Transform Business Impact

B Impact Improvement Plans

Required Materials:

To develop B Impact Improvement Plans, you will need to access the baseline B Impact Assessment Report you finished in Module 1.

To Do List:

There are four actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Review the baseline B Impact Assessment Report you started or completed in Module 1 of Business Impact Accelerator.
2. Download and review the Action Plan tool from the Change Accelerator© Toolkit.
3. Create or update a B Impact Improvement Plan (use the action planning tool from Change Accelerator) every 90 days to continuously improve your social and environmental impact and earn more assessment points.
4. Conduct quarterly strategy reviews of Improvement Plans to track progress toward B Corp Certification and celebrate successes in building a sustainable, high-impact enterprise and work culture.

Coaching Tips:

This Activity is focused on developing and implementing a continuous impact improvement process within your enterprise driven by the B Impact Assessment. If you are seeking to scale positive impact and build a sustainable, high-impact enterprise, then you need a systematic process for doing this.

When you access your B Impact Assessment account, be sure to read Step 3 (Improve Your Impact). In this section, you’ll see a number of best practice guides and improvement case studies provided by B Lab. Log into your account and go to the B Impact Assessment you started in the previous module of Business Impact Accelerator©.

Use the main navigation menu to find your B Impact Assessment Report. Look for the “filter tabs” at the top of “Full Assessment Improvement Report” and focus on improvement opportunities aligned with the “vital few” areas you and your team identified in the first Activity of Module 1. As you click on each potential improvement, you’ll see the assessment question, your answer, and three tabs (“Explain This”, “Show Example”, and “In Practice”). Be sure to click on “Score Value” in the lower right to see how many points your enterprise could earn by answering or improving on the response.

Next, download and review the Action Plan tool from the Change Accelerator© Toolkit and develop a 90-day plan to implement improvement opportunities identified from the B Impact Assessment. Identify a manageable number of opportunities consistent with the available time and resources in your enterprise. Be sure to focus first on the “low-hanging fruit.” The goal here is to create immediate “wins” and build confidence and positive energy for the process of continuous impact improvement.

Culture Change

Use all of the resources from the B Impact Assessment and Change Accelerator platforms (e.g., best practice guides, case studies, Project Dashboard, Phase Health Checks, etc.) to accelerate learning and change. The goal is to embed the B Impact Assessment and 90-day action plans (and later, annual improvement plans) into the daily operations and culture of your enterprise. These tools and processes will “sustain the change” you’re asking everyone to get behind and support.

As you complete items on the 90-day Improvement Plans, be sure to update your assessment answers on the B Impact Assessment. Take time to communicate progress to your team and organization. Don’t take small improvements for granted. This is essential for putting the Principle of Involvement into action and reinforcing positive action. Continue to go back to Change Accelerator for other tools that will help you and your team strengthen its commitment to sustainability and building a high-impact enterprise.

Be sure to save copies of your B Impact Improvement Plans to record progress as you work toward B Corp Certification (reference Module 4 of Business Impact Accelerator).

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. What are we learning about our social and environmental impact?
2. Did we make progress these last 90 days in improving our impact?
3. Did we use a gender lens to identify impact improvements within our enterprise?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 4–6 hours (once per quarter) to create a B Impact Improvement Plan. Additional time will be required to monitor implementation of 90-day action plans and report/celebrate progress at the end of each quarter.

Featured Certified B Corporation:

Greyston Bakery

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about measuring, managing, and improving impact, we recommend subscribing to the B Lab Channel on YouTube.

Customer Persona and Journey Canvases

Required Materials:

To create Customer Persona and Journey Canvases, you will need the Design a Better Business and Value Proposition Design books. You will also need to visit the Design a Better Business website and use results from customer impact interviews conducted in Module 1.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Download and review the Persona Canvas and Customer Journey Canvas from the Free Tools section of the Design a Better Business website.
2. Review pages 98–103 in Design a Better Business and page 106–119 in Value Proposition Design.
3. Review the feedback and insights gleaned from customer impact interviews conducted previously.
4. Create a Persona Canvas and Customer Journey Canvas for one or more customer segments served by your business or social enterprise.
5. Save these Canvases for your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and for ongoing use throughout Business Impact Accelerator©, especially Module 4 (Improve Customer Experiences).

Coaching Tips:

In 2008, we facilitated a leadership development program with the theme: “It starts with you, but it’s about them (the customer).” One of the exercises in this program asked the 45 participants to “walk in the shoes” of customers and visualize their journey at every “touchpoint” (both online and in-person). It was an eye-opening exercise for “inside-out” leaders more concerned about internal metrics than the impact they created in the lives of customers.

