The Purpose Driven Business Analyst

Our world is demanding a better way of business

Unsustainable business practices since the Industrial Revolution have changed our world forever. The consequence of commercial and industrial activity is producing pollutants that effects our environment, and the effect of dubiously ethical organisational practices impacts our society in many harmful ways.

Many companies recognise this change, and are in transition to the idea of acknowledging their own responsibility toward embracing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), and making plans toward this goal.?By?example are the companies who are signatories to the Business Roundtable’s 2019 ‘Purpose of a Business’ statement. In this, signatories recognize the importance that all stakeholders in the value chain must share benefits, and reject the concept of only generating shareholder profit to the exclusion of all else. This popular view from the 1970’s is now considered a very destructive view to people and planet.

Whether it’s corporate missions to eradicate environmental damage, generating investment in developments to help eradicate disease, solving the world’s food crisis, self-organising toward stakeholder values, or making their internal culture more supportive and fairer to employees, this is a shift towards more ‘purpose-driven’ business models.

How should business analysts respond to this shift, and what role do we play in supporting and enabling the purpose-driven organisational change? ?What are the challenges and opportunities that we might face in so doing?

Organizational characteristics to ESG change

There are two key variables within organisations that may dictate the success or otherwise of such ESG change.?These variables are the motivation to act and the means to act.?The motivation to act on ESG intentions includes the readiness to accept responsibility for the organisational impact in the world, awareness of opportunities, and the courage to act differently to the traditional model of operating.?The means to act implies the organization has the vision to inspire, strategy to lead, cash to spend, talent to apply, governance to control and the mindset to innovate, fail and learn.

FIGURE 1: Characteristics of Business Behaviours

Strategic Foresight ?is a professional practice that includes a technique called scenario planning that is used to examine how an organization may behave under different conditions.?Mapping the two variables of organisational motivation to act and means to act onto two crossed axes, where the horizontal axis represents the motivation to act, whilst the vertical axis represents the means to act on ESG intentions on behalf of the business, we can represent four different quadrants and four different types of architype business that a Business Analyst may work for (See Figure 1). The four quadrants representing these four types of businesses are as follows.

The Profit-Driven business

In the left-hand bottom quadrant, this business is motivated by short term profits for shareholders, risk-based decision making, and where competition drives success. This represents the traditional type of organization. As a business analyst, you may feel like a cog in the machine, as you will be very directed in your tasks.

The Target-Driven Business

On the left-hand top quadrant, this type of business is responding to the changes that they see in the market to decarbonise, transition to alternative forms of energy and to apply ethical social criteria internally and to their supply chains including IT services and systems. They are starting to set ambitious targets for decarbonisation, such as ‘Net Zero by 2030 or 2050’.?These changes may be driven by the external pressures of shareholders, by the desire to access new finance schemes that specify ESG criteria (ie. Ethical superannuation funds), and increasingly by their customers. These types of companies may be waiting for government legislation to be enacted before they seriously commit funds into action. Greenwashing is prevalent for this type of organisation. They may set up isolated initiatives to support these ESG goals and they may start to report on their initiatives to shareholders to demonstrate their commitment. As a business analyst you might feel some dissonance internally with your role, compared to how you really feel – sort of ‘two-faced’.

The Constrained Business

On the right-hand bottom quadrant is a business that has it’s heart in the right place. It is purpose-focused, with an ESG worldview, but has limited means to deliver on it’s purpose and objectives. It is a ‘constrained business’, as it is constrained by financial means or by inefficiencies from delivering on it’s ambitions.?Many ‘Not for Profits’ would fall into this category – World Wildlife Fund for example, many city councils (ie. Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Broken Hill), Hospitals and Universities. Their ambitions are so great, but their charter and their means are severely constrained to act and fulfil their ambitions.

The Purpose-Driven Business

On the right-hand top, the purpose and operational program are the same – to deliver economic, human, natural and other forms of value to the communities that they operate in, for example, supporting and investing in programs that combat climate change. This doesn’t mean that these companies just have a stated purpose, but that their entire worldview and the way that they conduct themselves are aligned with their environmental and social purpose. Examples include Australian Ethical Superannuation, KeepCup and Patagonia.

It is important to bear in mind that these organizational archetypes are not fixed, and these businesses may transition between quadrants, for example, profit-driven businesses may become target-driven businesses, and so on.?

But what would motivate a business to want move from one quadrant into another, and how could a profit-driven business move to become a target-driven business?

A new opportunity for Business Analysts to create impact

A ‘purpose driven business analyst’ is one who is able to recognise and drive organisational concerns around ESG through positive change and transformation for their customers.

FIGURE 2: Influencing behaviours of business analysts in purpose driven change.

This then is the key driving factor for the purpose driven business analyst, who seeks to influence the business and helps them to actualize their ambitions towards their ESG outcomes. How to do this depends on which type of archetype business you are situated within, as defined by the four quadrants (see Figure 2).?

How to influence a Profit-Driven Business to move to a Target-Driven Business

As a purpose driven business analyst working in a profit-driven business, you can seek to influence worldview by identifying and quantifying ESG risks and starting an internal community of practice with like-minded colleagues. The goal is to make the leadership of the organisation aware of the risks of ignoring the ESG factors in their programs. However, if you find that there is no motivation to change, you may need to invest in yourself and potentially move on.

How to influence a Target-Driven business to move to a Purpose-Driven business

As a purpose driven business analyst working in a target-driven business, you can seek to shift the organisation’s worldview. You can achieve this by identifying & quantifying ESG risks & opportunities, innovating for efficiency and long-term viability. The goal is to widen the perception of stakeholders, challenge the status quo through mechanisms within your control, which may include workshops, lunch time presentations, future state analysis and requirements work.

How to influence a Constrained business move to a Purpose-Driven business

As a purpose?driven business analyst working in a constrained business, you can focus on high value initiatives that unlock resource productivity, identifying efficiencies that decrease costs. Digital transformation initiatives offer huge benefits to a constrained business. ?Gains can also be achieved by increasing revenue streams, introducing changes that fit within constraints, and including ESG in business cases. The goal here is to free up and grow the resources of your organisation to do more good in the world.

How to influence a Purpose-Driven business

As a purpose driven business analyst working in a purpose-driven business, you can seek to ‘feed and water’ holistic growth, social and environmental value and innovation. You can focus on monitoring and remediating ESG outcomes and making sure that their ethical and sustainable outcomes are really that, and not creating other problems. Help others by sharing and promoting how your organisation is leading in sustainability transformation.

Call to Action

As a purpose driven business analyst, you can be a key influencer to help your organization to achieve their ambitions to transform into a purpose-driven business, thus creating a more ethical, sustainable, and responsible environment in which to work and live. You have the power and influence to leverage trusted relationships with your clients to see through positive change, and thus create an authentic and harmonious alignment with your own personal values and beliefs, for the benefit of people and planet.

What do you think?

If you are a business analyst interested in this new and emerging field of purpose-driven business, Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) and sustainability transformation, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch with Ruth or Carl via LinkedIn to share your views.

This article was co-authored by Ruth Lewis and Carl Sudholz.?