Lead with We by Simon Mainwaring is a book that explores how businesses can become more socially and environmentally responsible while still generating profits. Mainwaring argues that businesses that prioritize their impact on society and the planet will ultimately be more successful in the long run.
Throughout the book, Mainwaring uses case studies and real-world examples to illustrate his points. He also provides readers with a clear action plan for making their businesses more socially and environmentally responsible.
The rise of we first capitalism
Business—meaning all its stakeholders, including consumers—is uniquely equipped to address compounding social and environmental crises now presenting an existential threat to humanity with speed and on an equal scale.
The twin crises of 2020–21—the global pandemic and the racial justice movement—have demonstrated how business must now respond in real time and with greater authenticity to better serve all stakeholders on other key crises, including the environmental emergency.
For humanity to survive and businesses to thrive, we must work with each other in new ways to restore the integrity and well-being of our social and natural ecosystems.
Paradigm: a revolutionary new narrative
- Initiate a new story of business, wherein WE all approach our shared responsibility for our future with optimism and hope, and employ our empathy and excitement to inspire others to join WITH us and this movement.
- Humanize your business by sharing people-focused stories that remind us all of our responsibility, agency, and incentives, while also securing and scaling engagement by all stakeholders and partners.
- Solve long-term issues while also addressing emergent crises with an expansive ambition to improve life for humanity and the planet.
Purpose: the leadership mindset to slingshot business growth
- Upgrade your business ambitions to drive growth through purpose, as they are two sides of the same coin.
- Enterprises, companies, and startups can each leverage purpose to enhance their supply chains, build a productive culture, drive sales, and scale impact in partnership with all stakeholders.
- Purpose must be activated in authentic and collaborative ways to inspire trust, especially among younger generations, that drives engagement and scales impact.
Community: Inspiring Customers to Scale Growth & Impact
- Shift from “marketing” to “movement-making” in ways that inspire all stakeholders to build your business and its impact WITH you.
- Use your purpose to launch brand movements, building momentum through storytelling, partnerships, and impact.
- Determine the appropriate tone of your brand voice and engage consistently with selected social and environmental issues on this basis.
Urgency: A Confluence of Crises
- Recognize the urgency and responsibility to respond individually and collectively to the environmental challenges that threaten humanity, society, and your business.
- Take a stand on social and environmental issues, even if and as they become politicized, to drive business relevance, growth, and impact.
- Mimic the regenerative dynamics of nature that we must engage to increase the speed and scale of our response.
Lead With We: Community
1.LEAD—Determine what issues or impact are most authentic to your brand, aligned with your purpose, and relevant to your future.
2.WITH—Leverage The Four C’s to ensure your brand becomes an effective community architect: Co-ownership, Co-authorship, Co-creation, and multiple forms of Collaboration.
3.WE—Create new movements, or join existing ones that most effectively solve challenges that are meaningful and motivating for all your stakeholders.
Lead With We: Urgency
1.LEAD—Adopt, execute, and iterate with a first responder mindset to best prepare your business to support all stakeholders in the face of ongoing crises—and inevitable future challenges.
2.WITH—Respond to polarizing or politicized social and environmental issues in alignment with your predetermined purpose and values, and in partnership with like-minded stakeholders and organizations.
3.WE—Seek to consistently expand the Breadth of Your WITH (all your partners) to increase your positive impact on the collective WE.
Lead With We: Culture
1.LEAD—Align around integrating purpose into business goals and internal communications so that culture starts at the top and is built bottom up.
2.WITH—Use planning, training, and tools to consistently integrate purpose among internal stakeholders who then co-create its activation and advancement.
3.WE—Consistently review, and transparently communicate, progress across the breadth of internal activations, including sustainability, ESG, and DI&E efforts.
Society: collaborating to reinvent business
- Brands must define and LEAD the cultural conversations they are best qualified to address, with the goal of positively shaping culture and society.
- Pre-competitive collaboration unlocks and scales profitable innovations, elevates industry reputation, and scales solutions for a regenerative and sustainable future, while fortifying trust that insulates against future controversy.
- A requisite coalition of stakeholders, including the critical participation of the investor class, is enabling new market forces with the potential to regenerate our collective future.
Lead With We: Society
1.LEAD—Drive cultural conversations with clearly defined pillars and proof points to achieve lasting business growth and societal impact.
2.WITH—Be proactive, responsive, and/or reactive in service of these cultural conversations and changes you seek to co-create WITH other stakeholders.
3.WE—Participate in pre-competitive collaborations, industry coalitions, and cross-sector alliances to accelerate and scale industry-wide shifts, net positive solutions, and regenerative practices.
Lead With We: Paradigm
1.LEAD—Tell a new story about business. Cultivate a mindset and practice of business that finds and executes opportunities in challenges and crises.
2.WITH—Drive collaborative impact with nature as your model from wherever you are on your impact journey.
3.WE—Hold yourself consistently and transparently accountable to metrics that identify how you are benefiting all stakeholders through meaningful and measurable results.
Lead With We: Purpose
1.LEAD—Identify where you are on your purpose journey through an honest self-audit, then take appropriate and persistent steps to upgrade your leadership.
2.WITH—Use the LEAD WITH WE methodology to define an authentic and differentiating purpose that serves as an animating force for your company and its stakeholders to co-create its activation with you.
3.WE—Leverage your purpose as a company-wide decision-making filter to ensure that all aspects of your company are consistently working, evolving, and innovating to unlock solutions that benefit society and the planet.
Culture: guiding an internal transformation of your business
- Recognize and rise to the new expectations of leadership to build, strengthen, and reward a productive culture of purpose, starting with your own employees, whose expectations and demands have changed with incoming generations.
- Examine collaboratively what issues your company can address together, and what it means to LEAD authentic, collaborative action on what you all care about most.
- Build a culture that recognizes, elevates, and celebrates the humanity of its employees and their passion for addressing social and environmental issues.
