Inside the 'movement’ delivering business growth by doing good

Raikes gets an invite to the inner sanctum of a group of Gloucestershire firms adopting a different approach to business and finds companies delivering for people and the planet as well as profit too.

Dear readers,

Welcome to the Thursday edition of Raikes - the penultimate publication before I take a Christmas break. What follows is a feature-length article taking a look at a private business event that took place in Gloucestershire recently that I was lucky enough to be invited to.

The world as we know it in the UK is on a journey towards adopting a new set of rules governing how we do business. You can see it most clearly in the pressure on water companies currently. Just making profit on its own isn’t good enough or acceptable any more.

Good businesses need to have a purpose beyond being self-serving. In short, the utopian world as defined by economist Adam Smith all those years ago - of a freemarket dedicated to self interest - doesn’t cut it any more.

Before you have a go at me for not knowing what I’m talking about, the argument is laid out far more eloquently below by someone who really does understand these things (although, for the record, I did ‘study’ economics once upon a time, so at least I know who Adam Smith was!).

You might say the smart businesses are already some way down this road (think B-Corp, but there are other brands). And some might think considering community and planet and having a higher purpose dilutes your efforts. But plenty of evidence continues to emerge that it can in fact supercharge them.

In Gloucestershire there’s a growing movement that ties all this in to good leadership. What was apparent to me when I stepped into the room at the private event the article is about is we are not just talking about a handful of businesses. We’re talking about scores of them - and the total is growing.

The article headline calls this a ‘movement’ because that’s what it is. And together that movement is helping drive the county’s economy and create jobs - and it’s created a self-supporting community to help achieve that too.

We were not allowed to publish all the figures and detail we heard, but the doubling of turnover we mentioned below is in the tens of millions of pounds and more.

I’ve covered business stories as a journalist for 25 years and I have never seen anything like this on this scale. It’s massively impressive - and it’s here in Gloucestershire. What we didn’t go big on in the piece is the immense effort the path takes, so credit to them. They are the pioneers.

And if you’ll excuse the sales pitch, if Raikes wasn’t here to tell you about such things, you would probably never know. These businesses would never get any credit. Someone asked me the other day why they should pay to subscribe.

If people subscribe, and better still pay to support, I can write more like this and together we’ll learn what’s really going on in the county and all celebrate it together.

Andrew Merrell (editor).

NB: Raikes publishes probably the best-read business-related email ‘newsletter’, pound for pound, in Gloucestershire.

If you have a story, an issue, a news item, a charity or an interview you want us to write about or investigate, challenge the powers that be on, then please email me: andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.

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* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.

If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this community interest company too. We are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls often put on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable.

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Inside the 'movement’ delivering business growth by doing good

Raikes gets an invite to the inner sanctum of a group of Gloucestershire firms adopting a different approach to business and finds incredible companies delivering for people and the planet as well as profit too.

By Andrew Merrell.

Two multi-million pound businesses on course to double turnover, a new CEO for a county manufacturing legend, benefits of being purpose-led, how culture and AI have been harnessed as powerful forces for growth and power of peer reviews.

These were the headline-grabbing lines from an end-of-year conference-come-masterclass Raikes was invited to that revealed an eclectic family of firms forging a powerful economic and social catalyst for change - right here in the county.

This was a glimpse into the inner sanctum of that community, forged by those embracing the leadership development programmes delivered by Gloucester-based B-Corp business QuoLux.

It was an end-of-year Alumni Showcase of the impact its imparted learning is having. But it seemed more than that.