1 00:00:07,490 --> 00:00:09,590 And I'll start with my full disclosure, 2 00:00:09,590 --> 00:00:18,169 which I always do obliterate the term social entrepreneurship from the vocabulary and just focus on entrepreneurship, 3 00:00:18,170 --> 00:00:26,870 because all entrepreneurship should have, as we're finding out, social, environmental and governance components if it's going to be sustainable. 4 00:00:27,290 --> 00:00:30,710 Let's talk a little bit about future proofing. 5 00:00:32,020 --> 00:00:36,470 If I say. How can you futureproof your house? 6 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:42,470 What would you think I was talking about? How would you futureproof your house? 7 00:00:42,710 --> 00:00:46,850 Anybody? Yes. 8 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,620 Open windows and vinyl Saturday. And don't. 9 00:00:51,620 --> 00:00:57,589 Did everybody hear that don't big loud loud open windows and vinyl siding. 10 00:00:57,590 --> 00:01:03,200 I used to sell them door to door and that was our pitch. So your future proofing your house? 11 00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:08,140 Why was that future proofing your house? The windows, they are very strong. 12 00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:13,160 Supposedly, they were related to something that was used on a NASCAR shuttle. 13 00:01:13,790 --> 00:01:21,319 And boy, you're a great salesman. I would buy everything on a vinyl siding. 14 00:01:21,320 --> 00:01:24,740 It protected the wood from sun and wood. Okay. 15 00:01:25,490 --> 00:01:28,790 How else? How else would you futureproof your house? 16 00:01:30,270 --> 00:01:33,270 Yes. Ensure it. Okay. 17 00:01:33,480 --> 00:01:38,820 Good point. Hopefully your insurance won't be around so that it pays back. 18 00:01:39,360 --> 00:01:46,679 Anything else? So if you're going to futureproof your house, 19 00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:52,319 you're really looking at what could happen eventually in terms of something that would threaten your house. 20 00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:58,799 Maybe you live in an earthquake friendly zone, let's put it that way, or a flood friendly zone or whatever. 21 00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:02,580 And you would be looking at that? Well, we talk about future proofing business. 22 00:02:02,580 --> 00:02:08,610 What I really want to do tonight is give you a sense of where we're going with business today, 23 00:02:09,060 --> 00:02:13,410 what are the trends that I see, and then give you some very concrete tools. 24 00:02:13,740 --> 00:02:16,440 If you are going about building a business, 25 00:02:16,890 --> 00:02:25,410 how do you actually incorporate what seems to be very complicated aspects into thinking about how would I future proof my business? 26 00:02:25,410 --> 00:02:30,059 And let me let me just start with this and hopefully you're going to have to put up with my absolutely horrible technique. 27 00:02:30,060 --> 00:02:34,200 Okay. What's the new normal? The new normal is this. 28 00:02:34,890 --> 00:02:38,070 We know that we are going to be living in a hotter, 29 00:02:38,670 --> 00:02:45,300 much more re and we are already much more resource scarce world and a much more 30 00:02:45,330 --> 00:02:50,879 transparent world so that everybody knows whatever is out there in terms of, 31 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:57,050 you know, disclosure around corporate, you know, misbehaviour or government misbehaviour, 32 00:02:57,060 --> 00:03:00,750 anybody misbehaviour, it's out there, whether it's true or not, it's out there. 33 00:03:01,140 --> 00:03:05,370 And then the other aspect is, of course, everything is unpredictable. 34 00:03:05,760 --> 00:03:11,040 We can no longer predict the patterns of the future by looking at what happened in the past. 35 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:18,540 Things are accelerating at such a rapid pace that this is really something that, you know, if you look at CEOs, 36 00:03:18,540 --> 00:03:24,239 which I often deal with, they're scrambling to figure out what is what does this mean for a company? 37 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:30,690 Where should we be going? And so that really is a completely different way of looking at things. 38 00:03:31,050 --> 00:03:36,450 And so they're beginning to think about what how should we be reacting to this? 39 00:03:36,780 --> 00:03:41,310 How should we be preparing our business so that it is future proof? 