"Sustainability must always be part of decision-making"

Valerie Paelman graduated in applied economic sciences at Ghent University and is working on her PhD research into companies with sustainable business models, specifically B Corps. Recently she published a scientific article together with her colleagues for which she interviewed various founders and employees of B Corps. Kim Cramer from BR-ND People was one of them.

Valerie: I believe you also did something at university?

Kim: Yes, that's correct. I studied psychology and communication science in Amsterdam. After graduating, I started working at SWOCC, a foundation established by Giep Franzen, a special professor and advertising man who has unfortunately since passed away. He saw a large gap between the communications industry and communication science: scientific knowledge was not being utilized in practice and practical experience was not being utilized in science.

I started working for that foundation as a scientific researcher. Subsequently, I was able to do a PhD research in the field of brand management: how can you optimally organize your brand portfolio as a company. It was a completely new topic so it was very fun to pioneer. In addition, just like you, I have always taught students. Still do. To students and professionals.

After my PhD, I started working in practice. First as an employee and later as a partner in a company that helped organizations with their brand positioning. Then, at the end of 2010, I founded our own company with one of my co-partners and we reorganized our work. That has everything to do with the way we develop sustainable strategies with our clients, by giving all people in the organization the opportunity to participate.

Do I understand correctly that you achieve your sustainability goals mainly by choosing clients that have a sustainable business model?

We are open to all clients, profit and non-profit, with and without a sustainable mission. But it is true that our commercial clients are always looking for their social role and that many organizations that naturally have a social role are precisely looking for more successful impact. In both cases, they want a more attractive brand to accelerate the impact. And regularly they also want to become a B Corp. We can help them with that.

Has that been the case from the start or was your strategy different at first?

It arose organically. When we started more than ten years ago, we wanted to pay more attention to our contribution to society than in the previous company. We were intrinsically driven. But it's not that if you tell that in your environment, you suddenly get all clients with whom you can also make it happen. Your credibility grows steadily. The more beautiful client cases, the more you can tell about it and then other clients think: hey I want that too. Our client portfolio is very broad: small, large, profit, non-profit, startup and established. The common thread is that they are in transition. Our task is to make that transition sustainable. Our status as a B Corp Way consultant selected by B Lab helps with that.

On the spectrum of idealistic non-profit organizations and pure profit-driven companies, those two are growing a bit towards the middle.

Actually yes. And the beauty of the experience you have in both categories is that you can bring together the strengths of both. Because in an ideal world, as far as I'm concerned, all organizations would be in the middle. The healthiest situation is that you can take care of your own continuity while doing good for the world.

That's what B Corp stands for too.

Yes, exactly.

You're still relatively small so many years after your founding. Is the company still in startup phase?

No, we're certainly not in startup phase. Alexander and I have been working together for sixteen years and in the current form with BR-ND People for twelve years. In our previous company, we had big growth ambitions. Then the financial crisis came. Clients stopped work, we couldn't renew contracts and had to let people go. A roller coaster from which I learned a lot. Now we mainly want to do beautiful work with nice people. We think it's important to grow in impact. If it's necessary to grow in revenue and number of people, then that's a consequence, but it's about the impact. By the way, you could of course also say that we are continuously in startup phase. You have to keep innovating, thinking about the changing future.

When did you become interested in B Corp? How did you come into contact with it?

It must have been around 2014. We went to a meeting a few times. I think we just picked it up somewhere online. Could it be that B Lab Europe was founded around that time? We thought it was quite nice, but it was also still a bit vague for us what exactly it was. We tried to fill in the B Impact Assessment at the time. We found that way too complicated. It was also still very American-based at the time. Logical, because that's where it came from. As a small company, we didn't really seem to fit in.

In 2017 we got an assignment from a client, Nextview, who had just become a B corp themselves. They had organized an introduction with different agencies and said: you also seem like a B Corp with the values you stand for. That was a trigger for us to really seriously fill in the B Impact Assessment. It wasn't easy and there were no European reviewers from B Lab yet, but we succeeded then.

