What does being a B Corp mean to our Managing Director?
For a business to truly use business as a force for good and create a positive impact in the world, B Corp principles must be demonstrated and implemented at board-level.
The B Impact Assessment evaluates the Governance Impact Area, taking into account the business’ overall mission, ethics and transparency, ensuring that stakeholders throughout the company are included in the decision-making process.
We had a chat with James Wood, our Managing Director, to find out more about what the movement means to him and how he puts the core principles of B Corp into action.
Why did you choose the B Corp certification for Optimised?
The moral responsibilities that come with running a small business have always been very important to us. We get a lot more satisfaction from running a professional, inclusive and transparent environment with like-minded people, rather than taking decisions based purely on one-dimensional profit maximisation.
So, when we heard about the B Corp values, they instantly resonated with us, and they seem to set the bar so sufficiently high that gaining B Corp certification is meaningful enough. From an objectives point of view, I think the principles aligned with us, both personally and professionally.
Why is the movement important to you?
Having personally grown up in South Africa, there's a lot that comes with our desire to run a business that is oriented towards trying to do good in the world, and to have a positive impact on the environment. Those social and environmental pressures to contribute positively to the world around us were very evident, certainly to me, while growing up in the Third World.
I think this movement really holds businesses to account not just in the short-term, which is how most organisations have traditionally operated, but in the long-term by creating a mainstream sustaining business community that are all collectively striving to do things better, and that feels like it's worth being part of.
How does Optimised positively impact the environment?
Our core business focuses on helping our clients to understand energy markets and the general energy and climate change policy landscape that exists in the world today. It's becoming much more complex as we move away from a fossil fuel dominated economy. We help organisations to understand the risks and opportunities associated with that, with a view to building robust strategies for them to manage their businesses and the environment better.
Implementing strategies and practical solutions that help our clients to save energy, and therefore to save carbon and money, is at the heart of what we do. Clearly for our clients, understanding how to decarbonise is fundamentally important, but without having that engineering capability to implement practical solutions, we wouldn't be able to have the impact that we do.
I think that sets us apart from a lot of our competitors, who are primarily either talking about what could be achieved, or focusing on delivering short term impact. We're here to do not only the strategy part, but also to help with the practical implementation of those initiatives, over the medium to long term.
How do you intend to adopt the core principles of B Corp at board level, particularly in relation to how you run the business?
We're a small business, and traditionally small businesses may be slightly lacking when it comes to process and corporate governance, with decisions being made somewhat freely by individuals in positions of power.
We’re in the process of certifying the company at group level, and as part of this, we are implementing a new corporate governance process which is owned by the senior leadership team. The senior leadership team will be empowered to make the key decisions for the business, as opposed to a traditional board of shareholders. The team is made up of a cross section of people, from across the organisation, who have earned their position based on merit and are well-equipped to make those decisions. As part of that, we're hoping to develop our people and communications plans significantly, so that we become much more inclusive and communicate the right information to people across the business.
So, by starting with a senior leadership team that's all on the same page, making key decisions together, and then filtering that throughout the organisation through new technologies, video-type content and our new intranet, we think that we will really start to become a much more transparent organisation than we are now.
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