20
TH
MAY 2016
Seldon in a
STATE
ANN
CERRELL on
CARTER
GIBBONS on being
20 AGAIN
IVERSARY EDITION
BAYLEY on
BAD
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
CONTENTS
Dear friends,
As you can probably tell, we decided our 20th
birthday was worth a little bit of celebration – as
well as being a good opportunity to look back, and,
more importantly, look forwards – bring on the
next two decades and more!
WHAT ON EARTH
ARE WE DOING?
INFLUENTIAL
FRIENDS
SIR ANTHONY SELDON
DAVID ROBINSON
05
29
And because one of the richest and most brilliant
things about the last 20 years has been the number
and nature of the people we’ve crossed paths with
for all manner of reasons – whether we’ve worked
for them, or they’ve worked for us, or because
they’re part of a totally different organisation we’ve
helped create – we wanted to make them part of
our celebration too.
YOUR
GOOD HEALTH
DAVID CARTER
JULIA HOBSBAWM
30
So, although we’re not sure being asked to do
something necessarily fits in the ‘celebration’ box, we
asked a number of these people if they might consider
writing a small piece about how they relate to the idea
that’s powered Good Business from the start – the
power of good (you’ll find a bit more about what we
mean by that in my piece on p 21).
RESTORING
THE GOOD
MUCH MORE
THAN SIMPLE
GOOD TASTE
ALI PARSA
MARK LINEHAN
08
34
THE POWER
OF GOOD
FOR THE GOOD
OF OTHERS
JOE CERRELL
KUSHIL GUNASEKERA
11
37
05
RESTORING
THE BAD
STEPHEN BAYLEY
07
It was an admittedly loose brief – up for anyone
to interpret however they wished – personal,
professional, life story, moment in time, supportive,
challenging – really anything at all!
We were overwhelmed by the response – we
couldn’t have hoped for a more insightful, inspiring
and eclectic mix. We’ve got references ranging
from Shakespeare to Superman; provocations to
get rid of half of our name (the ‘good’ part, along
with any mention from anyone of ‘sustainable’,
‘ethical’, ‘healthy’ – with that we’d agree with Nick
Stanhope on p 43); thoughts philosophical, culinary,
practical, and human. We’ve even got a wholehearted
defence of ‘bad’ from Stephen Bayley on p 7. Suffice
to say we love it all, and we really hope you do too.
If this sparks any thoughts you would like to
debate further, or any thoughts you would like
to add, we would love to hear from you. You
can email me directly on [email protected] or
join the debate on Twitter – @gbminds or on our
website www.good.business.
0800 107 0160
releasethepressure.uk
Joe, 34, from Kent*
Support is free and confidential, provided by an
independent charity and funded by Kent County Council.
R:U:MAD?
SPORT
FOR GOOD
BOB MUNRO
32
THE BIG FIVE
ALL CHANGE?
AMANDA KAMUGISHA
NEIL ROSS RUSSELL
12
37
BACK ON
THE FRONT FOOT
VIVE
LA REVOLUTION
MATTHEW GWYTHER
VINCENT NOLAN
15
40
A PERSONAL
JOURNEY
THE END
OF GOOD?
OLIVER SPARK
NICK STANHOPE
15
43
A GOOD SOCIETY
SHAPO KA YONE
ROBERT PHILLIPS
NGOZI CHUKURA
17
44
THE GOOD NEWS
`OUR’ GOOD
GILES GIBBONS
BUSINESS
21
LYDIA PARIS
47
MINDING THE GAP
DAVID HALPERN
I look forward to hearing from you!
23
FIVE
GOOD IDEAS
LYDIA PARIS
Enjoy,
HOW CAN
YOU TELL?
LARISSA PERSONS
Giles and the Good Business team
26
* Quotes are genuine, but names have been changed to protect confidentiality
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
3
48
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
WHAT ON
EARTH ARE
WE DOING?
SIR ANTHONY SELDON
O
n a trip to China last month, I
asked anyone and everyone who
would talk to me what they thought was
the primary motivation of the growing
numbers of Chinese city dwellers.
‘Money’ was the answer that came back
every time. I asked what they wanted
money for and they answered “a car, a
bigger car, a flat, a bigger flat, shopping
and restaurants.”
Are the Chinese uniquely self-centred?
I don’t think so. Indeed, I often detect
a generosity of spirit amongst the
Chinese, which I do not always find in
the West. For instance, I came across
the remarkable Blue House project
in Hong Kong, which is dedicated to
improving the quality of urban life for
all and to enhancing opportunities for
shared communal experiences at the
heart of their crowded city.
I wonder how much we have learnt
in the West in the last 50 years about
how to live well and intelligently.
More possessions, bigger houses, more
expensive food and wine, faster cars,
and more exotic holidays seem to be the
biggest motivators. Yet they will never
make us happier. They might give us
pleasure, but pleasure fades, leaving in
its wake a vacuum, which compels us to
consume more and more.
We need a new mind-set for the 21st
century, one which rises above the allpervasive personal and selfish one that
so dominated the last century. We
need governments who can think longterm for the benefit of all, rather than
short-term to try to secure re-election.
We need schools and universities that
teach the young how to think and
connect, rather than memorise and
regurgitate. We need businesses and
banks to be aware of their wider
responsibilities, not because of fear
of public exposure, but because it is
the right and good thing to do. We
need voters to choose governments
who act wisely and responsibly, not
just for today’s generation, but for
future generations as well.
For as long as I’ve been alive, people
have talked about the need for a
new consciousness and sense of
responsibility if we are to survive and
flourish. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s,
achieving this new awareness seemed
like a luxury, but today it is a necessity.
Individuals like scientist Martin Rees
and organisations like the Oxford
Martin School are far from clear that
we can definitely survive this century.
Wisdom, compassion and responsibility
are the three qualities that individuals
and all organisations need to adopt. The
older generations have served young
people poorly. They have spent too
much money, stacked up huge debts,
polluted the environment, squandered
raw materials, and have failed to devise
inter-governmental organisations that
can prevent war and conflict. We will
look back at the horror of Syria in the
second decade of this century as the low
point for international co-operation.
If we bring up our young people,
whether in China, India, or the
United States, to believe that money
and national pride is all important,
rather than educate them about
wisdom, compassion and rational
responsibility, the future will be
bleak. But I am an optimist. We
have come close to disaster, but we
will pull back from the brink. Why?
As the writer and philosopher Iris
Murdoch wrote, “because of the
sovereignty of the good”. Goodness
will always triumph as long as we
champion it with our young in our
homes, schools, and our community.
MAY 2016
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
4
5
"Anthony is the headmaster, the
vice chancellor, the biographer.
But more than that, he is
someone who is able to express
the complexities of life, not
shying away from difficulties
or issues that conflict with each
other, in a way that helps us
make sense of the world today
and our part to play in it. This
country has no greater innovator,
no-one as passionate and no-one
more tiring to work with than
Anthony! We salute you."
www.anthonyseldon.co.uk
YOUR
Good
Health
JULIA HOBSBAWN
G
ood health is good for you, we
all know that. A quick high
intensity exercise burst at the gym, or
a run, or a good night’s sleep – these
all do us ‘the power of good’. Up until
the middle of the last century having
good health really meant staying alive,
and not dying young: the “Spanish
Flu” pandemic of 1918-19 which killed
many more millions than the First
World War itself showed how a common
bug which has low mortality can rocket
around a population weakened by poor
nutrition, bad sanitation, the spreading
effect of mass mobility and a factor like
war. But in 1945 after the Second
World War something changed. The
UN was created and with it a new
body, the World Health Organisation.
They wanted to create a world which
was healthy enough not just to survive
life but to thrive in it. Their original
definition of health is interesting, not
least because it still stands today:
THE GOOD NEWS
“a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being and not merely
the absence of injury and disease”.
One word stands out for me: the
word social. We have come a long
way to understanding and practising
good physical and mental health
and well-being, but social wellbeing? Today we have not just a
physical obesity crisis – 20% of
the world will be clinically obese
by 2025 according to the wellcome
Trust and The Lancet – but we
have a different kind of crisis and
deprivations: information obesity,
time poverty and network blockage.
We are officially in the Age of
Overload. Those in control of their
schedules and diaries are regarded as
infinitely richer than those who are
not. Networks are for many people an
overwhelming tangle comprising workrelated and purely personal databases,
LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and
WhatsApp in a permanent cacophony
of addictive sharing rather than a set
of trusted relationships who can
guide us through the thickets. The
MIT psychologist Professor Sherry
Turkle has written about how
conversation is being sidelined by a
new condition: “phubbing: the art
THE GOOD NEWS
RESTORING
THE Bad
of talking to other people but with
your eyes on your phone”.
The modern fitness revolution was
kick-started by the actress Jane Fonda
in 1982 with her famous workout video.
Something interesting happened the
same year: TIME magazine named
‘The Computer’ as its celebrated
‘Person of the Year’. This year, next
year, we need a new kind of fitness,
one which has been made necessary
by the very computerised technology
which keeps us all connected – fully
connected – all of the time.
We need to know how to switch
off, how to manage information
overload better, how to connect
better face-to-face in the a Facebook
world, and how to build networks
which are not a tangle of virtual
tubes but real relationships. We can
start with learning how to treat our
diaries like our bodies – only putting
something in which we feel is good
and healthy for us.
Here, then, is my definition of a new
kind of health: social health: “To
maintain a balance of activity, mindset
and connections which enhance wellbeing and productivity”.
"Julia is like a big sister to me
(and most of London too!).
In fact that is her brilliance:
she makes everyone feel at ease,
informed and in the gang! But
don’t think that this is mere
networking, she is the vibrant
knowledge economy. Always on
the pulse, always there to help,
with sage advice. She leads
Editorial Intelligence, has created
the Comment Awards, and the
eclectic and wonderful Names
Not Numbers conference. Long
may her social health continue."
www.namesnotnumbers.com
www.editorialintelligence.com
STEPHEN BAYLEY
I
have mixed feelings about goodness.
For instance, I like it that the poet
Jean Lorrain thought “a bad reputation
never did anyone any harm”.
It is really quite hard to prove that
unblemished virtue is an asset to a
business. Indeed, it is easy to make
the opposite case. Perhaps not all
the seven deadly sins are useful in
management: sloth, for example, is
no-one’s friend, but avarice and lust
are terrific motivators.
Meanwhile, no-one is going to
publish a book called Seven Saintly
Stratagems to Protect Your Bottom
Line because it would be very boring
and would not sell, but Unscrupulous
Advice from the Very Rich would
surely be an attractive title. And a
thicker volume than the other one.
Hunter S. Thompson once said
that, looking around his friends and
colleagues, indeed, looking at himself,
and considering how very happy and
successful everyone was, he would
positively recommend committed,
long-term abuse of drugs and alcohol.
It is the same with sin in business. We
may need more of it.
I am not talking about vulgar criminals,
although common criminals and
business visionaries share certain traits:
they have huge egos and see a system
that is vulnerable to exploitation for
personal gain. Of course, criminality
is not attractive, although remember
that Bernard Madoff had many
admirers and investors until the very
end. Like the German intellectuals
with the Nazis, a great many
otherwise sensible people found him
entirely plausible.
Instead, there is a more subtle case to
be made for the place of wickedness in
business. And this case has historical
credentials so profound that it is
tempting to argue a general theory that
business is amoral and that a record of
social conscience or good behavior or
polite deference or well-maintained
scruples do not necessarily make any
contribution to success. They might
even militate against it. We know
this. Has anybody ever said: “Richard
Caring! What a lovely man!” ?
and one of the great soldiers, statesmen,
corrupters and murderers of the
Renaissance. Borgia existed in a stew
of universal depravity where incest,
back-stabbing, front-stabbing and
poisoning were routine. He was the
inspiration for Niccolo Machiavelli’s
The Prince. This was the first howto book and Machiavelli was the
prototype management consultant.
His top tip was, and I paraphrase, the
ends justify the means: decide what
you want and go for it.
Any survey of sin’s place in good
management must begin with Cesare
Borgia, the illegitimate son of a Pope
The men whose iron, coal and
railroads made industrial America
possible were called ‘Robber Barons’,
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WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
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7
THE GOOD NEWS
not ‘Civic-Minded Philanthropists’.
Theft is a common theme in success.
Terence Conran once described an
occasion where a friend’s eight-yearold daughter asked “Daddy, what’s a
plagiarist?” Terence jumped in and
said: “I am!” Picasso knew that truly
great artists don’t borrow, they steal.
Between inspiration and theft there is
a line so fine it is nearly invisible.
once went to a meeting with a leading
retailer. She was a case-hardened
PR and quite inured to deplorable
manners, but returned astonished that
he had spent the entirety of her pitch
talking on his phone, then passed
wind very loudly per anum, gave her
a bottle of claret, patted her on the
bottom and said goodbye. This man
owns most of the high street.
Henry Ford used armed thugs to
break strikes and was a virulent
anti-Semite. During the Second
World War, Mercedes-Benz and
BMW ‘employed’ slave labour
to manufacture war materiel.
Ferdinand Porsche mumbled he was
just-doing-his-job when he put his
design consultancy in the service of
Hitler, creating Panzer tanks and
supervising manufacture of the V-1
buzz bomb. The war encouraged
business duplicity: after 1945 the
old US ITT conglomerate claimed
compensation for damage caused by
Allied bombing of the Focke-Wulf
factories it owned. Good business,
but poor scruples.
The question is not so much about
sin in business, but the more general
one that many of life’s activities
discourage morality and encourage
loutishness. For example, to make
progress in traffic, good manners
and foresight are actual handicaps.
Traffic rewards brutality and
stupidity. The meek do not inherit
the fast lane.
