So you're a B Corp...now what?
Congratulations, you’re a B Corp! Welcome to the global movement of using business as a force for good. Take a second to give yourself a pat on the back - you’ve made it! B Corp certification is a powerful symbol of trust, credibility, and values and sets you apart as an impact leader. It’s a tremendous achievement that represents not only the hard work going through the certification process, but years of positive intentions, outcomes, and impacts across your business.
But what happens once you complete your B Corp certification? Is this the climax of your sustainability journey, or just the first step? How do you maintain momentum? What happens next?
As our clients successfully achieve B Corp certification and start to bring their news to market, these are some of the questions we are asked most. The good news is that B Corp is far from the end of your sustainability journey; the great news is that there are so many options of where to go next. But as we also know, too much choice can sometimes be worse than no choice at all… so we’re here to give you some guidance on where to go next.
Let’s start with the outcomes you wish to achieve. Most often, we see our clients’ desires falling into at least one of the following choices. Read on to see our tips for each outcome:
Getting clear of the outcomes you wish to achieve will add clarity to your next steps, and bring confidence to your impact journey.
Blow up your Impact
The B Corp Impact Assessment (BIA) is far more than just a rigorous certification; it’s a detailed guide to continuous improvement. As companies start to use the assessment, you are exposed to questions that you haven’t asked yourselves before. These powerful questions unleash creativity and innovation. Once unleashed, it’s hard to put these ideas back in a box.
So what’s next? How can you blow up your impact? Good news: we’ve got lots of options for you!
Because the B Corp certification exists on a three-year timeline (you must re-certify every three years), once you certify you are left with some breathing room to really decide on what’s next. This is the perfect opportunity to move beyond B Corp and really dig into the areas of impact that matter most to you. We get to move from the operational to the strategic, exploring the many ways that care for people and planet can be embedded directly into your core products and services. Here are three ways:
Strategic Planning: In order to ensure that your social and environmental impact remains top of mind, you must ensure that it makes its way into your overall strategic plan. With our clients, we offer both traditional strategic planning offerings (often achieved in a one or two-day retreat with the executive team) and more bespoke options focused squarely on impact.
BHAG Workshop: BHAGs are a concept that was first defined by business management guru Jim Collins in his book “Built to Last”. Collins described how some of the biggest achievements were achieved as goals that are so big, and so hairy that you have no idea how it might be achieved, but is so audacious that it inspires you to achieve it anyways. This type of thinking is perfect for the hairy social and environmental challenges that we currently find ourselves in.
Internal Capacity Planning: Once you have a clear goal in sight, we work with you to build out the internal capacity required to achieve these goals. Depending on your goals, this might mean working on new service design or product design, development and implementation of holistic stakeholder engagement strategies, or a lighter touch impact coaching role to support your existing team to integrate an eye for impact in everything they do.
Engage your Team
Another area that we often see new B’s looking at is how to engage their team on impact. One of the big reasons we see companies pursuing B Corp certification in the first place is about their team - with an abundance of research showing that investing in purpose leads to more engaged employees, stronger cultures, and higher performance, it’s no wonder that B Corps want to find a way to spread their impact throughout their team. At the same time, the actual certification is often completed by just a couple team members, with the rest of the organization out of the loop of exactly what B Corp means for them and their role.
So, what’s next? If your goal is to engage your team, what options are available to you?
Team engagement can be accomplished in a number of ways - from simple lunch & learns to more engaged strategic programs. No matter how you decide to communicate your achievement to your team, ensure that you give your employees the opportunity to engage with the assessment and understand the initiatives - large and small - that contribute towards your vision for success. Here are three ways we work with clients:
Beyond B Corp: All of our clients at Decade Impact are offered a Beyond B Corp workshop when they certify. In our sessions, we spend time explaining the assessment, identifying areas of strength for our clients, and then creating the space with our client teams to ideate and explore what can happen next. It’s equal parts celebration and strategic engagement, and always infuses a hefty dose of momentum into your organization.
Mobilize: For clients looking for a deeper dive, we also offer our Mobilize program, a three-day training program for purpose-driven teams to embed a lens of impact throughout your entire team, operations, and strategy. This program is designed to build impact literacy within your team, allowing you to truly unleash the benefits of a B Corp mindset.
