B Better Purpose Virtual Summit '22 Day 1 - Organisational Purpose Workshop

So the first part of the session today is you can be having a little chat with me about this thing called organizational purpose and just kicking off the summit, really getting to the basics of, well, what is purpose? Why do we need it? So on and so forth. So we'll just, we'll just kick into it. So.

What are we going to cover off exactly? Like I say, what, what is organizational purpose? That's different. Different levels of purpose that will already exist within an organization. We'll just look at some of the, some of the reasons as to why organizational purpose is a thing right now. And then I guess importantly for you as business leaders, but also as consumers, as employees, as investors, helping you try and differentiate the difference between purpose and purpose light. Because there is definitely some purpose washing going on out there, which I guess would be the same kind of idea is greenwashing, where people are talking about credentials or things that they're doing that may or may not be as true or as deeply connected to purposes. They might say, awesome. So let's try and make this as interactive as possible. Why does any business exist? Let's see if Wendy, Christine or Claudia, who are tuning in, can give us any clues as to like, why does a. Why does any business exist?

Fastest finger on the buzzer.

I will leave you. Let you off the hook on that one. So the reason why a business exists is fundamentally to solve a human problem. That's why businesses were created. And one thing I like to think about is if you go back way, way back to medieval times, and I get to do this because my degree was in medieval history, or you might know people even today who have surnames like Fletcher or Cooper or Shoemaker. We used to be so connected to the concept of how we contributed. There we go. Wendy's coming with the goods here. Serve the community. Christine, to provide goods or services.

Yeah, we used to be so connected to the idea of the need that we were solving that we actually named ourselves after the thing that we provided to our community. However, since those times, and I guess perhaps more so since the 1960s, 1970s, it's become more around utilizing business as a vehicle to maximize profit and shareholder return in particular. And, you know, this is why we perhaps have some businesses around in this day and age that are focused solely on that profit maximization and focused on, I guess, creating or solving not a true human need. They're solving what would be described perhaps as an artificially constructed need. And to sort of bring this into relief, I guess, would be to think about, well, let's look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now, it's not a complete model, but it's a really useful just point to think about. And if we look back to countries like New Zealand that had a pretty hard lockdown during the beginnings of the pandemic, you know, what businesses were deemed to be essential? Well, that's quite an interesting thing to posit or to think about for you and your business. You know, is your business actually essential.

Versus, you know, some of the businesses that were.

