Newsletter, July 2020
Our occasional newsletter is a brief update on how we’ve been pursuing our purpose to create business value and social value hand in hand. Here’s some highlights from each of our three areas of focus– social insight, leadership development and citizenship.
It’s been a few months since our last update but rest assured that the pandemic has not held us back in pursuing this purpose. The methods might have changed – cue the move to online – but the purpose hasn’t; in fact, it feels more relevant than ever!
Amidst all the uncertainty we’ve been helping businesses to understand more about their more vulnerable and underserved customers through our social insight work.
To support M&G as they developed their customer vulnerability principles we convened charities expert in financial vulnerability, serious illness and hearing loss for a day of insight gathering and workshopping around how best to support customers.
We’re particularly proud to have taken what was scheduled to be a three-day face to face programme for Experian on innovating for the ageing population and running it over seven online sessions. Yes, it can be done! Here’s a short case study with, if I say so myself, some powerful testimonials from some of those who took part.
On the CSR and Citizenship front, in April we published our latest Business Charity Relationship report – essential reading for anyone in business who wants to get working with charities right. Here’s a link to the report and here’s a recording of an online session we ran on the key findings and recommendations.
Another virtual discussion focused on loneliness and isolation amongst colleagues, customers and communities, with valuable insight from Carers UK, Age UK Camden and Leonard Cheshire – here are the key takeaways.
We’re gearing up to run skills-based volunteering projects in the autumn for Experian and Vitol amongst others, with projects that are fully transferable to the virtual world if necessary.
Finally, our work in leadership and talent develpment is all about developing key skills and behaviours, and promoting awareness of societal issues, through social impact projects. Much of our thinking was summed up in our online discussion on what we call connected leadership with speakers from Balfour Beatty, Imperial College Business School and William Hill.
We’re currently focused on the creation of a ‘Purposeful Leader Programme’ for mid-level to senior leaders to help them develop the skills needed to lead in a world in which collaboration, systems thinking and purpose-driven leadership are vital for success. If you’d like to learn more or even contribute your ideas please let us know.