How I Accidentally Started a LinkedIn Fight About Chocolate in Front of 77,000 People

A few weeks ago, I published a LinkedIn post promoting my Beyond the B interview with Douglas Lamont, the CEO, of Tony's Chocolonely.

I opened with a deliberately bold line:

"In my opinion, Tony's Chocolonely belongs in the same credibility conversation as Patagonia."

I really do feel that way. I listed my reasons: Tony's mission-locked legal structure, its Open Chain philosophy, its support for policy change through the Better Business Act in the UK, and other efforts to change the chocolate industry at scale. To me, it did not feel like a particularly controversial take.

Boy, was I naive.

The post generated nearly 104,000 impressions and reached more than 77,000 people, quickly accounting for the vast majority of my LinkedIn impressions during the previous twelve months. Somewhat humorously, there was no comparable spike in podcast activity. The podcast downloads did not rise nearly as much, suggesting that much of the discussion was responding to the comparison itself rather than the full interview behind it.

Supporters of Tony's arrived first. "Love Tony's!" "Aren't they amazing?" Then came the critics with sharper questions: about the company's relationships with conventional cocoa manufacturers, its pricing and traceability claims, how much power farmers actually hold, and whether Tony's visibility crowds out smaller enterprises doing more structurally ambitious work.

I tagged Seth Goldman, one of Tony's three Mission Guardians, and invited him to respond to some of the criticism directly. He did not join the thread, which by that point had become a bit of a sh*tshow. One person said my post read like a paid advertisement.

I replied to nearly every comment, which probably kept the post circulating. The more contentious the exchange became, the further LinkedIn's algorithm seemed to carry it.

The argument underneath the argument

The responses were nominally about cocoa. But underneath, it was the same disagreement I have watched play out dozens of times in the social impact and B Corp space. Do we need larger companies, broader market adoption, and interventions at scale to change the system? Or does real transformation require building smaller, farmer-led, regenerative, and structurally different alternatives outside the dominant system?

The thing many people don't want to accept is that both kinds of work are needed. The most useful framework I have found for holding that tension is one we use at LIFT Economy: the Two Loops model, and the roles of hospice and midwife in the transition to the Next Economy.

The Two Loops Model (adapted from Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley at the Berkana Institute).

Picture two curves. One traces the dominant economy as it peaks and begins its long decline. The other traces something new emerging underneath it: worker ownership, regenerative agriculture, steward ownership, community-controlled and nonextractive finance, and other models that shift who owns, governs, and benefits from economic activity.

Hospice workers tend the declining curve. They reduce harm within the systems we already have and help extractive institutions change, or die, more responsibly. Think of Walmart pushing renewable energy and emissions reductions through its enormous supply chain. Midwife workers tend the rising curve. They build what could come next, like an Indigenous-owned regenerative enterprise such as Winona's Hemp & Heritage Farm.

Neither can bring about the transition to the Next Economy without the other. Hospice work alone can make an unjust system more tolerable without changing its foundations. Midwife work alone can build beautiful alternatives while millions of people remain exposed to the harms of the economy we actually have.

Once you see the two curves, the cocoa fight, and all the other versions of this same argument among people who ultimately want very similar things, become easier to understand.

Tony's and hospice work

Tony's did not exit the global commodity system to build a small, vertically integrated alternative. It stayed inside the machine. It works with large cooperatives, processors, manufacturers, and retailers, relying on much of the same broad infrastructure used by the rest of the industry. Its five sourcing principles cover traceable cocoa, prices set against a living-income reference, stronger farmer cooperatives, long-term purchasing commitments, and investment in quality and productivity. Through Tony's Open Chain, competing brands can adopt the entire model rather than watching Tony's protect it as a competitive advantage. Douglas described the logic as collaborating in the supply chain and competing on the shelf.

None of this hands ownership of the chocolate industry to farmers, eliminates commodity dependence, or undoes the colonial history of cocoa. What it does is change what happens to a meaningful volume of cocoa right now. When a major retailer signs longer contracts at higher prices, farmers feel the effects. This alone does not transform the cocoa supply chain. It is also not nothing.

The critics were asking midwife questions

Does Tony's give farmers real decision-making power, or better terms within someone else's system? Where does the value actually accumulate? Is the industry moving toward farmer or community ownership, or simply toward a commodity system that is somewhat less exploitative? Does Tony's visibility crowd out attention that could go to smaller, farmer-led enterprises?

One side of the debate was asking how to improve the bulk cocoa market that exists today. The other was asking why we should celebrate an intervention that leaves so much of the underlying structure intact. Both questions are necessary. But the hospice side can write off midwife projects as too small to matter, and the midwife side can write off any compromised intervention as greenwashing. Without a framework like Two Loops, each side can mistake its partial view for the whole. And round and round we go.