Suspicion that it subverts governments
and certainties that it sells destructive
obesity products have not stopped
Coca-Cola becoming the world’s
biggest beverage business. Steve Jobs
was a borderline psychotic, a bully and
had sub-optimal personal hygiene.
Many believe that Richard Branson’s
richly deserved knighthood was
delayed awaiting clarification about
the legality of some early business
activity. Bernie Ecclestone has only
recently begun to talk openly about
his long alleged involvement with the
Great Train Robbery. He denied it all,
adding, mischievously, that there was
not, in any case, enough money on the
train to make the heist worthwhile in
business terms. It’s a matter of cost
and benefit, you know.
Still, we admire success, even if we are
often unhappy about the way it has
been achieved. The moral mutability
is revealed once in that wonderful line
from the novelist Arnold Bennett: “I
don’t mind lying, but I detest inaccuracy.
And second in that marvellous line
of Malcolm McLaren’s about his
technically inept fledgling band, The
Sex Pistols: “They are so bad, they are
good”. There’s a thought.
"Stephen Bayley is one of those
unique individuals that always puts
colour (and I mean technicolour)
in to our drab, mundane lives. His
intellect, charm and wit set him
apart from the crowd. Best known
as one of the founders of the Design
Museum, creative director of the
Dome (before Mandy ruined it)
and journalist – he always helps see
the world through a different prism.
Long may he continue to light
up our lives."
www.stephenbayley.com
High achievement does not necessarily
mean high principles. A friend of mine
THE GOOD NEWS
Restoring
the good
ALI PARSA
A
round twenty thousand Puritans
in the 17th century migrated
to America to escape the religious
and political climate in England in
order to create their own ‘Kingdom of
God’ on Earth. To fund the mission,
they formed a startup called the
Massachusetts Bay Company. These
were the very early days of capitalism
and some of the Puritan thinkers
like Bunyan and Winthrop became
capitalism’s prophet ideologues. The
Massachusetts Bay Company’s Initial
Public Offering became the largest of
its kind in history. Their prospectus
is still instructive to any advocate of
capitalism. It set two main objectives
for the funds. First, to provide a great
return for the investors. Second, to
create the Kingdom of God on Earth.
At its inception, capitalism was not
just about making money, it was about
achieving something meaningful.
Fast forward four hundred years
to the 20th century and the focus
of many in business shifted from
the creation of greatness and human
progress to the maximisation of
shareholder value. The result has been
short-termism in companies, damaged
economies, dissatisfied workers, and
antisocial developments. Capitalism
went from the ideology of
mass liberation and personal
emancipation to becoming unloved
because it no longer represents what it
originally stood for.
The Puritans’ ‘City upon a Hill’
was supposed to be an example
to the rest of the world of rightful
living. Businesses today can set new
examples of how to achieve something
meaningful for the next generations
to follow. There are three principles in
particular that will give companies a
head start in this endeavour: First, the responsibility of a business
should be to solve the problems of
its users and serve the aspirations
of its customers. Companies will
succeed when they help their
customers succeed first. The late
Sam Walton, the world’s richest
man at the time and the creator of
the world’s largest retail company
used to say: “A business should not
exist to make its owners rich but to
serve its customers. If it does so, it’ll
make its owners rich anyway”. Great
businesses exist to provide a better
solution for their customers and
advance our lives first and foremost. Second, to be truly great, businesses
need to understand that ‘Everyone
Matters’. Leaders can’t do great
things on their own. No one person
or even a small group of people can
create a great company that has a
meaningful enough impact. The
way to do it is to encourage others
to join it, share its values and
contribute to achieving its purpose.
The bigger the objective, the more
talent is needed. If intelligent
humans are expected to contribute
to the common mission, then their
intelligence should be used in the
decisions the company makes and
the way they carry out their work.
The principal job of the management
is not to yell orders, but to create
an environment in which creative
humans can reach their best and
thrive in their contribution.
Third, great businesses should
remember Jim Collin’s adage that the
enemy of great is not ‘bad’, but ‘good
enough’. Too many companies settle
for sufficient when they are capable
of excellence. It is only a matter of
time before what was once excellent
becomes mediocre. That’s why they
call it the pursuit of excellence.
Excellence is all about consistency;
companies can pursue it only if they
consistently set their expectations
high, consistently face and correct
mistakes, and consistently avoid
complacency.
There have always been entrepreneurs
who’ve wanted to build ‘Great Cities
Upon Hills’. That spirit never died. It
just got overshadowed by followers
who lost the cause and just grabbed
the rewards. It is time for Reformation.
MAY 2016
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9
"Ali is a rare breed. He is a genuine
entrepeneur. His restlessness for
change, his enquiring mind, his
passion for his product or service
and his total belief make him the
ultimate businessman of our age. If
I was down to my last £5 I would
give it to him. I know I would get
it back tenfold and that the world
would be in a better shape as a
result of it."
www.babylonhealth.com
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
The Power
of Good
JOE CERRELL
O
ccasionally I ask my kids,
maybe after school or a sports
match: “How are you doing?”
When I do, they often say: “I’m
doing good.” Thinking back to my
days learning grammar in grade
school in the U.S., I invariably
feel the need to correct them, “I
think what you meant to say is: ‘I’m
doing well.’ Doing good means you
were out there, somewhere in the
community, making someone’s life a
bit better. Is that what you meant?”
That’s usually when the eye-roll
happens, accompanied by the
dismissive reply “Whatever”.
Early in my time working at the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
I had the chance to travel to Ghana
as part of a small delegation from
our global health team visiting
programmes we were funding in
the region. And when we got there
we met some people that were
doing good. They were working
as part of an initiative run by the
Carter Center, an organisation set
up by the former U.S. President,
to rid this fairly remote part of the
country from a disease known as
Guinea Worm. This disease has
been around for thousands of years
but rich countries eliminated it a
long time ago. Today there’s only a
few handful of cases left. In fact, it’ll
probably be eradicated by the end
of the decade. (The world has only
achieved this with one other human
disease, smallpox.)
Guinea worm is dreadful. No child
– and it’s usually children who
become infected – should ever have
to endure it. The existence of the
disease is a stark reminder about the
health disparities that exist between
those of us lucky enough to have
been born in rich countries and
those who didn’t win that ovarian
lottery. Guinea Worm and other
afflictions like it are not sexy causes;
they’re so unpopular that they’re part
of a cohort of other parasites and
organisms called Neglected Tropical
Diseases (NTDs).
So it’s all the more remarkable that
an ex-U.S. President who could
otherwise be playing golf and giving
the occasional speech has literally
devoted his life after leaving office to
working in some of the toughest parts
of the world to eradicate so-called
NTDs like Guinea Worm.
“Leading economists got
together in Copenhagen
a few years back and
concluded that getting
rid of NTDs was one
of the best returns on
investment governments
like the UK could make.”
Jimmy Carter believes it’s disgraceful
that as a world we still tolerate
millions of children getting sick
from diseases my kids have never
heard of just because we can’t get
them medicines that cost literally
pennies. Yes pennies. In fact, some
of the world’s leading economists got
together in Copenhagen a few years
back and concluded that getting rid of
NTDs was one of the best returns on
investment governments like the UK
could make.
Fortunately in recent years, Carter’s
power of conviction has been matched
by the power of collaboration. In
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11
2012, a diverse group of players
signed the London Declaration on
NTDs, which is today one of the largest
ever
public-private
partnerships
on global health.
Now lots of people throw around
the term public-private partnership,
but this is one of those that holds
up to the superlatives that were
probably used in the press release to
announce its creation. In addition
to the Carter Center, there were
others who came to join the fight,
including drug companies – usually
the whipping boy for bad corporate
behavior. Since the signing of the
declaration, drug companies have
donated more than 5.5 billion drug
tablets, a huge step toward fulfilling
their commitment of approximately
$17 billion worth of donated
medicine. If all goes according to
plan, this partnership will demonstrate
the power of working together
and dramatically diminish some of
the worst, most crippling diseases
by 2020.
So if in the future you happen to run
into President Carter, ask about his
well-being and if he happens to say
“I’m doing good”, don’t correct him.
"Joe runs the Gates Foundation on
this side of the pond, and quietly has
raised almost more cash through his
effortless diplomacy with European
and Middle Eastern governments
than Bill and Melinda have put
into the pot themselves. From the
moment Joe and Sara touched down
in the UK five or six years ago, they
have been at home here, enriching
all our lives, in and out of office.
I hope we can persuade them
to stay for good! "
www.gatesfoundation.org
THE GOOD NEWS
THE BIG
FIVE
AMANDA KAMUGISHA
F
or want of a crystal ball, we’ve
tapped into things that are
getting the GB team excited and
drawn up a list, in the tradition of
our weekly Friday 5 email, of the
emerging megatrends that we believe
will be important forces in shaping
society, and the role of business in
society, over the next 20 years. We
were light on methodology; our only
ask to each person was to contribute
something they would back with a few
hundred quid of their own money. We
don’t pretend it’s comprehensive (or
are even confident that we’ll be proved
right) but it was pretty exciting to put
together – think General Election
Debates of 2010 but with a lot less
spin and a lot more conviction.
Don’t hide; be open, be honest
In a post-purpose era, brands will
move from defining their values and
purpose to a more radical and public
form of honesty. Tom’s set the trend
with its one-for-one model, but
brands like Everlane and its policy of
radical transparency are taking it to
new heights. We may even see brands
letting their values take them further
– imagine Ben and Jerry’s working
so closely with climate charities that
they end up seconding employees to
Brussels, lobbying the EU for robust
climate legislation.
On the consumer side, citizen
journalists will drive this shift. Some
of the GB young’uns argue that
Twitter has done far more for giving
people a voice than the ballot box,
particularly the young and those in
emerging democracies. Added to that
are platforms like Change.org which
are revolutionising existing power
relations. What does this mean for
business? There will be nowhere left
to hide. Take tax. Citizens could
push for a global taxation department
or even create a new tax-at-source
system. Think about supply chains.
We could see the emergence of
radical supply chain transparency
which shows consumers the origin
of every component or ingredient in
a product. Fairphone is one example
of this approach, which could become
even more individualised. Our
smartphones could come equipped
with a Personalised Ethics Index,
defined according to our individual
values, telling us what to buy and what
to avoid.
The next 20 years will be characterised
by a power shift with consumer values
and views given equal if not greater
weight than shareholder views, pushing
businesses to re-assess not only how
they do what they do but also why they
even exist.
The new hustle
Individuals are also becoming more
innovative - 21st century Del Boys
with entrepreneurial flair but not shady
ethics. Over the next 20 years this will
be the new norm. On the business
side, we will move beyond closed
loop resource management to a focus
on design principled cradle-to-cradle
approaches, changing the way we live,
work, and create. The UN’s SDGs
are a call to business to help solve
some of the world’s biggest problems
but it can’t tackle them alone. So we
will see a more collaborative working
model, like the human-centred design
approach, in which business works
with citizens to tackle these big issues,
realising that the wider environment
of its operations affects every aspect of
its business.
On the consumer side, we’ll be
diversifying our income streams. We
THE GOOD NEWS
are seeing budding shoots of the gig
economy everywhere, including in
our very own office (ask David about
Lucky Peel for all your Orangecello
related needs). Over the next 20 years,
individuals that do not have a side
hustle will be in the minority. Much
maligned Millennials are the pioneers
of this trend in which individuals are
no longer in an umbilical union with
their employer.
Artificial intelligence will also aid us in
diversifying who we are and what we
do, as many jobs become automated,
giving rise to a call for qualities that
are uniquely human in the professional
sphere. Given this new courage and
working environment, we anticipate
a rise in the number of people doing
work they actually love (like us!) and
a welcome decrease in the number of
inspirational quotes set against blurry,
scenic backgrounds on Instagram.
Responsible “dealers”
and “consumers”
Traditional services will be hard
pressed to remain as they are. The
‘Uberization’ of services will continue
and it won’t be just the black cab
drivers up in arms. Airbnb, which cuts
out the middleman, has a valuation
of $10bn, higher than that of Hyatt
Hotels or Hilton Worldwide.
Peer-to-peer lending is steadying itself
to outstrip the banking sector when it
comes to business loans; Revolut is
making the bureau de change defunct
and Mondo is giving consumers the
power to manage their money in a
transparent and positive way (why on
earth haven’t the banks been doing
this for years?). The Uber experience
shows that although these brands
are loved by consumers because of
the convenience they afford, if the
business itself is ‘bad’ and shirks any
form of moral responsibility or duty,
its advantage won’t last forever.
On the consumer side, owning ‘stuff’
is becoming increasingly uncool.
Services like Zipcar and Spotify are
signs of our increasing comfort with
being users rather than proprietors.
Over the coming years, we’ll see
a redefinition of the concept of
ownership, and it may even come full
circle. We could reach a point where,
having thrown out the throwaway
culture but also having become
increasingly uncomfortable with
how well services like Netflix know
our likes and dislikes, we return to
owning things, but fewer, and more
carefully chosen things that we really
care about and say a lot about who we
are. Websites such as Buy Me Once,
which bring together things that
have been built to last, are gaining
currency, indicating where consumer
culture is heading.
Every(wo)man, everywhere can
The internet is a game changer,
still. According to some sources,
smartphone penetration in Africa
is growing at an astonishing rate
of 100% per year. 3D printing is
getting faster, more accurate, and
cheaper every year. At the same
time, European and US powers
are falling away and once hailed
economic powerhouses like China
are being revealed as masters of
smoke and mirrors.
India is already leading when it
comes to frugal innovation. Take
the ingenious Tata Swatch – a
water purifier that works without
electricity or running water and
has been made from one of India’s
most common waste products – rice
husk ash. But over the next 20 years,
Africa will be at the forefront of
the rise of the ‘anyone innovator’,
becoming the cradle of innovation
and entrepreneurialism for the
world. We will witness a technology
driven shift in geopolitical influence
in which Africa will shake off the
‘Dark Continent’ label and define
itself on its own terms.