“B Team”: Once you’ve brought your team up to speed on what it means to be a B Corp, we also recommend building out a specific ‘B Team’ who will be stewarding impact going forward. Developing your B Team moves impact from something that is done off the side of someone’s desk, to a specific mandate with the necessary resources to move impact along. Looking for support to develop this B Team? We provide coaching for the ‘B Keepers’ which can range from a one-time design lab to ongoing accountability calls.
There are lots of different structures you can put in place to keep team members engaged over time - from monthly meetings to annual retreats. The most important thing is to celebrate achievements and give all employees the opportunity to align with your mission and impact.
Get People to Care
B Corp certification comes with a lot of benefits to your business - from internal accountability structures to a powerful message that can ignite stakeholders. But in order to fully realize the benefits of certification, your stakeholders need to know your story. We’ve talked before about the curse of “greenblushing” that often befalls impact-driven brands. While greenwashers are guilty of passing themselves off as environmentally friendly when they are not, greenblushers are guilty of remaining silent of the positive impact they are creating.
We see this happen all the time. And that’s bad news because the impact business movement requires (authentically impactful) businesses to get loud about the role of business in creating a better future.
So, what’s next? If your goal is to get people to care, what options are available to you?
Impact Communications are one of our favorite topics to discuss with our clients - so much so that we include it in every one of our multi-day programs. We believe that if the economy is going to shift for the better, we need stories of purposeful brands showing the way forward. Here are three ways to engage in telling your impact story:
Impact Metrics: Authentic communications come from a marriage of compelling stories and hard-hitting metrics. Metrics are a powerful antidote to greenwashing, and give proof behind your claims of impact. They’re also the building blocks of your first impact report!
Impact Report: When we strive towards a “triple bottom line” company that values people, planet, and profit, companies tend to be better at proving their financial metrics than the other categories. We can support clients in building out strong impact reports that tell your annual story of impact - from your B Corp metrics, to the UN SDGs, and everything in between.
Brand Manifesto: Every revolutionary needs a manifesto. A guiding document that succinctly encompasses why you exist and how you affect the future for the good of the world. This is not a brand guide - it’s a rallying cry, your call to action for stakeholders to join you on the right side of history.
Improve your Score
Finally, let’s go back to the B Impact Assessment itself. With the recertification timeline occurring every three years, many B’s are also looking to improve their score over time. Certified B Corps are required to score at least 80 points in the B Impact Assessment. While there is no official requirement to improve this score over time, B Corps are naturally invested in continuous improvement, and often wish to see these improvements reflected in their year-on-year score. We’re all about a little friendly competition to keep doing better for people and planet!
So, what’s next? If your goal is to improve your score, what options are available to you?
Good news - by following the tips throughout this blog post, there’s a good chance that by increasing your focus on impact, your score will naturally increase between your first year of certification and your renewal date. Although it can be quite tempting to chase points, we believe that the points happen when you do everything else right. This is particularly true if you follow our tips to bring impact literacy into your entire team. Empowering your team is a sure-fire formula for innovation and improvement! Here are three other ways:
Gap Analysis: At any point in your impact journey, you can create a focused gap analysis to understand your strengths, areas of improvement, and how to develop an internal roadmap for your next 6, 12, or 18 months. Although many companies will create a gap analysis while they’re going through the certification itself, we think it is wise to also do this after you become certified, as your points have now been third-party verified.
Policies and Systems: A key area of focus for improving your points is to develop policies, systems, measurements, and engagement frameworks to make your next B Corp assessment a (relative) breeze. We can spend time between certifications to develop tracking systems for workers, suppliers, and customers, allowing us to confidently report on results the next time around.
Bring on a Coach!: We might be biased, but we believe that going through the B Impact Assessment with a coach (such as ourselves) is the most powerful way to unleash the true benefits of B Corp certification and re-certification. By taking the tedious tasks off your plate, we can turn the process from a chore to an absolute pleasure.
B Corp is certainly not the end of your sustainability journey… you’ve opened a beneficial Pandora’s box of opportunities and we are always incredibly excited to see where you might go next. As you step into this next phase of your impact journey, we’re thrilled to help you measure, manage, and communicate the many ways impact shows up in your business model. It’s time to grow capacity from within, shout out your good news, and develop the skills necessary to lead the movement of business as a force for good.
Ready for your next leap? So are we. Let’s build some better businesses, together.