I met with Nick Christoforou and Kelly Smith from Neo, one of the first certified B Corps in the UK. Neo was also one of the first brand agencies founded around supporting purposeful organisations. Their work is about helping those organisations create deeper connections with people through identity, culture and communications. Connections that move them to be part of real, radical human change.
Tell me about Neo and what drives the work you do.
Nick: We like to think we’re a bit different to most agencies in our space, not just because of our B Corp status. We’ve always been a strategic and creative consultancy for purpose driven organisations, working exclusively on social and environmental projects. And we go deeper than most to surface what really matters in our brand exploration, for example.
Kelly: The organisations that excite us are those that are embarking on a journey of change. Often that journey is multifaceted and includes both the positive change they want to see happen in the world, and building participation around that, and the change they want to see in their sectors and in their own organisations. So, through these projects we help them to align and amplify what they do, how they do it and how they talk about it.
That change may be reimagining how children receive physical education, so that they’re motivated through their own love of sport, rather than it being imposed on them. Or it could be about inspiring action through the relationships people have with ethical and sustainable products they buy. And there’s the pioneers that are helping to revitalise whole sectors, for example a homelessness service that’s reframing the problem and revolutionising the solution. It’s that progressive social change that drives us.
I’m really drawn to social justice and equality in particular. What motivates me is being able to use what I’m good at to make a difference to the world, to challenge harmful narratives with positive ones and disrupt the conventions that don’t serve people, or the rest of the planet for that matter. Seeing groups that are marginalised step into a space where their voices are heard; I want to be a part of that change.
What’s different about your approach?
Nick: The first thing to say is that we try to seek out and attract those doing things differently themselves, because that’s where we feel we can achieve the most impact. You could say change makers or pioneers, often when people don’t necessarily identify as such.
It can feel so satisfying to support a business or organisation on the cusp of change, embarking in courageous evolution or when first launching their idea into the world.
We see the potential and the power of that creativity and the change it can deliver. It’s a conductor for the creative energy we bring. And we can help those pioneers achieve more when they invite us on the journey with them.
Kelly: No matter how modest or ambitious the initial mandate, we work to understand the full possibility of a project rather than just take a brief and work through a ‘cost-effective’ formula. Shaping the right narrative and achieving the best possible impact demands a holistic view of strategy, culture and identity, so so we can really connect people and get them playing a part in change.
Nick: It’s an integrated approach. When we started out, we found ourselves being asked us to do superficial rebrands based very much on the ‘outside’ of the organisation. We know that polish comes unstuck quickly.
Kelly: Superficial work may feel feel safe and straightforward, but it carries several costs. If people in an organisation don’t have a shared understanding of what their purpose is, and a shared commitment to it, then things can begin to fragment into pieces that don’t mean much. Where our work can make the most difference is by helping our client partners build their brand, culture and service or product strategies from the inside out.
Nick: That inside-out approach applies to us as a team and a business too. We’ve build Neo around a more human-centred environment; working with people that valued that human connection and not just transactions and profit. It is about relationships and the value that can come from a collaborative rather than competitive or traditionally hierarchical approach.
Kelly: That’s what a shared sense of purpose can bring. We can all learn from one another, no matter the level of our experience. True collaboration, that sense of openness, understanding and respect, is important to making sure everyone can develop. That way, we get the best from each other and our work.
What motivated you to become a certified B Corp?
Nick: It felt a natural step to support a movement that businesses could get behind in showing their commitment to sustainability. It also provided a useful framework for us to reflect and see what’s working in terms of our own carbon footprint, and the positive social and environmental impact we were contributing to through our projects.
Kelly: We’re kind of a B Corp by nature because our purpose is essentially about improving the impact of others. We’re not just reducing our negative footprint, we’re increasing a positive one.
B Corp marks us out as a purposeful business, affording us a bit more visibility, and trust, to potential project partners in the business world. Social enterprises and sustainable brands with whom we can connect through shared values and broad ambitions.
It feels quite validating, especially as certification is a fairly rigorous process of not just measurement but also reflection and exploration.
It’s definitely worthwhile for anyone who wants to commit seriously to their business being a force for good, while sending a clear signal that they’re looking for a better quality of working relationship; not a transactional agreement.
Through our project outcomes and impact reporting we can show that there are more effective ways to work — in terms of how we get that work and how we deliver it, working collaboratively toward the same goals.
When you think back over the last 20 years, can you tell me about any challenges or difficult times for the business, and how you led through that?
Nick: Growth, in the early days, presented challenges, as well as how we organised ourselves. We started off with a collaborative, collective approach. But that can be disrupted when people joining team don’t share the same values or ways of relating. So, then, you get dynamics and clashes. We now have the tools to deal with that.
