My personal goals for my first year as the Executive Director of B Lab Germany were:
1) Stabilise our team by making our organisation a great place to work ☺️ We standardised all working contracts, published a transparent salary & career progress pathway 💷 installed multiple benefits like the #DeutschlandTicket 🚅 removed the personal financial burden of needing to reimburse expenses by setting up a corporate credit card system with Moss, sourced and built up our own office from scratch in a central location in #Berlin with good public transport connections to be a comfortable and pleasant place to work (adjustable equipment, a place to rest, many snacks from #Bcorps etc.), and moved accountants to ba tax so we could better integrate with our HR software from Personio. The team also got flexible public holidays (10), additional parental leave (40 days fully paid for second parents), a no-meetings Friday policy, plus we now close the office over Christmas. We also implemented new ways of communication and management, inspired from the #EntrepreneursOperationSystem which means we have weekly check-ins and check-outs that have helped address and ratify big painful issues. This operating system provided a process for building a 10-year vision, yearly goals, and quarterly ROCKS, aligning the team on a clear path forward while giving them the freedom to decide how to achieve it.
2) The next goal was to bring in good people to make sure we could actually achieve our goals and vision. When I started it was me at 90%, Mathieu Mohorcic (he/his) ☁ at 70% in BD+Certification, Annika Wohlert 100% split between Community and Communications, Marie Fries as a working student helping n BD, and Heiko Mitzkus 1 day per month helping with #BLeaders.
Since then we discovered and developed Chongo Kasanda to first build a process for our Supervisory Board election, and then get our organisation compliant (see many of the points above), Lea E. Lassak to launch and build the #BCommunity online platform, Pauline Staats to make it easier for companies to certify on the standard approach, Chiara Lavinia Neri to help large and complex companies certify more easily, Estelle Lauvergne to evolve B Leader training into a group that can support us in certification growth, Armelle Duvieusart joined to restore faith with our community of B Corps, while Heiko Mitzkus transitioned to be the yin to my yang and translated my vision into action while at the same time filtering me from overwhelming the team.
Joachim Hesse was a true entrepreneur and brought to life our certification bootcamp program called #MessenWasZahlt
Karry Schwettmann and @Gina stal were big helps too covering for some absences.
3) The final goal overall was to professionalise, rebuild trust with B Corps, and deliver exceptional value to them, setting us up for a bright future together.
This photo from IMPACT FESTIVAL symbolises the achievement of these three goals. Thank you to all who contributed 🙏🏿