Yiuwin Tsang:
Hello and welcome to the Beautiful Business podcast. Beautiful Businesses is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care guided by a clear strategy and soulfully grown.
Hello, welcome to this week's episode of the beautiful business podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang and I’m part of the Beautiful Business team. And this week, I was lucky enough to be joined by Nikki Gatenby. Nikki is a double best selling author on the subject of engagement at work with super engaged and purposeful work with better business on purpose. Nikki has led successful marketing agencies in London, Paris and Brighton in the UK, with a track record for supercharging positive growth. Her last business went from Brighton to global from marketing services to to Software as a Service technology products answer the public and coverage book hand in hand with being named one of the best places to work in the UK for eight years and running, having exited the agency in 2019. And taking a sabbatical to New Zealand.
Nikki is now an in demand agency specialist, non exec director, and cognitive behavioural coach helping founders set this strategy and coaching the leadership teams to deliver on it. Nick is featured as one of the corporate rebel pioneers for progressive thinking and voted one of 10 of the most inspirational people in the 2022 industry benchpress survey. It was a real pleasure interviewing Nickki, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Let's talk a bit about inspiring action and enabling change. One thing I often think about is the dilemma is you know, what role do business leaders have an inspiring change? And the other part of the question is, why should they bother?
Nikki Gatenby
Well, it's really interesting, isn't it? We have, as leaders written a unique position to galvanise the energy of those around us, particularly those that care around the trajectory of our modern world, you know, people that those of us and I think it's the majority that are shocked by how we've always seemingly totaled the planet to a degree disregarded flora and fauna and our fellow human beings in such a profit. And we have a duty to play our part in making the world a better place as such, not taking out as much, or putting back more than we take. And the people that do that are going to have a competitive edge in the future. We talked about talented people have choices, where are talented people going to want to put their future in terms of this planet we've inherited, how are they going to want to work in a way that's going to be a force for good going forward. Because I believe there's enough money being made in the world by corporations to address many of the world's problems, but that isn't happening is dead, we do this maximising profit at the expense of everything else, ignoring these glaring issues of poverty, lack of sanitation, environmental meltdown, and leaders need to bother because changes are coming from the obvious places. So now it's down to us. And leaders can help their teams in challenging times navigate there was you know, I don't know, if you scroll through your newsfeed turn on the TV, look at any news agent, or going on school or on your phone, you can be forgiven for feeling a bit queasy. It's all doom and gloom, this whole smorgasbord of negativity, this media serve up these proportions, kind of these portions of brutality, catastrophe and negativity, because it's kind of hooks us into reading more. As faced with such a diet of doom. It's not surprised and no surprise that many of us are kind of struggling. There was a recent piece of research by Sasha university that found that consuming negative news exacerbates your own worries, of course it does, it makes you unhappier and more anxious. And it turns out bad news is bad for everyone. If we cast our minds back to the pandemic, so we're living through the aftermath of it. But at the time, the mental health crisis off the back of the pandemic, we didn't even know how big it was going to be. And it's still coming out now. Because a lot of us internalised all of that negativity, as I met you. But I had to really monitor what I was consuming on a daily basis, because it was just full on thing is we all have always known we have a choice to think differently, we can choose to consume that bad stuff, or we can seek out positivity and loads of forms out there to do so. I don't know, if you've come across a future crunch. They have a brilliant positive news site. And then there's positive news who another brilliant post a new site, but I just looked on future crunch this morning. And they're still talking about not issues. But talking about solutions are talking about things being better things improving not just this cycle of doom the whole time. And I look at balancing my immediate consumption with things like that, so that I can have a balanced view. Because otherwise we're just gonna go down into this spiral. And I think if we can make an effort to read and share the good stuff, if we can seek out the positive stories, we're not just in a world where we're thinking, Oh, it's all fine. We're in the closed areas, I think negative but it's what are the solutions? You know, I've often say, Well, I believe me, teams don't contract the problem cover solution. Let's work out what the best ones are. There's that old adage. But as leaders, ideally, we could be doing the same. Because if we can help others to think differently, that collective power, we can actually make change happen rather than just being honest receipt of negativity. And I think leaders have a pivotal role to play there.
