This month we released our first e-book written by x+why member Richard Johnson - an independent researcher, consultant and facilitator. In Mission Lit, Richard Johnson explores how purpose has been misused in business, and provides a sound business case for why Mission Lit enterprises have the ultimate benefit, featuring first-person interviews from industry leaders such as Patagonia, Innocent, All Plants and Tony’s Chocolonely, learn how to locate, refine and use your Mission to drive societal and business success!
This month we released our first e-book written by x+why member Richard Johnson - an independent researcher, consultant and facilitator. In Mission Lit, Richard Johnson explores how purpose has been misused in business, and provides a sound business
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case for why Mission Lit enterprises have the ultimate benefit. Featuring first-person interviews from industry leaders such as Patagonia, Innocent, All Plants and Tony’s Chocolonely, learn how to locate, refine and use your Mission to drive societal and business success.
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Don’t Fight The Future - Fit It
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Mission Lit is the first in a series of books designed to enable modern leaders to create future fit businesses that lead with purpose. The series covers how to find ‘your why’, what to do about it, and how to measure and live by what you put out into the world.
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As we slide into the Triple Bottom Paradigm that is taking us from a narrow focus on the bottom line and into a broad focus on all of people, planet and profit - Richard is the perfect sherpa having spent 5 years at sustainable research and consulting firm Volans, founded by John Elkington himself.
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Working at Volans ignited Richard’s passion for sustainability and innovation, specifically innovation that can take sustainability beyond incremental change. Over time his interests shifted to focus more on the entrepreneurial side of things, and ways in which businesses can bring these innovations to market to create transformative change.
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The reason for writing the book centred around the observation that entrepreneurs were popping up in a variety of different industries and all shared some sort of magic sauce. They all had missions to enrich the world, and appeared to understand instinctively how to translate that mission into successful companies which displaced incumbents.
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The book tries to decode their processes. How they frame their mission and how they operationalise it. How it affects the way you run a business, and how you design, products and services. Essentially it was a chance to interview entrepreneurs who were building the new model of business, and synthesise their wisdom into a guidebook so others can follow in their footsteps.
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People, Planet and Purpose
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x+why’s purpose is to change the way the world works for good. An audacious ‘moon-shot’, we know. We understand that we are a small part of a larger movement that is pushing toward this exciting and essential goal. Our roles as a flexible workspace community is to house, support, inspire and influence businesses under our roofs.
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The prosperity and progress generated, although far from being equally shared, has been wide-spread and unprecedented. But this single-minded pursuit of profits is about to hit the very social and environmental buffers it’s been so keen to ignore all these decades. Change is inevitable.
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For a long time now there has been talk of 'paradigm shifts' and new narratives. The change brought about by the exponential rise of technology is one form of this shift, but it will only magnify the polarisation of the current paradigm(s) if we do not work to diversify and shift our own perspectives as well.
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Progress and not simply change requires seeking unity in diversity of cultural container by exploring the complexity of the grey areas, as well as resolution of balance in both quantitative and qualitative 'metrics' - not a narrow focus solely on the figures in an increasingly specialised, data-driven era.
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What is The Business of Business?
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Shifting the focus from profit and the bottom line (shareholder supremacy), towards people, planet and purpose (stakeholder primacy) means fundamentally redefining business and therefore capitalism. The Friedman paradigm, within which society currently operates, propagates the Friedman fallacy - whereby business sees itself as separate from society.
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Businesses are in fact part of a highly integrated system and economy and can therefore become hubs of transformational change. The Elkington paradigm seeks to widen the lens and put profit in the context of people and planet. This element of purpose demonstrates that without a healthy society and environment, there is no room for business.
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This is ultimately a shift of responsibility, putting autonomy back in the hands of the consumer. We are seeing similar models being built in the world of Web 3 using Blockchain Technology. Here, this moves us away from the extractive model of data harvesting by large companies as we serf the web, and instead allows us to surf the web by giving us back control and ownership of our data. Simultaneously therefore, it requires us to widen the lens of the paradigms we employ, in order to allow people to make truly autonomous and informed decisions.
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Better B Corps
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Becoming a B Corp is one means of cementing this ideal into company culture. At x+why, making sure that we adhere to our mission is what inspired us to become a B Corp. It ensures that we never lose sight of our vision and who we are.
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This is important because the difficulties that most companies face as they expand, centre around preserving their culture and soul. The B Corp framework is a means of cementing the intangible elements of a company into its endoskeleton, ensuring that these core values are not traded in return for scope and scale.
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At the heart of our company culture is an adherence to the Triple Bottom Line - people and planet, alongside profit. This means that while we house a diverse array of start-ups in terms of background and industry, they are all united by a common vision and mission: to change the way the world works for good. This inherently fosters a more collaborative and cohesive environment.
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The main difference between traditional CSR and becoming a B Corp is accountability. Many CSR goals are well intentioned but do little in the way of impact as they often serve more of a window-dressing or green washing purpose. Because the B Corp community requires a 3rd party to validate the model using a rigorous process, certified B Corps are continually held accountable to the long-term impacts of the promises they make.
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Being a B Corp positively influences our business strategy because it gives us a more holistic, systems lens with which to view our problems and solutions. What we need to bear in mind, is that this is ultimately a process that requires a shift in mindsets and perspectives, and that while we may have control of the process, the outcome is never a guarantee because there are always unseen emergent properties that impact the overall system. This means acknowledging a state of constant flux and transformation, while adhering to an ethical guideline and mission as a North Star.
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If we fail to imagine and strive for that possibility, then no amount of regulation or incentives will unlock the drive needed to get there. This book will introduce you to the building blocks of the Mission Lit businesses that will leave the old, degenerative ones behind. What we need now is for entrepreneurs to use these building blocks to make that future a reality.
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