You know, claiming to be essential but perhaps weren't that central to humanity? And I think that's where in Maslow's here you can see, you know, that safety and security, physiological needs, those are really the true human needs that need to be looked after at the deepest level. Because the risk is if you start creating products and services around some of the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy, you end up with products like this. Now, this, to me, I just feel sums up modern humanity in many levels. So this is the pooch selfie. It's basically a piece of plastic that you attach to your phone that holds a tennis ball so that you can get the perfect selfie with your dog and every time. Now, I'm sure there are some benefits to, you know, people having some better health and wellbeing outcomes by feeling more connected with their pet, but do we really need to have designed and manufactured and sold and produced essentially a piece of landfill? Essentially, which I think these kind of artificially created products and services lead to what David Graeber described as bullshit jobs. So if you haven't connected to David Graeber's work, unfortunately he passed away. I think it was maybe last year or the year before. Very, very smart guy anthropologist who basically assessed that there were these five types of bullshit jobs. We got flunkies, you've got goons, you've got duct tapers, you've got box tickers and taskmasters. So these are sort of artificially created jobs that serve no real meaning to community, society, or to the individuals themselves. And that is leading to, I think, in no small part, this whole great resignation as people are perhaps realizing that their job might, might actually be a bullshit job, or they just don't have that connection of meaning and purpose to the role that they're doing now. When you are pursuing things that are unnecessary, when you start only focusing on profit maximization and trying to earn as much money as possible, that also can lead to some really negative outcomes. At a slightly lighter level, you know, a couple of years, 2013, I think it was, you know, Findus, a well respected food company throughout Europe, was found to be having horse meat in its beef and other lasagna and other burger patties and things like that. Now the reason that happened, well, horse meat is cheaper in Eastern Europe where they were sourcing their food from. So, hey, we'll do that. It's all, you know, it was all about ultimately the end of their supply chain, providing a cheaper product so they could get more money out of it. So that's, that's the lighter end. But, you know, at the really tragic end. For those of you who've studied or had a look at the, the Boeing 7737 Max story, it's, it's pretty clear that it was cultural challenges. It was the change of the company to be focusing on profit maximization rather than culture and outcomes that led to fatal outcomes on the, the Boeing 737 Max flights. And that's something that also echoed by me in my own personal background working in the medical device industry, where it was clear that where companies pursue profit over people, you end up with bad outcomes. And this leads us back to Maslow, because not a lot of people know this, as Michael Kane would say, but before Maslow passed away, he had written or updated his hierarchy of needs, but it was unpublished. And in his unpublished, updated version of the hierarchy, he actually put at the, at the top of the pyramid, transcendental purpose. So the idea is that humanity thrives and is at its best when it is doing something on purpose. So this is really, really crucial for me and this is where we kind of need to help in my mind, get companies to get to is, is the pinnacle of being an organization of purpose. So getting onto that, then what is organizational purpose? So if you think about the world's most inspiring organizations, they all have one thing in common and that's that they are playing a game that's bigger than themselves in service of others. And that's really a big part of the crux of what is purpose for, for. On an individual and organizational level, individual purpose and organizational purpose, the journeys to, to connecting to them and understanding them are both very similar. So this is the key though, at an organizational level, you know, beyond just making a financial return for your stakeholders, you know, what social and environmental impacts is your business making? Why should your employees, your customers care about what you're doing?

You know, like I say, go back to the first principles of where business started. The Fletcher, the Cooper, the Baker. You know, we've all had, we all had a part to play a role in the tribe, to make sure that the tribe thrived. And it's about you understanding how are you making the tribe, the tribe thrive as a business.

So my old mate Aristotle summed this up. And this is what I love. You know, like I say, I really love my medieval history and even before all that. And if you go back to some of the ancient philosophies, the ancient works that are out there, we've known what the answers are. We, we know, we know what we need to be doing. We've just been disconnected from it. And as Aristotle said, you know, at the intersection where your gifts, talents and abilities meet a human need, therein you will discover your purpose. So again, this is exactly the same for individual or an organization. As an organization you have a set of unique skills, unique things that you can do. And somewhere in the world there is a problem that needs to be solved, that you could be using your skills, your unique genius to make the world a better place. And that it sounds really, really simple, but it's complex, it's tricky because you have demands. You need to be making a profit, you need to be doing all these other things. We're all human beings, we're all frail, we're all failed at some level. So it sounds really, really easy. But it's not that easy because if it was easy, we'd all be doing it. And clearly we don't have thousands and millions of organizations of purpose yet because we still have some problems in the world.

This is a model from a good mate of mine, Zach Materio, who kind of pulling this together. So if you start thinking about the individual, so your personal purpose, why me? Why am I here? Why am I in this organization? You've got the product or the service, why this? You've got your world need, well, who cares about what you do? And the nexus point of all of that, you've got this. Why us? So that's just a model of how to sort of think about.

Organizational purpose at a higher level. Another model just to throw in the mix if you sort of think about a spectrum of purpose. So historically, you know, charities will were described, I guess as the ultimate for purpose enterprise. And in many ways they still are. Whereas at the far end of the spectrum, you've got bau, business as usual. So if you're the CEO, excuse me, if you're the CEO, leader of business, if you're a board member, your only fiduciary duty, really currently, globally, is for you to trade that business solvently and to make as much money as you can for the shareholders, that's really your only duty.

So as we start to come in from both those extremes, you know, from the charity moving towards a more enterprise centered concept, you have social enterprise. So the idea of a mission driven entity, mission driven business where significant amount of the profits are put back into solving a social and or environmental problem. Coming back in from business as usual, we've got this idea of corporate social responsibility. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. Well, Beth will be talking a little bit more about the differences between CSR and B Corp tomorrow. But at a high level, you know, corporate social responsibility, we have large numbers of organizations definitely on the carbon, I guess monitoring and looking at their carbon emissions net zero is a big movement within the corporate environment. Similarly, you might have a lot of businesses that are looking at making sure their supply chain is child labor free.