Business is increasingly finding ways
to be part of this shift. Precious
Plastics, a company that is making
entrepreneurial opportunity possible
for anyone anywhere, is already a great
example of this.
Diversity will characterise business
over the next 20 years. As feminism
becomes more inclusive of men,
and gathers pace, business will shift
perspective and female quotas will
become an archaic concept as will
the motherhood penalty. Sites like
Après, the LinkedIn for women
returning to the work place is a sign
of what’s ahead. Similarly, whether
or not we stay in the EU, population
movements will continue and the
latest wave into Europe will have a
profound effect on business.
Employees and leaders will come
from a range of backgrounds
bringing a range of perspectives
into business. Our aging population
will also be part of the mix – new
hires with years of professional
experience will rub shoulders with
kids who eschewed university in
favour of apprenticeships. Diversity
is the future and, if the politics of
fear doesn’t reign supreme, it will
bring positive effects for business
and society as a whole. Watch out
Default Man, your time is nearly up.
Living longer, living better…
The dramatic recent increase in average
life expectancy is considered one of
humanity’s greatest achievements, but
we’re only just starting to realise that we
can live longer lives that are better and
healthier too. Clean eating, standing
desks, activity-tracking, mindfulness
– the betterment movement has been
gaining momentum for a while now
but it’s where this might take us that
is exciting.
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Babylon Health is testing the use of
artificial intelligence and machine
learning to help doctors triage patients
faster and more efficiently. This could
lead to diagnosis and treatments in
seconds at a fraction of the current
cost worldwide. Matsumoto Apple
Association is using food to deliver
free personalised dental consultations.
Wearable tech will increasingly
offer us real-time, actionable and
informative
feedback.
Oral-B’s
latest toothbrush, for example, uses
location-tracking technology to
provide real-time feedback on which
of your teeth you need to pay more
attention to. We think we aren’t far off
your step tracker telling you to walk
your way to the nearest A&E because
a cardiac arrest is on the cards.
Virtual reality and bioengineering
are going to take us to sci-fi levels of
living. Samsung is already harnessing
VR for emotional wellbeing and
personal growth through its Be
Fearless campaign. As a team made
up largely of dodgy backs, knees, and
broken hands, we are holding out
serious hope for the next generation
of joints engineered from spider-web
fibres. Bioengineering also stands
to help reduce our impact on the
planet with inventions such as invitro meat. However, given increasing
consumer concern about the origin
of what we put in their bodies, the
only ones backing test-tube burgers
enthusiastically are our kids.
“Amanda is one of our best
consultants at Good Business.
Throw anything her way and she
grabs it with both hands. From
smoking prevention in Uganda,
to strategic support for Old Mutual,
she provides considered but
challenging thinking for
our clients, since joining our
graduate programme.”
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
BACK ON
THE FRONT
FOOT
MATTHEW GW Y THER
“Good name in man and woman,
dear my lord
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash;
‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been
slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me
my good name
Robs me of that which
not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.”
Othello
I
’d say the good name of business
is at a pretty low ebb at the
moment. It’s been stolen, filched
and has left its owner poor indeed.
Recently I made a BBC programme
about trust in business. Levels are not
high, as anyone who makes a close
study of the annual Edelman Trust
Barometer survey will tell you.
After I’d interviewed, among
others, the Chairman of Audi to
ask why his organisation appeared
to think behaving like a cheat and a
bounder was acceptable, my producer
suggested we get out onto the street
for a vox pop. The BBC is paid for
by ‘the people’ so their voice must be
heard at every available opportunity.
We marched up and down Oxford
Street seeking the opinion of the
shopping public. Few we approached
were terribly positive about commerce
– maybe they would have them all
back using the tradesman’s entrance.
In the end we used the short quote
of a late middle aged woman who
was exiting John Lewis with her
daughter, a nurse. “Business? What
do I think of business? Well, it’s a
necessary evil, I suppose.’
Jeez, I thought. Have things got
that bad?
When the Panamagate scandal was
at its height recently, Boris Johnson
weighed in – or rather willy-waved –
with his last four years’ worth of tax
returns. And, glory be, if he wasn’t
raking in substantially higher sums
of money than the Prime Minister or
the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I couldn’t help but calculate that, thanks
to his lucrative Telegraph column
and his book royalties, Johnson had
paid enough tax in the previous year
at around a quarter of a million quid
to cover the salaries of both Jeremy
Corbyn and his side-kick John
Mc Donnell. Well done him, I thought.
And yet the latter pair, neither of whom
have ever removed themselves from the
teat of the public sector in search of their
wage-packet, was keen to make him
and all others who bring in more than
the minimum wage ashamed of the fact.
Business badly needs to get back
onto the front foot when explaining
why it isn’t ‘a necessary evil.’ Why it
creates wealth, pays very large sums
of money in tax, employs people –
even giving them purpose in the
process – and makes the world go
round. Never mind the fact that the
whole CSR debate is long won and
any business that pays it no heed is
regarded as beyond odd or Trumplike in its obtuseness.
I think Giles’ and Good Business’s
mission for the next twenty years
should be to assist business in this
basic process of education.
Because we’ve currently in danger
of getting completely lost in a fug of
‘fairness’ and woolly thinking that
wouldn’t have been out of place in
1960s Cuba.
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"Matthew Gwyther is a ‘proper’
journalist – always pushing and
challenging the excepted norms,
never letting anyone get away with
anything. And yet you always feel
he is not just doing that for the sake
of it but because he passionately
believes that the business of
journalism is a fundamental tenet
of the process of making things
better. As editor of ‘Management
Today’ in a most turbulent period
for print journalism, he has kept the
magazine relevant and particularly
the belief that we can always
learn more about business from
understanding the people in them
not just from the rather dry P&L. "
www.managementtoday.co.uk
a Personal
Journey
OLIVER SPARK
S
o mine is personal. I woke up one
morning, I went for a run, I went to
work and I went to a Friday night party.
I also fitted in a blood test with my local
doctor at 5.30 pm - and was called into
hospital at midnight. The police were
about to come knocking on my door –
they had been trying to reach me from
9.30pm; but, as I said, I was at a party. It
was July 3rd 2015.
I was diagnosed with Acute
Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and
spent 20 out of the next 26 weeks living
in a special room on my own (with visitors
allowed- thank god!) having three bouts
of chemotherapy – one descriptively
called Intensification – and a bone
marrow transplant. I came home on
24th December.
THE GOOD NEWS
So where is “the power of good” in that?!
To be honest, while in “the process” and
the immediate aftermath of coming
out of hospital, it has been difficult to
see it – other than being completely
humbled by kindness from so many
friends and learning how grateful I
was to receive any good wishes – it just
reminded me how lacking in thought
I had been on so many occasions ...
However, now through my first
100 day tests and being currently
cancer-free, I am beginning to see
some areas of good. Firstly, it is in
health. I have moved onto fitness
and living; and now I understand
that I must eat healthily, be fit and
manage stress. I have read a lot, but
there is no book better than “Anti
Cancer” by David Servan-Schreiber.
You need to read this – not me the
bloke on the wrong side of cancer
– but you who are cancer free. The
graphs of the growth in cancers in
the West since 1940 are just too
stark. It is everywhere and we all
need to do something about it. For
me the power of good here comes
from me educating myself and my
THE GOOD NEWS
family – and possibly even one of
you? You can help yourself and you
need to.
Secondly, it is love. I am married,
I have four children, I have many
friends – and then there is the
broader world. Starting at the very
closest – there is myself, and as
has been said before, life begins
with cancer. I hope to be around
for many more years to come, but I
can’t afford to miss any moment not
to ensure that I have love between
me, my wife and my family. Cancer
does make you realise that you must
leave some mark.
I haven’t yet taken on the broader
world – I am immune-suppressed
and not even allowed out in public
at the moment!... but that is the next
area for me to think about, as to how
I can do some good – however, small.
So on my journey through cancer, I
have found some power of good. I
just need to stay fit and healthy to
deliver it; as we all do.
"Ollie has built many businesses
and rescued others and is currently
residing as the CEO of Multiyork
and Feather & Black (although on
temporary medical leave). For me,
there is one trait that makes Ollie a
stand out CEO, citizen and friend,
and that is his infectious ability to
inspire people to follow his lead. His
confidence, positivity and warmth
provide the perfect balance to bring
people with him. And it is this same
attitude that kept him going over
the last twelve months – you are
an inspiration to us all."
www.featherandblack.com
www.multiyork.co.uk
A Good
Society
ROBERT PHILLIPS
In the wake of the infamous Panama
Papers – a leak one thousand times
bigger than Snowden and Assange –
traditional hierarchies, political and
media alike, react with usual handwringing gusto. France immediately
blacklists
Panama;
the
UK
government threatens ‘emergency
legislation’ against aggressive tax
avoiders; and the Big Five European
Nations promise ‘open co-operation’
on corporate ownership. Tellingly,
the Americans – so often lone
rangers in the world of tax – absent
themselves from the conversations.
The elephant in the room remains
in the corner, with the bigger
questions about wealth distribution,
power and injustice – both statesponsored and corporately-led –
still unanswered. These are not the
questions leaders want to answer.
Tax is not the core issue. It is merely
a manifestation of the problem of
what is fair, just and right – and
the continued absence of a moral
dimension to what is all-too-often
legal. The more significant questions
raised by the Panama Papers are
ones of globalisation, transparency
and fairness.
But these are too complex for world
leaders to tackle, still less explicable
in a much-favoured 30-second
media soundbite. Tax, the subject du
jour, therefore offers an easy excuse
– cake fed to the masses. Better that
the politicians (and accompanying
media) vilify pantomime baddies
instead of asking bigger, better
questions about wealth, power
and social injustice and their role
in maintaining an ugly status quo.
But, as Superman knows all too
well, everyone needs a Lex Luthor
to portray themselves as superhero
instead.
What we are witnessing post-Panama
are the usual, predictable and
somewhat feeble reactions of a political
elite that claims to understand citizen
anger but then frequently reacts with
gross indifference to the common
good. It chances that the anger will
eventually fade. This wilful blindness
is a mistake in an increasingly activist
and volatile world. In addition, by
failing to ask courageous and more
meaningful questions around justice
and common good, leaders end up
confirming their own mis-placed
prejudice that spin, not substance,
provides them with an escape from the
real problems at hand. Hence the glut
of sudden action and announcement.
A good society deserves better. In
a world where whistleblowers and
(social media) activists abound, those
who fail to “do the right thing” now
will eventually be found out anyway.
The significant questions
raised by the Panama
Papers are ones of
globalisation, transparency
and fairness.
This schism between elites and the
general public is well documented in
the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer.
It is demonstrated powerfully by the
continued rise of a global caucus of
the angry and discontent. Witness
Donald Trump in America, AfD
in Germany and or Marine Le Pen
and the Front National in France.
Justifiable citizen outrage can no
longer be met with meaningless
political gestures or platitudes, or
by two vanilla politicians who seem
to learn little from history and are
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themselves the catalysts for swelling
revolutionary forces against them.
Occupy warned us several years ago
that such anger was on the march. It
only needed focused and articulate
leadership to make it real and maybe
even electable. Those now rushing
to over-simplify and ignore the root
problems of injustice and inequality
– from taxation to migration – only
make matters worse. Tired and
failing elites must be called out as
the principal barriers to a better,
fairer and good society.
The late philosopher Tony Judt
reminded us that the case for social
democracy and a flourishing polis
has never diminished: we have just
forgotten how to argue for it. Two
centuries ago, the Victorians (with
pioneering heroes like Robert
Owen, George Cadbury and Titus
Salt) understood the need for “doing
good” in the wake of the great
disruption of the first Industrial
Revolution and the bi-polar
society that it imposed. They rose
to the profound social challenges
of the day – working wages and
standards, employee representation,
education, health and the public
realm – and acted in the public
interest, for the common good. If
we are now experiencing disruption
through the fourth industrial
revolution, as the World Economic
Forum insists, then we need to
re-discover a commitment to
societal enlightenment and embrace
the urgent need for enlightened
Public Leadership.
Donald Trump is not an enlightened
Public Leader. But he is the visceral
embodiment of something that is
very real. Rolling Stone magazine
brilliantly captured the essence
of his rise in three simple words:
“America Made Trump”. 406 miles
from Capitol Hill, in Grundy,
Virginia, the life expectancy of
THE GOOD NEWS
an average white American male
is the same as his counterpart in
downtown Baghdad. In real terms,
the mean salary of the American
blue-collar worker has fallen by
over 25% since 2001. This is the real
discontent that Trump is leveraging
for political advantage. The question
should not be “why is Trump
shaking the establishment like this?”
but instead “how did America not
see this coming?”. Social injustice
breeds leaders like Trump.
406 miles from Capitol Hill,
in Grundy, Virginia, the
life expectancy of an average
white American male is the
same as his counterpart in
downtown Baghdad.
In a cab ride in Washington DC
recently, I asked the driver how he
was feeling about what comes next
in U.S. politics. “Well, sir”, replied
the quietly-spoken, church-going
man “we are preparing to riot”. For
him, the visionary hope of America’s
first African-American President
has been cruelly extinguished by a
white Congressional elite and “riot”
provides his only voice.
In a symbolic gesture, Pope
Francis airlifted 12 Syrian Muslim
refugees from the island of Lesbos
to the sanctuary of the Vatican.
