What are some tips for companies already underway with their B Corp journey?

These tips are gained from experience across the size and sector spectrum.

They will add value and lower cost risk during your pre certification B Corp journey; increasing its effectiveness, efficiency and transformational potential. They will also lower your costs; removing the risk of significant wasted resource, mistaken prioritisation of changes and reducing the effort required to maintain engagement.

They will add value and lower reputation risk during your post certification experience. Don't forget that the certification journey is the starting point: most of the B Corp experience is post certification. If you delay thinking thinking through how to weave B Corp thinking and reporting into everyday life until you certify, you will find it considerably more challenging to engage employees and maintain progress.

After the tips we share the headline approach we use as a comparable in the hope it helps spark some ideas or, indeed, affirmation.

The Tips

The Formal Scoping Exercise

If your context is more complex than a wholly owned, single legal entity with no related entities, you should have undertaken B Lab's formal Scoping exercise, i.e. if you have two or more legal entities within your company, or you are a subsidiary or part of a group then you need to do the Scoping.

If you have done so, great. If not, you need to consider it sooner rather than later.

Scoping exists because too many companies were discovering at submission they were incorrectly set up or had missed additional requirements, which is obviously painful if you've done a lot of work.

Scoping is not well publicised by B Lab so it is often missed.

See: B Corp - Scoping Info for more detail on the process and how we can help streamline it.

Additional Requirement Concerns

Companies with any of the following can be subject to additional requirements, including a pre-screening exercise (which is supposed to happen prior to using the B Impact Assessment):

• Revenues over $/£100M
• Offices in 5+ countries
• Operating in 2+ industries
• Exposure to 'Controversial Industries'

It is not always the case that Additional Requirements apply but is worth confirming sooner rather than later to ensure clarity prior to reaching submission.

Obtaining an answer can typically be combined with B Lab's Scoping exercise.

Using A Bottom Up and Top Down Approach

Regardless of your size, it is far more effective and efficient to take it on as a whole company journey - top down and bottom up - than it is to handle it like a project management exercise.

Dominating your B Corp process by allocating it to a small central who then chase around the company gathering data and implementing actions on everyone else's behalf will create material issues post certification, namely a combination of higher ongoing workload (than would otherwise be the case) combined with lower widespread commitment and slower continuous improvement/momentum.

In the words of Douglas Lamont (CEO, Innocent Drinks) from the stage of a B Lab event: “It was a massive mistake to pursue B Corp as a small team without making it part of an exercise that involved the whole company.” Bearing in mind Innocent Drinks already had quite a purpose led culture, this speaks volumes; hence why he talks about this every time he's on a stage for B Corp.

It is never too late to to open your process up. Better to open it up one week before submission than not at all. Announcing B Corp to fanfare when you haven't taken everyone with you risks falling totally flat. Don't think that just because you're excited that everyone else will be if you haven't involved them. Sharing progress on a regular basis won't count: that is communication not participation.

2023's New Performance Requirements

There will be new B Corp performance requirements from 2023, likely covering: Purpose, Worker Empowerment, Impact Management, Ethics and Anti-Corruption, Collective Action, Human Rights, JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion), Climate, Environmental Management, Living Wages.

Some of these you can build into your approach from now, particularly if you are taking a bottom up + top down approach: "Purpose", "Worker Empowerment" and "Impact Management" (i.e. considering who you involve) are all particularly relevant to the ideal methodology.

Ensure Leadership Has Clarity & A Reality Check

Allocating intentional time amongst the leadership group to a) create some clarity about the commitments and b) challenge and enrich their thinking is well worth the time.

By "intentional time" we mean going beyond signing off a proposal to go B Corp as an agenda item during executive or board meetings.

The ongoing context B Corp will have to live within is key given this is both a movement and a commitment to an idea before it is a certification exercise.

Without targeted dialogue, there is a real risk a leadership team doesn't fully comprehend the potential change it's voting for. And that divergence or disappointment opens up between what leadership see as possible or expected vs what the employees and other stakeholders do.

Furthermore, B Corp represents an ideal and permissive moment for leaders to look beyond their typical rhythm of dialogue to recapture their imaginations and connect on a more expansive and human level.

The problems we face are dynamic and large; the heart, courage and vision we need should match that.

For more info. See: The Reality Check Statements

Don't Miss The Catalyst For Wider Change

The B Corp journey is a golden opportunity to boost or kick start broader change, fresh thinking and opportunity seeking. It is wise to consider what the window of opportunity can provide.

As the BIA is neither a culture change nor a mindset shifting resource, only focusing on the B Corp mechanics will miss this.

Don't Forget To Look Beyond The BIA

The B Impact Assessment can become all consuming during the B Corp journey. However, whilst it is thorough and targeted, it can never be entirely bespoke: there are always key issues to a business that the BIA won't flag as an area of focus.

These hyper relevant issues tend to be both vital and central to who you are. It is important not to overlook them as they a core part of your brand and a primary source of your thought leadership potential.

For example, the BIA does not cover issues pertaining specifically to:

• Family dynamics if you're a family business
• Luxury concepts if you're a luxury company
• Heritage if you're a heritage brand
• Faith or spirituality if you're a faith or spirit led company
• Generational stewardship if you're a landowner
• etc.

Our Approach As A Comparison

We share this to help you compare what you are doing to how we would help companies approach B Corp, as a sort of roadmap benchmarking exercise.

Designing for Commitment not Installation

Perhaps the most important comparison is the design mindset.

We design our approach for commitment, not installation. Installation is the default way companies pursue ideas: the top decides something on behalf of a company, the centre makes it happen with some input from various additional individuals and then installs it throughout the business (comms, training, visuals, incentives etc) to engage and enrol people into their new reality. Effectively, it is done to the company, not with it.

Designing for commitment is very different. It asks at every stage "How do we maximise localised ownership and commitment going forward here?" And that typically means constant participation to create ownership.

Apply Some Mindset Principles

When designing your approach, come up with some principles or guardrails that you will make constant reference to when deciding how to move forward.

We have four that we use to help ensure a client's journey is committed, participatory and locally co-designed across four concepts:

1. Leadership Connection. Challenging leadership get real, informed, inspired and aligned.
2. Evolutionary Purpose. Enabling emergent synergy with wider cultural and commercial ambitions.

3. Stakeholder Empowerment. Ensuring widespread ownership of what this means, not just imposing ideals or interest.

4. Assessment Mechanics. Optimising score, implementation and continuous improvement.

Feel free to use ours or think up some (better!) ones of your own. :-)

Ten Core Steps

All of the above thinking manifests practically into Ten Core Steps, which we then customise to the context. For example, a 50 person business needs a different approach to early whole company engagement vs a 1,500 person business, but you still need the context setting step. The Ten Steps, which you can see in more detail in here (Slide 13: B Corp Service Intro) are:

1. Starting Review (scoping etc)
2. Context Setting (leadership and company sessions)
3. Teaming & Training (forming by invitation and aligning bottom up and top down gaps)
4. Strategy Creation (choosing what to focus on in a purpose-led way)
5. Implementation - Governance (BIA section)
6. Implementation - Workers (BIA section)
7. Implementation - Environment (BIA section)
8. Implementation - Community (BIA section)
9. Implementation - Customers (BIA section)
10. Final Review (check before submission

I hope all of that not only provides ideas for what you might change but encouragement for what you are doing well.

If you would like some advice, we would, of course, be happy to help. Feel free to email John Featherby on [e-mail]