Organizations might be looking at are we paying a living wage across our organization. So typically with CSR though, it's one of many elements that an organization is having a go at getting better. And I guess the risk with CSR at that level is, you know, is it rigorous, is it independently verified? Yeah. Can you sort of prove what you're doing? And that's what leads us to B Corp. And I'm not going to talk about B Corp really on any depth today other than just to briefly introduce the concept. And if you want to learn more about B Corp, you need to tune in for day two tomorrow where hopefully we won't have any technical issues. So B Corporation is for me the pinnacle of proving the purpose that you have in your business, at least on an operational level. And B Corporations are this new form of business that seek to balance purpose and profit. So rather than solely focusing on profit maximization, they consider the impact of their operations on their workers, customers, suppliers, community and the environment. And increasingly are expected to enshrine legally a sense of corporate purpose and mission at a governance level. We'll probably touch on that a little bit tomorrow if we have time. So B Corporations are essentially these for profit businesses that have been independently verified to be meeting the highest levels of transparency and accountability around their social and environmental footprint. So that's where, you know, particularly here at Grow Good, we feel that B Corp is the way forward for proving that you are truly a purpose driven company. And it helps you kind of galvanize and pull together some of the strings and tendrils of the good that you're doing on an operational level and helps bring it Bring it to life.

Cool. So purpose probably already exists in an organization. And there are kind of four levels of purpose that you can typically find within an organization and it typically would look like this. So at the basic level, a lot of companies will be doing some kind of corporate giving. So whether it's a donation, I mean, we do this at Grow Good. Instead of providing Christmas gifts, we typically make a donation to a charity at Christmas as a thank you to companies that we've worked with.

You know, that's, it's a great thing to do. But we're certainly not saying don't help support charities. But the challenge is, you know, not every dollar spent in giving to charity is a dollar well spent. So it's an easy entry level way of connecting to doing some good. But you know, actually how much positive contribution is that donation making the next level up? Again, certainly not suggesting you don't do this, but just be wary. Corporate volunteering is very, very popular, you know, but again, having worked in the not for profit sector, I spent 12 months hanging out with a team at Kilmarnock Enterprises, based down here in Ototahi, Christchurch. And a very, very popular business for good, I guess, social enterprise. And we would be inundated with people from particularly professional services firms wanting to come and volunteer and come and hang out and do some work in the factory. So Kilmartic Enterprises is essentially a sort of third party, sort of manufacturer outsourced facility that can do things like picking, packing, re, refurbishing, recycling of stuff. So we'd have all these, you know, corporate people that want to come and volunteer for the day. And we did it a few times. But you quickly realized that, you know, no offense to the corporate accountants, but you're a great corporate accountant. It doesn't mean you're actually good at picking and packing food and spices and putting them into a little 50 gram sachet and weighing them and measuring them and putting a label on straight. And quite often we'd find that you'd have to redo a lot of the work that had been done by your corporate volunteers. So you feel good having done some good for your local community or environmental thing. But quite often, you know, the charity that you've helped actually needs to go and redo the thing that you're doing. And also, you know, if you're a corporate accountant, I'm picking on the accountants. I'm very sorry. You know, it might not mean that you actually like planting trees, because if you did like planting trees, you'd probably be an Arborist. And so there can be a bit of a disconnect. So the next level up would be purpose light. And so this is where you might have individuals running some kind of purpose based projects. They've got permission to go and try and test some little projects on the fringes of the company. I'd also put into this section companies who are making some claims about doing some good. But you know, when you really scratch the surface, it's not really all that it's been made out to be. And then at the highest level you've got what grow good we call purpose fuel performance. Where, you know, purpose is strategy. You know, you have a clearly defined and articulated purpose. The organizations and individuals are fully aligned behind it. You have this poor account. I know, Ivan, I feel very sorry. It's because I don't like maths. I pick on the accountants. It's just all my childhood trauma coming through. So feel very sorry that I'm picking on them. Yes. But your, your, you know, your true genius is being used for true human planetary needs. And that is where we want to get businesses to and we feel that's where we need to get businesses to for so many reasons. And that's really, yeah, part of what we're trying to help companies with.

