This way forward! – why leaving a sustainable legacy is crucial

This month is B Corp Month, an annual event every March where the global B Corp community celebrates what it means to be a B Corp and raises awareness of the movement worldwide.

And this year’s theme is This Way Forward, which champions the B Corp community as a work in progress and offers an invitation to ‘join the journey to better business’.

As a recently certified B Corp celebrating our first B Corp Month, we felt this theme really struck a chord with our aims at Acumentice – where our goal is all about supporting the NHS to move forward to be the best version of itself it can be, and leaving a sustainable legacy to any work we carry out to ensure true progress is made.

In our previous blog, announcing our B Corp certification, we outlined why we applied for B Corp and how it aligns to our company CSR goals – this time, we discuss the synergies between the B Corp movement and how we deliver our projects. ?

Creating and developing a very clear plan

In any work we undertake, we place a great deal of importance on planning. This means, at the very beginning, clarifying the challenges faced and analysing the root causes to ensure the solution we provide is the correct one. By ensuring that the solution is right from the very beginning, you therefore reduce the chances of needing to go back in and do it all again to solve the problem.

Through comprehensive planning, you can increase the chances of a sustainable legacy by only putting in the effort once you know for sure it is going to work – and, more importantly, work for the long-term with minimum intervention.

Once you have carried out the initial planning, now comes the part where you actually develop the plan that will help you reach your goals and ambitions. ?

A target-driven approach

Setting clear targets here is key to reassure you that your plan is going to work and deliver results, ensuring you don’t have to come back to the same problems again and again.

Just setting the targets isn’t enough, these also need to be monitored effectively to ensure your performance and progress can be measured. You want to make sure that you can measure what good looks like, and then monitor the reality against those targets. ?

Good governance is crucial. Ask yourself: are we measuring it right? Are our targets realistic and achievable? By making sure your plan is working, and regularly sense-checking and scrutinising this plan, you can ensure progress and sustainability by not having to go back to square one and come up with another plan. That will likely only cause delays, frustration, extra costs and a range of other issues.

Standardising your processes

Even when you’ve got to the end of your project, and it’s been successful, the work is only half done. Creating a sustainable legacy requires you to standardise your processes to ensure that improvements and efficiencies are embedded into your business as usual – making these improvements and efficiencies stick. ?

It is, of course, all very well to make big improvements and transformations, but if there is no sustainable legacy all the gains you’ve worked hard to achieve could be compromised. There needs to be a long-term plan where the improvements continue to function even when you’re not looking at things so intensely or dedicating so many resources. ?

These changes need to be drafted into your business-as-usual processes so that they become natural and everyday – in the best possible way. ?

They should soon look after themselves, rather than needing intense focus. That’s when you know you’ve really got a sustainable legacy.

It’s important to bear in mind, also, that all three of the above steps need to be carried out effectively and working in tandem to ensure an effective legacy. After all, if only one or two of the three is done correctly, you risk having to do it all over again – back to the drawing board once more. ?

This is the crucial difference between sustainable and unsustainable solutions. An unsustainable solution works only briefly, only works when you’re devoting a lot of resources to it, or perhaps doesn’t work at all. It is, of course, not sustainable if it doesn’t last or you have to do it all over again. The journey to the destination immediately becomes longer and more difficult.

By getting the planning right (to ensure the right solution is focused on), by delivering this quality plan (to deliver the solutions effectively), by monitoring results against key targets, and by then standardising processes into your business as usual, you hugely increase your chances of creating a sustainable legacy – something we always aim to do in our work with the NHS.

We believe there are strong comparisons to make between the sustainable legacy we aim to create, and the purpose of B Corp, which is to drive forward positive change and encourage more sustainable business practices – and we hope this blog shows how we are living those values in all the work we do.

*You can find out more about how we are celebrating B Corp Month by keeping an eye on our socials. For more info about the services we offer, please click here.