40 00:03:41,790 --> 00:03:49,920 Okay. And some of those aspects are very challenging because business has been used to thinking about the short term. 41 00:03:50,490 --> 00:03:55,379 And anybody who has ever run a business knows that cash flow is very important. 42 00:03:55,380 --> 00:03:59,130 Your financial health is very important, so you tend to focus on that. 43 00:03:59,490 --> 00:04:06,090 But all of a sudden they're going actually the short term. I need to start thinking for a longer term because a lot of these other issues that 44 00:04:06,090 --> 00:04:10,050 I've never had to deal with are going to be affecting my shorter term bottom line. 45 00:04:10,260 --> 00:04:15,840 So that's the first main challenge is a total way of looking at the world in a different way, or at least in business. 46 00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:18,660 And this is where it really is tough. 47 00:04:19,110 --> 00:04:27,569 You know, business has really been used to and we've all been used to something that Steven Green has has talked about. 48 00:04:27,570 --> 00:04:30,570 Steven Green was the former chair of HSBC. 49 00:04:30,930 --> 00:04:35,399 He's an Anglican priest, which many not very many people know about. 50 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:42,990 And now he is a minister in government, in charge of trade or some very fancy British name. 51 00:04:44,220 --> 00:04:48,480 And what he but he basically he wrote this book called Good Value. 52 00:04:48,690 --> 00:04:51,629 That's really very it's very philosophical. 53 00:04:51,630 --> 00:04:58,470 Of course, he went to Oxford and he basically looks at the history of business and he looks at how things have been done. 54 00:04:58,860 --> 00:05:05,340 And he says today our biggest ill is that we divide where how we live our lives. 55 00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:15,690 This is my work person and this is my family person and this is my church person and this is my volunteer person. 56 00:05:16,020 --> 00:05:22,139 And a lot of times those things don't come together. They don't resonate, and that is one of the great he says. 57 00:05:22,140 --> 00:05:28,230 This is one of the great ills of of life. And so it really allows us to make that clear, which are well, 58 00:05:28,500 --> 00:05:33,720 that's why you have people who are just wonderful community members and wonderful church goers, and yet, 59 00:05:33,900 --> 00:05:37,140 you know, they may be part of the Mafia, etc., etc., you know, 60 00:05:37,380 --> 00:05:43,470 so we tend to be able to compartmentalise the idea of future proofing businesses, how do we bring this together? 61 00:05:43,710 --> 00:05:46,350 And it's not just about business, it's about our lives. 62 00:05:46,650 --> 00:05:54,990 How do we actually end up pursuing what we really want to do with our lives and what we really value with, 63 00:05:54,990 --> 00:05:59,300 you know, with our time, the time that we're here, you know, on on earth. 64 00:05:59,460 --> 00:06:08,340 So put it rather cynically. So business as usual is this is where I make my money and this is where I do good and never the twain shall meet. 65 00:06:08,340 --> 00:06:11,790 That's a little bit exaggerated, but that's often been the case. 66 00:06:12,300 --> 00:06:20,460 And what we're looking at when we talk about when we when businesses begin to say, you know, we really need to look at this in a different way, 67 00:06:20,790 --> 00:06:29,550 it really is moving from CSR, which stands for Corporate Social Responsibility, which is kind, sort of what you do to tick the boxes. 68 00:06:29,790 --> 00:06:33,930 In the most cynical viewpoint, some CSR programs are much more integrated, 69 00:06:34,320 --> 00:06:42,510 but basically people who run CSR units, etc. are like a little wart on their corporate. 70 00:06:43,650 --> 00:06:49,800 I mean, that's a horrible thing to say, isn't it? But anyway, the point is, they're kind of like a little satellite hovering around there, 71 00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:54,150 and everybody else is like it's like, you know, it's like the person who's in charge of diversity. 72 00:06:54,330 --> 00:06:58,050 Oh, yes, you shall have diversity or you shall have gender mainstreaming. 73 00:06:58,260 --> 00:07:03,270 And then there's some poor women trying to change the entire way that the company works. 