And I think shout out to a good friend of mine, loud and Keira, and this is his, his phrase, you know, it's not what you gave, it's what you could have given. And I think that really sums up the corporate giving kind of aspect. There are, there's a couple of companies here in New Zealand, I won't name them publicly, who have, you know, adverts running on TV talking about how much they've donated over a period of time. And when you do the maths, you kind of go, well, actually yearly that's less than what your CEO earns. And so you kind of go, well, could you have given more? Could you have done more? Yeah, you probably could have done. So this is where I think, you know, people are increasingly savvy about this purpose light and companies making platitudes, making some donations here and there to sort of morally and environmentally offset the core damage potentially of what their business is actually doing.

So let's look at some examples of purpose in action. Now Volvo, I think, is actually a really cool example of purpose in action. If anyone knows anything about Volvo, the thing that they are most famous for is making cars that are super safe. Now if that is your sort of unique proposition as an organization, you would probably find that your Intellectual property lawyers and marketing team would be pretty keen to keep that and ring fence that, that and say, no, look, we need to, we need to use that as our unique sales proposition, our unique marketing advantage. But Volvo didn't do that. They have chosen. This was from a couple of years ago. They, they shared 40 years of safety data that they'd been collected, that they'd been collecting and they shared it with all their industry competitors because their purpose was to make cars safer for all. Now that's a great example of purpose in action because this is the thing, you know, if you're competing against your competitors, you're not on purpose. We talked about at the very beginning this idea that, you know, the companies and organizations that are purpose driven are doing something that is bigger than them. It's for the greater good. And so this is a really, really great example for me of purpose in action.

So maybe we will get some, put some comments as I trundle on through the rest of this presentation. But yeah, what, what other examples of purpose can you identify? Have you got examples? Maybe you yourself, if you are tuning in. I know, Wendy, you do some pretty purposeful stuff. Yeah. Like what examples have you. Can you recognize or can you see out there where there are. Yeah, good examples of purpose in action. Put some stuff in the comment.

Cool. While you're doing that, I will keep on going. So five levels of impact. Like I said, we've introduced this idea of business as usual, which is where businesses kind of come from. This idea that businesses only aim legally across most of the developed world or most of the world, is that you need to trade in a manner that is solvent and you need to make more money this year than you did last year or this quarter than you did last quarter. We've talked about csr, that's kind of a next step up. But like I said, there's this risk of it being unverified, it being patchy, it not being holistic, which is that leads us to B Corp. So like I said, B Corp day is going to be tomorrow. But at the high level, B Corp measures your business's impact across five areas. It looks at your governance, it looks at your, how you treat your workers. It looks at your community impact, which is sort of supply chain and diversity. It looks at your environmental impact and it looks at your customer model or what it is that you actually make. And that's why.

I make no claims that B Corp is the silver bullet. It is not the most perfect system, but right now it's the best system that we've got out there for companies to truly measure their impact across holistically. Holistically across all of their business. Now, within the B Corp, there's actually kind of two levels above B Corp. Within the B Corp assessment, there are ways that you can unlock more points and that's by having what's called an impact business model.

And that is basically where you can prove that you have gone out of your way to create more positive social and environmental impact than you have been, than you are legally required to do as a business. And Ethique is the example that I always use of that. And we'll be hopefully talking to Brianne as part of our panel event after this, after this session just now where maybe we can. Well, I'll make sure that Beth asking some questions about her impact business model. There we go. Beth, over to you on that one. But beyond an impact business model and where we ultimately need business to be getting to is for business to be a regenerative business. Because you could be a really good B corp, but you could still be extracting something from the planet. And ultimately, if we are all even slightly extractive, we end up in a place of there being less. So that's kind of where we're at. So Wendy, shout out here to the B1G1. So buy one, give one community. They are a certified B corporation as well. So they make it really easy for companies to donate monthly as they. As you're going through your invoicing. So that's a great example of. Yeah, so that, that corporate giving purpose in action. So go you, Wendy, love your work.

