International Women, Dr Jodi York, the ABGF, Evidence-based storytelling, greenwashing, Personal ESG liability & Tár

Happy Thursday! I hope this finds you well? This may seem like a generic opener, though I’m genuinely interested to hear what you’re working on, so feel free to reply :)

"A theory of change underpins everything you're doing. It's the groundwork of good impact management, I can't tell you what to measure if you don't know what you're trying to do and how it's going to happen. Done well, it will also surface assumptions that underpin the relationships between A and B.?It's an evidence-based map of the steps you're going to go through along the way to a destination, based on how change happens in the world rather than "Underpants Gnomes" and “Step 4: Profit”.

Watch Part 1 and Part 2 of this cracking interview with Dr. Jodi York !

If you don’t know the Underpants gnomes reference, it’s from South Park, so be warned if you’re going to look it up on YouTube :)

Challenge & Change: It's our time

Next Thursday evening, as an early celebration of International Women’s Day, Nicole Stewart is hosting a webinar with three influential leaders.

Together with the panelists, Nic will “.. peel back the layers around what it means to be a potent woman, their journeys to success and what they've learned along the way.

Together, we’re going to dive into riding the waves of change instead of fearing and trying to control them, and learn how to use crisis as a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block. We’ll tackle the big issues faced by many ambitious women, like imposter syndrome and perfectionism, and discuss how you can identify and create professional environments conducive to your thriving.

I’ll also teach you one of the most powerful tools you can do in under 60 seconds, to calm and focus yourself any time you’re feeling overwhelmed..”

Sign up here.

Based on the feedback I’ve personally heard from Nic’s events, this is a must attend, and I’d ask for your support in sharing the registration link with your friends and colleagues whom it would be relevant for, and I recommend you attend yourself!

The Australian Business Growth Fund

I wanted to give a quick shout out to the ABGF, as I’ve recently come across them and am really impressed to see the hybrid of Government Support and Banking step into support growth-stage businesses with the capital to expand. In their own words;

“.. The newly established Australian Business Growth Fund (ABGF) is a middle market private equity fund with a mission to support growing small and medium Australian businesses to thrive. We believe that Australia’s economic prosperity is tied to the growth and success of small and medium businesses. We believe in the power of entrepreneurs and business owners to drive innovation, generate progress and deliver prosperity. W e are committed to help make that happen.

Our ambition is to become the leading growth capital provider for SMEs in the Australian market, acting as a catalyst for the growth of SME businesses and the wider economy, by connecting founders and entrepreneurs to the capital, capability and wider networks to help them succeed.

We will be building a portfolio of exclusively minority (<49%) equity investments between $5-15m in profitable and growing Australian companies (c. $2–100m turnover). We will deploy $500m in capital across a diverse portfolio of businesses over the next five years. Along with capital for growth, we will curate a talent network of highly experienced business professionals to assist our investee company executives achieve their growth objectives..”

Pretty neat hey. Click to visit their website and LinkedIn profile.

Q. How often do you notice the critical links in industry that support our way of life? Have you considered what it takes to have a ‘secure’ future for Australia?

Evidence-based storytelling

Whether it's communicating the science, the impact, aligning partnerships, investees and investors, enabling growth, profitabily exiting companies, interfacing with the public or scaling to institutional capital, evidence-based storytelling is key, and I've put together a platform that shows you how to do it, and how leaders in the space are doing it, have a look - https://bit.ly/BravoCharlieIES

Q. Which businesses do you know doing great things, that aren’t communicating it that well? Have you got a colleague that keeps repeating themselves each time they meet someone new, and doesn’t give them useful background before showing up? Introduce us! :)

Greenwashing 101 & Personal ESG Liability

Thank you to Laurie Lane-Zucker and the team at Impact Entrepreneur for featuring my insights in this Greenwashing 101 article, which then lets people dive deeper through our recent ‘No more greenwashing: Driving evidence-based practice in ESG & Impact Investing’ report.

I’d also bring your attention to this piece by MLT Aikins on Personal ESG liability;

“.. In conjunction with the trend toward personal ESG liability for directors and officers, many institutional investors are also taking action against boards that don’t address ESG issues. As an example, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund voted against the re-election of 18 boards of directors last year – and plans to vote against dozens more to address mounting environmental concerns.

The?Guardian?recently reported that Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages US$1.4 trillion in assets on behalf of Norwegians, plans to?vote against the election of at least 80 boards of directors this year?over their failure to set or achieve environmental and social targets.

Norges is a major shareholder of Apple, Nestlé, Microsoft and Samsung. The fund’s chief compliance officer told the?Guardian?that only 17% of the more than 9,000 companies Norges invests in have “clear science-based net zero targets.” Voting against the re-election of board members is part of the fund’s plan to pressure the remaining 83% of companies to act now to address climate change..”

Q. Could there ever be a better time to set strategy with your board and combine this with evidence-based storytelling? Reach out as I’m happy to help.

Cinema Corner: Tár

A friend brought this to my attention (click to watch the trailer), it was definately a slow burn, my partner skipped out on it after an hour and then some fusion of the weight of what was happening settled in, and I found it rivetting. Indeed it was only in the retelling the next day of ‘what happened in the end?’ that I noticed my own excitement at the many layers of interweaving plot and nuance, deftly and passionately delivered by Cate Blanchett.

A few days ago Cate picked up the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance, and admitted her role could have been “career-ending” - this speaks a lot to the variety of reviews online, which are extremely polarised.

You can watch her beautiful acceptance speech here.

Personally, I thought it was fantastic when it finally arrived at the end, though I’ve recommended a few people watch the Triangle of Sadness as well, and they really didn’t get it, and there is infinitely less to be entertained by in Tár if you don’t want to pour over detail and monologues (compared to Triangle), so be warned before committing 2.5 hours :)

Have a great week(end), let me know you’ve enjoyed reading by giving it a like or clicking the heart icon, and do share with a friend.