“This mission doesn’t get solved in a year or two years. This is 20 years, 30 years of work.”
— Douglas Lamont, CEO of Tony's Chocolonely

Tony's does not sit neatly on either curve

Calling Tony's pure hospice work would be too simple. Its Mission Lock places a special share in an independent trust overseen by three Mission Guardians, whose job is to protect the mission through any future change in ownership or leadership. Douglas put the need for that plainly: "This mission doesn't get solved in a year or two years. This is 20 years, 30 years of work." Tony's also supports the Better Business Act and treats its sourcing practices as shared industry infrastructure rather than a competitive advantage.

That puts Tony's between the loops, improving the existing industry while experimenting with structures that could help a different kind of business system emerge. Most purpose-driven companies probably occupy this same complicated middle ground.

What this reveals about B Corp

The same tension runs through the entire B Corp movement. Should certification recognize a relatively small group of structurally transformative companies? Or should it build a demanding pathway that larger and more conventional businesses can realistically travel?

Douglas argued strongly for the big tent. Large companies control supply chains, employment, capital, emissions, and political influence, and a movement that cannot reach them will struggle to change the economy at scale. The midwife warning is equally important. A large, conventionally owned company making credible improvements is not the same thing as a worker cooperative, a steward-owned enterprise, or a regenerative business built around community wealth, even when both carry the same certification.

At its best, B Corp is one of the few places where hospice companies and midwife companies belong to the same community, measure themselves against a shared floor, and sit at the same tables. Certification cannot tell us exactly where each company sits on the curves. Its value may be keeping the two kinds of work in relationship rather than leaving them in separate rooms criticizing one another from a distance.

That only holds if the movement keeps a high bar and a big tent. Drop the bar and B Corp becomes a marketing community. Shrink the tent and it becomes a small identity group with limited influence over the wider economy.

What I learned

My original Patagonia comparison compressed several different questions about scale, governance, evidence, ownership, and transformation into one sweeping verdict. I still believe Tony's belongs in a serious conversation about corporate credibility, mission protection, collective action, and supply chain change. But the more accurate claim is that Tony's is doing serious hospice work at scale while experimenting with midwife-oriented approaches to governance, collaboration, and policy. More farmer-led and structurally transformative enterprises are still needed to show where the cocoa economy ultimately needs to go.

One side of this argument was asking how to improve a massive industry that exists today. The other was asking what a genuinely different cocoa economy could become. The path to the Next Economy runs through both questions.

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Walking the Talk, Part 8: Impact Measurement and Transparency

This is the eighth article in our ten-part "Walking the Talk" series on how companies can move beyond B Corp certification and truly embody their values in daily practice. Parts 1 through 7 covered how leaders model values (Part 1), how values get embedded in strategy and budgets (Part 2), how roles connect to mission (Part 3), how employees learn to apply values on the job (Part 4), how policies and operations are brought into alignment (Part 5), how stakeholder engagement becomes a genuine feedback system (Part 6), and how decision-making authority is distributed (Part 7).

Part 8 asks a question the new standards have made unavoidable: does your company actually know what its impact is, and does anyone outside the company get to see it?

Under the previous B Corp framework, measurement was largely something you did to earn points. Under the new standards, many companies are now required to track specific social and environmental outcomes and, above certain size thresholds, publish the results. That is a real improvement. It also creates a new and subtler failure mode.

A company can produce excellent documentation for its assurance provider and never look at that documentation again. The climate action plan gets written, verified, filed, and forgotten. The data lives in a folder rather than in the conversations where decisions get made. This is measurement as compliance, and it can coexist indefinitely with a company that has no real idea whether its impact is improving.

What We Mean by Impact Measurement and Transparency

In the LIFT B Corp Values Assessment, this dimension asks companies to rate themselves on four statements:

  • We track key social and environmental KPIs alongside financial metrics.

  • Impact data is used to inform decisions and strategy.

  • We share regular updates on impact performance with employees and other stakeholders.

  • Leadership communicates both successes and challenges openly when reporting impact results.

Notice what the second and fourth statements are doing. Tracking and sharing are the visible parts of this dimension, and most companies that have been through certification can claim them honestly. Using the data to change decisions, and reporting results you would rather not report, are the parts that separate measurement from documentation.

Why This Matters

Every organization measures something, and what it measures shapes what it pays attention to. If a company tracks revenue weekly and emissions annually, employees learn which one the organization actually cares about. That lesson is absorbed regardless of what the values statement says.

Transparency raises the stakes further. A company that publishes its performance has created an external record it will be held to, which is precisely why so few companies publish anything uncomfortable. The willingness to disclose a missed target is one of the clearest available signals that a company's commitments are real. Anyone can publish a report full of achievements.

There is also a practical argument. Impact problems, like financial problems, get more expensive the longer they go undetected. A company that discovers a supply chain issue through a journalist is in a very different position than one that found it through its own monitoring two years earlier.

What Strong Impact Measurement and Transparency Looks Like in Practice

  • Impact metrics appear on the same dashboards and in the same meetings as financial metrics, on a comparable cadence, rather than in a separate annual process.

