The Organization:
MaRS is North America’s largest urban Innovation Hub and registered charity, supporting hundreds of companies at every stage of growth to achieve global impact and scale. Started at MaRS, the Business for Purpose Network (B4PN) is a coalition of leaders from the private, nonprofit, academic and public sectors. B4PN’s mission is to help Canadian businesses shift beyond traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) to focusing on societal purpose as their reason for being.
The Assignment:
MaRS and a dozen Business for Purpose (B4PN) Founding Members had been working on advancing the Social Purpose of Business movement in their own domains for several years, focused on environmental issues, social responsibility and/or leading the work from their geographic perspective. They were at a stage in their development looking to align the diverse perspectives of subject matter experts, to frame the issue and develop an approach to engage critical stakeholders and move to action, towards a shared goal. They knew they would also need a governance structure to house and move the work forward.
Overall Outcomes:
Like so many of Lynn’s consulting engagements, with her guidance, the team gained a deeper understanding of the issue they aimed to address and the barriers to success. They committed to delivering a specific, measurable, stretch-goal social impact and developed the stakeholder-validated plan necessary to direct and communicate their work. They also developed a revised governance structure. Overall, they gained impact-focused strategic clarity and alignment to make a meaningful difference.
Outcome #1:
A movement is hard to measure. The Purpose Economy is hard to measure. How will we know if we’re successful? Recognizing the power of a specific measurable objective, with guidance, the team set a target that by 2030 “25% of Canadian businesses are adopting, disclosing, and authentically embedding a social purpose across their operations and relationships, and collaborating with others to achieve it.” They successfully described the outcome, breaking it into its measurable steps.
Outcome #2
The team holistically identified 11 critical stakeholder groups and their roles as levers of change in shifting to a Purpose Economy. Most importantly, they were guided to dive deeper to identify that businesses and business leaders had to be at the centre of this work, as this is where the behaviours would show up. A business school, government or association (three examples of the critical stakeholder groups) could be powerful levers for change by teaching, legislating or promoting a move to businesses being about more than profit, but this work recognized it would come down to businesses and business leaders taking action for the Purpose Economy to happen.
The Framework
With business at the centre, 5 strategies support change roles for the 11 stakeholder groups.
Outcome #3
What is the role of this team in the Purpose Economy movement? How does this work best move forward? The team saw a necessary role to Connect, Catalyze, and Amplify around five strategic focus areas requiring cross-sectoral collaboration. Using a Constellation model, it developed a governance structure creating roles for an expanded roster of change agents to drive businesses to a social purpose.
Find Out More:
A job well done, this work has indeed been catalyzed. It is exciting to see it continue to gain momentum under the Canadian Purpose Economy Project.
Testimonial:
“While I was at MaRS, we launched a Business for Purpose Network (B4PN). One of our tasks was to craft an easy to understand depiction of the ecosystem and how we needed to impact it. Lynn worked with our diverse coalition - all online - to create (5) strategic areas of focus: create an enabling environment; support societal purpose champions; accelerate business adoption and scale; mobilize resources; and conduct research and education. All mapped to 11 groups of key players like government, intermediaries, and talent - with business at the core. It took a very messy, complicated system and theory of change and made it accessible. Her biggest talent was in bringing us all along, despite our divergent experiences and points of view. The infographic she produced remains intact today and is being used to continue to advance the purpose economy in Canada.”
Allyson Hewitt, former VP Impact, MaRS