In this Activity, you and your team will use the Persona and Customer Journey Canvases from Design a Better Business to walk in the shoes of customers. You will find both Canvases in the Free Tools/Understand section of the Design a Better Business website. Be sure to read through the descriptions and instructions provided on the site for each canvas.

Also, read pages 98–103 in Design a Better Business and pages 106–119 of Value Proposition Design before completing these canvases. And, use the feedback and insights gleaned from customer impact interviews conducted in Module 1. From these interviews, you will have gained insight into the needs, expectations, and emotions of your customers.

There is a quote on the Design a Better Business website that is relevant to the scaling and growth journey you and your team are preparing to launch: “The Customer Journey is relevant for everyone. Everyone on the team, and in your company, must understand what your customers experience, how they feel, what they struggle with, and how you can improve their experience. The underlying goal: to solve our customer’s problems and make them happy.”

Personalize the Canvas

As you create Persona and Customer Journey Canvases, keep these thoughts in mind:

• Creating the Canvases will help you to more clearly define the root cause (or causes) of the problem (or problems) you solve for customers.
• Give each segment a face and name on the Persona Canvas; that is, you need to “make it personal” so your team can empathize with the world customers live in and experience every day.
• Think “outside-in” from the customer’s point of view; her or his goal isn’t to purchase your product or service, but to solve a problem, reduce pains, and create gains important to them.
• Results from customer impact interviews could be pointing your enterprise toward “low-hanging fruit” that will immediately improve the experience of your customers. It may also inform you and your team that your enterprise has an opportunity to create even more impact and value for customers (and ultimately for you).
• Understanding the journey of your customers is key to delivering high-impact value propositions and creating retention levels that enable you to deliver sustainable results during the ten-year journey of growth, change, and transformation.

As you develop Persona and Customer Journey Maps, be sure to identify at least ten “earlyevangelists” or “early adopters” as discussed on page 118 of Value Proposition Design. These “rock stars” could be very helpful in providing feedback for the new value proposition and business model you’ll be designing, prototyping, and testing later in this section of Business Impact Accelerator©.

Also, be sure to review the Business Plan Checklist to see where you will place this information in the Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan that you and your team will be creating in Module 3 of Business Impact Accelerator.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we completely describe the persona of our selected customer(s)?
2. Did we discover any “low-hanging fruit” that would help us to improve the customer experience?
3. Are these canvases based on any assumptions we need to confirm or validate?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 3–4 hours to complete both the Persona and Customer Journey Canvases.

Featured Certified B Corporation:  

Seventh Generation

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about customer empathy and the value of putting customers first, we recommend you subscribe to the Hallmark Business Connections Channel on YouTube and watch these videos:

• “Connecting with Customers Through Empathy”
• “5 Essentials for Creating a Differentiated Customer Experience”
• “Creating an Unmatched Customer Experience”

We also suggest:

•  “Customer Empathy Maps” video from Optima Training in the U.K.
• Updated Empathy Map Canvas by Dave Gray
• The Lean Approach (free 6-part video series from the Kauffman FoundersSchool).

High Impact Value Proposition Canvas

Required Materials:

To design and prototype a High Impact Value Proposition Canvas, you will need the Value Proposition Design, Business Model Generation, and Design a Better Business books. You will also need the Business Impact Accelerator Library.

To Do List:

There are four actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Review the Understand and Ideate chapters in Design a Better Business (pages 84–149).
2. Review pages 102–103 (Six Ways to Innovate from the Customer Profile) in Value Proposition Design, as well as pages 144–157 (Finding the Right Business Model) and pages 98–99 (Identify High-Value Jobs).
3. Implement the Coffee Challenge (page 121 in Design a Better Business) and rapidly prototype at least ten different value proposition canvases in the next 1–2 weeks.
4. Select one High Impact Value Proposition Canvas for ongoing refinement, testing, and validation.

Coaching Tips:

In this section of Module 2, you and your team will engage customers to learn more about their priority jobs, pains, and gains. Your aim is to take an “outside-in” point of view and discover higher value benefits you could deliver to achieve the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG®) identified in your ten-year Vision Story of Sustainable 10X Impact.

Start this process by first reviewing the Understand and Ideate chapters in Design a Better Business. Be sure to examine the case studies, especially the Wavin story on page 93. This story is an excellent example of “outside-in” design thinking as well as creation of a Level 4 Customer Value Proposition (the free Wavin Academy). Note the comment CEO Richard van Delden makes on page 96: “We knew that there were other options worth exploring as well. So, rather than spend time arguing about the one option on the table, we decided first to validate our assumptions and learn from our customer first hand. We got out of the building.”

