Week Notes - 10 June - 15 June 2024 - 'Stairs. Stairs. Stairs.'

A shorter update this week because I’m knackered from travel…

Diplomatic Relations with our European Friends

I spent a few days in Paris this week working with colleagues across B Lab Europe, B Lab Nordics, B Lab France and B Lab Spain to explore impact programmes. 

I really enjoy meeting with my counterparts across the wider B Lab network. It was one of the highlights of my time at the Serious Fraud Office as well - engaging with international partners to learn, share and coordinate. 

Time and again we talk about the value of doing more in-person catch-ups and it really is amazing to get into a space and thrash things out. It was exhausting and undulating, progress and stepping back, blocks and moments of epiphany. This is raw design for me which is at once agonising and liberating. It’s been helpful to learn more and practise the letting go and riding the wave, but also trying to find those moments when you need to stick an oar in and try and navigate around a current.

It was also helpful to reframe the work around the concept of ‘coherence’, rather than ‘alignment’. Alignment, to me, suggests one way of doing things and feels a bit too fixed, especially in these early stages of creating something new. Coherence, provides flexibility and variance around a direction, creating opportunities and openness to the new and the emergent. We also explored guardrails, and the creation of some constraints which again help provide some steer within a range. 

Finally, it was good to get up, walk around, draw on boards, write with post-its, play an improv game or two. 

So, I think we made progress, a type of progress. More to come…

Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

I presented B Lab UK’s JEDI strategy to friends within the Diverse Sustainability Initiative this week.

We’re doing some good stuff already, and as should be expected given what we encourage businesses to do for people and the planet. You can read more about what we are doing and what we’ve committed to here (and copied below).

It was useful to share to help inspire further action, and explore where there are still gaps. One of the interesting things was how smaller organisations can support JEDI work especially when they cannot access more expensive tech and tools like the Applied platform for recruitment support.

There are a lot of free resources and free things organisations can do to support each other, like joining the DSI, providing salary ranges and holding space within organisations to talk about this work.

This is what we’re doing so far (with more to come):

• Mandatory diversity and inclusion training
• Developed and launched the JEDI Action Plan
• Transparent job adverts e.g. salary ranges
• Running regular internal JEDI awareness events 
• Regular data collection and monitoring on staff satisfaction and diversity
• Internships paid with the London Living Wage
• JEDI included in our competency and behaviour framework
• Improving accessibility to IT tools
• Creating programmes like the Equalisers and attending events like the Black Business Show
• Using Applied for recruitment to minimise bias
• Implemented a carers policy
• Developing an ethical procurement policy
• Offering hybrid working 
• Board development - training and data capture
• Joined the DSI

And some tips from my experience so far:

• Use the B Impact Assessment or the new standards as a free guide on best practice 
• Leadership advocacy, time and support is crucial
• Recognise that people are staring from different places in this work - empathy and kindness to each other is essential
• Data is important, but this is not a numbers game - we’re living beings within a living organisation, not a machine to be tinkered with
• JEDI is everyone’s responsibility, not just HR + ensure a mix of levels of experience from across the organisation
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
• Avoid the simplicity trap - move beyond acronyms and be aware of intersectionalities 
• It always takes longer than you think
• Be aware of context and starting points - each organisation is different and things that work in one place will not necessarily copy and paste across to a different context.

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