Cool. So why is organizational purpose a thing right now? Certainly Beth and I think it's a thing right now. Certainly the panelists who we've got coming up will, I hope, will agree that it's a thing right now.

We live. This is, this is, I guess this is the interesting thing. Like we live in exceptionally good times for sure. Like if you're tuning in from New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. you know, any sort of western democratized nation, life is pretty good for most people right now. But we do still face a number of significant challenges collectively as a species and as a planet. You know, so we've got the climate emergency, we've got biodiversity loss happening, we still have inequality, we've got mental health and addiction challenges. We've got, you know, I guess like the great resignation happening as a thing. There's uncertainty, there's people feeling a lack of connection and meaning in their work. And so it's no Surprise, really to see that business leaders around the world are waking up to the opportunity of aligning their business to solve the big challenges of our time. Because this is the thing, I love asking this question. Maybe someone can try and put the answer in while I'm talking, but without googling, you will not get the answer. Like if I asked you what company was listed number three on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2001, no one is going to know that answer. What people do remember though, is what you did and how you did it. And that is the really, really key thing that I think underpins this purpose thing. Now this I can kind of shower you with many, many statistics that are out there in terms of why purpose is the thing. It's actually really hard to keep up with them because there are so many and they keep they're literally being updated almost on a weekly basis. But in essence, customers want you to be more socially and environmentally responsible. Employees want to feel that they are working for an organization that has some kind of greater purpose, that has some kind of social and environmental is taking some action socially and environmentally. Investors we'll talk about. We've got Carolina joining us on the the panel event coming up. She knows her way around ESG and the investment world. But you know, investors are increasingly looking to put their money in organizations where companies can prove that they're doing some good. We'll mention a good example tomorrow in terms of, well, actually we might not mention it tomorrow. So I mentioned it now in 2021. May, I think it was May 2021. ANZ bank from Australia and New Zealand. Australia, New Zealand Bank. For those of you not in this region, they issued a $100 million loan to Kathmandu, which is one of the biggest B corporations in the Australia, New Zealand region that was basically indexed on Kathmandu, maintaining their B Corp score. So sustainable backed lending, so it's called a sustainably linked loan. You know, they are becoming a thing and I have no doubt Carolina will be able to talk to us more about that. Well, that's exactly why we bought on the panel. So no pressure, Carolina, we'll be having you talk to on that. So you know, there are trends and like I said the panel event, we're going to really dive into some of these trends from the customer, the internal and the external push and pull factors that are driving this. But the factors are there like customers, employees, investors and supply chain as well. We've certainly helped a few companies recently go through the B Corp journey because they've been asked by their Customers, what are they doing in their business around their social and environmental impact? So there are multiple factors and they are increasing and they're just getting bigger. All right, but why other than sort of, I guess like the push factors. So, so people telling you that they want you to do this thing, you know, what are the actual benefits to your business? Well, what aren't the benefits to having purpose in your business is probably the easier question to answer because basically there is overwhelming evidence that if you get purpose at work in your organization, you are going to see amazing things like increased team performance. You can have increased team engagement, you will attract and retain the best talent, you will long term see increased profitability. You will gain utterly raving fans. And I think Brianne is going to be the one to be talking about raving fans on our panel event because Etique just has utterly raving fans. But most importantly for you as a senior leader, for you as a business owner, for you as a board member, you actually get to sleep well at night knowing that you've done the right thing. And that is priceless. And, and for me, that is what's sitting at the bottom of this great resignation of the great meaning crisis of the mental health epidemic that we have globally is people are lacking the feeling of meaning in the, in what they're doing. There's some harrowing statistics. I think it was a YouGov survey from the UK around about 2017. It was about 30, 35% of employees surveyed felt that their job provided them with no meaning. And in fact it was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet. Now, you know, no wonder people don't want to go to work. No wonder people having mental health challenges if that's how they're feeling for the 80,000 hours of their working life.