He has a gift for the photo-call,
for sure, but no one can doubt his
compassion. Meanwhile, in the
UK, many of those campaigning
to exit from the European Union
show no compassion and make
thinly-veiled attempts to make it
instead a referendum on (Muslim)
immigration, playing to base-level
fears and prejudices. They would
not even recognise any similarities
between their own dogwhistle
politics and those of Donald Trump.
If we are to be the good
European society that we
promise ourselves, we have
to show better collective
belief in and support for our
fellow citizens, of whatever
colour, denomination or
economic status.
I write as someone committed to the
European Union but twice in recent
years, the EU has not demonstrated
“good” within its community. A
project dedicated to the peace and
prosperity of the continent (as the
Franco-German axis likes to remind
us) first hung Greece out to dry with
punishing austerity and then failed
miserably to demonstrate collective
understanding of the common good
in dealing with a humanitarian
crisis of almost biblical proportions,
much of which (from Sykes-Picot
to the bombing of Libya and the
lack of constructive intervention
in Syria) was very much of its own
making. Instead of negotiating good,
European leaders imposed further
injustice. If we are to be the good
or better European society that we
promise ourselves, we have to show
better collective belief in and support
for our fellow citizens, of whatever
colour, denomination or economic
status. A good Europe cannot exist like
Hobbes’ Leviathan.
THE GOOD NEWS
better leadership that acknowledges
and addresses the re-distribution
of wealth and power head-on. A
good society demands that leaders
tackle the fundamental causes of
inequality and injustice (political
or corporate) and not merely tinker
with the symptoms and then issue
meaningless platitudes. Actions
must speak louder than words. The
world is an anxious and fragile place.
The absence of good leadership has
created a dangerous vacuum that
threatens the common good. We
cannot go on like this. Actors like
Trump, Le Pen and their ilk remind
us why.
"Robert is single-handedly bringing
communications into the 21st
century. As the founder of Jericho
Chambers (a jazzy name for a very
serious office, delivering top notch
advice to progressive organisations)
he has once again shown the rest of
us how to do it. From Jackie Cooper
which he started in his ‘cooler’
days, he moved on to his ‘corporate
glamour’ period making Edelman
in Europe a force to be reckoned
with. And now in his ‘honest’
phase, he continues to show the rest
of us how to make a difference and
earn a crust in the process!"
www.jerichochambers.com
“The future”, novelist William Gibson
noted, “is already here. It is just
unevenly distributed”. The refugee
crisis in Europe is Gibson’s vision,
writ large. A good society deserves
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THE GOOD NEWS
The Good
News
GILES GIBBONS
N
othing like an anniversary
to make you think about the
passage of time – and the fact
that we founded Good Business
20 years ago has def initely given
me pause for thought. Two
decades! A generation (or nearly).
Thinking back brings up all
sorts of memories and thoughts
and emotions about the people
and organisations and events
that have f illed those years and
become our company’s history
and given us all our formative
experience along the way.
But the thing that strikes me the
most – apart from the normal trite
but nonetheless overwhelming
amazement at how quickly time
goes by – is how little the core
thought, belief and passion that
led us to set Good Business in
the f irst place has changed. We
took the leap of faith and left
our jobs to get on and start the
company because of our absolute
conviction in the power of good
– for business, for people, for the
future. And 20 years on we’re as
sure about it as we’ve ever been.
A key player in Britain’s Mediterranean Food Revolution, the Belazu Ingredient Company
has been supplying the food industry with a unique range of premium quality, authentic
ingredients since 1991. For information about our products, go to www.belazu.com
@Belazu_Co
BelazuIngredientCo
It just continues to make
complete and total sense to us
all. Who would you rather buy
from, work for, partner with, talk
about – an organisation you trust
to do the right thing, to make the
right choices, to treat people in a
way that respects their humanity
or one that you don’t think really
gives that much of a damn?
Who would you rather invest in
– a company you think creates
something that the world not
only wants but also needs, and
makes it better, richer, healthier
or one that is going to be on
the f iring line from governments,
activists, social commentators and
anyone else that cares about the
world’s wellbeing? Which company
would you rather lead? Which
makes you feel comfortable about
our era’s legacy?
No prizes for guessing that to us
the answer is blindingly obvious.
People are drawn to organisations
that, in the broadest possible
sense of the word, seem to be a
force for progress. They have the
power of good on their sides.
Who would you rather
buy from, work for,
partner with, talk about
– an organisation you
trust to do the right
thing, to make the right
choices, to treat people
in a way that respects
their humanity or one
that you don’t think
really gives that much
of a damn?
Of course ‘goodness’ doesn’t
trump everything else, and there
are all sort of ways to make
stack loads of cash by ravaging
the world or making products
that serve people’s least noble
desires. And of course the world
doesn’t divide into the ‘good’ and
the ‘bad’ either - but is made up
almost entirely of the murky grey
in between.
And on top of all that, it’s not as if
people are actively exploring the
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WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
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companies behind the products
and brands they choose to buy
on an ongoing basis and basing
their decisions on a balanced
assessment of their contribution
to the world.
But every person in every
organisation is making choices
every day about both what to do
and the way to do it. Sometimes
these are big choices – about
the sort of product to innovate
in or the way materials will
be sourced. Sometimes they’re
smaller choices – the tone of an
advert, the approach to a supplier,
the way to handle an employee
review meeting.
And than there is the set of values
and motives and goals that make
up the culture of the organisation
guides the approach they’ll take
to these choices, and what they’ll
factor into play. Whether it has
a sense of purpose, whether it
considers the impact it is having
on the world around it. Whether
it’s open and outward looking.
Whether it values emotional
intelligence and empathy.
All of these choices combine
to create the organisation’s
personality and mode of being.
And, particularly in today’s
world, this is something people
pick up on and feel, often without
thinking about it at all.
And we think this matters. It
matters if you want to succeed.
It matters if you want to feel
proud. It matters for society and
it matters for the sort of world we
want to live in.
So this much is, and always has
been true. And in the past 20
years, in many ways we’ve seen
the world move with us and
conf irm our convictions. We’ve
seen
massive
multinationals
champion the power of creating
THE GOOD NEWS
shared value and we’ve seen the
birth of completely new iconic
brands that originate from a
sense of social purpose and a
desire to create positive change.
We’ve seen a new generation of
consumers rise up that believes
it’s cool to care.
And we’ve personally been part
of some pretty inspiring stories
of just what a belief in the power
of good can make happen. The
march of progress has been
strong.
But at the same time, we’ve seen
an economic crisis most attribute
to the misdoings of the f inancial
sector, a string of corporate
scandals and manifest evidence
of dupingand manipulation and
spin in all organisations, public
and private, corporate and
charitable, big and small.
And when we look out at the
landscape hand on heart we have
to say that the genuine success
stories, the rock solid case studies
of organisations that have put
the power of good into practice
and reaped all its rewards can
feel quite thin on the ground –
everyone rolls out the same old
suspects and stories.
But perhaps that isn’t that
surprising either. Because if
there’s one thing our 20 year
perspective makes clear to us it’s
that mastering the power of good
– and making the right choices
about things – is more diff icult
than it’s ever been to achieve.
Companies and the world and
societies are so complex and global
and interconnected, and there are
so many social, cultural, political
and environmental issues to
contend with, and everything
changes so fast – and this all
means that f iguring out what’s
good and right can be incredibly
hard to do, let alone then doing
it and communicating it and
sticking to it.
And because of hyper transparency
and the imperative of authenticity,
both spirit and action all have to
be 360 degrees real, or it’s almost
worse than not having it at all.
There are no simple short cuts
an organisation can take that
will instantly make it a force
for progress, and make people
genuinely believe that it is too.
Because of hyper
transparency and
the imperative of
authenticity, both spirit
and action all have to
be 360 degrees real, or
it’s almost worse than
not having it at all.
Articulating a meaningful purpose
and setting out the principles and
practices that will make it a reality
certainly helps, and if the purpose
is simple and compelling enough
for everyone in the organisation to get
behind, then every decision becomes
much, much easier to make.
Adopting a longer term approach
to accounting and reporting that
formalises the integration of
social, human and environmental
factors and shows the part they play
in determining future prospects
can make a big difference.
Using the power of brands and
the creativity of marketing and
product innovation to create
campaigns based around positive
change which people can become
THE GOOD NEWS
part of is also incredibly valuable
– and helps tie an organisation’s
actions and approach together in
people’s minds.
Having a leader with a clear voice
who’s ready to actively champion
the causes that align with the
organisation’s aims and actions
can also be a powerful way to
drive the message home.
But particularly in big and
complex organisations, it is pretty
much impossible to eradicate
every incident of wrongdoing or
poor judgment call that might
suddenly be catapulted onto
the front line for consumers to
chance upon. And even within
organisations that want to be a
force for good, there will always be
differences of opinion both inside
and out about the best way to get
there, and what compromises can
be made along the way.
So there’s no denying the fact
that it’s anything but easy.
But we believe that the worst
conclusion to draw from that is
that it’s not worth trying. That
because nothing can ever be
perfect and that no one is whiter
than white, then the only sensible
route is to keep your head down
and embrace the status quo. That
rather than do something, and
risk it backf iring, the best option
is to do nothing.
Twenty years of Good Business,
and our rallying cry has always
been that it is far better to do
something rather than nothing.
Let your belief in what’s right
guide you to give that new
progressive product idea a go,
collect people together to think
about what you all hope to achieve
in the future, experiment with an
approach to getting through to
your target audience that appeals
to hearts as well as minds, or
aim to bring the product you
think makes lives better to a new
audience altogether.
Let your belief in what’s
right guide you to give
that new progressive
product idea a go, collect
people together to think
about what you all hope
to achieve in the future,
or experiment with
an approach to getting
through to your target
audience that appeals to
hearts as well as minds.
The chances are you’ll make
something good happen, and that
people will begin to associate you
with that. Which will be good for
you, good for your organisation’s
future, and good for the world.
And as we look forward to the
next 20 years (and more!!) of
Good Business, we feel genuinely
hopeful, and excited. It certainly
seems to us that we are now
approaching something of a
tipping point, with organisations
of all shapes and sizes and in all
places becoming ready to give the
power of good and all it can do
for them a go – that momentum
is on our side.
And this brings me to a parting
story. As you can imagine, we’ve
always thought that the best
bets for the future in terms of
companies and brands are those
that have made ‘good’ work for
them, the ones that the world both
wants and needs to be around, and
which are doing their bit for the
march of human progress.
But we’ve sometimes had an uphill
battle persuading other people
of it. So we were particularly
pleased to be approached recently
by an investment company that
had reached the same conclusion,
from its particular hard-nosed
and f inancially driven starting
point.
This
company
has
developed ways of identifying
companies and brands that are
‘good’ – both in what they do and
the way in which they do it. Not
to screen out the bad guys that
will fall foul from a regulatory or
reputational view, or to package
off into a socially responsible
parcel for a niche audience, but
to gain better returns. Because
its leaders have come to believe
and are proving that this is the
best way to f ind the most likely
success stories – not in years
ahead, but right now. They too
know the devil is in the detail
and cracking a process that is
able to identify these companies
in a deep rather than a boxticking way is going to be an uphill
battle. But they believe it’s worth it
- because if they get it right they’ll
reap the rewards.
So we reckon that 20 years from
now, if we stop and look back again,
this will mark a moment. Our
time is now. And this gives us an
urgency, and an excitement for the
future. And it gives us a new wave
of ambition too – for the part we
can play in helping organisations
of all shapes and sizes f igure out
what this means for them and
grasp the opportunities being
progressive creates. Collectively
we can make more (and more and
more!) good things happen. And
what could be better than that?
MAY 2016
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
22
23
Minding
the gap
DAVID HALPERN
A
s a veteran of number 10 during
the Blair years, I’d had many
meetings in the room just opposite
where the Cabinet met, but none
quite like those with Steve Hilton. It
wasn’t so much the bike-oil stained
t-shirts and shorts, the heckling from
the DPM’s adviser Polly Mackenzie,
or the regular profanities. Rather
it was a new angle on innovation,
and particularly including a restless
search for how government might
encourage, cajole, or even hook-up
with imaginative businesses to get
things done.
A regular attendee at such meetings
was also Giles Gibbons, Steve’s
erstwhile colleague. I even went
out and ordered an old copy of
their book Good Business (and was
pleased to find one already signed,
until Giles explained that was how
they made sure that bookstores
wouldn’t return them…) But it’s
worth understanding how fresh
an idea this was to the corridors
of Whitehall.
Governments are frequently, and
appropriately, careful to keep
the concerns of the state and
policymaking somewhat separate
from the lobbying and interests
of business. Companies, and
particularly incumbents, often
have substantial vested interests in
tilting regulatory frameworks in
their favour, let alone less subtle
interests in winning public sector
contracts or adjusting the tax
environment for direct benefit.
But sometimes this obscures the
many areas of joint public and
THE GOOD NEWS
private interest. Sometimes the
best answer to a social problem –
or opportunity – is not a piece of
regulation or government policy,
but an innovative product or service
produced not by government, but by
inventive and often socially minded
entrepreneurs. From at least the
industrial revolution, entrepreneurs
have been figuring out how to get
us around faster, heal the sick, keep
us warmer, safer, and in touch with
each other. As John Kay and others
have shown, very often the most
successful businesses are ones that
are driven more by passion, curiosity
and good will, than by making a
quick buck or hitting next months
profit target.
One of the manifestations of this post2010 awakening in government of the
potential overlap between business
interest and social impact was a
strand of work in the Behavioural
Insights Team (BIT) – aka Nudge
Unit. Encouraged by Steve, the team
often looked for overlaps between
the interests of ‘good business’ and
‘good government’, notably around
opportunities to run trials to test
innovative approaches to address
policy challenges. This varied from
encouraging the suppliers of building
materials to consider lending to the
small builders they served (when
banks seemed hesitant to do so), to
encouraging high street chains to
promote parenting classes, and to the
Department of Health’s ‘responsibility
deal’ (though far from perfect, that
led to significant changes towards
healthier food and drink).
