New Year’s resolutions for purposeful business
10 January 2023 at 11:57 am
In the next instalment of our 2023 resolutions series, co-chairs of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand B Lab chapter Alex Hannant and Mele-Ane Havea share their hopes for the local B Corp community.
B Lab’s mission is to make business a force for good by transforming the way individual businesses operate and contributing to systems change for the benefit of people and the planet.
As co-chairs of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand (AANZ) chapter, our New Year’s resolution is to ensure that the governance of B Lab reflects and keeps up with this ambition.
This is a continuing commitment to what started in 2020 when we began reimagining and reshaping our governance. This process has resulted in two main evolutions – in our organising structures and in our mindsets.
In terms of structure, we have sought to create governing forums that match the nested nature of B Lab’s work – overseeing a small non-profit that manages a holistic business certification; facilitating a rapidly growing network of purpose-led businesses; and contributing to the necessary transformation of our economies.
This has meant that in addition to the B Lab AANZ board, we have established two other forums which allow for the role of community convenor and systems change advocate to be reflected.
First, the B Council is a forum for certified B Corps to deliberate, protect their shared interests, and mobilise the regional network for greater influence and impact. Secondly, the Horizon Council is a forum intended to create space for longer-term sense-making and cooperation with other movements with aligned goals.
The B Council and the Horizon Council won’t operate like conventional boards, but that’s the point. They will facilitate emergent governance functions and conversations that are beyond the scope of conventional boards and which provide the foundations for community leadership and systems organising.
The vision for this governance ecosystem is that the B Council and the Horizon Council interact and intersect with the board and the team in ways that allow for increased insight and information flows, deepened relationships and greater accountability for decision makers.
Our continued commitment for 2023 is to further support the evolution of the B Council and the establishment of the Horizon Council, and ensure the three forums weave together to amplify B Lab’s collective efforts.
In terms of mindsets, we will renew our commitment to approaching governance in ways that reflect the dynamics of systems work. This includes four main principles:
- Learning: our practice requires experimentation and evolution. Regardless of individual expertise or experience, curiosity, sense-making, and adaptation are essential ingredients for good governance.
- Stewardship: while a board has certain responsibilities, a hierarchical approach to governance where ‘power over’ management is used is antithetical to the work of impact and systems change. Accordingly, governance needs to be held with humility and a deep commitment to the principles of stewardship – it is an organisational function not a position of assumed authority.
- Relational: any effective team is dependent on healthy relationships and boards are no exception. Across our governance ecosystem we seek to embody and emphasise the relational nature of governance. This means having a culture where we do not assume to understand each other’s beliefs and perspectives, where we actively listen with openness, and where we engage in ways that are explicit and transparent.
- Attunement: while we have deliberately expanded the voices in B Lab AANZ’s governance ecosystem, there remain many stakeholders not directly involved in our deliberations. Accordingly, we will endeavour to be mindful of those not represented (including non-human entities and future generations) and actively consider their interests.
Ultimately, our resolution for 2023 is to constantly remind ourselves that the work of governance is service, and that serving B Lab’s purpose for systems change demands that we are also in a process of ongoing change and evolution.
Alex Hannant and Mele-Ane Havea are co-chairs of B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (AANZ).