74 00:07:04,020 --> 00:07:09,750 So CSR is very much like that. It's a tipping of the hat without and in general that is the case. 75 00:07:10,050 --> 00:07:13,379 But now more and more CEOs are realising that that doesn't work. 76 00:07:13,380 --> 00:07:16,290 And I'm going to give you a couple of ideas in terms. 77 00:07:16,290 --> 00:07:27,180 But first of all, even the most, you know, radical activists like McKinsey and MIT are basically doing, you know, 78 00:07:27,240 --> 00:07:34,139 some studies that are actually proving that you want to know what future proofing your business actually pays. 79 00:07:34,140 --> 00:07:38,640 And these are some of the major studies of the major publications that have come out. 80 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:49,470 And as you can see, they're pretty recognisable in terms of saying this actually pays off and this is what we know. 81 00:07:50,820 --> 00:07:56,639 Goldman Sachs in their study has found that companies that futureproof their business and by this we're 82 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:01,470 going to get into get away from the jargon of future proofing business and tell you exactly what that means, 83 00:08:02,040 --> 00:08:08,970 that they actually have 25% higher stock value than their counterparts that haven't gotten that rapid. 84 00:08:10,610 --> 00:08:18,950 So basically what's happening is more and more, although I don't want to tell you that this is a pandemic, it's very slow. 85 00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:24,140 It's very slow. But more and more, we're seeing companies that are beginning to really take a hard look at this, 86 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:32,330 a hard look at their supply chains and how they do business, a hard look at who do they work with, how do those people work and under what conditions. 87 00:08:32,570 --> 00:08:39,559 And really putting it out there in terms of knowing that because the world is more transparent, they can get into trouble like that if they're not. 88 00:08:39,560 --> 00:08:45,590 If anything, it's great that they're running scared because they are being forced to do some of the right things. 89 00:08:46,170 --> 00:08:52,520 And these are some of the key components to improve short and long term profitability. 90 00:08:53,740 --> 00:08:57,040 And we're going to get into each one of those and I'm going to be giving you 91 00:08:57,040 --> 00:09:00,249 tools for how do you incorporate this so you don't need to be taking notes, 92 00:09:00,250 --> 00:09:03,550 I think. Isn't it like that? Aren't these all going to be up on. Yeah. 93 00:09:03,850 --> 00:09:07,479 And I'm going to give you some links so that you can begin to think about this, 94 00:09:07,480 --> 00:09:13,060 because I know that after this of starting your business comes building your business. 95 00:09:13,330 --> 00:09:22,540 And this session actually I'd want to say bridges both of those both of those sessions because as you begin to think about starting your business, 96 00:09:22,540 --> 00:09:27,309 you'll find some of these issues will make you reflect. 97 00:09:27,310 --> 00:09:32,080 And then as you build your business, you will find that you will actually have tools to be able to incorporate. 98 00:09:32,410 --> 00:09:38,380 So governance immediately, when people say governance, people think of boards, don't you? 99 00:09:39,250 --> 00:09:43,660 It's so much more than boards. And you'll find out exactly what that means. 100 00:09:44,110 --> 00:09:48,550 Workers. These both things to workers and community are part of the social component. 101 00:09:49,180 --> 00:09:50,290 How do you treat your workers? 102 00:09:50,290 --> 00:09:59,619 If you look at a company like Wal-Mart that I find absolutely fascinating and this is the schizophrenia of business, Walmart, huge company, 103 00:09:59,620 --> 00:10:05,379 employs millions of people and basically is doing all of these campaigns around, 104 00:10:05,380 --> 00:10:09,910 you know, helping women in developing countries get employment, etc., etc. 105 00:10:10,210 --> 00:10:15,490 And meanwhile, how does it treat its workers? Not real well. 106 00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:22,640 So there is this schizophrenia in that in a sense that still needs to be worked out. 107 00:10:23,030 --> 00:10:26,390 And community, how do you how do you actually support the community? 108 00:10:26,420 --> 00:10:30,590 We're going to show you a couple of little film clips of what companies are doing around that. 109 00:10:31,070 --> 00:10:35,389 And then finally, of course, the obvious one environment. What is your environmental footprint? 