Careers for Social Impact, Meaningful Work and Sustainable Profits: Meet Daniel Truran, CEO of EBBF

Daniel is a social impact innovator, speaker and facilitator of change. He is currently CEO of EBBF - Mindful People Meaningful Work, and he is an ambassador at BCorp: creating new corporations that balances purpose and profit. B Corp companies are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.

Ultimately his goal is to assist in creating companies that deserve to exist: those that contribute to a more prosperous, just and sustainable civilization. In addition to the creation of successful companies that generate value and values, social entrepreneurship, creation and management of international events, Daniel regularly delivers talks and presentations, and is a professor at IE Business School in Madrid.

Xperienceships caught up with David recently to talk about his own career exploration, and to find out more about building our own ethical career paths, as well as what impact innovation means for companies who wish to work for a common good. You can watch a short clip of our conversation here, or read on for the full interview.

Xperienceships: We're always keen to speak to thought leaders and people who are at the forefront of movements, industries, and different ways of working that we find interesting. So you are one of those people, Daniel. We always like to start with a personal question, which is, what was your first job? 

Daniel: I was really lucky. I had one job offer after university. So it took that stress out of my life. And I started to work in the UK after university, and then moved to Italy, Australia, South Africa, a number of places. It was a big logistics multinational, where I learned a lot about the traditional side of corporations, got the beautiful office and everything else. 

And then halfway through, at about 30, I had a bit of an awakening that I'm not quite enjoying what I'm doing, maybe I should do something different. And a member of this organization where I work, EBBF, said, “you know what, get out of there, I'll give you a proper job.” The day before, I was managing big logistics clients from Formula One, Carrefour. The next day I was organizing big events in New York for Peter Senge and Daniel Goleman. My learning from that is, we think we know how to do certain things. But then actually, we can do a lot more - a lot of different things. And this experimenting, trying things out, I think has served me well. It was luck: somebody picked me aside, you know, they saw something in myself, and it’s been a totally different lifestyle for me since then.

I think as you mature, probably a clarity of what's really important comes in. For myself, it was a spiritual calling, I became a Baha’i, therefore my whole life changed. I asked, “Why am I here? To serve humanity.’ And when you're sitting in a comfortable corporate office, you say, am I really serving humanity? Not quite. 

When this opportunity came out, it was like an awakening of sorts. But I think being awake is probably what's missing most in people. We're constantly triggered into going one direction and then another, trying to filter those triggers. 

To reconnect first with yourself in what is really important with you helps you so much in deciding what you should and should not do.

I think there's a level of stress and anxiety in people of all ages. But especially when you're young, you want to do all sorts of things, but have no idea what you're good at. I remember, when I was 30, I was a logistics expert. And the next day I was doing global events, which had little or no connection. So allow yourself to be surprised by just how many other things you can actually maybe be able to do, which you didn't think you could.

X: That's great advice. It's reassuring to a young person to know that it doesn't have to be all planned out meticulously, it doesn't necessarily have to follow a formula. And of course, it changes - what you think you wanted to do at 18 is very different from what you might end up doing at 40. We talk a lot about career chapters - the world of work as we see it changing and developing means that we'll have several different types of career as we go forward.

D: It’s nice that you talk about chapters - I always talk about a ‘life book’. There's lots of pages in the book. It's super difficult, but focus on that one page, really enjoy that one page, try to learn from it without trying to read the end of the book because we have no idea what it will be anyway. I love this thing of chapters or pages of a book and just enjoy one book one page at a time, and get the most out of it. 

X: Moving forward to your work now, how would you describe a typical day for you in the work that you do?

D: I wake up at six, I do half an hour meditation, half an hour yoga, then a healthy juice, I wish! (laughs). What's really happening is I wake up kind of early. I discovered these new apps, notion and roam. And I do try to the night before, say okay, what am I going to do? At least tomorrow, or for the next week. Not a to-do list which is useless. But say, from 8 - 8.15, I'll do this from 8.30. To-do lists give me such anxiety, but find if I allocate this time to do these things, it really helps me to move forward. So that's a quick productivity hack there. 

My typical day, because I'm wearing many hats: the purpose of my life is basically that I love to have people connect with their values with their worth, connecting with other people and creating amazing companies. And that creates a better future. So as simple as that. It starts with the human being reconnecting with their values. 

I’m Director General of EBBF: Ethical Business, Building the Future. So imagine people building the future, that's already pretty good. And they're ethical. So that's also a good environment to be in. It's a global organization and is present all over the world. It’s got students, Director Generals of the World Bank, CEOs, small intrapreneurship people, that all work to say, how can I make my work more meaningful?

