Press release
Embracing uncertainty & duality:
It’s no secret that being a social impact professional working in private sector can be a challenging and sometimes lonely experience. My boss, the inspiring Cate Kalson, once described it as ‘pushing a massive rock up a hill’ when I felt like things were too hard and I wasn't sure I could do this anymore.
But it’s also super fulfilling. And when you see others coming over to push that massive rock up the hill right alongside you, it can be exhilarating.
That’s where we are at Opencast. Not that there wasn’t willingness and commitment before, but we’re starting to make a real impact with meaningful allyship at the senior and executive leadership levels to go alongside the buy-in and allyship we’ve built across the wider business. And it feels good. It feels exciting, even world-changing. In the best way possible.
I’d like to say that as Opencast’s first Head of Social Impact ever, this was all part of my masterplan. But that would be lying. This space doesn’t work like that. You can’t control or simplify it. At least, not if what you’re looking for is meaningful impact. Not if your ambition is to prove that it is possible to have a financially successful digital technology consultancy business that does good things for people and planet not as a ‘charitable’ thing, but as a default. And that’s always been the ambition at Opencast.
Let me acknowledge my privilege: there are certain battles I’ve not had to fight at Opencast. Our board and executive team have always been bought in. Our DNA has always been ‘do the right thing’ so in my most radical moments, at best they’ve whooped and immediately jumped in right behind me and at worst they’ve given me a raised eyebrow and an implied questioning of my sanity. But they’ve never blocked or tried to stop me. That is huge. And it’s not that common for a business of our size, in our industry.
Having said that, we’ve had our challenges, as expected. And we will have them again. But over the past two years, I’ve learned a few things, the most important of which were crystallised in my mind last week while attending the Louder than Words festival, the largest gathering of B Corps in the world:
I notice that often in industry/professional gatherings we talk about ‘systems change’ and ‘impact’ but we never (or rarely ever) say things such as ‘late-stage capitalism’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘white supremacy’ which are some of the most important systems we exist in.
We can’t fix what we don’t acknowledge. So, name the thing.
Don’t be afraid of using words and concepts that are not used in your professional (or personal) circles or language that has typically been considered taboo or otherwise a shorthand for being thought of as ‘odd’ or ‘unprofessional’. If you’re wondering what language or what names, look at the activism movement – they are always in the forefront of language and thought leadership.
Maybe our brains are wired this way, maybe this is just a really entrenched social norming habit, but we tend to think in quite binary terms as if all the world was a zero-sum game. But that’s just not the actual reality of things, particularly not in a complex space such as social impact (and I include environmental sustainability in this).
This is as much an intellectual exercise as it is a literal physical and sensory experience. It doesn’t feel right to not have an either/or type of thought pattern. It’s more tiring and requires more active pathfinding to operate in ambiguity and complexity.
But this is just what we have to do: get comfortable with holding apparently conflicting ideas as equally valid in our heads in order to find a way towards meaningful change. Note that when I say ‘equally valid’ I don’t mean on merit – some views are, in my opinion, totally meritless, especially if following them results in harm to others but profits and impact do often operate under clashing incentives. So what I’m saying is; ‘find the Venn’.
Burn out is real and it happens quickly. Disillusionment when you can see the end game but things are not happening quickly enough or meaningfully enough is a recipe for giving up. But believe me, your organisation and your wider community are better for you being in them, so find allies where you are and ask for help.
Verbalise when you’re exhausted or feeling done. Bravely have those extremely scary conversations. I’ve been there and credit to Tom Lawson, our CEO, and Cate, they held me lightly and listened. That’s not to say that they say yes to everything, but they held me together when I needed it and took on board my experience into their choice-making. That kind of humane leadership at the Executive level should be the norm, rather than the exception.
If you’re reading this and you are an executive or senior person – create a safe space for your people to be open about the challenges and then pick themselves up; lead with humility and in allyship. They’ll come back into the fold reinvigorated and re-committed. And I don’t need to explain why retaining talent is important (I hope).
I hope these simple ideas will help you and your organisation onwards in your journey to purpose. If nothing else, I hope they help you feel seen and part of a collective of people working towards meaningful social impact. There’s strength in that.
With our submission this month to become a B Corp, Opencast has formalised the purpose-driven nature of our work. But, as chief executive Tom Lawson s...
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