110 00:10:35,390 --> 00:10:41,360 Even if you are a financial institution, even if you are have you'd say, oh, I have nothing to do with environment. 111 00:10:41,630 --> 00:10:45,410 You actually do. So those are the big four components. 112 00:10:45,590 --> 00:10:49,640 Now, why would why would people want to do this? 113 00:10:50,030 --> 00:10:52,100 Why would you know? This is a lot of work. 114 00:10:52,820 --> 00:10:59,870 But the interesting thing is that many of the CEOs I talked to today are saying and if you really in the financial institutions, 115 00:10:59,870 --> 00:11:03,200 they're going, nobody wants to work for us anymore. 116 00:11:04,190 --> 00:11:06,769 What do we do? How do we motivate people to come? 117 00:11:06,770 --> 00:11:15,230 People want to work for organisations, for companies that are basically fundamentally innovative, philosophically positive and morally compelling. 118 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:16,730 That's what everybody wants. 119 00:11:17,030 --> 00:11:25,730 And that is a tough act to follow or a tough, you know, a tough thing to do if you are not really honest about what you're doing. 120 00:11:26,060 --> 00:11:29,420 So the CEO wants to attract and retain the best talent. 121 00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:33,500 How do you do that? Many ceos go when our h.r. 122 00:11:33,500 --> 00:11:39,170 People go out to actually interview many of the mbas or the post grads or whatever. 123 00:11:39,500 --> 00:11:45,260 What we're finding is they're interviewing us and saying, so what do you do about x, y or Z? 124 00:11:45,590 --> 00:11:53,000 And they're finding that a very interesting flip of the coin or the CFO wants to attract investors and save money. 125 00:11:53,210 --> 00:11:58,850 That's another reason why they're interested in doing this or h.r. 126 00:11:58,850 --> 00:12:03,480 And we get this all the time. Human resources goes. How do we motivate our employees to do fun? 127 00:12:03,740 --> 00:12:07,280 You know, it's kind of a sad thing that people go to work and they don't feel motivated by 128 00:12:07,280 --> 00:12:10,360 what they're doing and have to go out and do something totally different to, 129 00:12:10,670 --> 00:12:15,559 you know, get them excited. But this is one of the big things that we get all the time from big companies. 130 00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:20,930 We want to engage because we want to motivate our employees, want to give them a reason for working here. 131 00:12:21,470 --> 00:12:24,530 And the sales team wants to increase consumer trust. 132 00:12:24,530 --> 00:12:32,240 Some very interesting lessons learned there that I could go into in terms of some of the ways that big companies have done that. 133 00:12:34,070 --> 00:12:38,150 Operations managers want to save on on on efficiencies, etc. 134 00:12:38,810 --> 00:12:44,000 And then, you know, there's always the marketing team goes, hey, a good opportunity for us. 135 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:48,709 You know, anyway, these are some of the motivations why people are beginning to think about how 136 00:12:48,710 --> 00:12:53,480 do we actually show that we are good citizens in this world and not just, 137 00:12:53,690 --> 00:13:02,509 you know, wanting to save. So one of the things that questions that I get and all the time and and I was working with Goldman Sachs in an initiative 138 00:13:02,510 --> 00:13:11,989 that they did here in the UK called 10,000 small businesses where basically went to about five of of UK's big urban hubs, 139 00:13:11,990 --> 00:13:21,500 Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, etc. and looked at and and they selected entrepreneurs who were just starting. 140 00:13:21,980 --> 00:13:27,350 And when we would talk about this, they'd go, hey, come on, you know, I'm just a start up. 141 00:13:27,950 --> 00:13:32,299 I can't afford to do this kind of stuff. This stuff is for the big guys. 142 00:13:32,300 --> 00:13:36,440 It's not for little ones like me. I'm just trying to make you know, I'm trying to make ends meet. 143 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:37,880 I'm trying to pay my workers. I'm trying. 144 00:13:38,510 --> 00:13:44,060 And in fact, what I'm going to show you is that across the board, this isn't something that you do from one day to the other. 145 00:13:44,330 --> 00:13:51,050 This is a progressive, a progressive process that I will give you some tools to be able to follow through.