Yiuwin Tsang
I think you're absolutely right. I couldn't agree more with everything you just said that I remember again, it was during lockdown. One of the gentlemen had the rule of six remember the rule of six. And we used to organise into groups of six and we'd sit outside with a fire pit, have some beers and chat around the local dads basically of our dads club. We were watching one of the Attenborough programmes or something like this, and he's watching it with his two little girls. And one of his little girls said that we broken the planet. And he didn't know what to say, you know, now, I'm asking now, but then they couldn't watch those nature programmes as a family, because the girls would get too upset.
So I think you're right, there is a degree and maybe it's something that we have to kind of accept that things are in a bad way, in order to be in a position where we can do something about it. And as you say, not just in terms of the environment, but you know, in terms of our own kind of social and community kind of positions as well, when we have a look at what's happening across society, the inequality that's there, you know, the prejudice, and then the ways that different parts of society treat each other. And there's lots of kind of deep systemic problems that are in there.
But as you say, just to look at them as problems is one thing, and it's quite hard to get out of that cycle of doom. And perhaps this comes back to your point, when you have leaders of businesses, founders of businesses, entrepreneurs, they are typically more solution orientated anyway, certainly in terms of their work. So as a part of society, as you know, that demographic, if we were all pushing, pulling in the same direction, in and around, how can you take out less than what we kind of predict, you know, and how can we create a fairer society?
How can we help those underrepresented find a voice, you could almost say that we're in the best position to do you could almost say that the founders and the leaders of businesses are in the best position to do it, not just in terms of the skills that they bring to the table, but also the influence that they have, they're almost like, as you say, almost like the hub of the business, and the reaching their influence to their teams and from their teams cascading through to the customers and suppliers, the difference it can make, it's pretty profound, I guess, if you can project it forward in that way.
Nikki Gatenby:
And if you ask most founders, why they started their business, it's not money, it's because they wanted to achieve something decent, they had a dream, there was something that drove them to start this business. Okay, some of them think I don't wanna work for somebody else. I'm unemployable, which I've met a number of times, and that's an entrepreneurial thing, I love it. But it's about doing something that means something to them. And money is a part of it, you know, we need the fuel of business to fuel our purpose. But it's not the only reason. And there's some brilliant examples out there that, you know, read leaders have created business to create a difference, and we're gonna go and talk about a bit is really empowering for their teams to know they're part of something bigger. And that's where this clarity comes in, we can be clear about where we're headed, let people have the freedom to get there with us, we're going to create a wonderful business.
Yiuwin Tsang
Yeah, indeed, that's the thing which kind of gets so fun, the personal level, it's what gets me up in the morning. You find that the worlds that you work in, and the people that you meet, if you live to your purpose, if you you know, try and make the change that you want to see in the world, then there's almost like a gravitational pull isn't that you start whether it by chance, or you notice, the more you know, it's a bit like, you know, that's something, you don't notice them until you start seeing them.
But it's almost kind of like you happen across more of these people, you have more of these kinds of conversations. And then there's this whole kind of give and get thing, you know, you have more of these conversations, you feel more inspired. And people leave more inspired. And there's this energy that's created, rather than having the energy pulled away from you. And I feel something a little bit wishy washy, but I feel like there's a real kind of impact in that, you know, if you are feeling and as you say is that when you run a business, it's not all unicorns and butterflies, you know, there are some dark days that you have to face, isn't it. And there's something about meeting people talking with people engaging with people being part of the lives of people who give you energy and who don't just take it away. And I feel like when you have purpose, you know, channelling through you, then that type of energy is infectious. And I guess even if we're kind of a very roundabout kind of way, there's an internal impact that can come from creating impact. That's really bad sentence there. There's an internal value. Impact. Yes, yeah.