  • The company distinguishes between outputs and outcomes. Hours of volunteering is an output. Whether the community partner's capacity actually increased is an outcome.

  • Reporting includes targets that were missed, initiatives that failed, and areas where performance moved in the wrong direction, with an explanation of what the company is doing about it.

  • Data is accessible to the people who need it. Procurement can see supplier performance. Managers can see engagement and pay equity data for their own teams.

  • Baselines are established and held consistent, so year-over-year comparison is possible. Frequently changing methodology makes progress impossible to verify and is one of the more common ways companies avoid accountability without technically saying anything false.

  • At least one person outside the sustainability function is accountable for impact results, which prevents measurement from becoming the private project of the team most invested in it.

Common Challenges and Pitfalls

Measuring what is easy rather than what matters. Carbon from purchased electricity is straightforward to calculate. Scope 3 emissions across a complex supply chain are not. Companies naturally gravitate toward the tractable metric, and over time the easy number becomes a proxy for performance it does not actually represent.

Reporting as a communications exercise. When the impact report is owned primarily by marketing, it will be written to persuade rather than to inform. The tell is the absence of bad news. A report with no setbacks in it is not a report about a real company.

The annual cycle problem. Impact data collected once a year and published three months later arrives too late to influence any decision anyone is currently making. By the time the report lands, the company has moved on.

Documentation without use. This is the specific risk the new standards introduce. A company assembles an impressive evidence file for verification, passes, and then leaves the underlying data untouched until the next cycle. The company is compliant and no better informed than it was before.

Transparency that stops at the company's edge. Publishing your own operational footprint while remaining silent about the parts of your supply chain where the real impact sits is a form of selective disclosure, even when every published number is accurate.

How to Strengthen Impact Measurement and Transparency

  1. Pick a small number of metrics that would actually change a decision. For each metric you currently track, ask what the company would do differently if the number moved significantly. If there is no answer, the metric is documentation, not measurement.

  2. Put impact data in front of the same people, at the same frequency, as financial data. If leadership reviews financials monthly and impact annually, change the impact cadence before changing anything else.

  3. Publish something you would rather not publish. Start with one missed target and an honest explanation. This is the fastest way to change how internal conversations about performance work, because it removes the incentive to manage the number rather than the problem.

  4. Separate outputs from outcomes in your reporting. Label them differently. Most impact reports blur the two, and the blurring is usually not accidental.

  5. Fix your baselines and document your methodology. Then leave both alone unless you have a substantive reason to change them, and disclose the change when you do.

  6. Review the measurement system itself once a year. Ask what the company is not measuring that a serious critic would ask about first. That question tends to surface the gaps faster than reviewing the existing metrics.

Examples in Practice

Wanderlust Life, a UK jewellery brand and one of the first nine companies certified under the new standards, maintains a public sustainability hub that hosts its climate action plan, human rights policy, grievance procedure, and annual sustainability report as plain public documents. The disclosure is required at their size, but the execution is not. Most companies meeting the same requirement do the minimum. The hub is worth studying as an example of what verified, publicly available documentation looks like when a company treats disclosure as useful rather than as a burden.

Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles took the opposite approach to conventional impact reporting by publishing supply chain information that included problems the company had not yet solved. The strategic logic is worth understanding. By disclosing difficulties early, the company made itself harder to expose and easier to trust. The reputational protection came from candor rather than from performance.

Reflection Questions for Leadership Teams

  • If your impact data disappeared tomorrow, which decisions would be harder to make?

  • When was the last time an impact metric caused your company to change course?

  • What did you publish last year that you were reluctant to publish?

  • Who outside the sustainability team is accountable for impact results?

  • If a well-informed critic examined your reporting, what would they say you are conspicuously not measuring?

The Road Ahead

Impact measurement matures in a recognizable sequence. Companies in the early stages track what certification requires. Companies with moderate alignment track what the business needs to know and share it internally. Strong alignment means external reporting happens on a regular cycle and includes results that are unflattering. Full embodiment means you can point to specific decisions that impact data changed.

The distinction that matters is not how much a company measures. It is whether measurement has any consequences.

In Part 9, we will look at Recognition and Celebration, which is the dimension most companies skip, and the one most closely tied to whether values work survives past the first year.

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Where are the Tech B Corps?

Last month I was at the book launch for Incorruptible by Eric Ries (which recently hit the NYT bestseller list). Eric's main argument is that companies that want to be trusted need structural accountability, not just good intentions. He recommends the Public Benefit Corporation as the single most important step any company can take.

B Corps did not come up in any of the discussion. So I asked Eric afterwards how much B Corp certification had come up on his book tour and media appearances. His response was candid: barely at all, which surprised even him.

