[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he business community in Kenya plays an important role in making the economy stable, more sustainable and inclusive. Being a growing economy, Kenya needs businesses that not only make profits for the shareholders but also make a positive impact on people and planet. Making positive impact is what we refer to as Future Proof Business.
It is making sure that businesses thrive not only for today but for generations to come. At the very rudimentary level, it translates to businesses being responsible for their full impact, not just within the business but throughout the value chain.
This, however, doesn’t just happen without deliberate action. It requires a holistic mindset, visionary action and new leadership. The prerequisite for new business mindset is new business values that are embedded in the DNA of a business.
For a business to be future proof, it should have two distinct qualities. One, it should be sustainable and two, it should be inclusive. Sustainability guarantees that the core business undertakes its operations and gains profits without affecting the ability of future generations to do the same.
Inclusiveness, on the other hand, means bringing in every stakeholder and having a positive impact on people at the bottom of the pyramid through affordable, high quality, and need-based products. Inclusiveness can also be at the core of the business through increasing the engagement of employees in an organization. This goes a long way in improving quality of work, communication, and transparency.
Sustainable and inclusive businesses take the little steps to integrate low-income people into the value chains. They empower people to participate in markets as producers, buyers, suppliers, and consumers.
They also empower employees and invest in the community where the business is located. Businesses that want to be future proof must have a code of ethics and business values. Everywhere business is conducted, ethics matters as ethical leadership is critical to good governance.
A successful business depends on the trust of various parties including employees, managers, executives, customers, suppliers, and even competitors. The code of ethics reflects the organization’s core values. A code of ethics defines acceptable behaviors, provides high standards of practice, provides self-evaluation benchmark, establishes a framework for professional responsibilities and promotes and enhances the brand.
A ‘working’ code of ethics depends on whether those codes are part of the business DNA. If the identity doesn’t reflect the values on which the code is based – implementation, enforcement and accountability will not be in place.
The structural changes required to make value chains sustainable require confidence and support of fiscal players. A fundamental but often disregarded cause is a governance mindset that takes only a partial understanding of the multilateral link between business and nature.
Change of mindset requires clarity, role modelling, achievability, commitment and enforcement.
This partial view sees business relationship to nature as separate. This isolated mindset blinds leadership to the necessary innovations required to profitably address the great systemic challenges.
With an isolated mindset, leaders focus mainly on the portion of the business-nature relationship that can be quantitatively evaluated. Less tangible social and ecological factors are considered as milieu – something that is nice but not essential to the decision-making equation because it is not measurable.
To do so effectively, corporate leaders need a different mindset which sees business and nature as deeply and existentially interconnected.
Leaders with an integrated mindset would see the existential value of nature for many local and indigenous people, and the impact of poor local and regional governance on sustainable development. A commitment to integrity is about creating a climate for continued success. These require a change of mindset.
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According to Mr William Oelofse of Deloitte, collusion is not the right mindset to grow businesses.
SIB-Kenya, an organisation that supports businesses by providing advice on where they can increase their positive impact, works with B-lab to measure status and impact on the SIB journey. B-lab tools enable businesses, investors and institution to measure their social and environmental impact. Companies measure and report on their impact for many reasons.
It gives information that informs their decisions on strategy and operations, driving improvements in performance. Reporting on impact also improves accountability and transparency.
Businesses can do good and do well at the same time with a Sustainable Inclusive Business approach. It’s all about responsibility towards the full business impact. The extent of the responsibility lies within one’s true Business DNA, core values and therefore business ethics.
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