Nikki Gatenby:
It keeps you motivated, and you want to be doing it more, rather than that hideous Groundhog Day of, Oh, Jesus, I can't remember what product was being advertised. But it was the image of someone going to bed in their suit, and they're waking up the next day and going get this just on that treadmill. And that's what people can feel like that. Where's your creativity going to come from you're doing that you can't possibly have the impact you want to have. If you're feeling like that, as you say, there's inherent value of feeling great about what you're doing, because you're gonna want to do it more. It has this incredibly upward spiral effect.
Yiuwin Tsang:
Yeah, without a doubt. You mentioned some leaders that inspire you or have you've seen some incredible things, incredible change that leaders have brought, but I'd love for you to share maybe a few of your favourites or a few examples that you might have.
Nikki Gatenby:
I absolutely love it honest female to Patagonia, because for the word go, he's talks about the fact they're in business to save the planet. And everyone's probably seen the ad when they had the jacket on their agent. It says don't buy this jacket. And there's a reason because they want you to recycle and repair and reuse. And that's fantastic. And then last year, he went one step well 55 steps forward and said, any of the profit this business is going to be put into the Baskonia purpose trust and the whole false collective, which is all about using our profits with purpose to combat the planet's ongoing climate catastrophe. And we're talking to the tune of 3 billion here.
Now, you know, sort of some people some critics said, Oh, that was a tax dodge. Okay. All right. Well, actually, I'd rather that money was spent well, as opposed to potentially in other ways that he could have been spent. So I think you know, he's been said to literally give his company to Mother Earth that is Pinnacle asset. That's the most amazing poster. But let's take a look at his book. And one of the things we've searched, we were looking into better business on purpose was Lego. And the company's mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow, helping all children grow and develop their full potential through creative play. Wonderful. Now, do you know how many Lego plastic bricks that are per person on the planet?
Yiuiwn Tsang
No, but I'm ready to be blown away by this.
Nikki Gatenby
Times that by the billions of people on the planet, that's a lot of plastic that they pumped out into the world. So how do you reconcile those two? Well, we've held them up as a better business or purpose, because although they've produced 90 million piece of plastic every year, they are moving into becoming a green game changer. Because they take that as a problem. And they want to lead charge it changing how plastic is created, and used in a different way. Set aside, of course, some stats here 400 million to lead a team of 100 to go green by 2030. Okay, it's a bit of a timeframe. But they want to continue to inspire and develop the goals of tomorrow, by changing the way that they're creating their products. And they're moving from stopping oil based plastics, and relying on fossil fuels, to recycle plastics, and then into longer term sustainable materials such as sugar cane, and stop using plastic or together in their packaging. So they still want to live their purpose, they realised they got it a bit wrong. But my God, they're putting quite a lot behind it. So you know, not all got to be whiter than white or do this really, really well. Far we can recognise what needs to change. So there's just one brand that says, Okay, if we haven't got it quite right, we can change their peak colours, you can just imagine the lines where they're really high, really low planet are a nightmare. What are we going to do about it? Then there's a wonderful brand, which you may have come across, have you come across ‘who gives a crap’? Toilet roll brand. And I love that their purpose is to provide everyone in the world with access to a toilet by 2050. Because it's like, okay, how hideous is that people don't have access to a toilet, we know this. We just don't see it every day. But it's about doing something about it. This is this occurs and negativity here, but we can actually change and make action happen. So 2012, their founder discovered that 2.4 million people didn't have access to a toilet, that's 300,000 children under five, and that people are dying for diarrheal disease, poor sanitation. So they got together three friends to create who gives a crap and they donate 50% of their profit, to help build toilets improve sanitation in the developing world. Now, that's an amazing way of fueling your business with profit, to feel your purpose. And they have the most incredible marketing off the back of it. I think, when they were doing their fundraiser, founder, Simon sat on the toilet, and I'm not getting off until we've raised 10 million brilliant, and we've got quite a lot of humour going with it. So it's a huge global issue. But they're solving it one loophole at a time. I love that. It's like, okay, we can do stuff, we can do things, we just need to think about it creatively, which means we need to be feeling good to do it.