Why B Corp is Missing

I wasn't surprised. Eric's audience is heavily tech and startup focused. I have done talks in Silicon Valley many times, including events, founder conversations, and lectures at Stanford's business school. The reaction was almost always a blank stare or mild curiosity. At Eric's event, an attendee put it bluntly: "The Venn diagrams of the two worlds do not overlap." I think that's slightly overstated. But it's basically true.

“The Venn diagrams of the two worlds do not overlap.”
— Audience Member at Eric Ries's book launch

I am now working on the third edition of The B Corp Handbook, so I went looking for big-name tech B Corps. There have been several in the past: Kickstarter, Etsy, Change.org, Hootsuite, WeTransfer, and Rally Software. But none of these are certified anymore. I know there are some--like CultureAmp and Coursera--that are current B Corps. But there are now almost 11,000 B Corps across the world, and it feels like the proportion of big-name tech B Corps has gotten even smaller. What's actually going on?

The High Growth, Silicon Valley Playbook

My take is that the traditional Silicon Valley playbook doesn't leave room for it. The VC playbook demands that companies be "N of 1" innovative disruptors that turn entire industries upside down. But then those same VCs want the most basic, traditional legal and corporate governance possible: the Delaware C Corp. Entrepreneurs are told by their lawyers, investors, and advisors to not mess with how their company is structured or they will struggle to attract top-tier investors. Scale first, figure out everything else later.

For a long time, the legal structure requirement for B Corp certification was a real barrier for companies on an IPO track. Warby Parker and Etsy were both B Corps, but decertified before their respective IPOs because they couldn't (or didn't want to) convert to a PBC (Warby Parker later made the conversion and is currently a B Corp). But the "fear of the PBC" excuse has expired. Anthropic and OpenAI have raised hundreds of billions of dollars in a Public Benefit Corporation structure. More than 60 publicly traded companies around the globe are PBCs. The argument that a PBC makes you uninvestable is not supported by current evidence.

Why Tech Companies Should Reconsider

Here's what I would say to tech companies that are on the fence about certifying: you should definitely do the PBC. But you should also do B Corp certification. The PBC alone is mission lock without accountability. It tells the world you intend to consider stakeholders, but it doesn't verify that you're actually doing it. Doing both the legal mission lock and the independently verified operational standards creates a system of aligned incentives that makes you more resilient. The verification is what makes the mission credible.

Consumer trust in tech companies is arguably at an all-time low. Third-party verified accountability, which is exactly what B Corp provides, is precisely the kind of credible signal that could rebuild it.

Twenty years in, the tech world and the B Corp movement barely overlap. Let's change that.

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Walking the Talk, Part 7: Equitable Governance

This is the seventh article in our ten-part "Walking the Talk" series on how companies can move beyond B Corp certification and truly embody their values in daily practice. Parts 1 through 6 covered how leaders model values (Part 1), how values get embedded in strategy and budgets (Part 2), how roles connect to mission (Part 3), how employees learn to apply values on the job (Part 4), how policies and operations are brought into alignment (Part 5), and how stakeholder engagement becomes a genuine feedback system (Part 6).

Part 7 moves deeper into the question of power. Stakeholder Engagement asked organizations to open their decision-making to outside influence. Equitable Governance asks who holds that decision-making authority in the first place—and whether that structure reflects the values the organization claims to hold.

Most organizations that care about equity make it visible in their programs and their public commitments. Fewer make it visible in their governance.

That gap—between how a company talks about equity and how it actually distributes decision-making authority—is one of the most consequential gaps in mission-driven business. It also tends to be the one people are least comfortable naming directly.

What We Mean by Equitable Governance

In the LIFT B Corp Values Assessment, this dimension focuses on four interconnected practices:

  • Decision-making processes intentionally include diverse voices and perspectives—not as an afterthought, but by design.

  • Underrepresented groups have real influence over strategy and direction—not merely a seat at the table, but actual leverage over outcomes.

  • Governance structures are regularly reviewed to ensure they remain fair and inclusive as the organization evolves.

  • Leadership succession and promotion practices reflect a commitment to equity, ensuring that the pipeline itself—not just individual hiring decisions—advances diversity over time.

The common thread running through all four is the word "real." Equitable governance is not the same as diverse governance. An organization can recruit board members or managers from underrepresented groups and still concentrate meaningful authority among a narrow, homogeneous inner circle. What the Values Assessment is probing is whether structural power—over budget, strategy, succession, and direction—is genuinely shared.

Why This Matters

When governance is not equitable, the rest of the framework loses coherence.

Consider the previous six dimensions. Strong leadership commitment, well-aligned strategy, values-driven roles, good employee education, coherent policies, and genuine stakeholder engagement—all of these can exist alongside governance structures that reproduce inequity at the top. When that happens, the organization ends up modeling a subtle but powerful message: equity applies to everyone except the people making the most consequential decisions.

That contradiction does not go unnoticed. Employees, particularly those from historically marginalized groups, read governance structures with precision. When they see who is promoted, who leads high-profile initiatives, who sits in key meetings, and who controls resource allocation, they draw conclusions about what the organization actually values—regardless of what the mission statement says.