Also, review the Coffee Challenge described on page 121 of Design a Better Business. The Coffee Challenge is a customer discovery exercise you and your team should plan to accomplish in the next 2–3 weeks. Use the initial sketch of your enterprise’s Value Proposition Canvas from Module 1 to dive more deeply into the high-value jobs of customers (note–you may want to schedule a return visit with some of the “earlyevangelists” identified in your customer impact interviews). Pages 98–99 in Value Proposition Design outlines the information you will be seeking. Also, note there are other customer discovery tools in the “Understanding Customers” section of the book.

As you start to generate new ideas for potential high impact canvases, consider the information provided on page 131 of Design a Better Business (Improving the Lives of Millions). This example illustrates the importance of using your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG®) to evaluate prototypes.

Search, Not Execution

There are two other sections in Value Proposition Design we recommend before conducting the Coffee Challenge. On pages 102–103, there is a summary of Six Ways to Innovate from the Customer Profile. Note the third example, which supports The Level 4 Customer Value Proposition idea presented by Bill Lee in The Hidden Wealth of Customers (reference Module 1, Evaluate Customer Engagement).

As well, pages 144–157 in Value Proposition Design discuss the reality of searching for high-impact value propositions and business models. That is, you should expect this process to be “dynamic” as you work back and forth between the two canvases, arriving at a prototype to test and validate.

There is one more YouTube video we recommend you and your team watch (and watch together): “How to Grow Your Business and Sales Faster”. In this YouTube video, you’ll learn about an analytical framework for developing a revenue growth strategy using the 80/20 Principle.

Next, schedule and moderate “integration meetings” to ensure coordination and communication. As team members present prototype canvases, apply the Thinking Hats process outlined on pages 136–137 in Value Proposition Design.  If space is available, you may even want to designate an area of your enterprise as an “innovation center” and start involving a wider group of people in the process of transforming your value proposition and business model.

Be sure to select one High-Impact Value Proposition Canvas for further refinement, testing, and validation. In reality, you’ll be developing this Canvas at the same time as you design/redesign your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model.

Our last coaching tip focuses on the Business Plan Checklist you’ll be completing in Module 3 of Business Impact Accelerator©.  Note the section titled “Unique Solution.” This is where you’ll be communicating your high-impact value proposition (and business model) to women and HeForShe advocates.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. What did we learn from our meetings with customers?
2. Did we discover any “high-value jobs” or priority pains and gains that could lead to a more impactful value proposition for women?
3. Did we design and select one High Impact Value Proposition to test and validate with our Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model?

Estimated Time:

It will take you and your team approximately 2–3 weeks to design a High Impact Value Proposition Canvas.

Featured Certified B Corporation:  

Cotopaxi

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about creating value propositions and business models from an impact point-of-view, we recommend the following:

• Models of Impact Toolkit
• ImpactKit: 110 Methods to Change the World
• IRIS (or Impact Reporting and Investment Standards; provides a database of metrics used by the B Impact Assessment and impact investors).
• Visual Capitalist (daily infographic on future trends in business and investment).

We also recommend these free online courses from +Acumen (on the NovoEd learning platform):

• Social Entrepreneurship
• Business Models for Social Enterprise
• Introduction to Human-Centered Design
• Social Impact Analysis

We also advise:

• The Lean Approach (free 6-part video series from the Kauffman Founders School on Youtube)
• The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less by Mark Joyner.
• How to Build a Startup (free course on Udacity by Steve Blank).
• Gender Lens Investing: Uncovering Opportunities for Growth, Returns, and Impact by Joseph Quinlan and Jackie VanderBrug.

Investment Readiness Level Canvas

Required Materials:

To use the Investment Readiness Level Canvas, you will need the Value Proposition Design and Design a Better Business books. As well, you will need to visit the Design a Better Business website. You will also need to download resources from the Strategyzer website and Change Accelerator© platform.

To Do List:

There are six actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Review content in Value Proposition Design, including Fit  (pages 42–63), and Testing Process (pages 198–199 and pages 188–252).
2. Review the Strategyzer Blog post dated June 20, 2016, by Alex Osterwalder titled Why Companies Fail & How to Prevent It.
3. Download and review The Progress Board and Testing Your Business Model: A Reference Guide from the Resources section on Strategyzer’s website.
4. Review Introduction to Investment Readiness Level in Design a Better Business (pages 242–247) and download the Investment Readiness Level Canvas from the Design a Better Business website.
5. Download the Action Plan tool from the Change Accelerator Toolkit and implement a test and validation plan specific for your Sustainable 10X Business Model.
6. Track and record progress on the Investment Readiness Level Canvas and save a copy for the Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan (to be developed in Module 3).

Coaching Tips:

In this part of Module 2, you will use the Investment Readiness Level Canvas to track progress in validating the Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model you and your team designed in the previous Activity. You’ll be using this Canvas in your five-year Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan to show prospective crowdfund investors how you mitigated the risk of business model failure.