Yiuwin Tsang
Yeah, wonderful examples there. Nikki, really lovely. And just the last one, ‘who gives a crap’ really does go to show you something as basic as toilet roll, and how a story can be built around that how a following could be built around that you know how a movement to give the plan can be moved around that. You know, it's incredible.
And as you say, it is intrinsically linked to being profitable, the more profitable they are, the more impact they will have in terms of improving sanitation for people around the world. So I think that it's a great example. I remember my name, I first came across it actually when I had to pick up some postage from a neighbour because they were away. And I was like, What is this? And you looked into it, you think this is brilliant, and then you get on board? You buy it? And you know, and it's done. And then yeah, and to your first example of Patagonia Yeah, the fact that he's given the company away is, you know, a story in itself.
But you know, what really got me was I went to the Eden Project A few months ago. And they have Patagonia hats, and I thought I'm gonna go face with a midlife crisis younger. And I looked at the cups, oh, my God, it's like 30 quid for a cup. That's quite a lot of money. And I went back to my to my Do you ever thought about getting this Patagonia thing I didn't know much about the brand back then. And I thought, justify spending two quid on cut or like 120 quid on a jacket. And then it was actually one of our employees, and you know, they do the repairs. So if they fix it, and or if it impairs or breaks down, you send it to them, they'll fix it for you send it back. And I was like, Oh, my goodness. And then you start looking into it. And then you hear about the moves that he's making in terms of doing it in its profits. And then you think, well, actually, you know, 120 quid for a jacket, isn't that big a price to pay for the impact that it will have. And then that, again, in a hard nosed kind of business perspective, look how much pricing elasticity that has introduced into your product, because of having purpose that aligns with the values of your customers, then, you know, my kind of tight ask for a jacket budget is more than doubled, you know, because of the values that I place in the purpose of that business. So again, just kind of pull through and this last one, I'm really glad that you brought up Lego as an example of business because my little girl loves Lego. She likes nothing better than stick audible on and play Lego all day. You know, we wouldn't see her for the rest of the day if she had her own sort of way. But there's something that about creativity and children and this is something has been a bit of a bugbear of mine. When kids leave the house for the first time to go into school. Certainly with my two. They would ask questions about everything, everything that hasn't Curiosity. What's that? That how does that work? Why did it did it did it it did, and already is happening. My 11 year old has gone into comprehensive school now, he can't wait to get out of school. You know, he can't wait for the day to finish for the week to finish. When we speak with him. So much of it is down to that creativity piece, you know, he doesn't get a chance to be creative anymore. He does. And it's almost like my curiosity is shrinking away. So you know, whilst does he say Lego perhaps doesn't have the greatest record when it comes to plastic production. The fact that they're trying to nurture something is so important to us, as a society as a culture, I think goes some way. So I'm delighted that you brought up Lego as an example.
Nikki Gatenby
As you say, it's an innate ability we all have. And I would love it. If a school we were taught more about thinking on our feet and improvisation, not necessarily reading a subject and then almost playing it back. Obviously, we're gonna get there's loads of external sources. But what are we think? What are we thinking about? It happens every day in business, we're put on the spot, we need to improvise me to think quickly. I'm not sure that's been nurtured as much as it could be. And that creativity can tend to sort of SEEP away as you've just described. The other thing, money management would be great if it was taught at school, not just maths. I want a different riff. Now. I know I'm doing amazing jobs, don't get me wrong, schools are brilliant.
Yiuwin Tsang
I think you have to and I think it's still you know, it does kind of go slightly off on a slight tangent. But I think it does come back to you know, the fact is, as a species, we're facing some incredible challenges ahead of us, some of them more urgent than others. You right, and we touched upon not chauffeurs. In a previous episode, we talked about machines and algorithms, replacing a lot of the kind of the legwork that we do. And what defines us as a culture as society as businesses is the people is the humans that are in there comes back to the whole education piece is that should education systems really be kind of, you know, drilling into our kids, things that machines will probably do in a few years time? You know, or should it be nurturing the human element, as you said, the creativity with the problems that we've got, we need that creativity, don't we need that spark that inspiration to make the changes that we need to see?