And for B Corps specifically: governance structures that concentrate authority among a demographically narrow group sit in direct tension with the stakeholder accountability that B Corp certification requires. Meeting V2.1's Purpose and Stakeholder Governance requirements and genuinely embedding equitable governance are not the same thing. The question this article addresses is the latter.

What Strong Equitable Governance Looks Like in Practice

  • Formally structured decision-making pathways specify who has input, who has voice, and who has authority at each level—reducing the informal power dynamics that tend to favor incumbents.

  • Board and advisory structures reflect the communities the organization serves, with documented processes for identifying and recruiting candidates who expand, rather than replicate, existing representation.

  • Underrepresented groups hold meaningful roles in high-stakes decisions around budget, hiring, compensation, and strategic direction—not just advisory or consultative roles.

  • Regular governance audits assess whether representation at leadership levels is changing over time and whether decision-making processes are functioning as intended.

  • Succession planning begins early, actively identifies candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, and provides sponsorship and development pathways rather than waiting for vacancies to appear.

  • Compensation transparency is tied to governance—because how an organization sets and communicates pay reveals a great deal about whose interests its structures actually protect.

These practices share a common orientation: they treat governance as a designed system, not as the natural result of good intentions. Equitable governance requires architecture, not just aspiration.

Common Challenges and Pitfalls

Confusing diversity with equity. Bringing in diverse voices is necessary but not sufficient. The real test is whether those voices have structural influence. When underrepresented leaders are brought into governance roles but informal power continues to flow through long-standing relationships and processes they were not part of building, diversity becomes a veneer rather than a structural shift.

Relying on informal culture to do the work of formal structure. Many mission-driven organizations believe that because people know each other well and share values, formal governance structures are unnecessary or even counterproductive. In practice, informal cultures without structural accountability tend to reproduce the hierarchies of the broader society. Formalization is not bureaucracy—it is protection for the equity commitments the organization claims to hold.

Episodic rather than systemic review. Governance structures are often reviewed in response to a crisis—a high-profile departure, an equity complaint, a failed hire—rather than on a regular, proactive cycle. By the time a gap becomes visible, significant damage to trust has typically already occurred.

Advancement pipelines that don't match stated values. Organizations can have equitable hiring practices at entry level and deeply inequitable promotion and succession practices at senior levels. If the people making it to leadership are drawn from a narrow demographic regardless of entry-level diversity, the governance structure is working against the equity commitments the organization has made.

Tokenism in high-stakes rooms. Including one or two people from underrepresented groups in a decision-making process—and then proceeding largely as before—is worse than exclusion in a specific way: it provides the organization with a false sense of progress while signaling to those individuals that their perspective is not genuinely valued.

How to Strengthen Equitable Governance

  1. Map where real authority actually lives. Org charts show hierarchy; they rarely show where decisions actually get made. Start by tracing a handful of high-stakes recent decisions—a major hire, a budget reallocation, a strategic pivot—and document who had meaningful input, whose concerns were heard, and whose perspective shaped the outcome. The map this produces is more honest than any formal governance document.

  2. Audit board and leadership composition, then set specific goals. Document current representation across gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and lived experience relevant to your mission. Set specific, time-bound goals for change. Vague commitments to "increase diversity" do not create accountability; specific targets do.

  3. Review succession and promotion processes for structural bias. Examine who is being sponsored, who is receiving high-profile assignments, and who is being formally prepared for senior roles. If the answers consistently skew toward a narrow demographic, the process itself needs to change—not just the intentions behind it.

  4. Formalize feedback loops between governance and underrepresented stakeholders. This builds on the stakeholder engagement work from Part 6 but applies it specifically to governance decisions. Create mechanisms by which the communities most affected by the organization's work can provide input on the decisions that affect them most.

  5. Build regular governance reviews into the annual calendar. Once a year, the board or leadership team should formally assess whether governance structures are functioning equitably. This review should include data on representation, promotion rates, compensation equity, and decision-making patterns. The results should be shared with employees.

  6. Name who is accountable. Governance commitments without ownership tend to fade. Identify who is responsible for tracking progress against equity goals, reporting results, and proposing adjustments when the data suggests the current approach is not working.

Examples in Practice

Equal Exchange, the noteworthy worker-owned cooperative, has built equitable governance into its legal structure. Worker-owners elect the board, vote on major strategic decisions, and share in financial returns. The governance structure is not an aspiration—it is the ownership architecture. When governance equity is structural rather than aspirational, it does not depend on individual leaders to maintain it. Any given leader can leave; the structure remains. This is the most durable form of the dimension: not a program the organization runs, but the legal and operational design of the organization itself.