As Value Proposition Design says on page 178: “When you start exploring new ideas, you are usually in a space of maximum uncertainty. You don’t know if your ideas will work. Refining them in a business plan won’t make them more likely to succeed.”

We think this statement is true regardless of the age, size, or type of enterprise you founded or now lead and manage. Envisioning a future of 10X impact is one thing, but being able to scale impact and achieve sustainable growth after scale-up is another matter. Given the failure rate of young ventures or new products and services in larger enterprises, it is essential to reduce uncertainty and risk before developing a business plan and 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer.

As you review pages 42–63 in Value Proposition Design, note the three kinds of “fit” described on pages 48–49 (problem-solution fit, product-market fit, and business model fit). Access and download the June 20, 2016, post from the Strategyzer Blog. Here, Alex Osterwalder discusses a study of over 200 startups post failure. In FRACTL’s study, the top three reasons that founders cited for their organization’s failure were: (1) business model not viable, (2) ran out of cash, and (3) not enough traction.

After reading this post, download Testing Your Business Model: A Reference Guide from the Resources section of the Strategyzer website. This guide will provide you with ideas for testing the assumptions or hypotheses driving your new impact-driven business model. Then, review pages 198–199 in Chapter 3 of Value Proposition Design to learn about the testing and validation process recommended by the Strategyzer team. Additional information on each step is provided in pages 188–252 of the book.

Download and use The Progress Board from the Resources section of Strategyzer’s website. List your priority business model assumptions and hypotheses on this tool. Then, identify the combination of tests, minimum viable products, and other experiments that will provide evidence you are ready to scale your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model.

What is Your Plan to Test and Validate?

The Testing Your Business Model Reference Guide provides three focus areas and eight validation questions which will help you and your team create a test and validation plan specific to your enterprise. The priority areas and validation questions discussed in the Guide include:

• Testing Interest and Relevance (Do potential customers show interest in your ideas? Are your ideas relevant to them? Are they interested enough to perform an action?)
• Testing Willingness and Ability to Pay (Are potential customers interested enough in the features of your value proposition to buy? Will they put money where their mouth is?)
• Testing Preferences and Priorities (Which features of your value proposition do potential customers refer? What do they really value? What do they prioritize?)

Next, download the Action Plan tool from Change Accelerator and with 2–3 members of your team, develop a test and validation plan specific to your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model. Note the free training resources available on the Strategyzer website (in addition to their affordable online programs) that you and your team can use to create a practical and viable testing process.

However, before finishing this action plan, review pages 242–247 in Design a Better Business. This section provides a quick overview of the Investment Readiness Level Canvas. Also, visit the Design a Better Business website and download the Canvas. Use this tool to shape the metrics you’ll be using to signal completion of each stage of the Investment Readiness Level Canvas.

Be sure to track progress of the 30–90 day (or longer) test and validation plan and document progress on the Canvas. Be specific with the completion date and metrics used by your business or social enterprise as evidence of investment readiness. By referencing or using the Investment Readiness Level Canvas in your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan, you will impress women and HeForShe investors that your enterprise is ready to deliver on its 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. What did we learn about the integrity and viability of our impact-driven business model?
2. Did we generate the right evidence of business model validation and investment readiness?
3. Are we ready to move forward in preparing a five-year Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer? If not, what do we need to verify?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 6–8 hours (or more) to develop a high-quality test and validation plan. Execution of that plan will take anywhere from 30–90 days (or longer) depending on the age, type, and size of enterprise you’re leading and the nature of your new or improved business model and value proposition.

Featured Certified B Corporation: 

The Redwoods Group

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about the Investment Readiness Level Canvas, we recommend subscribing to Steve Blank’s Blog.

To find out more about customer development and business model validation, we suggest these resources from Michael Libes, Steve Blank, and Eric Ries:

• The Next Step Series by Michael “Luni” Libes (a $10 per month online training program by an impact-driven entrepreneur turned revenue-based investor and head of a “conscious company accelerator”).
• The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (by successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor now turned consultant and educator Steve Blank).
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneur’s Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (by Eric Ries).

We also recommend these recently published books (and related online learning programs) from Strategyzer:

• Testing Business Ideas by David Bland and Alex Osterwalder.
• The Invincible Company by Alex Osterwalder, Yves, Pigneur, Fred Etiemble, and Alan Smith.

We also advise:

• The Lean Approach (free 6-part video series from the Kauffman FoundersSchool).
• How to Build a Startup (free course on Udacity by Steve Blank).
• 25 Need to Know Key Performance Indicators by Bernard Marr.
• Key Performance Indicators: The 75 Measures Every Manager Needs to Know by Bernard Marr.