Nikki Gatenby
Absolutely. And as well, as you know, what can leaders do to create impact, I really think leading from the front is a big one. But what what leaders can do to inspire change that we're looking at is challenging the status quo and challenging this thing about systems and tech and AI is going to win Netherland. And there's a brilliant example of a company called Burt's org. It's a Dutch healthcare company led by a chap called Joshua Bloch, who was so inspiring, I can't tell you he took on the Dutch healthcare system and completely changed the outcomes for patients, the rest go into for a bit, because it's fascinating, just to Bob and his co founders, we're working for patient home care companies. So people being careful in the home, they were honest, traditional kind of Command or Control basis where you get 15 minutes long. So you had to decide whether you made a cup of tea or administered medication or to something a little water, there's something very inhuman about going to see somebody who needs to care, because you're the time slot because you had to fit within the system. And, and it was quite challenging to actually be there for the purpose you were there for for care. So he said, Okay, I'm going to rail against this is ridiculous. We need to put caregivers at the forefront, and enable them to be able to care. So they built their business, but it's on purpose. And it's to help people live meaningful lives, meaningful, autonomous lives through humanity about bureaucracy, simplicity, above complexity, and practical above hypothetical, so they removed all the hierarchy of a traditional system of business, and they have self managing teams. And every time a team grows to 12, nurses, they split off into another team. There's no planning, there's no hrs a marketing, but they do have a central team of coaches that now the business is 11,000 nurses is 50 coaches at the heart of it. And all of these teams are working across Ireland. And they have huge support online. So there they get adjusted blockers currently available for them and often does a big communications online, but they out perform every touch competitor on every imaginable metric. So they have the highest client satisfaction of any organisation that and care over the five pathetic percent. But overheads are six to 10%. Lower staff turnover is half the rate of competitors, absenteeism is 33%, lower. And the most important of all, the American Journal of Nursing reported the buttstock cure patients faster than anyone else in the sector, they improve twice as fast and half the time with a third of the fewer of the visits, which says to me that rails completely against the system needing to control everything, and about us being human. So what can leaders do to change and inspire? Well challenge the status quo and lead from the front. And every time I go through that case study, it just makes me smile, because there's people there who have been cured are so much more happy than they possibly would have been in a different healthcare system. brilliant thing, it's being adopted globally now, which is amazing.
Yiuwin Tsang
That is amazing love that don't accept the status quo. It's almost like Don't limit your thinking. That's the thing. We're almost conditioned on where it has to do this. It has to do that got to do payroll, whatever it might be. And we almost have to put ourselves in a box. And it sounds like this example is one way of enabling the staff to be the best versions of themselves. And being the best version of themselves was about giving the best standard of care to their patients. So the two most significant stakeholders in the whole thing are the ones that benefit from it.
Nikki Gatenby
Yeah, the caregivers, the patients quite incredible. If you looked at different healthcare systems, a level of management in there is almost the opposite of this.
Yiuwin Tsang
Indeed. And I think that is again, as you say, if you're brave enough to check it, yeah, because ultimately, it isn't easy to do. And perhaps this is to that kind of entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial trait of being brave of taking that chance,
Nikki Gatenby
if you link it back to money, and what a lot of people are looking for printers profit, patients improve twice as fast. Okay, that sounds like half the cost in half the time or even better, with 1/3 fewer visits. It just says there's less wastage in the system all over. And let's apply that kind of thinking everywhere because we can because we're human. We're not machines yet.
Yiuwin Tsang
Thank you so much, Nikki Gatenby for joining us on this week's Beautiful Business podcast. It was a real pleasure to hear your ideas, your insights and your inspiration when it comes to purpose for businesses. Thank you for joining us for this week's Beautiful Business podcast.
Beautiful Business as a community for leaders who believe there's a better way to do business. Join us next time for more interesting discussion on how businesses can bring about change, helping communities, building a fairer society and safeguarding the planet. You can also join in the discussion at www.beautifulbusiness.uk