business has been responsible for in the world. We need a different, more holistic approach where the mind is an equal partner with our hearts, souls, and somatic parts.
Going beyond B Corp
So, how do we bring this more heartfelt and soulful vibe into our businesses? Here are a few ways we do this as part of our business culture. But remember, this is not a final destination; it is an ongoing process and one that requires you to keep learning:
Engage And Learn From Nature
Most of the answers are out there. Have outdoor meetings, encourage your people to get outside and set an example yourself. Immerse yourself in nature, and nature will bring the answers and the change you need to see.
Encourage Emotions Within Your Business
That means leaders being vulnerable and expressing their own emotions, too. It means giving space for others to be themselves. Yes, sometimes, it may feel like stuff isn’t getting done quickly enough, and it will undoubtedly be messier, but there will be a depth to what is happening that will always be more transformative for the future.
Create Space and Silence
Create space and silence and try to move away from constant ‘productivity’. If you are lucky enough to have a quiet area within your building, encourage people to have ‘time outs’. At the start of our meetings, we have a short silence and take a few deep breaths, which helps the brain be less dominant and the other parts of us come to the fore. By doing slightly less, we achieve more.
Lead with Abundance and Generosity
Put people first, even when it hurts. Learn to lead with abundance and generosity. If we believed putting people and the planet first would lead to greater profits, we would sometimes make different decisions. That’s why I never liked balancing people, planet, and profit, as when the pressure comes, the numbers trump the other two. We have a rule within our business that in meetings, whatever type, we never talk about numbers first. If business leaders do that, what do you think their people think is most important?
Align Personal Purpose with Company Purpose
Our people’s purpose needs to relate to the company’s purpose. There’s a lot of talk about purpose these days, but that is often at a company level. What about helping our company’s individuals discover their purpose in life? Hopefully, there is a connection between the two, but if not, it sometimes means they may leave. But this can be good for not just them, but for the business too.
Yes, the B Corp framework is a fantastic tool for helping us to become a better business, but we need more than that. In today’s broken world full of injustice on a rapidly degrading planet, we need leaders and businesses that are connecting in compassion and love to nature and people. We need the people within our businesses to engage at a heart, soul, and mind level. We need our workplaces to be those where there is depth and creative life.
It is different and not always easy, but we can’t continue as we are, can we? It’s not working. Will you join me in being a leader and exploring new ways of being? I have been happier and more fulfilled since doing so, and our businesses have transformed beyond belief.
I hope you enjoyed that.
Talk soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Hargreaves is a speaker, author, CEO and B Corp Ambassador. He is one of the leading voices in the UK, encouraging and inspiring businesses to positively impact the world. He firmly believes that businesses should be a Force for Good, the title of his first book.
Paul is CEO of Cotswold Fayre, an ample speciality food and drink wholesale business supplying over 2,000 retail sites in the UK. In 2021, the company opened Flourish, its first food hall, restaurant, home, and lifestyle store.
Cotswold Fayre was one of the UK’s founding B Corps in 2015, and the company was named Elite Business’s No. 1 in The SME Top 100. It has won the Lloyd’s Bank’ Purpose before Profit Award’ and a coveted Grocer Gold Award. Paul’s team of over 120 is constantly looking for ways to be generous and compassionate by putting people and the planet before profit; this is at the root of the business’s success.
Paul believes that a new compassionate, loving, servant-hearted leadership is required to bring radical and systemic change to reverse climate change and the growing inequality in the world. He calls this The Fourth Bottom Line, the title of his second book.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwhargreaves/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@paulhargreaves636
Forces for Good book: https://amzn.eu/d/9S12bFc
The Fourth Bottom Line book: https://amzn.eu/d/etUjwe3