In this episode of Game Changers, host Sophie Brazell-Ng sits down with James Radford, former Chief of Staff at St John Ambulance, and Alex Wilford, Managing Consultant at Clarasys, to discuss the...
How our sustainability practice can help you
Purpose and Impact
Purpose-driven is a mantra that organisations are adopting at a rapid pace.
We believe that the accepted definition of a purpose-led business is important and complex.
“A purpose-driven business produces profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet, and does not profit from producing problems for people or planet.” Professor Colin Mayer
We use PAS 808 (soon to be ISO 37011) to help us explore what it means to be purpose-led.
Here’s our view of the four criteria to being purpose-led:
IT’S NOT EASY
When an organisation is built with a profit-first mindset it takes a fundamental rewiring to make purpose a reality and not a PR exercise.
As strategy, reporting and leadership interventions become established, it can be hard to know how to embed the purpose across the organisation, cultivate the purpose to achieve commercial success, and identify the right places the business can have an impact.
We help organisations to become more responsive and adaptive, successfully embed change and transformation, galvanise and de-risk themselves in a challenging political climate, boost their innovation, identify new routes to market, and inspire a committed and motivated workforce.
We do this by putting purpose at the heart of the organisation, and ensuring that everything is done through a lens of creating value for people and planet, profitably.
EXPECT AN ADVENTURE
This is an exciting area of best practice innovation: those publicly ahead will admit they’re still working it out.
Clarasys is at the epicentre of best practice development, both in thought leadership, and practice by walking with our clients every step of the way.
Our approach is designed around exploring how a business can create value, for themselves and for the world, through looking at businesses and our stakeholders through a different lens.
“We want to be purpose-led, but aren’t sure where to start”
“We need to bring our purpose statement to life”
“We want to run in a purpose-led way but we aren’t set up like that”
“How do I know we are achieving anything”
Trying to be purpose-led while running your organisation the same way as it always has isn’t going to work. Being purpose-led requires different capabilities, different organisational muscles to be able to see the world around you differently and react and respond appropriately.
We help organisations understand what it is that needs to be tweaked or re-imagined across their people, processes, data, performance, and culture that will turbocharge their value creation engine.
Assessing impact is complex as it’s not often easily quantifiable and attributable. We believe that organisations can and should build high-quality insights that accurately reflect the impact they are having. We help build the necessary capabilities, frameworks and structures within organisations to capture and analyse impact data effectively. We also ensure your team has the skills required to interpret the data correctly, so you can confidently track your progress and make informed decisions.
Define your impact
We engage with stakeholders to understand and prioritise impact goals and create an impact-driven strategy using the Theory of Change model.
Design for impact
We build the capability to deliver impact through developing operating models that enable purpose-led cultural, structural and behavioural change, focused around your Theory of Change.
Measure your impact
We help organisations develop the processes and ways of working to better understand whether or not they are achieving their desired impact and what they need to do in response.
Unlock your purpose-driven impact
Hear from Ruth, one of our sustainability, purpose and impact leads about how we help organisations to define, implement, and amplify their purpose-driven impact on the world.
Working with the Purpose in Practice Community
Clarasys are members and facilitators of the PIPC where we are sharing our insight and expertise while learning from others who are going through purpose journeys. Alongside Anglian Water and OfCom, we are leading a line of inquiry focused on how to embed purpose in organisation strategy and performance reporting, find out more about this here.
We believe that the best way to deliver high-quality work is to continuously learn from others. That’s why we are participating; to hear from other’s experiences, collectively explore the challenges and be part of the development in this space.
What’s on our mind
Businesses today are at a crossroads. For a long time, the orienting goal has been to maximise profits and shareholder value, often at the expense of people and the planet. Yet, as the world grapples...
TESTIMONIALS
What our clients say
‘This work is eminently usable, practical, and achievable. Consultancies have delivered us 'great' products but it didn't fit because it didn't touch who we are at our core and essence...you've managed to do this because you've schooled yourself on how to listen. It's very clear you have a thoughtful and defined process about how you do impact measurement work, I noticed it, and it's exceptional".
Incompass
Jean Phelps
CEO, Incompass
“The guidance offered by Clarasys provided us with clarity and structure and allowed us to contextualise our aims, and synthesise them with those of our partners. The team were flexible, accommodating, personable, and highly knowledgeable, and we are immensely grateful for the support provided.”
NSPCC
Bob Saull
Senior Manager, NSPCC
Meet the experts
Ruth Wilkinson
Ruth joined Clarasys in January 2022, leaving the not-for-profit sector where she worked as the Sustainability and Impact Lead at a large UK charity, to develop and implement their first sustainability strategy. She specialises in supporting businesses and not-for-profits who want to find viable ways to solve the world’s greatest problems, to increase their positive impact.Outside of work, Ruth loves open-water swimming, hiking, yoga and good food.
Sam Maguire
Sam is a principal consultant who specialises in sustainability strategy and operating model design across multiple industries. He has particular expertise in sustainable business models and designing organisations to be more circular. Having previously worked for Clarasys for four years he rejoined in May 2021 to lead the development of our internal sustainability strategy and roadmap and the formation of our sustainability proposition. Outside of work Sam enjoys playing sport, cooking and being out on his bike.