Soon, various bits of the government
began to wake up to the potential.
We realised that while armies
of civil servants spent their time
engaging with other civil servants,
very few seemed to engage with the
businesses that touched the lives of
millions everyday, and often had
the potential to tweak what they
did for great public good – and in
ways that might help them as well
as their customers too. With this in
mind, we moved this activity out of
the BIT, and created a sister unit –
the Partnerships Team – within the
Cabinet Office.
While armies of civil
servants spent their time
engaging with other
civil servants, very few
seemed to engage with the
businesses that touched the
lives of millions everyday
Through the 2010 Coalition
government, the Partnerships Team
worked with hundreds of businesses
on issues ranging from social
mobility, to reducing emissions, and
recognising dementia.
In 2013, the Behavioural Insights
Team itself joined the ranks of ‘good
business’, becoming a company coowned by the Cabinet Office, the
innovation charity Nesta, and an
employee benefit trust. True to a
model of ‘good business’, the BIT’s
articles formally required it only to
work on projects with clear positive
‘social impact’. The new freedoms
given to BIT have allowed it to
develop and invest in further ‘good
businesses’, such as its recent launch
of a platform ‘Applied’, designed to
reduce bias, and increase predictive
accuracy in recruitment decisions.
In a small but elegant arc of history,
Steve and Giles’ ideas around the
power of ‘good business’ were brought
into the heart of government, then
exported back out again. It’s a story
to be proud of – and one that is now
being exported across the world.
MAY 2016
24
For good businesses to
thrive, we need consumers
and investors to be able to
tell the difference between
businesses, in all the senses
of the word ‘good’.
But there is one Hilton-era project
that remains unfinished, and that we
should not forget. It is still very hard
for consumers, or even businesses, to
pull apart claims of ‘good’ from the
reality. For good businesses to thrive,
we need consumers and investors to
be able to tell the difference between
businesses, in all the senses of the
word ‘good’. The rise of comparison
and switching sites is moving us
on this journey. But we still have
far to go. It may be that the best of
the good businesses to come will
be the ones that help us all tell the
difference between the ‘good’, the
indifferent, and the outstanding…
"David is simply one of the cleverest
chaps I have ever met. There are
so many themes, ideas and policies
going on in his head at any one
time, that it is sometimes difficult to
keep up! We should feel lucky that
he has, for many years, put all that
brainpower towards making
this country a better place to live
and work in, regardless of which
government is in power. And now
as head of the Behavioural Insights
Team, he’s gone global. Hats off
to you and the team, David – you
have our utmost respect."
www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk
THE GOOD NEWS
How can
you tell?
LARISSA PERSONS
H
ow can you tell if a company is
actually ‘good’ or not? How do
you tell if it cares? If it does right by
its people, and by everyone else, and
by the world?
Given the amount of store we
place in the power of good, it’s a
pretty important question. Not
least because the full value for an
organisation comes not just in it
being good but in people, on some
level, knowing it is too.
So we’ve spent a lot of time in the
past two decades thinking about how
people could be better equipped to
know what a company is really like,
in a quick and easy way – because it’s
not as though anyone’s ever going
to go through an active ‘judging
process’ in their minds and employ
some complicated calculus to figure
out how a company approaches the
multitude of issues it faces.
It’s a big question, and there have
been plenty of attempts to address it.
There are initiatives like the
FTSE 4 Good and the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index, powered by
the appeal of creating a credible and
universally accepted ‘mark’ that tells
people a company is ‘good’. We’ve
seen the rise of new ‘types’ of company
which are defined by their ‘goodness’–
from social enterprises to the B Corps
idea that’s gathering momentum at
the moment, and which does have a
lot going for it. And the number of
crowd-sourced forums and sites which
encourage people everywhere to share
their views about companies and
pool the results to provide a quick
answer are multiplying fast.
All great ideas in theory, but to our
minds none of them quite cut the
mustard in practice.
The sustainability indexes of the
world are up against the fact that
creating a system that can assess
every company in every sector
against every issue they might face
is a massively complex task – so it’s
no surprise that what results often
turns into a box ticking exercise.
B Corps et al are great, but they’re
never going to be for everyone; the
process is too arduous, and they still
exist in opposition to the status quo
rather than becoming it.
And while crowdsourcing people’s
opinions is a very attractive option,
it too leaves a lot of unanswered
questions about what to take into
account and who to trust, even if you
could overcome the massive hurdle
of getting a critical mass of people
on board.
Then there’s the further complicating
factor which applies to all of these,
which is that they rest on the
assumption that whether a company
is good or not is an objective fact –
where as in fact my good can be very
different from your good. On many
issues defining the ‘right’ choice is a
pretty subjective and personal process,
as is what’s deemed important in the
first place.
But we don’t net out of this twenty
years down the line with an alternative
solution either.
We just don’t think it’s ever going to
be possible to create a one-size-fitsall process which gives people a quick
answer to the superbly complex question
of whether any organisation is ‘good’ or
not (particularly given we mean good in
the broadest possible way).
We have given some careful thought
to whether it might make more sense
THE GOOD NEWS
at a sectoral level – when all the players
face the same broad spectrum of
issues. Restaurants are a case in point.
That’s why we set up the not-for-profit
Sustainable Restaurant Association,
to both make it easier for the
individual players to address the
issues (from the provenance of food
to tipping to recycling – and on) and
to help diners make a more informed
choice about where to eat. The idea
was that the restaurant’s SRA rating
could become one of the elements
people weigh up when deciding
where to eat (not least because we all
know that well sourced food, happy
staff and reflective and thoughtful
management are pretty good
indicators of a good experience…).
Six years on the SRA is going from
strength to strength, and has done
a huge amount to put sustainability
issues on the restaurant map and
create interest and passion around
them, and has helped thousands of
restaurants make positive changes.
Do we think people are actively
using it to help them make a decision
about where to eat? Well yes, up to
a point, but perhaps, to date, not as
much as we had hoped.
what it cares about. At the end of
the day, people are left with a clear
sense in their minds of whether they
like it or not.
And if an organisation has a purpose
that comes from its heart, and it has
a set of values that are a real mode of
being then these shape the nature of
all the experiences people have with
them – whether it’s a phone call to
customer services, or what they hear
from a chance chat with an employee,
or the tone of an advert. The good will
– to a certain extent – come out.
It’s far from a perfect process. But
– and this is important – it can be
helped along. And we think the onus
is on progressive organisations to do
just that. They should do what they
can to actively make sure that they
tell the people who come into contact
with them their story, in a compelling,
memorable and individual way.
Rather than joining an index
or changing the nature of their
corporation they have to figure
out the best way to make sure that
people get the strongest possible
sense of the sort of company they
are. To make it all more explicit, in
the way that chimes with who they
and their audience are. To put the
dots there for people to join up for
themselves, but without making it
too hard for them.
And this is one of the things we
now spend a lot of time helping
organisations to do. They come to us
because they’re proud of what they’re
trying to do and how they’re going
about it, and they think it matters. It’s
part of who they are and why they’re
there. And we help them make sure
that people ‘get’ this about them - so
they unlock the value.
And this development is one of the
things that makes us optimistic
about the future. Because the more
the progressive organisations of
the world are recognised as such
on an individual level, the greater
the momentum for progressive
organisations in general. So the
greater the recognition for them, the
greater the reward for everyone.
“Larissa is the strategy director
of Good Business. But that does her
role a disservice. Over the last 10
years she has been not only at the
heart of much of the strategic end
of our most important clients, but
of Good Business itself. We pride
ourselves at being at the forefront
of thinking for the more progressive
organisations in society - Larissa
makes this a reality.”
So where does this leave us as we
look to the future? Well, actually, in
a strangely positive place.
Because give up on the pipe dream
of there being a ‘gold star’ that gives
everyone their answer, and you have
to accept that what people think
about a company will continue to
come down to the overall impression
created by the multiple ways they
interact with it, and through the
various different touchpoints –
through its products and brands,
its marketing and promotion, what
other people say about it and what
it says about itself. These things
do, after all, all combine to build a
picture of the sort of company it is,
how it carries out its business and
A RECRUITMENT COMPANY
COMMITTED TO CLIENTS,
CANDIDATES & COMMUNITIES
www.london-works.com
MAY 2016
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
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27
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
INFLuential
friends
DAVID ROBINSON
E
ven the weather was miserable.
It was a grey, damp morning
when we gathered at St Margaret’s
Church, almost next door to
Community Links for the funeral of
a friend and colleague. Bridget, our
much loved youth worker, had died
in a minibus accident on the last
day of the Easter play scheme. Her
loss, along with our equally valued
colleague Annette, had devastated
our community.
“In an age of celebrity”, said Father
John, “we all know that Bridget wasn’t
really famous. Nor was she wealthy or
a woman of great learning. But, and a
big but this, it is very evident to me…”
pausing to survey the tear-streaked
faces of the generations packing
out the pews on that heartrending
morning … “it is very evident to
me that Bridget was a woman of
great influence”. I thought it was the
perfect phrase.
Doing things for other
people is usually easier
than helping them to do it
for themselves, but, in the
long haul, fundamentally
misguided.
The best youth workers don’t seek to
control people or make them dependent,
but to be the influence in the lives of
others that makes them free – free to
run their own lives successfully, happily,
and as contributing members of the
wider community.
Doing things for other people is
usually easier than helping them to do
it for themselves, but, in the long haul,
fundamentally misguided. Enabling
them to thrive independently is the
gift that endures.
And if that is particularly true of great
youth workers, it isn’t only true of them.
As colleagues, friends, and especially
as parents, we also recognise the
importance of influence and not
controlling the lives of those we love,
but of enabling them to grow and
make good decisions for themselves.
Of course, it is much harder for parents
who never benefitted themselves from
positive role models at school or at
home, and it is particularly difficult
if simply getting by is an unending
struggle - getting work, paying the
bills, clearing the debt, visiting the
hospital, caring for Mum. That’s
why organisations like Community
Links and people like Bridget are
so important. We help to deal with
crisis – because no one can focus on
the longer term if they are worried
about putting food on the table
– then we guide, we support, we
enable. We influence.
And if it all goes wrong we do it all again,
as often as need be, for as long as it takes.
This requires corporate partners
and sponsors who understand that
although controlling or “doing
for” may get quicker results than
influencing or “doing with”, those
fast results are, like a lot of fast
commodities, unlikely to be much
good and much more likely to be
superficial and unsustainable.
It calls for partners who walk the
talk. Business leaders who, like
the good parent or the good youth
worker, don’t believe they know best
about what works for us but have
the humility to begin by trying to
do no wrong. Leaders who build
businesses that create worthwhile
MAY 2016
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
28
29
development opportunities for
new entrants, that trade honestly
and fairly, that pay a real Living
Wage. HR directors who don’t send
busloads of staff to paint our walls
on random away days because they
think it’s what we need most or even
that it is what they do best (I’ve
heard both explanations and I’m
not sure which is the more bizarre),
but who use the expertise and the
experience in the business to help
others develop ideas and skills of
their own. And FDs who, even in
their giving, spend with their heads
as much as their hearts, paying for us
to build sustainable business models
rather than wobble perilously from
one project to another.
Above all it cries out for partners
who recognise that doing with, not
doing for, is definitively a reciprocal
endeavour. As needs are met with
intelligent, influential engagement,
staff flourish, reputations grow, and
horizons expand. Making friends and
influencing people, day in and day
out as the natural way of working,
is not only how to be a great youth
worker. It is also how to build a very
good business.
"David calls himself a community
worker and certainly is that – the
best in the country by a long shot,
having created Community Links
in East London more than 25
years ago. But David is so much
more that that – his openness to
work with anyone trying to create
positive change has meant his
impact has gone far beyond the
community that he has served for
so long. Every person in Britain
has benefited from David’s public
service. We are very lucky
to have him."
www.community-links.org
THE GOOD NEWS
R:U:MAD?
DAVID CARTER
D
uring the first ten years of my
career as a professional mentor
to CEOs I helped over 50 people
become multi-millionaires. It was
interesting how few of them ended
up being happy as a result.
I realised that the biggest cause
of their disappointment was that
so many of them didn’t feel that
making all that money had made
any difference – to them – or to others.
Life has four ‘notes’ or ‘parts’, which
I call the 4 ‘L’s. They are:
LEARNING
LOVING
LIVING … and
Leaving a LEGACY.
Together, they create the chords that
form the ‘melody’ of our life.
In life, most people start off
LEARNING a lot, but stop after
finishing their education and their
learning decreases rapidly as they
get older. The LOVING part starts
in our twenties, but this, too, soon
tapers off as responsibilities begin
to take over from hormonal and
biological drivers. The third ‘note’
of life, the LIVING part, is about
manifesting our ambitions.
However, if these first three notes
were all there ever was to your life,
how do you imagine you would feel
at the end?
I believe that as you reflect back
on your life, there would be a huge
sense that something is missing —
a sense of what ‘could have been’.
Unlived dreams give rise to a massive
shortfall in fulfillment.
What’s missing was the fourth ‘note’
— LEGACY, or what we leave
behind — and I’m not just talking
about the kids’ inheritance. This is
the additional resonant line of our
‘song’ that adds richness, depth
and harmony. It’s M : A : D — or
Making : A : Difference.
Complete happiness, joy and
fulfillment can only be experienced
if we leave behind a Legacy that
involves Making : A : Difference.
That’s why people like Richard Tyrie
– Founder & CEO of Good People
is MAD. He has helped 300 people
who were on benefits, homeless and
disadvantaged in many ways get
a job at The Shard. Not only has
he helped turn around the lives of
these 300 people but also made The
Shard a successful business in the
meantime. A win: win all round.
