The B Corp Community Stands Together Through Challenges to Build a Brighter Economic Future
This is a personal perspective from an employee at B Lab, the nonprofit behind Certified B Corporations. In this series, we invite individual B Lab employees to share their experiences, inspiration, hopes, and challenges as they work toward a more inclusive and regenerative world. This edition of B Lab Voices is by Kim Coupounas, who serves as a Global Ambassador for B Lab, as co-chair of the B Global Climate Task Force, as co-leader of the B Corp Climate Collective, and co-founder and executive circle member of WeTheChange. She is also a former co-founder and CEO of one of the earliest B Corps.
The global landscape and our lived reality have shifted radically over the past six weeks. The loss, suffering and death being experienced by many in this moment are often too much to fathom, let alone bear.
I write these words having spent the past few weeks vacillating between moments of abject despair and moments of hope and gratitude. What’s making me grateful is seeing the love and generosity being shared so freely by people who are able to help those in need. And what’s giving me hope is that the crisis is sparking concrete conversations by leaders across sectors globally, including within the community of Certified B Corporations and B Lab, about how we can work together to create a more equitable and regenerative economy on the other side of the pandemic.
As I’ve talked with B Corp leaders in one-on-one and group calls, I’ve heard repeatedly and in various versions the painful anxieties of real and immediate health and financial needs and hardship, for themselves, their families, and their businesses. Some have shared openly their circumstances — whether they would be able to keep their workers employed, how to keep workers safe, how to keep the lights on with zero revenue coming in, and whether their beloved company would ever be the same. Some are sharing news of the sickness of a loved one or the death of a friend or colleague.
The suffering has weighed heavily on me, not only because this is the community of people most dear to me but because news of these hard times has brought back memories of my own company’s death spiral on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis. Amidst that spiral, caused largely by anonymous “market forces,” I tried desperately to serve our customers and communities while caring for the well-being of our employees, all while it was unraveling before my eyes. The mind-numbing exhaustion and embarrassment of not being able to pay our vendors, many of whom called me daily, on my mobile phone and at home, with my child listening. The gut-wrenching reality of the impacts on the families of workers who were laid off, “employees” who were in reality colleagues and friends who had trusted their livelihoods to me. The dizzying paralysis brought on by realizing everything we had poured into our brand and company was dying. And then the sickening, chest-crushing acceptance of F A I L U R E that crashed over me like a tidal wave.
Hearing the level of sadness and despair from so many leaders these past weeks has brought these painful memories from 12 years ago back to my consciousness in vivid colors.
When I reflect on that time, I realize that we let the fear of failure paralyze and isolate us. We reached out to practically no one to advise us — let alone help us. We had some misguided belief in the nobleness of our cause and the positive destiny that would manifest. If I could change one thing about that time, I would have reached out to our friends, allies, and community when we needed them most.
What business leaders are dealing with during this pandemic seems far worse than anything I just described. For some industries, revenues have literally ceased. Many of you are dealing with family members and co-workers who are sick with or who have died from COVID-19. Many of you are dealing with income, job, housing, and food insecurity. And many of you are dealing with the challenges of remote learning for your children or caring for elderly loved ones.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Now is the time for you to lean into your community, more than you ever have. Yes, even amidst the terrifying challenges you may be facing. We can be the eye in the center of the storm for one another. In community, we can navigate these turbulent waters in the months ahead.
The past few weeks have shown me in countless ways how when human beings are united in common cause, we rise with care, love, compassion, and kindness. As a community that’s built on a foundation of trust, love and shared values, B Corps in particular have been showing how business can practice interdependence — sharing resources and information, serving their communities together, being a sounding board and source of understanding and solace for one another, and collaborating for real-time solutions.
And in the spirit of community and our interdependence, B Corps also are reaching out to fellow B Corps to offer support, services, and guidance. In recent weeks, members of the B Corp Climate Collective have come together in community and mutual support including work shares (where one company with ramped production amidst the pandemic is hiring furloughed workers from another), offering free and reduced-price services to one another, sharing knowledge about manufacturing retrofits to make PPE, hand sanitizer and other items in short supply, and many other connections.
“Climate and inequity are the two greatest challenges of our time — and love and collaboration will solve them.” — Mary Powell, CEO (retired), Green Mountain Power at WeTheChange B Corp CEO gathering, May 2019
COVID-19 has exposed the ugly underbelly of the current broken economic system. We are at a pivotal moment in history, with an opportunity to not only recognize the flaws in the current economic system but to work in collaboration and community to forge together the inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy that will sustain life on this planet.
Human beings’ creative powers are boundless. None of the world’s problems are “unsolvable” — including climate change and the human inequities that cause so much suffering. If there is any silver lining to this pandemic, I want it to be that humans recognize and fully own our agency to solve our most intractable challenges and build this new world together.
The only thing clear about the path ahead is that it will be rocky, but as Charles Eisenstein wrote recently, “let’s get serious about taking care of each other. Let’s remember how precious we all are and how precious life is. Let’s take inventory of our civilization, strip it down to its studs, and see if we can build one more beautiful.”
Let us be among those who choose hope, gratitude, love, action, and community in the weeks and months ahead, no matter what comes our way. Let us fully embrace our interdependence and lean into our communities for the help, inspiration, solace, and courage we need.
For more on how to gain strength through interdependence, see a longer version of this article posted by B Lab.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
How Interdependent Leadership Can Help Businesses Weather COVID-19 was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