So from 2019, you know, Unilever have got some, some, some purpose led brands. They have certain sub brands that are B Corp certified. So Ben and Jerry's is a B Corp brand that is owned by unile. So in 2019, their purpose led brands grew 69% faster than the rest of their businesses and delivered 75% of the company's growth. And so this is the thing like purpose is this sort of super fuel that if you can connect to it in your business, it's going to really, really take you places.

On the individual level. Then what are the benefits to your team and for you as a, as a team member? So there are seven major life benefits for being on purpose. And I guess one of the things to think about for you Is think of a time when you were on purpose. So when you were doing something that involved your genius, your, you know, you being the best version of you doing something that you love in service of something bigger than you, or doing it for someone else, think of those times for yourself. But on average, when you are on purpose, and I say on purpose because it is kind of like a drug, but it's a really, really cool drug that is only good for you and good for the people that you're. You're using your drug on. On average, 63% increase in income, wealth and leadership effectiveness. If you are on purpose, on average, a 42 increase in memory, cognition and executive function. And this is built also on the premise that you will have stronger mitochondria and DNA and so stronger cellular function, which could lead to an extra seven years of life. That's pretty cool. Purpose also gives you hope and meaning. On average, people who are connected to their purpose and living on purpose would express a doubling in overall life satisfaction and life fulfillment. Purpose gives you motivation. So motivation is kind of finite. You know, willpower is finite. You can go so far on pushing yourself to do something, whereas purpose is infinite. If you connect to the idea, like I say, doing something bigger than you in service of others, you just don't stop, you just keep going. It also gives you deeper levels of resilience. So again, on average, four times engagement and five times productivity on task if you are connected to the purpose of it. But like I say, the real thing, the real take home is the legacy. You know, if you're a business leader, business owner, if you're a board member on a company, like what is the legacy that you're going to leave? And the question I typically ask rooms on this one is can anyone give me the name of the richest person in the world? Sorry, the richest person in North America in 1968, 1969. I'm not going to leave it or wait to get the answers in because no one's going to get the right answer. No, no one has ever got the right answer. The answer that I found was it was a gentleman called Robert Wood Johnson, who was one of the founding brothers of Johnson and Johnson. So then if we elevate that question and say, okay, well, who was the richest person in the world ever? When we adjust for currency and inflation and all that kind of stuff. And again, I've had one person ever get this answer in all the times I've asked this question. The name of that person was Mansa Musa and he was the reigning emperor of mali from about 1280 to the early 1300s. But if we flip it around and go, okay, well, can anyone give me the name of the gentleman who wrote and delivered a speech about having a dream for a group of Americans in 1968, 1969 without failure, everyone will say, ah, Martin Luther King or mlk. And again, this is the thing. People won't remember what you did. So won't remember what you had in terms of your financial success. They'll remember what you did and how you did it. And you know, that's kind of what we're all looking for ultimately as humans.

All right, so getting into some examples of sort of purpose maybe versus purpose light. So I pick on a teak because I just think, like I say, for me, they're one of the. They were the B Corp. Number two in New Zealand. They've been trailblazing this thing and genuinely just a company that is hard to hate. And I think that's another way to look at your business through a purpose lens. Is, is it easy for people to look at your business and say you're not doing everything that you could be doing? And like I say, ethic is one of those businesses where you just go, it's really hard to see how you could be doing any better than you're currently doing. And let's compare them to this company Monday, which kind of came out of nowhere a couple of years ago.