Cabot Creamery, the farmer-owned cooperative and B Corp, offers a parallel example with a different stakeholder configuration. The farmer-members who supply the cooperative hold governing authority—they are not just participants in the business but its owners and directors. When the organization faces decisions about pricing, sustainability investments, or strategic direction, the governance structure ensures that the people most directly affected by those decisions have real influence over them. This is not a function of culture or individual leadership commitment. It is built into the legal ownership design. For organizations that are not cooperatives and are not planning to become one, the principle still applies: who holds formal authority over the decisions that matter most, and does that authority reflect the equity commitments the organization has made?

Reflection Questions for Leadership Teams

  • If you traced the last five major organizational decisions, who had meaningful input, and whose perspectives were most reflected in the outcomes?

  • Are underrepresented groups in your organization in governance roles with actual authority, or primarily in advisory or consultative positions?

  • What does your leadership succession pipeline look like, and who is being actively sponsored and prepared for senior roles?

  • When did your organization last formally review whether its governance structures are functioning equitably, and what changed as a result?

  • What would a person from a historically marginalized background experience as the real power dynamics of your organization—and how does that compare to your formal governance structure?

The Road Ahead

Equitable governance sits at the intersection of structure and culture. Early-stage organizations may begin by auditing current decision-making patterns and setting their first formal representation goals. More mature organizations move toward integrating equity into governance design itself—in ownership structures, board composition processes, succession planning, and the formal pathways by which authority is distributed over time.

The progression from aspiration to architecture is rarely linear. Most organizations will find that naming the gap between their governance practices and their stated values is uncomfortable. That discomfort is productive. It is the entry point for the kind of structural change that actually reshapes culture—rather than the reverse.

The test is the same as in stakeholder engagement: if the people most affected by the organization's decisions cannot point to real influence over those decisions, equitable governance is not yet working as a system.

In Part 8, we'll turn to Impact Measurement and Transparency—how organizations track, report, and act on social and environmental performance data in ways that build genuine accountability rather than just documentation.

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Walking the Talk, Part 6: Stakeholder Engagement

This is the sixth article in our ten-part "Walking the Talk" series on how companies can move beyond B Corp certification and truly embody their values in daily practice. Parts 1 through 5 focused largely on internal dimensions: how leaders model values (Part 1), how values get embedded in strategy and budgets (Part 2), how roles connect to mission (Part 3), how employees learn to apply values on the job (Part 4), and how policies and operations are brought into alignment (Part 5).

Part 6 marks a meaningful shift. Stakeholder Engagement is the first dimension in this series that explicitly asks organizations to open their decision-making to outside influence—not just to refine what happens internally, but to let the people most affected by your work help shape it.

There is a significant difference between talking about stakeholders and building genuine systems for them to influence your organization. Many companies do the former. Far fewer do the latter.

What We Mean by Stakeholder Engagement

In the LIFT B Corp Values Assessment, this dimension focuses on four interconnected practices:

  • Having clear systems to gather feedback from employees, customers, suppliers, and community partners.

  • Intentionally seeking input from the people and groups most impacted by your operations.

  • Analyzing that feedback and using it to inform company decisions.

  • Communicating back to stakeholders about how their input influenced your actions.

Together, these describe a feedback loop, not a feedback box. Gathering input is only the first step. The dimension becomes meaningful when that input is analyzed, acted on, and reported back.

The second practice deserves particular attention: seeking input from those most impacted. Most feedback systems are designed around convenience—reaching the stakeholders who are easiest to access. Genuine engagement requires a more intentional effort to include those who often have the most at stake but the least formal access: frontline workers, small suppliers, community members, and people from historically excluded groups.

Why This Matters

When stakeholder engagement is absent or performative, a few things consistently break down.

Decisions get made with incomplete information. Leaders who rely primarily on internal perspectives miss the blind spots that stakeholders would have surfaced—a supplier facing difficult conditions, a frontline employee who sees problems leadership doesn't, a community partner whose concerns keep getting deprioritized.

Trust erodes when engagement is theater. If stakeholders are repeatedly asked for input and never see evidence it was considered, they stop believing the process is real. Employees stop responding to surveys. Community partners disengage. Once this disillusionment sets in, it is difficult to reverse.

And for B Corps specifically: stakeholder governance without stakeholder engagement is a contradiction in terms. You cannot be genuinely accountable to people you are not genuinely listening to.

What Strong Stakeholder Engagement Looks Like in Practice

  • Formal, recurring feedback mechanisms exist for multiple stakeholder groups—not just one. Employee surveys, customer listening sessions, and supplier check-ins are scheduled into the organization's calendar, not done ad hoc.

  • Feedback is analyzed by group. What employees at different levels experience often differs from what suppliers or community partners report. This disaggregation is where patterns become visible.

  • Someone owns the process. A clear internal owner is responsible for synthesizing input, bringing it to decision-makers, and following up on commitments.

  • Decisions visibly reflect what was heard. When changes are made in response to feedback, this is communicated explicitly: what was heard, what changed, and—when something was not addressed—why.

  • The loop is actually closed. Stakeholders know their input was received, reviewed, and acted on—or they receive a specific explanation of why a concern wasn't addressed.