And then I work with The Bcorp movement, I work at BLab Europe. This movement is using companies as a force for good, which sounds like a pretty good thing to go about. And then I give classes in different Masters and Business Schools, talks and things like that. And now I've just joined Now partners: about regeneration. So: how can companies create a new regenerative model? I think we're a little bit in a bit of a pickle, in terms of climate disaster. It’s not enough to be sustainable. A company that can actually help the planet to get better, and actively make it better from the basic planting the seeds, circular economy and everything else. So that's an interesting area. 

In my typical day, I have calls and interactions with people literally from all over the world, all of these organizations, and what keeps me sane is fostering innovation connected with the values of each one of those people I interact with, and move that forward. 

X: Could you talk us through the overarching ethical principles in business, and what role you think that has for improving the future working world that the students we work with are coming into now.

D: I see a general detachment of people from themselves. They’re not really sure about who they are, what is important with nature, with other people, the relationships are very fraught and complicated. When you reconnect all those elements in what I call “dynamic coherence” things really happen. EBBF is ethical business building the future. Each one of the people that comes to one of our 300-odd events wants to build the future. Wow. hat already tells you they're not worrying about the future, complaining about the future, they want to build it. And so that kind of positive energy creates a kind of conversation that is exciting, that's interesting, that leads to good actions. 

EBBF is Baha’i inspired, so spiritually inspired, which means that people of all faiths can explore the application of some core values, like justice, Unity, gender equality. It's just amazing what really happens through these kinds of connections. Just recently, three members met. And they wrote a book about rethinking governments for the 21st century. And now they're presenting at the UN75, big annual events. That's a level of action I'm involved in. So that makes it really exciting, not just on the borders: I’m part of this co-creation.

And I think, as much as possible we should all try to be part of conversations with great people, but also do things. Because otherwise you're just listening. I attended a UN event caled Uniting Business - a three day long event. At the beginning, they asked you “what do you come here for?'' The vast majority came to listen to inspiring keynotes. It’s amazing how much people waste time just listening without acting. It's very easy. You just stay there and you consume. But it's much more exciting to listen, reflect, do stuff, and do stuff with cool people doing great things. 

The BCorp movement is basically a bunch of amazing human beings who created amazing companies. We are all very ‘imperfect’, there is no such thing as a perfect company -, but there's basically a metric that you measure how good you are as a company, not just what you do, how you treat your workers and many other things. It’s a holistic measurement - are you trying to be a good company or not? There's about 100,000 companies trying to become a B Corp, and only 3000 manage so it's quite a selective group. We’ve got Patagonia, EcoAlf, Holaluz. Jamie Oliver just became a B Corp, The Guardian is a B Corp. So these kind of luminary companies - as multinationals, startups, medium size - in common, they ask how can we use business as a force for good. 

And one of the founders of the BLab, Jay Cohen, just recently launched the #Imperative21. What are the priorities of the 21st century? And there's just like a really cool campaign that went to the NASDAQ ticker about rethinking capitalism. So you can imagine how much fun I'm having. Right? These are the conversations. 

X: Yes, it must be a nice thing to do to inspire others all day long. And to see people spark and attach to these big concepts, which ultimately lead to action. 

Could you walk us through impact innovation? What is it? And then how is it implemented in an organization? Could you give us any examples of that?

Impact innovation? Sounds so cool: it must be good, but we need to explain it. (Laughs). Innovation is what everybody begs us to do. To me, innovating is not just new stuff, but just doing that stuff better, just being better at doing things. Innovating can be also doing the same things as before, just better.

Impact innovation is not changing for the sake of changing, but changing it to create something better for the planet, the people, and so forth. So one of the things I did was co-create the Impact Hub Madrid. So social innovators from all over the world come together, and they create cool new stuff that has an impact. So that's the essence of what impact innovation is. Some examples: Holaluz is a Spanish company. The cool thing they do is a hundred percent of their energy is renewable. But also the way they treat the people is impact innovation. If you go inside Holaluz and see the way people are treated, the kind of relationships, how they view work as a playful game of meaningful change, wow, that's exactly how companies should be - so to me, impact innovation is not just the outcome, it’s how you go about making it happen. 

Another example is EcoAlf. What they do is they dig plastic from the oceans, and from that process, they create clothes, shoes, made 100% of recycled plastic. So it's a good circular economy concept. These are just a couple of examples that come into mind. But there's also schools, there are schools that are teaching. And to me the most important of all businesses is the education business, and maybe should not call it a business, but the area. That's where it starts.