Do you also use the B Corp certification on the job market to attract people?

Almost everywhere we communicate about ourselves, it's included. As for the job market, we get many open applications from people who are attracted to our way of thinking. That we are B Corp is mentioned very often.

So even if you have a job interview, for example, it will probably come up?

Yes, certainly. By the way, it's not that if they've never heard of B Corp they can't come work or intern with us. We're happy that we can then inspire someone again.

How involved are employees in that sustainability? Is that why they do their job or is it something they accept?

In any case, we have always attached great value to a healthy and pleasant culture in all respects. For nine out of ten people, sustainability is really an intrinsic motivation. Perhaps not always from the beginning when they start working with us, but it develops very quickly because we pay a lot of attention to it. That sometimes opens eyes. You get infected by it in a positive sense.

Does B Corp play a role in that?

Every Monday we have our week start and then B Corp is always a topic on the agenda. So it certainly comes up at least once a week: have we done anything in the area of sustainability or is there something planned for the coming week? We keep a log about it. Our B Keeper is responsible for this.

We also always actively participate in all kinds of B Corp initiatives and campaigns, such as the Interdependence Coalition and B Corp Month, and we are very involved in the B Corp community. In Amsterdam, for example, we took the initiative for a collaboration with other creative agencies to create a game around JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion). So it is certainly always a major part of our work.

Is the B Corp label sometimes used to motivate certain choices? For example, choices that you as founders make without support from the employees? Or vice versa?

I think — I hope — that there is no difference at all between what the founders and the employees want. Our organization is completely flat. We as founders believe that we are not the boss and that we can decide things as a team. Of course, everyone has their tasks and not everyone is continuously involved in every decision. But regardless of who is responsible for a certain decision, sustainability must always be part of the decision-making.

By the way, it DOES happen that people don't constantly think about it. For example, if they want to purchase something and forget to look at the sustainable aspect. Then we have to whistle them back: great job, keep going, but if you also include sustainability in your decision, do you still come to the same outcome? The discipline of B Corp thinking is just a little bit stronger in one person than in another who hasn't been working with it for that long.

You said earlier: it's not so much about growth unless it's growth of impact. Do you measure that impact in one way or another?

That's a very good question that we also ask ourselves. Not so much whether we want to measure it, but how we can measure it well. The effect of our work is difficult to determine anyway. We develop strategy in co-creation with the client and at some point you let that client go, often before the moment the strategy is executed. It's then difficult to make your part of the effect on the client's objectives measurable. What you can do is have a qualitative conversation with your clients to ask how much impact you've made and what has changed. In addition, we can of course say something quantitatively about the process, for example how many workshops did you give, how many people did you reach. But we want and need to get better insight into the impact we make.

If you are active in the B Corp community, you see that some organizations run into the same things. Then you can start collaborating, for example to develop a measuring instrument, or a tool. And you can offer such tools to B Lab so they can share it with the rest of the community.

Can you give an example of one of the questions from the B Impact Assessment that you thought, actually we can work on this?

Well, that's for example proving that you make an impact with your clients. But it can also be something simpler like — for example — is there a code of ethics? We didn't have one. So we defined and published a code of ethics with the team. That led to a good conversation about ethics and our moral compass. Once it was published, we thought, it's actually good to let everyone we work with — our suppliers, our clients and partners — know that we have this and ask them if they also have something like this. If so, we would like to see it.

A lot of those topics from the BIA seem like some kind of annoying administrative action — all that documentation you have to submit — but the beauty of it is that it can lead to a ripple effect. Because I have to have it, initially for my certification, we have a very nice conversation with our team, we publish it on the website and we ask others if they also have it. We actually stimulate them to become a bit B Corp-like too.

And the ball is rolling...

Exactly!

Read Valerie's article