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Becky Willan is CEO and co-founder of Givena purpose consultancy with nearly 15 years’ experience supporting the likes of Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L), John Lewis Partnership and Ikea on defining and activating their corporate purpose.
I’d always wanted to do something that had a positive global impact and I thought that was going to be working in international development.
But I realised that world wasn’t really me. I was interested in making things happen quickly, ideas being part of something that felt more entrepreneurial and not part of this massive bureaucratic system that wasn’t really set up to create a positive impact.
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At the time, in the mid 2000s, there were very few companies that were taking those same issues around inequality, human rights and climate change seriously.
The Body Shop was one of them. Coming out of university, I managed to land what I felt like my dream job there, working on everything from their climate change strategy, shop fit and how they could be more sustainable.
My first boss was Jenny Whitebourne. She was then brand and values director for Europe, Middle East, and Africa and is still with The Body Shop today, while my role was environment manager.
What Jenny really encouraged me to do was understand that if you’re trying to change things in an organisation, what you really need is to engage people. You need to think about what matters while you can’t just sort of have the best plan. And Jenny taught me to get people to do things differently.
That understanding of human behaviour, what makes people tick, bringing brilliant ideas to change people’s understanding, desire, motivation to do different things was a massive lesson for me. It has really shaped the rest of my career.
But unless we get leaders and businesses to make decisions differently, we’re not actually going to achieve any of the things that we need to. Jenny encouraged me to think about how to make storytelling and creativity a massive part of that strategy. She then told me to launch it at the regional sales conference in front of 400 people at Disneyland, Paris.
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To spot potential in people and give them the support, confidence, space and the time to achieve things that they didn’t know that they could achieve perhaps at that point in their career was huge for me.
She drove a little red open top sports car which I thought was amazing. I loved the power that she bought, but without that alpha sort of quality.
It was almost like she walked a mile every day in your shoes which suggests that she took up all the stuff that you were probably not aware of. It’s another great trait of a leader, someone who can pick up the phone and say, ‘What can I do to help you today?’
I was enjoying The Body Shop but I was also ambitious. When I think I understand the power of ideas and creativity, if you present these issues as risks or compliance things, then no one’s going to buy into it, especially in organisations that are quite driven by brands and marketing.
That really was where the idea of setting up Given came from. If we want to help businesses properly address some of these really important issues, we’ve got to make sure that they’re seen as creating, but you’ve also got to help people see the possibility.
There’s a growing number of businesses that understand that they really need to take a strategic response to these huge issues but also that they need to bring people on the journey with them.
I would describe purpose as a management approach for profitably and solving the problems of people on the planet. It’s important because a lot of people think about purpose and they either think it’s a wishy-washy corporate strapline or they think it’s just marketing.
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Whereas for me, it’s a management approach, a business philosophy that says that what we’re really here to do is not just to make profit for our shareholders, it’s to make profit because we’re solving these real problems and not to make money from creating more problems for people.
Jenny saw something in me that meant she kept giving me more opportunities to do things, that pushed me beyond my comfort zone and gave me the support to feel like I could do it well.
I think she would have thought there was a good chance I would go on to do something a bit pioneering later in my career.