The role of educators in creating impact innovation mindset, I think is fundamental, which is not to stick with what you have, think how much things could be better and better in a way that benefits as many stakeholders and as many people as possible. 

X: So what would an impact innovative school look like? What would they do differently from, say, the school that you attended? 

D: As an example in Italy, there's a school that teaches social intrapreneurship to students. So on top of teaching geography and history, finding out or trying out how to create companies that create a positive impact. And what they do is experiential learning where they really take students from 12 - 16 through creating their own company, and thinking through: “why does it exist, how does it source sustainably?” All these little seeds that you plant in the mindset of people - that's one example of how that can be done. 

Right now, in education, I think the whole distance learning or “relearning” is a very important area. So I think there's a lot of innovation that can come in education from this. But I think the fundamental shift is really, from learning to read or memorizing, to learning to discern, think and act coherently. That will be a beautiful way in which education can really be innovative and impactful. Also creating curiosity. I think the greatest are those with the eagerness to find out. It really creates a different mindset that allows impact innovation to happen, because then you're just curious to try things out to experiment. 

I love the word experiment : it's so light as a concept, that allows you to try things out. So teaching how to experiment to me would be a really interesting additional curricula to add, that I wish my children could get to. 

X: We've already given educators lots of food for thought there. But if there was one message that you would like to give to the education system to help children flourish when they leave school, what comes to mind?

D: I will start with a huge round of applause. So guys, you are heroes, you guys are the most important part of the whole of humankind. So a huge round of applause. That's the first one to really bear in mind, and they should be paid much more than financial advisors that give really bad advice. (Laughs).

That's number one: feel great about being an educator. And then: allow these children to really savor life as opposed to suffer through it. So discerning, understanding, trying to develop the capacity to understand before acting, (which is also very difficult as the younger you are), is really very important, because with that, you understand that you can make better decisions and you can have better impact. At the end of the day, we all want to have a good input. So if the educator can help young people to think, to observe and to understand that's huge. The second thing is curiosity, developing the curiosity to experiment, try things out, develop your career, lower the pressure. To me, those would be really interesting things to start off with.

Most things my kids can find out on TikTok in 30 seconds. Knowledge they can find anywhere, they do not need knowledge - your work is all about mindset, attitudes. Those things are important. And again, it's that ‘dynamic coherence’ I'm talking about- it’s not just material or just spiritual, it's matching the two. We have material needs. But if we can also elevate them to some kind of spiritual guidance or essence of why we're here that will help you in your life, to create that balance. That would also be very helpful in education, the values of children. But again, we end with a huge round of applause for these educators. My heroes.

X: So for anyone who watches, listens, or reads this article, and they want to know how to explore a career path that is more ethical, where do you suggest they get inspired or go for inspiration?

D: That's a good place to start: movements. If there's a movement that feels good, see, meet people - corporations are made of human beings, let’s not forget that. 

And so if there’s something that resonates with you, be with those people, experiment with those people, because the risk you have is zero. Find movements that resonate with you. Interact with those people, get active, get your hands dirty, in a positive way. That's a great way to see if it fits or it doesn't. Internships are also good. Try things out, and do stuff with others. Going solo is tiring, you will have down moments. Try to create small tribes around you, to share things or ideally do things together. We are in this collaborative era, as I call it, so where people need to collaborate more than ever. 

So I think it's really important to learn how to collaborate in the best possible way. Which means finding what's in common, but also not imposing your idea of what's right, listening very carefully, creating empathy. And as I always say, make sure there's women in whatever you do, because now we're entering the feminine era. You get all these reports about the best companies and they’re all women-led, and it's not by chance, it’s because of this ability to dialogue, to have deeper conversations. Everything will be better if you have gender equality, which I think is more of a given for younger people. But make sure if you don't, in your small impact innovation team or whatever, there's at least a balance of mindsets, because now more than ever, you really need the wider perspective. 

Be open to change mindfully. And here's one last metaphor that I like to use all the time, which is called adaptive focus. We focus very little, I'm as guilty as anybody else. When you look at the wind vane, it doesn't turn like crazy, it focuses in a certain direction for a while, then the wind changes. And then it focuses on a different direction. So that metaphor is stick to something for a while and not just for five seconds. Go deep. Try to experiment, find out and then shift to the next one. Don't keep turning, because that's exhausting. That will get you very little. So that's one way to actually get you to these ethical career paths or at least to get started ?