Complete happiness,
joy and fulfillment can
only be experienced if
we leave behind a
Legacy that involves
Making : A : Difference.
That’s why Chris Griffith, CEO
at Kumba in South Africa ensured
that every member of his workforce
– and their families and community
– had free anti-retrovirals, AIDS/
HIV tests and counselling – plus
built social housing and crèches –
and started micro financing. Not
only did all of these ‘benefits’ to
his workforce enhance their lives
– it reduced absenteeism and so
enhanced productivity and hence
profits. A win: win outcome again.
THE GOOD NEWS
matrix into the management of all of
the buildings that they acquire and
manage on behalf of clients. Their
clients are making more money
directly by making a difference to
hundreds of local people in each
building’s local ecosystem.
That’s why for every expensive fee
paying client I have ever had I take
on a pro-bono client to whom I offer
the same quality of service. It makes
me a better mentor as a result.
That’s why all businesses should ask
the simple question before they press
‘play’ on any new initiative. ‘Is there
a way that we could achieve the
same outcome, without it taking a
day longer or it costing a penny more
that would shift the dial in Making
A Difference to our employees,
customers, or community?’
The answer is always YES! So have
a think about how you can be MAD
in all you do too.
"David has the minor accolade
of being the world’s top mentor!
Working with CEOs, heads of
NGOs, and the world over, he
provides wise counsel. However,
if this was not enough, in the
last six months he has become a
bright-eyed entrepreneur all over
again and is launching an exciting
online mentoring business. Energy,
experience, entrepreneurship. A
heady mixture in one person."
www.davidcmcarter.com
That’s why Alexander Nikolaev, CEO
at ANVEST – a high-end property
investment and management company
added a ‘good people’ social impact
MAY 2016
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31
THE GOOD NEWS
Sport for
Good
BOB MUNRO
S
ince the 8th century BC when
the first Olympic Truce allowed
athletes to travel safely to the Olympic
Games, sport has been largely regarded
as an inspirational force for good. Sport
has helped transcend often divisive
geographic, political, and cultural
differences by bringing people and
nations together to celebrate athletic
achievements. Surprisingly, concerted
efforts to expand sport as a force for
good accelerated only in the last two
decades. More surprisingly, the youth
in Nairobi’s Mathare Valley, one of
Africa’s largest and poorest slums,
were global pioneers in using sport for
development and peace.
Since the late 1990s, a major and
still oldest partner of the Mathare
youth is the Laureus Sport for Good
Foundation. Not coincidentally, that
long and productive partnership
was midwifed by Giles Gibbons
and Good Business. Today, many
different sports are now used as a force
for good in tackling a remarkably
wide range of serious health, social
and environmental challenges – and
even conflicts – around the world.
Combining sport with community
service
The
Mathare
Youth
Sports
Association (MYSA) started as
my payback to the many volunteer
fathers who organized and coached
our summer baseball and winter
ice hockey leagues in the small
Canadian town of St. Catharines in
the 1950s. Over three decades later,
in August 1987 in the huge Mathare
slums near the UN headquarters in
Nairobi, I stopped at a little dirt field
to watch some barefoot kids excitedly
playing with their homemade football.
Their joy triggered a flashback to my
own youth and this thought: why
shouldn’t these kids also get a chance
to play and learn useful life lessons in
leagues with real footballs, coaches and
referees?
A few days later I met with some young
leaders in the slums to start organising
youth leagues. I set only one nonnegotiable condition, that ‘if you do
something, I’ll do something, but if
you do nothing, I’ll do nothing’. They
agreed and the first MYSA leagues
kicked off two weeks later with over 500
youth in 27 boys’ football teams and six
girls’ netball teams.
The Mathare youth leaders and
members adopted the same approach
which soon transformed MYSA from
a few youth leagues into a self-help
community development project using
sport as a starting point. For example,
the huge piles of uncollected garbage
were major causes of disease and deaths
in the slums, so environmental cleanups became an integral part of all
MYSA leagues. While teams get three
points for a victory, MYSA teams also
earn six points for each completed cleanup project. Then, and still today, MYSA
likely has the only sports leagues in the
world where the standings include the
points for games won or tied plus points
for garbage clean-ups.
MYSA’s community service activities
expanded in response to many different
needs and risks in the slums. In 1994,
when Adrian, a shy and popular
teenager on a MYSA streetkids team,
suddenly grew thin and died of an
unusual and unfamiliar disease, MYSA
started a HIV/AIDS awareness and
prevention programme which is still
in existence today. Training in AIDS
prevention as well as child rights and
protection against sexual abuse are
embedded in all staff, coaching and
other courses in the MYSA Sports and
Leadership Training Academy.
THE GOOD NEWS
By the late-1990s, MYSA’s pioneering
sport for development activities attracted
a few brave partners, especially Good
Business and the new Laureus Sport
for Good Foundation. Their support
enabled MYSA to add innovative new
programmes such as training youth in
music, photography, dance and drama.
These focused on serious health and
other risks in the slums: providing
leadership awards to help the best
young volunteers stay in school; feeding
and freeing jailed kids; expanding
activities for kids with disabilities;
stopping child labour; and creating
slum libraries and study halls for
members and local school classes.
Expanding sport for development
initiatives worldwide
Relief, now assists over 150 sport-fordevelopment projects in 35 countries.
Over the last 15 years, new international
non-governmental organisations and
networks also emerged for supporting and
linking sport-for-development projects
around the world, notably starting in
2000 with Good Business and the new
Laureus Sport for Good Foundation
who adopted MYSA as its first flagship
project. Committed to ‘using the power
of sport as a tool for social change’, today
Laureus has national foundations in
eight countries on four continents, and
with additional support from Comic
The thousands of innovative sport
for development projects that started
and achieved often remarkable results
during the last 15 years can’t be captured
in just one paragraph. However, a few
trailblazing examples include the use
of soccer by Spirit of Soccer to reduce
deaths from landmines among children
in Cambodia, Iraq, Jordan, Laos
and Moldova; the use of basketball
combined with peacebuilding and
leadership training by PeacePlayers
International for youth in divided
Today, over 30,000 boys and girls
participate annually in the MYSA
self-help youth sports and community
service programmes. In addition to
helping themselves, the Mathare
youth also help over 10,000 youth in
similar projects in and outside Kenya
which receive technical and training
support from MYSA.
communities in Cyprus, Israel and
the West Bank, Northern Ireland and
South Africa; the use of various youth
sports to reduce AIDS infections and
teach life skills in the Kicking AIDS
Out network of 22 organisations on four
continents; and the use of boxing and
martial arts combined with education by
the delightfully named Fight for Peace,
initially in Rio de Janeiro but now with
a network of projects helping over
250,000 street and slum kids in over
25 countries on four continents.
The local and global sport for
development and peace projects and
organisations are now so numerous and
so successful that they even have their
own highly competitive annual awards,
such as the Laureus Sport for Good
Award which was awarded to MYSA
in 2004 in Lisbon.
Today, thousands of local to global
projects and organisations involving
millions of young athletes are now
carrying out sport for development and
peace activities. Using many different
sports, they tackle a wide range of
health, social, environmental, and
other challenges and even conflicts
around the world. As it celebrates its
20th anniversary, Good Business can
be deservedly proud of its crucial role in
helping launch the now global sport for
development and peace movement.
Linking sport for development
with peace
The MYSA youth also became
peacemakers in and outside the
Mathare slums. In 1999 inter-ethnic
violence escalated among the 70,000
refugees in the Kakuma Refugee
Camp in northwest Kenya. As twothirds of the refugees were youth,
the UNHCR asked MYSA to start
a similar self-help youth sport for
development project in the camp.
Within six months, the inter-ethnic
tensions and violence had dropped
dramatically. Many youth were from
South Sudan and, after the 2005
peace agreement, they returned to
Rumbek (the then administrative
capital) where former child soldiers
were also demobilised. MYSA
therefore helped start another project
there that still continues today.
"Bob Munro is one of a kind. If
you’re still not sure what a social
entrepreneur is, spend five minutes
with Bob. He has tirelessly,
entrepreneurially changed the world
for hundreds of thousands of young
people born in abject poverty. By
doing this through football he has
made it something that every kid
wants to be involved in. He is my
candidate for FIFA president and if
not that, the United Nations! "
www.mysakenya.org
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33
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
MARK LINEHAN
just want staff to be treated and
rewarded properly because that’s the
right thing to do, we know they will
welcome us and look after us better.
Of course, we enjoy eating out more
if it doesn’t make us feel guilty, but
it’s so much more than that, we can see
it and feel it when a restaurant is ‘good’.
here used to be a time when
we parked our principles at the
door. People – who would agonise
over free-range, outdoor bred
and organic as they browsed the
supermarket aisles, who would hang
up their towels in the hotel bathroom
to avoid them being laundered and
who would assiduously spate their
rubbish to recycle as much as possible
– seemed to suspend disbelief when
they entered a restaurant.
So, as food fads come and go, the
search for the ‘good’ restaurant
continues, continually raising the
bar to give us the very best food
and dining experience. This will
always come from restaurants that
source ingredients with thought
and consideration, that care about
their staff and their communities
and that look after the environment.
Whether it’s a burger, fish and chips,
a vegan dish or Michelin-starred
fine dining experience, it can all be
Food Made Good.
MUCH more
than SIMPLE
good taste
T
But then chefs appeared to take over
the television schedules and Sunday
supplements and we couldn’t get
enough of local, seasonal and
artisanal food. It became a cliché,
something for the middle class, for
those with nothing else to worry
about. But something had changed
– a good restaurant was now much
more about food you couldn’t cook
for yourself at home than silver
service, and we had created very
different expectations.
Today, we have more diversity and
choice than we could have imagined
when choosing a restaurant and, as
a nation, we eat more meals out of
the home than ever before. We look
for all sorts of things: great food (of
course), great service, something
different, a wonderful atmosphere,
and a memorable experience. But we
want restaurants that are ‘good’ in
the truest sense of the word, and in
restaurants good is utterly intrinsic
to the business.
Cynicism about companies that get
on with business as usual, with a CSR
"Mark has been the managing
director of the Sustainable
Restaurant Association for the last
five years. Mark took the strands
of an idea we had pulled together
and launched, and made it into
the organisation it is today. With
6,000 member restaurants and
now 500 globally, the SRA is
changing what and how we eat.
Thank you Mark."
www.thesra.org
policy on the side, is well justified. Being
‘good’ changes how you do business, it
doesn’t compensate for doing business
the wrong way. And this is so true
when it comes to restaurants because
it is directly linked to our experience
as a customer. Doing things better
– sourcing the right ingredients,
investing in staff, being routed in
and engaged with the community
– is visible and directly linked to
our appreciation of the food and
enjoyment of the experience. We
don’t just want higher welfare
chicken because it’s happier, we
know it tastes better. We don’t
Food Made Good 2016 winners
www.foodmadegood.org
Food Made Good Independent
of the Year Winner
Poco, Broadway Market
Most Improved
Sustainability Winner
The Roebuck, Parched Pubs
Food Made Good Small
Group
of the Year Winner
Daylesford, Gloucestershire
and London
English Food Made Good
Champion 2016 Winner
Poco, Broadway Market, London
Food Made Good Large
Group
of the Year Winner
Wahaca
The Raymond Blanc
Sustainability Hero
Award Winner
Jamie Oliver
The People’s Favourite
Award Winner
Lussmanns Fish and Grill
Food Made Good Award
for Environment Winner
Arbor Restaurant at The Green
House Hotel, Bournemouth
Scottish Sustainable
Restaurant
of the Year 2016 Winner
The Captain’s Galley, Scrabster
Irish Food Made Good
Champion 2016 Winner
KSG at University College Cork
Welsh Food Made Good
Champion 2016 Winner
The Gallery, Barry
Food Made Good Caterer
of the Year Winner
Bartlett Mitchell
International Food Made
Good Champion 2016 Winner
Relæ, Denmark
Food Made Good Award
for Society Winner
Artizian Catering Services
Food Made Good University
of the Year Winner
Plymouth University
Food Made Good Award
for Sourcing Winner
River Cottage HQ, Devon
Food Made Good Supplier
of the Year Winner
Delphis Eco
Sustainable Innovation
Award Winner
Bio-Bean
Best Food Waste Strategy
Winner
FoodInResidence,
The University of Manchester
MAY 2016
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35
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
for the
good of
others
KUSHIL GUNASEKERA
T
he goal of everyone at the end is
to be happy and not miserable.
Whoever you are and however
learned one can be, if you are not
happy it is a waste of one’s life. So how
does one tread that path which is not
rocket science, but a simple formula
of avoiding unwholesome action and
cultivating that which is truly good?
When one is committed to engage
and practice goodness and kindness
in their daily life, such a person
begins to experience real happiness,
the joy that arises from your inner
self, especially when your work
and words are of benefit to yourself
and others. Whatever you are, be a
good one and whatever we put into
the world is what we get back. At
the very end we are judged by how
well we lived but not by possessions,
power, prestige or positions, rather
in goodness, humility, service and
character. When each day comes to
an end one must rejoice by the acts
of kindness displayed for the good
of others. It is not through poor
behaviour one can be happy and
satisfied, rather in performing your
duty to the best of your ability at all
times no matter how others perform
their duty towards you.
The true measure of a person is
how he treats someone who can do
absolutely no good to him in return.
Demonstrating goodness coupled
with kindness brings fruitful results
not only to others but to your own
life. Mysterious occurrences take
place when one acts with purity of
intentions without any expectations
most compassionately particularly
in a world full of unkind, selfish,
destructive and unwholesome deeds.
How do we make the change?