We’ve also completely revolutionised our thinking in terms of who we want to be as a team and how we want to be as partners. We were inspired by Frederic Laloux’s book, Reinventing Organisations. His framework gives a great foundation from which to build a progressive human-centred team and business. We’ve taken those ideas, not only into our own team, but also into our work with clients. We’re finding it’s leading to some very good outcomes.
Kelly: One of the biggest but often least visible challenges we face is encouraging mindset shifts — among the team, among the people we want to work with, in our own industry.
When it comes to the culture of the agency, the culture of the third sector, for example, and simply the culture of teams in organisations, we see old ways of working getting in the way of shared ambition and outcomes. There’s a lot we try to gently disrupt.
Take the concept of hierarchy. It’s so ingrained in us from school age — to follow, to comply to preconceived ideas of authority, to ingest ideas and information fed to us and to criticise divergent ideas. All that can severely inhibit our curiosity, creative thinking, intuition and instinct.
For any of us, it can take a lot of work to overcome fear — of taking the initiative, of asking questions, of asking ‘what if..’, of taking a creative risk and of sharing control. But once we do, we see more clearly the benefits of shared responsibility, shared purpose and the self-development that comes with it.
Tell me a bit more about ‘shared purpose’.
Kelly: One of Laloux’s pillars, evolutionary purpose, is very challenging to traditional organisations, where a few senior leaders hold power over the direction of things. It’s brilliantly challenging and refreshing, in our eyes.
It’s about asking what’s needed? How does our purpose currently meet that need? Does anything need to be adjusted? How do people feel about it? Checking in on and evolving purpose and its outcomes when needed helps us all stay in touch with why we come to work each day. We call it our ‘Neo compass’.
Enabling everyone in the team to contribute to this process pays dividends in levels of participation, emotional investment and overall team wellbeing — we saw this validated in our B Corp measurement earlier this year. It’s really clear: contribution equals commitment.
We’ve seen huge benefits of this in identity/brand projects, too. Helping our client partners getting to the root of their true purpose and building their team’s ownership of that narrative is really central to our work. Often, by the end of the project, that purpose has emerged as something a bit different to what they expected. It gives them clarity and a renewed and galvanising energy — there’s a ‘penny drop’ moment, which is a joy to see.
When leadership qualities do you think are important in a B Corp leader?
Nick: It should be the same as what’s required of any good leader. Good leadership within any organisation, I think, has to involve more of a coaching approach rather than a management approach.
Accountability, good ethics, sharing values within the team and transparency are fundamental. If leaders are already living those principles, then they’re going to fit well into the B Corp model.
Kelly: To be a good leader, it’s important to self-reflect and understand our own behavioural triggers; to have that head space not to jump from one thing to the next, and not lapse into easy shortcuts. Inaction isn’t helpful either. But there needs to be that nice balance between reflecting and acting on things.
Being able to tune into the team’s skills and needs is important. We all have human instinct and ways of connecting with each other that have probably been steamrollered by social conditioning. That’s made us afraid of confrontation and healthy conflict, talking about our feelings and being vulnerable. I think that’s gradually becoming normalised, certainly in a conscious business context. It is great to see some progressive businesses and change makers take it seriously and not view it as the soft skill. Soft skills and hard skills. I think that’s such an unhelpfully polarising terminology to adopt.
Being a B Corp is all about the human element, and recognising that successful interdependence is the key to both a healthy business and a healthy planet.
What’s your advice to new B Corp leaders?
Nick: As Kelly said, self-reflection seems a good starting point. Spend some time exploring who they are and what’s important to them. Reflecting on the kind of team they want to be part of; how they can support and create an environment where everybody’s helping everybody else to develop, learn and grow. Other skills and traits will come into play on the way: resilience, patience and determination, for example.
Kelly: I would also ask the same questions of the team, then actively listen to them on how they feel about purpose and their ambitions and beliefs. If they can start with ‘why?’ rather than ‘what?’, they will build the right business and make the right decisions.
Really get under the skin of your purpose and understand how it relates your business to the landscape. What does your purpose say about your worldview and the change you want to make? How can you use it as a narrative to get others onboard with your ambition?
Nick: Try a reflection day with the whole team, looking at your social and environmental commitments. ‘Where are we now? Where do we want to be?
Make sure that everybody’s on that journey with you, and everybody’s playing a part in that, because that’s going to speed up the process and make whatever changes you put in place last in the longer term.
You can book a free sounding board session with Nick or Kelly here.
Lucy Chaplin is a Leadership Coach who helps B Corps unleash full leadership potential. She works with new leaders and managers to build performance and lead with confidence, giving them all the tools they need to amplify their impact. Her bespoke IMPACT model guiders new team leaders through the six stages of effective management. You can find out more on her website or book a free strategy call here.
Recent Comments