Common Challenges and Pitfalls

Confusing communication with engagement. Sending newsletters, publishing impact reports, and hosting all-hands meetings are valuable. But they are forms of communication, not engagement. Engagement asks something of stakeholders and then responds to it.

Surveying without closing the loop. Annual employee surveys are common. What happens to the results is often invisible. When stakeholders never see their input reflected in decisions, response rates decline and the practice loses its credibility.

Engaging only the easy-to-reach. The stakeholders most likely to respond are often those who already feel empowered. Genuine engagement requires asking who is missing and building channels that work for them.

Treating engagement as a project rather than a system. Many companies do meaningful engagement work during a strategic planning process or before a recertification, then let it fade. Strong engagement is ongoing, not event-driven.

Hearing without acting. This is the most common failure mode. Organizations gather input, then make decisions based on other factors without explicitly accounting for what they heard. When this happens repeatedly, engagement loses its credibility as a practice.

How to Strengthen Stakeholder Engagement

  1. Map your stakeholder groups and identify gaps. Who is most impacted by your operations? Who is currently providing input? Where is there a gap between who has the most at stake and who has real access to your feedback channels?

  2. Establish formal, recurring feedback mechanisms for at least two or three stakeholder groups. Consistency matters more than the specific format.

  3. Assign clear internal ownership. Designate someone responsible for synthesizing feedback, routing it to decision-makers, and following up. Without ownership, this work disappears into competing priorities.

  4. Build a closing-the-loop practice. After each feedback cycle, communicate back to stakeholders what was heard and what changed as a result—or explain honestly why a particular concern was not addressed. This step is what most companies skip.

  5. Review who is excluded. Ask periodically which stakeholders are not being heard and why. Then adapt your feedback channels to reach them, accounting for language access, power dynamics, and structural barriers.

Examples in Practice

Organic Valley, the farmer-owned cooperative and Certified B Corp, offers a strong structural example. Because farmer-members are formal owners of the cooperative, they have built-in governance rights—not just channels to provide feedback, but legitimate influence over direction and decisions. Organic Valley convenes member councils and regional meetings that give farmers direct access to leadership on issues like pricing, production standards, and cooperative priorities. This is not a program layered on top of existing governance; it is the governance. When members raise concerns, those concerns carry institutional weight. The structural design ensures that a primary stakeholder group—the people whose livelihoods depend most directly on the cooperative's decisions—cannot easily be overlooked.

Beneficial State Bank, a mission-driven B Corp bank based in Oakland, approaches stakeholder engagement from a different angle: defining its primary stakeholders as communities that are typically excluded from financial services. The bank tracks who it is actually lending to, disaggregates its impact data by community demographics, and uses that analysis to ensure its capital is flowing toward the people and places its mission prioritizes—not just toward creditworthy borrowers who happen to apply. This is stakeholder engagement embedded in how the business operates: not only gathering input, but structuring products, reporting, and decision-making around the question of whether historically excluded communities are genuinely being served.

Both examples reflect the same underlying principle: the most durable stakeholder engagement practices are those built into how an organization governs and decides—not added as communication exercises afterward.

Reflection Questions for Leadership Teams

  • Who are the stakeholders most impacted by our operations, and how much of our current feedback system is designed around their needs versus our convenience?

  • When we gather feedback, what actually happens to it? Who is responsible for ensuring it reaches decision-makers?

  • Can our stakeholders point to something specific that changed because of their input?

  • Which voices are we consistently missing, and what structural barriers make them hard to include?

The Road Ahead

Stakeholder engagement is where values-to-systems translation becomes visible beyond the organization. The first five dimensions of this series focus on internal coherence. This one asks: are you genuinely open to being shaped by those you say you serve?

Early-stage engagement often looks like ad hoc surveys and informal conversations that don't lead to visible changes. More mature organizations build recurring systems with clear ownership and disciplined follow-through. Full embodiment looks like stakeholder input that is institutionalized—embedded in how the organization governs and decides, not dependent on any individual's initiative.

The test is simple: if stakeholders cannot point to decisions that changed because of their input, engagement is not yet working as a system.

In Part 7, we'll turn to Equitable Governance—how decision-making structures can be designed to include diverse perspectives and ensure that fairness and inclusion are not just stated commitments but organizational realities.

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Walking the Talk, Part 5: Policy and Operations Alignment

This article continues our ten-part “Walking the Talk” series on embodying B Corp values in daily practice. In Part 1, we explored Leadership Commitment. In Part 2, we focused on Strategic Integration. In Part 3, we examined Values-Aligned Roles. In Part 4, we turned to Employee Education—ensuring that training, onboarding, and ongoing support equip employees to act in alignment with the company’s values.

Now we turn to Part 5: Policy and Operations Alignment.

If strategy defines your direction and roles clarify responsibility, policies and operations determine what actually happens every day. This dimension is about whether your written policies, internal systems, procurement practices, and operational routines consistently reflect your stated values.