Not by trying to change the
world, rather by trying to change
ourselves individually for the better,
inculcating superior qualities and
practicing them in our daily life as we
encounter the many opportunities
that arise from the time we wake up
until we retire to bed at night. It is
to learn the ways and means through
which one could contribute toward
the betterment of another, or the
increased happiness of another that
is encapsulated within the concept
of trusteeship and to be trained
thereof is what is in order today.
The power of Goodness,
when it bears fruit, is
unmatchable and the ones
who experience that joy
will do it again and again!
"I first met Kushil after the tsunami
struck Sri Lanka. His was the only
house left standing in Seenigama
village. He gave it to the village
and created the Foundation of
Goodness to help young people
affected by the horrific natural
disaster. Just 10 years later, the
foundation has become a shining
star in Sri Lanka helping the young
and old, from all religions and
regions of the country to reach
their potential."
www.unconditionalcompassion.org
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37
all change?
NEIL ROSS RUSSELL
“We believe there is no greater
ambition for Britain than to see a
steadily rising proportion gain the huge
benefits of a university education as
school standards rise, meeting our goal
of 50% of young adults progressing to
higher education by 2010.”
Tony Blair, May 2001
M
akes sense, right? For
generations, outside of a few
Richard Branson-style exceptions, a
University degree was the key to the
good life. School followed by university
followed by a solid management-level
career followed by kids who go to
school, then to University, etc etc…
repeat ad nauseam
And there was a natural order to it.
Upper and brainy middle class kids went
to Oxbridge, middle and “alternative”
upper class kids went to the Russell
Group Universities, working class kids
learnt a trade or just went to work.
Hardly conducive to social mobility…
So the Labour Government’s 2001
commitment to get 50% of school
leavers to University must have been a
good thing – disrupting the old order and
giving everyone access to the “huge benefits
of a University education.” Now that’s
harnessing the power of good. Isn’t it?
The Labour Government didn’t hit their
target of 50% of school leavers going to
University by 2010, but they didn’t miss
by much and that’s where we are now –
half of all school leavers go on to study
for a degree. Unfortunately, 40% of those
are unable to find a “professional” job on
graduation and only 28% see their University
course as being “good value for money”.
THE GOOD NEWS
The AimHigher initiative that was
introduced to deliver the 50% target
seems to have forgotten one of the
most basic principles – the law of
supply and demand.
While driving increasing numbers
of school leavers towards the
promised land of Higher Education,
the Government forgot to consider
the demand for graduates amongst
employers or the skills that those
employers needed.
Any of those who elected to study
economics can tell you what
happens if you increase supply and
not demand and, sure enough, as
the number of graduates steadily
increased year on year, the value
of the shiny degrees they were
clutching steadily declined. Tony’s
promise of prosperity was cruelly
broken as students, many from lower
income backgrounds, often the first
in their family to go to University,
graduated to find there were no sixfigure salaries waiting for them and
no Porsche in the car park.
To make matters worse, while the
value of their degrees has gone down,
the cost has gone up. Admittedly the
introduction of tuition fees was not a
Labour Government decision, but it
was certainly made more compelling
for the Coalition by the potential
cost saving compared to funding
50% of school leavers through three
years of University.
The AimHigher initiative was certainly
a worthy one. An attempt to drive social
mobility and allow students from all
walks of life to access the advantages
that Universities have traditionally
bestowed on the select few - but it
would be hard to argue it achieved its
underlying goal.
Conversely, few people have described
the Apprenticeship Levy as a worthy
initiative. More often labelled a “back
door pay roll tax” or an attempt to “shift
the cost of education onto the private
sector”, the Levy is being introduced
from April 2017 to help fund the
Government’s drive to create
three million new apprenticeships
by 2020.
The Apprenticeship Levy is a
“hypothecated” tax, which means
that while employers will have to pay
0.5% of their UK payroll, after the
first £3m, they will be able to claim
the money back but only if they use it
to fund apprenticeship programmes
within their organisations (if you
already knew what hypothecated
meant, congratulations, you clearly
don’t need to go to University!).
As with most Government initiatives
of this sort, the Apprenticeship Levy
is a fairly blunt tool, but despite its
apparent lack of “worthiness”, the
Levy and associated apprenticeship
legislation has the potential to
deliver more social benefit than
many of its predecessors, including
AimHigher.
The philosophy behind apprenticeships
reflects the philosophy that Giles
and the Good Business team have
been espousing for the last 20 years –
great things happen when commercial
and social objectives are aligned.
Apprenticeships make good commercial
sense. Empirical and anecdotal
evidence shows that school leaver
apprentices are more loyal, more
productive and better value for
money than graduates, particularly
in the short term, with graduates
lasting an average of just 18 months
in their first job. When you consider
the facts, this isn’t surprising. An
apprentice straight out of school can
be taught the precise skills required
in the job and by the time his or
her peers graduate from University.
They will have built up three years of
knowledge and experience about the
company and the role. Meanwhile,
the graduate has spent that time
THE GOOD NEWS
studying an often unrelated subject,
will have minimal work experience,
relationships or contacts within the
industry and have £50k of debt they
need to pay off…
Apprenticeships are also good for
society. Designed by industry,
apprenticeships teach precisely
the skills that employers need.
School leavers who graduate from
an apprenticeship can therefore be
confident that their skills will be in
demand, which is clearly good for
them and good for UK PLC.
more for degrees that were worth
less. With the Apprenticeship Levy
we may just have the opposite – a
“back-door pay roll tax”? Maybe, but
if so, this time the law of unintended
consequences might just be working
in our favour.
"From Kiss FM to BBC Kids, Virgin Galactic to Excelerator. Neil has mixed his
fine intellect with his passion for contemporary society to brilliant effect.
As co-founder of Excelerator, a new business recruiting high-end school leavers
straight in to the corporate world, Neil is once again ahead of the curve
delivering a service which in five years will be common place."
www.excelerator.life
Apprenticeships can also deliver
the social mobility that AimHigher
was trying to achieve. Many school
leavers are perfectly capable of getting
to University but are unwilling, for
financial or even religious reasons,
to take on the debt required to pay
for tuition. Apprenticeships offer
these students the opportunity to
achieve an equivalent qualification
without having to incur the extra
cost of University.
Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Needless
to say, it ain’t that easy. The
apprenticeship brand has issues and
until key stakeholders including
parents and schools view the
apprenticeship route as being on a
par with University, the best and
brightest students will continue
to be pushed towards University.
The Government is trying to
address this; apprenticeships will
be enshrined in law in the same
way degrees are to ensure that there
is a consistent level of quality in
both the content and assessment
of apprenticeships. They have also
introduced “Degree Apprenticeships”
which allow students to get the best
of both worlds, splitting their time
between working and studying for a
Bachelors or Masters Degree at an
existing University.
AimHigher was a worthy initiative
that ended up with students paying
MAY 2016
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39
THE GOOD NEWS
Vive la
revolution
VINCENT NOLAN
G
oodliness is close to Godliness.
And not just in a religious or
pious way.
Being and doing ‘good’ engages our
humanity, our sense of community
and is one of many expressions of
love, our most powerful emotion,
with an energy of its own.
Bringing ‘good’ into business is now
quite a well-trod path. Social businesses,
not for profit, fair trade and corporate
responsibility are now mainstream
ideas within business. But 20 years ago,
things were quite different.
In a post-Thatcher Britain that was
struggling to throw off the recession
of the early 90’s and the long running
Gulf War 1, life seemed precarious
and uncertain. Business was still
gripped with the “greed is good”
culture of the late 80s, although the
booming value of assets had become
a distant memory.
In the early 90s, business
was still gripped with the
“greed is good” culture
of the late 80s, although
the booming value of
assets had become a
distant memory.
In the mid 90s, pre internet and
battered by recession, consumers had
retrenched. As a young consumer
researcher, I was staggered by how
resistant people were to anything
new. How suspicious they were of
anything they didn’t already use or
of offers that promised anything
other than more of what they already
knew, preferably for free.
Against this backdrop, the radical
idea that we should switch marketing
budgets from traditional means of
persuading consumers to buy - all
tried and tested - to a new model
where marketing budget was diverted
into socially useful programmes that
obliquely referenced or acknowledged
a brand’s values was just that - radical.
That this idea originated from a
couple of guys schooled by the virtual
creators of the Thatcherite consumer
mindset, Saatchi & Saatchi, was
equally extraordinary.
Ideas that were radical
then are now mainstream.
Corporates now publicise
their civic and socially
responsible actions as a core
platform of who they are.
The business that resulted has
stood the test of time, and like
2CV in its field, Good Business
has subtly changed the status quo
of our marketing industry. The
ideas that were radical then are
now mainstream. Corporates now
publicise their civic and socially
responsible actions as a core platform
of who they are. And prioritise being
‘good’ in all aspects of their business.
THE GOOD NEWS
are motivated to putting themselves
forward as socially responsible
organisations – ‘good’ even.
Would this movement have
happened despite Good Business?
Probably. But it takes courage,
passion and commitment to lead a
movement before it is fully realised,
and Good Business has done just that.
Giles and his colleagues are pioneers,
now veterans, of a movement towards
promoting and celebrating a
social conscience within business,
without losing sight of the need for
commercial success and profitability.
Celebrating 20 years of Good Business
is a celebration of the pioneering spirit
of its founders and those who have
worked with them to establish them
as agents for change within the
business world. Hats off to you all.
"Vincent is one of the UK’s finest
and most insightful researchers
of his generation; his curiosity in
people and what makes them tick
has kept him at the top of his game
at 2CV for over 20 years. More
recently he has been turning his
skills to social impact investing and
creating the foundation ‘Talking
Taboos’, a charity aiming to take
the ‘oo’ out of taboo!"
www.2cv.com
www.talkingtaboos.com
There is still a long way to go
and maybe they are motivated as
much by fear as by moral fibre haunted by the prospect of being
outed by consumers who are now
empowered with the most effective
communication tools ever. But they
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41
THE GOOD NEWS
THE GOOD NEWS
The End
of Good?
NICK STANHOPE
P
erhaps now is the time to get
rid of ‘Good’.
Perhaps, in an era of seemingly
endless corruption and scandal, when
so many companies and institutions
that we had heard so many ‘Good’
things about have turned out to be
doing so much harm, we shouldn’t
allow it anymore.
So, what would this ‘post-Good’
world look like?
Companies would no longer have
Good bits and non-Good bits.
They wouldn’t have one arm of their
business that cleverly engineers a
gigantically immoral and profitable
mechanism to fix Libor rates
or emissions tests and one little
toe that donates to local food
banks and volunteers for national
children’s charities.
They would have, at their heart,
social values, commitments and
aspirations, because no business can
exist without them, and these would
flow into every corner of their dayto-day work, everyday. They would
flow into their main products and
services, their accounting strategies
and their contracts with office
cleaning companies. They would
live and breath these values from the
post room to the board room.
If someone in one of these companies
asked, “why don’t we just do some
‘Good’ over there and write a nice
press release about it and go back to
avoiding tax and paying our cleaners
4p an hour?”, their colleagues wouldn’t
know what they were talking about.
If Good disappeared from the high
street, so would Healthy, Sustainable
and Ethical. These values would
not be sold at a premium to a few,
but baked into all products and
services, because companies would
care deeply about the health of
their customers, the sustainability
of the planet and the humanity of
their supply chain (or admit that
they didn’t).
Someone in marketing would ask,
“can’t we just go back to tricking
millions of parents into thinking
that a bowl of cardboard and sugar
is ‘Good’ for their kids by using
wholegrain, natural and fortified
with vitamins in our advertising?”
but no-one would be listening.
Once companies had gotten rid of
‘Good’, it would filter through into
the way we all lived our lives.
We wouldn’t do “Green” things and
“non-Green” things. We wouldn’t
give ourselves a tick for re-using a
shopping bag and a cross for booking
a flight to New York and feel like
we’ve ended up pretty much even.
We wouldn’t do ‘Healthy’ things and
‘non-Healthy’ things. We wouldn’t
go to the gym for half an hour and
then have three bags of kettle chips
before dinner and feel like our new
regime was going rather well.
We wouldn’t be clueless about
whether we should buy local and
organic or fair-trade and freerange, because the most sensible and
progressive combination of values
would be normal and incidental, not
niche and branded.
Of course, this isn’t all just a
fantasy, it’s what is happening at
the most progressive businesses and
organisations all over the world.
The movement for completely
integrated social values, rather than
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43
bits of glued on ‘Good’, is growing.
Michael Porter believes that
businesses are entering a new phase in
their relationship with society, within
which actual products and services
will provide the most powerful tool
for solving social problems. This
theory of “shared value” predicts that
the most innovative companies will
move beyond the traditional routes
of philanthropy and corporate social
responsibility to using their core
business to drive change and generate
more profits.
The continued growth of B Corps,
impact investment and social business
are all further sign of this increasing
alignment and integration, rather than
separation and compartmentalization.
As is the progressive, intelligent
influence that Good Business has
through its consultancy and its
growing portfolio of social ventures.
Maybe it will just be called “Business”
one day soon.
"I have worked with Nick for over
ten years, five of the last as CEO
of Shift, the behaviour change
social enterprise. In that time I
have seen him grow to be one the
most innovative practitioners in
the social business space, never
happy with the status quo, always
wanting to go further but not
without a strong foundation and
rigorous insight. He is not
interested in the gimmick or
pretence of change, or the quick fix,
but real and lasting impact to
those that need it most."
www.shiftdesign.org.uk
THE GOOD NEWS
shapo ka
yone
015
JUNE C2O
PY
FREE
NGOZI CHUKURA
I
have been a SKY Girl since the
Gaborone launch event in 2014,
where I took the pledge to be true to
myself. It has been such a cool two years.
