The Global Sustainable Development Goals aren't just for saving the planet - they also help with quality management and professional standards

10 years ago the United Nations launched the global Sustainable Development Goals - a basket of 17 thematic aspirations that, if pursed well, will help see our common world a generally better place to live, work, and play for all of us (as well as those animals and vegetations that we also share the planet with too).

And in the year that followed, I redesigned the impact reporting framework I'd started to create for my own enterprise around it.

The goals, and my engagement with them in this way, have subsequently drawn ongoing interest and recognition - most recently from a new global special interest group who asked me to be their inaugural guest speaker. Specifically, the group is made up of facilitators who are all part of the global International Association of Facilitators, and who were keen to explore and understand different perspectives in how facilitators (one of the capes I sometimes don) have thought about how the Goals relate to their practice and profession.

As always, when I have opportunity to share some of my own story in this way, I try to deliberately pause to reflect on it afterwards. This post is therefore what struck me as being of most interest and encouragement from my side of the screen (but if you manage to join this interest group - links below, you'll also get to read other's take-ways to add to these):

Good ideas take time 

Most people who have a passing awareness with the Goals might know that they were launched in 2015. 

But they weren't officially adopted until 2016, the first guidance about reporting against them wasn't published until the year after that - and it took 3 years to even get to their launch point after the concept for them was first agreed and started to be explored in 2012.

So whatever your aspirations might be to create change; design new systems; and see people adopt new ways of working - take some consolation that it took the UN 3 years to get to the point of being able to start to get some early adopters to commit to adopt these Goals after they first started to talk about the idea of them.

You don't (and shouldn't try to) do it all

One of the few regrets I have in this life, is that I didn't buy all of the mugs I once saw in a shop window, with the message "you can't save everyone" printed on them.

The Goals are no different - they were never designed or intended to be adopted in their entirety by any single organisation. That's why I've focussed on working to 5 of the 17 Goals: it means I can hopefully be more credible in how I'm presenting myself in how I'm contributing to them (i.e. I'm not making what many would see as incredulous claims about how my different business offers are helping to improve the biosphere for life under the sea).

Altruism isn't (and shouldn't be) the only motivation for all of us that adopt the Goals 

As part of my reflections with the group, I'd mapped the Goals against the IAF's professional standards for facilitators. In doing so, it highlighted how taking a Goals-based approach to how you design and deliver your work very easily demonstrates how you're meeting and working to occupational and quality assurance standards - so there's also a clear direct business case for the Goals to be picked up, as well as an ethical/moral one.

My using the Goals helps others to contribute to their delivery

As my business model and ways of working are wrapped around the Goals, then the more I work, the more I'm delivering against them. Which means that whenever a client commissions me, I'll do more work = more delivery against the Goals.

I'm not aware that any client has ever engaged me solely on the basis of this, but it's an additional assurance I can offer them as to the wider benefits they get from using me as their consultant?

We don't usually think about how the Goals help us have better conversations about our role in local communities and the wider economy 

I was struck by how most people hadn't fully appreciated the wider importance of small and micro businesses, and how we can encourage and support these by trying to prioritise them in our own respective supply chains - despite us all bemoaning when a large employer closes their site, and the wave of unemployment this causes with the knock on effects to other businesses, families being able to remain in the area to find new work, etc.

The Goals prompt us to think about who we're doing business with, and how this in turn helps build more resilient local communities in the context of seemingly increasingly unpredictable economies and extreme weather events.

We're all already doing more than we realise

Through breakout room reflections, people shared a range of practices that they already used that were aligned with the Goals, but who hadn't realised the importance or impact of, before correlating them in this way. This meant people were more encouraged to continue and build on these models of working. And, within the framework of the Goals, they'll now be able to more easily share with others, as encouragement and challenge for them to consider doing similar.

If you'd like to know more about the conversations which are exploring how the Global Goals are being supported through the work of facilitators, please check out the IAF's Special Interest Group at: https://www.iaf-members.org/site/chapters/sustainable-development-goals

And a recording of the story sharing of my history with, thinking about, and approach to the Goals can be watched again via my YouTube channel:

Why social entrepreneurs (can) never retire

In my decades of walking around different parts of the social economy, there's something that's always personally bugged me - far too few people encourage us to openly talk, and think about, how we get paid (and how much we should be paid).

The focus always seems to be on supporting a person or groups' shiny social enterprise idea, and how to help it create as much impact in the world as possible. There's an implicit assumption that the social entrepreneur leading it will not only be able to give the emerging and growing venture whatever it needs from themselves personally (time, energy, own money, etc), but that they'll be able to do so indefinitely without needing to take anything from it to balance/in recognition of this.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any talk of 'succession' or 'exit' (such as we see in 'mainstream' business support programmes). There's little or no option for social entrepreneurs to take any form of future 'sweat equity' in lieu of foregone wages, the lost time they've incurred in otherwise having been able to build up savings for their own retirement, etc; (does this mean we may see future generations of social entrepreneurs retire into poverty?).

This also creates problems beyond those for the individual person as outlined above - most people who pick up, or are offered the badge of 'social entrepreneur' aren't in privileged or independently wealthy positions. They (we) need to continue to earn money to pay our rent and bills with. And as social enterprises are usually relatively slow to start to be able to generate enough cash to offer and sustain wages, this usually means many start life as 'side hustles' alongside other paid work that the person needs to maintain so they can still afford to live. This in turn, creates more tensions and potential issues for these new social enterprises, as they're being managed with a part-time/split-focus founder.

But despite the potential gloom in the above, I'm starting to see/take some encouragement from a small but growing trend of people who seem to be similarly feeling able to start to talk more openly about the social enterprises they're developing, and who need to recognise and reconcile these tensions and possible contradictions - this has led to my being asked to explore more 'group structure models' (using combinations of linked legal forms to help best manage the tension between a founders' personal, and their respective communities' needs, both now and into the future). It's also involved my starting to be approached by the leaders of more established social enterprises and charities, asking for support with salary benchmarking (although to date, this has highlighted how in general and as a whole sector, we usually pay our people and selves less than in other sectors for broadly similar roles, and this includes with making less provision for future pension and retirement).

I also recognise the tension that underpins all of this - if what we're doing is to ultimately create social good, then to pay better wages etc, we need to charge more. But how can we feel comfortable doing this when we see that the communities we support are in poverty, etc? 

But if we don't find ways to start to address these elephants, then we risk losing talent and skills as people may begin to feel that they can't continue to trade off their personal futures for the sake of helping others today - and actually, research from Social Enterprise UK shows that social enterprises are generally more likely to be profitable if they're trading in areas of deprivation; so it seems that there are ways to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

 

I have an idea that the only way we can start to break this taboo of social entrepreneurs being able (encouraged, and allowed) to pay themselves both today, and with regard for their future retirement chapters without feeling guilty for doing so, and the limitations it's placing on the sector as a whole, is by trying to talk about this more openly and in grown-up ways.

To this end, I'd encourage anyone reading this to share, reply, and engage in these conversations where and how you're able to (although I recognise that talking about money isn't something we Brits do very well). But if no-one talks about it, then nothing can ever change...