What We Mean by Policy and Operations Alignment

Policy and operations alignment asks a simple but powerful question: Do our systems reinforce our values, or quietly undermine them?

In the LIFT B Corp Values Assessment, this dimension focuses on whether:

  • Written policies reflect commitments to stakeholders, equity, environmental stewardship, and transparency.

  • Operational systems consistently follow those policies.

  • Procurement and vendor selection align with stated values.

  • Day-to-day practices reinforce, rather than contradict, the company’s mission.

It is one thing to articulate commitments to justice, sustainability, or employee well-being. It is another to ensure that hiring policies, supplier contracts, travel guidelines, benefits packages, purchasing standards, and internal workflows consistently reflect those commitments.

Why Policy and Operations Alignment Matters

When policies are misaligned, employees experience friction. They hear leaders speak about equity but see pay transparency handled inconsistently. They hear commitments to climate action but watch procurement default to the cheapest option without environmental criteria. Over time, these contradictions erode trust.

Conversely, when policies and operations are aligned, values become easier to live. Employees do not have to rely on heroic individual effort to “do the right thing.” The system supports them.

Aligned policies also reduce reputational risk. In a climate where stakeholders increasingly look behind the badge, inconsistencies between public messaging and operational reality can quickly surface. Alignment ensures that what is promised externally is reinforced internally.

What Strong Alignment Looks Like in Practice

Organizations that score highly in this dimension often demonstrate several patterns:

  • Clear, accessible policies on topics such as compensation, equity, environmental practices, supplier standards, and employee well-being.

  • Regular policy reviews to ensure alignment with evolving standards and stakeholder expectations.

  • Procurement criteria that include environmental and social considerations alongside cost and quality.

  • Operational metrics that track adherence to policy, not just output.

  • Cross-functional collaboration to ensure that finance, HR, operations, and sustainability teams are not working at cross purposes.

For example, a company committed to reducing its carbon footprint may formalize travel guidelines, require emissions tracking, and integrate sustainability criteria into vendor contracts. A company committed to justice and equity may codify inclusive hiring practices, transparent salary bands, and fair grievance procedures.

In these organizations, policy is a living document that shapes decisions.

Common Challenges and Pitfalls

Even mission-driven companies struggle here. Common challenges include:

  • Outdated policies that no longer reflect current commitments.

  • Inconsistent enforcement across departments.

  • Policies that sound values-aligned but lack operational clarity.

  • Procurement processes that prioritize speed or cost over stakeholder impact.

  • “Shadow systems” where informal practices override written rules.

Often, misalignment is not intentional. It emerges when companies grow quickly or when new commitments are layered onto older systems without full integration.

Strengthening Policy and Operations Alignment

Improving alignment requires disciplined review and cross-functional collaboration.

  1. Conduct a policy audit. Identify key policies that influence stakeholder impact and assess whether they reflect your stated values.

  2. Map touchpoints. Examine how policies show up in daily workflows, from hiring to purchasing to performance management.

  3. Update procurement criteria. Ensure vendor selection and contract terms include relevant environmental, social, and governance considerations.

  4. Clarify accountability. Assign clear ownership for maintaining and enforcing policies.

  5. Establish review cycles. Revisit policies annually to ensure continued relevance and alignment with evolving standards.

  6. Train managers. Ensure those responsible for implementation understand both the intent and the mechanics of each policy.

This work may feel technical, but it is deeply cultural. Systems shape behavior. When systems align with values, culture becomes more coherent and resilient.

An Example in Practice

Consider a B Corp that commits publicly to living wage standards. Alignment would require more than a statement on a website. It might involve formalizing compensation benchmarking, adjusting supplier requirements to encourage fair labor practices, revising pricing strategies to absorb increased labor costs, and tracking compliance across the supply chain.

Another example is a company committed to environmental stewardship that integrates sustainability into product design, logistics, packaging, and vendor contracts. The value is not confined to marketing language; it is embedded in operational decision-making.

In each case, policies create consistency, and operations bring those policies to life.

Reflection Questions for Leadership Teams

  • Do our written policies clearly reflect our core values?

  • Where do daily operational realities diverge from our stated commitments?

  • How do we ensure consistent enforcement across teams?

  • Are our procurement practices aligned with our environmental and social goals?

  • When we update our strategy, do we also update the policies that support it?

The Road Ahead

Policy and Operations Alignment is where aspiration meets discipline. It translates intention into structure and ensures that values are not dependent on individual goodwill alone.

Early-stage organizations may begin by formalizing a handful of core policies. More mature companies create integrated systems where governance, procurement, HR, finance, and operations consistently reinforce shared commitments.

If leadership sets the tone and strategy sets direction, policy and operations set the rules of the game.

In Part 6, we will turn to Stakeholder Engagement—how to design feedback systems and decision-making processes that ensure diverse voices meaningfully shape your company’s evolution.

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