Every day we young girls are told
what to do, what to look like and
how to behave. Sometimes it comes
from TV shows and music videos
and sometimes it comes from
our schoolmates. Young people
romanticise drinking, smoking and
partying hard, and even though
I love going to parties, I don’t like
smoking, and I don’t like being made
to feel like I’m not ‘cool’ enough to
fit in with other people just because
they do things that aren’t ‘me’.
What I love about being a SKY Girl
is that I get to choose what is good
for me; I know how to go for what I
am sure about and how to stay away
from what I am not comfortable
being part of. I’m really glad that I
now have the confidence to make
choices that are all about the young
woman I am, and growing into.
The best thing is that I GET TO
CHOOSE! And I’ve reached my
#SquadGoals because girls all over
Botswana are supporting me – and I
them – by being part of SKY.
It’s cool to be true to who you are,
without feeling like you’re the only
one. It’s been interesting to see what
the ‘sures’ and ‘shapos’ of other girls
are, and how we chat and help each
other with advice on Facebook. We
support each other in our quest to stay
true, and we’re gonna rule the world!
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Famous people think that they make
cigarettes look cool in their music
videos, but I feel like with SKY,
I’ve found something cooler – a
sisterhood of girls like me, who are
smoke free – and oh, so on fleek!
"Ngozi is an example of what makes the tobacco prevention work we
are privileged to do for the Gates Foundation such a joy. She has taken
the elements of our programme and made it her own, along with her mates,
and, in doing so, shown that they can and will be the architect of their
destiny – whatever anyone else says. Go girl!"
www.skygirlsbw.com
MAY 2016
44
G
| S M O K IN
IS DO M
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THE GOOD NEWS
`Our’
Good
Business
LYDIA PARIS
T
o commemorate 20 years of
Good Business, Giles asked
me to find out what it’s like to be
a GBer in 2016. I probed everyone
for their ‘highlights’. These are
my findings…
Work & Clients
Whether it’s getting that proposal
accepted, or brainstorming for vlog
(that’s ‘video blog’) content, it’s
often an aspect of work that is the
highlight of our week. Our work
is hugely varied, and we like that.
Sometimes we are flitting from
one project to the next like we’re
browsing through Tinder. But it’s
that heady cocktail of projects and
companies that makes the daily
‘grind’ feel more like the daily
‘one-of-a-kind’. Not only that, but
the fact that we’re helping clients
‘do good’ drives us to do a better
job ourselves. So, granted, we’re a
little bit smug. It’s hard to deny,
as GB Director David points out,
that helping underprivileged kids
find better opportunities, as we do
through Laureus, can only result
in super ‘good feels’.
Making the world a better place?
All in a day’s work really. But
we also get kicks out of pleasing
clients – in his three years here, GB
Director Andrew has seen more
smiles from clients than in the 20
years he spent in advertising. And
I like to think that that says more
about us than about advertising...
We take pride in surprising and
delighting people.
Though we enjoy the ride, it’s
always a good feeling when projects
come to fruition – if only to provide
tangible proof of what we do. For
Simon, seeing Innocent’s Buy one
get one bee smoothie promotion on
the shelves was the first concrete
evidence he had to show his family
what he does.
Behaviour Change
Behaviour change isn’t just for
clients – it’s for us, too. Working
with people who like to do things
differently makes us more willing to
try new things. When GB Project
Consultant, Caitlin, cycled from
London to (almost) Paris to raise
awareness for COP21, we supported
by pledging to try an ‘action’ that
would reduce our carbon footprint.
A number of us committed to eating
less meat – or even going veggie
completely. The challenge saved us
money, a significant amount of CO2
emissions and enhanced our cooking
repertoires. Not only that, but the
behaviour change stuck – for many
of us, meat is now just for treats!
Encouragement and support is one
thing, but when your team give up
meat on your behalf – you know
you’ve got it good! Likewise, when
your boss actually hikes along with
you on a 100km charity walk, as
Managing Director Claire did for
Lydia, you can’t help but feel like
Good Business cares. Plus, if there’s
anyone who can drive you on to walk
non-stop for 27 hours, it’s Claire!
Atmosphere & Team
Above all, reading the team’s
highlights showed how the
atmosphere in our office is what
makes the difference. It’s the
ethos, and the people, here that
really makes Good Business ‘good’.
Though we value each other’s
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
47
skills and knowledge, we’re more
interested in you as a person. We
want to hear the anecdotes, help
you with your struggles, and feel we
can take the p*** (out of some more
than others). Because when you’re
cooped up in a Chinatown office,
with the smell of fish sauce wafting
through the window and someone
outside is ‘busking’ on a traffic cone,
sometimes you’ve just got to find
your own fun.
And it helps that the team is as
diverse as the projects we work on.
From accountants to advertisers,
biologists to bankers, our assorted
backgrounds make for a motley
mix of expertise. It encourages us
to think beyond the boundaries.
And we learn a lot from each other.
So the ‘power of good’, for us, is in
more than our work outputs – ‘good’
is coming in every day not quite
knowing what the challenge will be;
good is looking at your colleagues
and knowing that you’d definitely
choose to spend time with them
even if you didn’t work with them;
good is hearing from a happy client
that the work we did for them solved
their problem, and then some. Good
is Good Business.
THE GOOD NEWS
Five
good
ideas
LYDIA PARIS
W
e asked veteran GBers to
explain how the principles
of ‘good’ business have permeated
their lives since moving on. (I know
people have actually left! We get a
bit hurt, take it far too personally,
then forgive them….) Out of that,
we came up with five broad scale
ideas to ‘take home’.
1. Doing ‘good’ and doing ‘well’ go
hand-in-hand – like strawberries
and cream, selfies and hashtags.
The point is, the central Good
Business philosophy, about placing
the goal of positive change at the
core of business strategy, doesn’t
have to compromise success. It’s
taken ages for this idea to gain
traction – especially within large
corporations. However, finally,
we are seeing change – the social
enterprise sector has boomed, and
even corporates are coming round.
It’s no longer purely down to
passionate campaigners and court
journalists to expose malpractice
in business. Twitter et al provide
platforms for any interested party
to express their thoughts, and
embarrass companies about every
little (or big) thing they’re doing
wrong.
2. Sex sells. An enduring truth. So how
to make ‘good ideas’ sexy? Perhaps it’s
easier if we put it in terms of…
Aesthetics – Looks are important.
Whatever you like, appearances are
what first grab your attention. So
how we package ideas matters – you
must grab your audience’s fancy.
Brain – Looks are important, yes.
But if my tall, dark, handsome
bloke has nothing in between his
ears, it’s a turn-off. Sexiness has
layers. Scratch past the surface –
does the idea make sense? Your
strategy has to be solid.
Personality – What’s inside counts.
The best ideas will progress,
change and adapt over time as the
world changes around them.
Pizazz – That ‘je ne sais quoi’.
Sometimes you can’t put your finger
on it, but there’s just something about
them… The spark. A good idea
should generate that intrigue, and
tempt people to take a punt on it.
‘Good’ ideas will sell. Because they
can (and should!) be sexy.
3. People generally want to be good.
Consider this: a number of cattle
herders share a ‘common’ area of
land, and each are allowed to let
their cows graze. If one herder
abuses the system, overgrazing
could result – the selfish farmer
has extra benefits by more of his
cattle being fed, but causes damage
detrimental to other herders in the
process. However, humans, being
(in most cases) intelligent animals,
also know that acting selfLESSly,
for the good of the group, is often
the better option. A selfish herder
would soon be told where to go by
the others, so chances are he sticks
to the rules.
… So where am I going with this? In
business, it’s good to remember that
behind every corporate supergiant
is a human, a person, with those
selfLESS tendencies. Screwing
people, the environment, the world
over weighs on our conscience for a
reason because, really, we know better.
Companies can be a force for good
in the world – all they need is a
little facilitation to do the right thing.
Enter Good Business…
MAY 2016
48
4. Take a step back. People, ideas
and agendas may seem conflicting.
But, if you think broadly, there are
links to be made that will align
them. Creating a good strategy is
sometimes about removing yourself
from the detail and connecting
the dots. Once those fundamental
links have been made, once you
have clarity and logic about what
you’re trying to do, you can let the
idea flourish. And the result will
be all the more powerful.
5. Do not forget the value of
humility. It’s possible to be
professional but also warm,
approachable and, above all,
yourself. Working relationships
are still just that – relationships.
Both in the office and with clients,
trust and credibility are built out
of caring and sharing.
A good relationship also allows
us to express freely, and honestly,
thoughts and advice. Which can
only help when casting a critical eye
over a proposal, or giving feedback
on a design. Having a heart is the
aspect of professionalism that will,
in most cases, take you from ‘good’
to ‘awesome’.
“Lydia is a junior consultant at
Good Business, managing our
work in Botswana and supporting
the development of City Harvest,
a food rescue service in London.
In addition she has taken up the
mantle of chief internal scribe,
bringing to life, each week, the
goings on in the office.”
THE GOOD NEWS
THANK YOU
G
ood Business has no machines, no factory, no set programmes,
no model, just a set of beliefs and a bunch of intelligent, creative
and energetic individuals working together to find better ways of doing
things than they were done before.
Therefore on our 20th Anniversary it is only right to thank first and
foremost every one of the employees who have given their time, energy
and dedication to making Good Business work. Too many of you to
thank personally on this page but you know who you are!! Thank you.
To the current crop of GB’ers from our graduates to the Management
Team thank you for still, even after 20 years, making every day feel as
fun as the first. Claire, Larissa, Simon, David, Andrew, who could ask
for a finer board of Directors. Your loyalty and dedication to the cause
(nearly a combined 50 years between you!) provides wise counsel to me
and our up and coming stars and our clients. Thank you. And to you the
clients – the paying guests, many now friends. None of this would have
been possible without you. In the same way Good Business is about
its people, good businesses have always been about their people too.
Finding individuals in organisations that are up for the journey has been
key to our survival. So whilst we say our thanks to the organisations who
have supported us, it is those special people inside them that believed in
us, fought for us, championed us and our approach – thank you.
And finally thank you to the people and support services around us
who work with us day in, day out to keep the wheels in motion. Alex
and Rob and the team at Perfect Day, you make the ordinary, very
extraordinary. To Alain and his team at Grunbergs (and our most loyal
financial wizard, Mimi) somehow you have made all the figures add up
to keep this show on the road. To our bankers C Hoare & Co, David
and Carina. If anyone asks what ‘good’ banking is, look no further. And
our lawyers, Farrers, they may be the Queen’s lawyers but they still
spare a few minutes for us. And finally to David and the team at Fluid
IT for being the most human tech team on this planet.
THE GOOD NEWS
A4E
Center Parcs
Abbey
Centrica
ABTA
Citi
ADIA
Citizenship
Foundation
Adventure Ecology
Alliance Boots
Alliance Trust
Investments
American Express
Andromeda Capital
The Global Fund for
Forgotten People
Granger’s
GSK
Guinness
City Harvest
Heathrow Airport
Clarks
Highclere
International
Investors
Classic FM
The Coca-Cola
Company
Home Retail Group
Iglo
Arcadia
Coca-Cola
Enterprises
ArcelorMittal
College of Arms
Innocent
Asda
Community Links
Just Eat
Aviva
Compass Group
Just Giving
babylon
Deutsche Bank
Kelloggs
Bacardi
DHL
Barclays
Dixons Retail
Kent County
Council
Bart Ingredient
Company
E.ON
inmidtown
King fisher Group
Kiss FM
BBC
Belazu
EE
Lansdowne Partners
Big Society Network
Elopak
Laureus Limited
Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation
EOC
The Laureus Sport
for Good Foundation
BP
EY
Scottish & Southern
Modus
ScottishPower
Morgan Stanley
Segro
Mothercare
Serco
MTG
Sky
National Express
Sparx
Nationwide
Syngenta
Nestle
Talk Talk
NetJets
Tata
Network Rail
Tesco
New Venture Fund
Thames Water
Nike
Thomas Cook
Novo Nordisk
Three
O2
Timebank
Old Mutual
Tribal Group
The Order of Malta
UBS
Orient Express
Hotels
Unilever
Otto
East London
Business Alliance
Expedia
Microsoft
KPMG
Leonard Cheshire
Virgin
Oxfam
Virgin Atlantic
Airlines
Pfizer
Vodafone
Pooky Lighting
Volvo
Primark
The Walt Disney
Company
Proper Corn
Warburtons
Liberty Global
Prudential
First Direct
Lloyds Banking
Group
RAC
We Are What
We Do
Fremantle Media
L’Oreal
RBS
Wellcome Trust
FT
Mark Leonard Trust
Relais and Chateux
Wellington College
Marks and Spencer
Richemont
Williams & Glyn
Camelot
Fundacion
Telefonica
Saatchi & Saatchi
Wonga
Capital Disney
GE Money
Sainsbury’s
Cathay Pacific
Glaceau
World Health
Organisation
Cello Group
GlaxoSmithKline
A final word to thank my first business partner in Good Business, Steve
Hilton. Good Business wouldn’t be here without him and the first ten
years would certainly been impossible without his constant drive for
better, his brilliance at expressing the new and his Saatchi inspired
belief that nothing is impossible. I hope that in some way you’re proud
of our legacy and what the team has continued to achieve in our name.
We are certainly proud of you and wish you all success with Crowdpac.
British Airways
Final, final huge thanks to the visionary Alex and the wonderful
Zebedee Helm who illustrated this anniversary edition. Thank you and
here’s to another 20!
British Paraorchestra
Bulmers
BUPA
Cable Europe
Fiat
Mars
McDonalds
Metro
Samsung
SAP
MAY 2016
WWW.GOOD.BUSINESS
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Yorkshire Water