Purpose is presenting business leaders with the biggest opportunity in the past 200 years, according to Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business. And it’s going to happen fast.
Consumers, investors, regulators, and employees are looking to business to create profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet, not profit from creating those problems.
But how do you change business to serve society better, while still acknowledging the need to make money? That’s the question that Sarah is helping the senior large leaders of large businesses to answer.
Along the way, Sarah has evolved her own organisation’s purpose and used it to help her leadership team co-create a new adaptive strategy, designed to focus the organisation’s resources and cope with the chaos and uncertainty of today’s business environment. Learn how she did it on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.
A Blueprint for Better Business is an independent charity whose purpose is to create a better society through better business. They help business to be inspired and guided by a purpose that benefits society and respects people and planet through stimulating and energising a different way of thinking and behaving in business. They also convene forums and events, and work with investors and influencers from wider society, including NGOs, academics, business schools, coaches and advisors, to help create the environment for purpose-led business to thrive.
Sarah joined A Blueprint for Better Business as CEO in 2022, with 25 years’ experience leading in fast-paced commercial environments at some of the UK’s largest retail companies, including the John Lewis Partnership where she was responsible for rearticulating and embedding the organisation’s purpose so that it continues to be a source of inspiration, innovation, and strategic differentiation.
Skilled in business and people strategy, purpose, culture, and innovation, she is a passionate advocate for making business more human – places where people flourish, communities prosper, and long-term sustainability is the driving force.
Sarah holds a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Sarah Gillard