Yeah. You know, entry into the shampoo market is kind of. Really. Well, the barriers to entry are really, if you look at, look at Monday, you get a plastic bottle, you put some stuff in the bottle, you sell it as a shampoo, as long as it's meeting the basic requirements, you know, in terms of the natures of the, the chemical ingredients within the product. Happy days. And if we have a little bit of a further look, we can see here, you know, Monday, they talk here about how, you know, they have no SLS or parabens. They're sustainably minded. I don't know exactly what sustainably minded means. They say that they're PETA approved or PETA approved. They say that they're vegan and cruelty free and that they have natural ingredients. Cool. And the bottles are 100 recyclable. Okay, well, that's interesting. But you know, is that true for the. In, in every country? I don't know. That they're selling you to versus when we have a little look at Ethique. I, I'd use Ethique products. Totally happy to, to say that you know, this is the most certified shampoo bar you will ever use. Like this. These are just, these are the certifications that they have. So they are a certified B Corporation. 2% of sales go to charity. They are living wage certified. They are New Zealand made certified. They have direct trading in place. They are certified palm oil free, they are certified cruelty free and vegan free. They are 100% plastic free. Their packaging is 100% compostable. They are climate positive, they plant one tree for every order and they are 100% plastic free with cardboard chipping. So in terms of making claims and being able to back it up and prove the good that you're doing, I think this is one of the key things that purpose differentiates between purpose and purpose light. And again this is why B Corp is such a useful tool to kind of bring all this together and help you understand the good that you do, but also prove it so that you can get the benefits of the, the communications that you're making to your stakeholders, whether it's the customers, employees, investors and your supply chain and others in your supply chain, others in your ecosystem. Now this is an interesting one. We're, we're almost coming up to the end here so we have plenty of time for Q A.

So this was from May 2021. This was called the Purpose Tapes. So purpose driven leaders in their own words. And this is from NatWest CEO Alison Rose who said that their purpose is to champion the potential of people, families and business. Now as a purpose statement you kind of go really any business could have that. I mean grow good. We could have that as our purpose statement. I see we've got Lawrence sitting in the green room here waiting for the panel event. You know, Sinlay could have that as their purpose statement. It's kind of a little bit wishy washy and doesn't really tell me too much about the organization and what you're doing. And I love this comment. This is from James W. Frick, he was former Vice President for Public Relations, Alumni affairs and Development at the University of Notre Dame. Is that, have I said that right? Beth, you're going to be better equipped to tell me if I've pronounced that properly. And I love this, this kind of backs up that. The same comment from a mate. Louder. You know, it's not what you gave, it's what you could have given. As James said, don't tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I'll tell you what they are. And this is an interesting thing you know, NatWest faces criminal case over money laundering. So at one point you're talking about creating benefit to families and business and then at the next minute you're facing a criminal case over money laundering. And so for me, that, that's kind of like the real acid test for, for purpose is, you know, can you genuinely prove the good that you're claiming that you're doing and are you doing it 100 of the time when no one's looking? So that's it from me. We have got a bit of time for Q and A.

Hopefully people are tuning in and that we've worked out the live stream stuff.

Let's bring Beth back in. Has Beth got any thoughts, comments, questions while we're waiting for the crowd to come up with something?

That was great. Thank you very, very much. You, you know, as you do, stole some of my thunder.

But we knew that was going to happen because you like to talk a lot.

Anyway.

Reinforcing the learning.

Yeah.

So let's see. We have a comment. Until we don't have clear regulations to avoid greenwashing, which will take a lot of time, certification as a B Corp is the only tool that can ensure we are buying a safe product. Is that a question or a statement? I think it's a statement.

I agree.

Yeah, I agree.

Go ahead, Tim.

I mean, as I said, you know, I make no claims that B Corp is kind of like this silver bullet that's going to solve all the problems. But certainly when I discovered it and connected to it, it's the best that we've got and it's getting better year on year and the more, more people that support it and you know, as, either as getting their company certified or as consumers, you know, you can start putting more pressure on B Lab, who are the organization that run the certification program to update the assessment and make sure we're asking the right questions of companies to make sure that they are doing the right thing. So yeah, 10 out of 10, I 100% agree. I.

Anyone else?

Feel free to put some. Oh, here we go. We've got another one coming in. Just a comment. That's cool. Yeah. Anyone else.

See if I've got any other messages coming in?

I checked to make sure that the link was working. Looks like the link is working on LinkedIn for the people who got the new link.

Excellent. So maybe we'll just. I'll post that liberally in a second.