It’s more now, “here’s the policy that we have for you, because you’re an individual.”

We’ve just found different ways to actually treat humans as humans and individuals, giving them the skills that they don’t have. Not saying you can’t do it because you don’t have what it takes, help them get to where they want to go. If they get there and it didn’t turn out to be what they wanted, then help them to work out where they want to go next and just try to help them along the way.

If we’ve got someone who prefers to do property more than commercial work, we just go find someone to do the commercial stuff so that she can do what she loves, and we’ll find someone else that loves the other side of things.

I think it’s just about looking at the individual, and not basing it on any kind of gender. if someone doesn’t like doing jobs a specific way, let’s try to take those jobs away and find another way to do them.

Disrupting the model, I feel like that’s what you’re about Katie. I love that.

Ingrid and Angharad, do you have any stories about disruption of the business model itself, what you’ve seen or what you’ve been a part of so far?

[Angharad Lubbock] – I can totally identify with being the only female in the room as a credit analyst, sitting in the annual meetings with some of the major rated banks in Australia. I think I asked a question to my boss once about the influence on credit ratings back in probably 2007, when everything was about to crash.

I asked ‘what influence does the operating environment have on the inherent creditworthiness of an organisation?’ If anyone loves credit, they’d get excited by that. Probably not in this room, but Ingrid you’re nodding! He said, “who’s asking?” I said, “I’m asking.” It occurred to me that my boss expected me to simply administer the existing thinking, not expand on it, which was the opposite of my reason for taking the job. I think those are the defining moments where, without realising it, you are simply leading with impact and brining about the change that is needed. Sure enough, 2 years later, the global credit rating methodology changed to reflect contextual factors and my curiosity was validated.

The thinking needs to change. There needs to be action around that thinking, it needs to be lived and sustained, and you need to attract the right people.

Your model Katie no doubt attracts a certain type of client that is not interested in title. Then you start to get that self-sustaining model where you don’t disappoint your customers because they weren’t there for the titles to start with. Once you’ve been in that long enough, you’ve then got that self-sufficiency, which is exciting.

[Ingrid Burkett]- I think it’s also true that it’s not an accident that there are so many women who are disruptors, and sometimes I think that we’ve got a fairly narrow view of what an entrepreneur is. I see a lot of women who are intrapreneurs who are making really disruptive changes inside organisations and inside systems. That’s what it’s all about, disrupting and challenging what has been assumed to be the norm or just the way that we do it. That’s the way it’s always happened. If you’ve got any kind of entrepreneurial streak, you’ll be a disruptor and it could be in a really small way, or it could be in a massive way like Katie’s done.

[Katie Richards] – We have to manage it a little bit too though, because we attract obviously other entrepreneurially minded people, and we all have shiny object syndrome. Let’s be honest, we do, it’s like a mental illness. We have to make sure we try to keep each other on track. Now I can get off track, and I hope my co-worker will get me back on track and then she’ll come up with an idea. It’s really good, we always foster that. But then we say, “let’s as a team agree, where do we want to go?” Then we just nut that out, otherwise. the entrepreneurial mindset can be quite disruptive to business too. You have to accommodate it.

[Ingrid Burkett] – I think that’s so true, and a really good call out Katie. We are attracted to shiny things, but I think there’s lots of roles to play. We often focus on the entrepreneur or the intrapreneur, but it’s a team.

This is a team effort; we’re not going to change the world on our own.

Team is so key here. Even starting something myself, I constantly questioned, “do I need to be the one that started this? Is this about my ego or is this about the impact that I’m having?” I think that’s a really valid question for a lot of people to keep coming back to, “am I the best person for this, or can I support someone else who’s doing similar work?” I think that’s when we get this tremendous change that we’re looking for. Thank you, that was super insightful.

Angharad, we’re going to move to you because you work with finding business capital for profit, for purpose and social enterprises led by both men and women. I’m interested to know about the differences that you’ve noticed in your work so far?

[Angharad] – I think as I reflect on the question, there are a lot of things that are common. It doesn’t matter what gender you are or where you see yourself on the gender spectrum. In fact, I think deeply intentional businesses are fundamentally tied to a certain temperament and a way of seeing the world.

I think it’s a mindset that’s brought in by the intentionality that the business is designed to do something that fundamentally is worthy of doing beyond short-term motivations.

I think what comes with that is essentially a belief that your financial resources particularly, are simply that. They are not an end in themselves, but simply a resource that you use to fuel your vision and your ambition and the actions. The other thing that I noticed is that businesses that are impact-driven are inherently more likely to be complex in the sense that they are constantly trying to balance and be ambidextrous in addressing long-term priorities, respond to short term challenges, and changes in operating context.

That’s something that really influences capital raising, and I think that goes back to the intersection of commercial and impact, you really have to have in your mind and in the minds of your people a very strong and clear narrative that explains it in ways that people from different backgrounds can understand and interact with.

I think what women do really well is spend the time, do the thinking and invite other people into that. I think women have a tendency to have very high expectations of themselves, and perhaps underestimate their abilities in general.

That’s maybe not true for everybody, but it’s certainly something I struggle with. I think we are also very prone to invite contributions, but I think that therein lies the inherent value of the feminine, I won’t say female, but the feminine. This is because I think men are just as capable of having that capacity to invite, engage, respond and to take people on that journey. When it comes to raising capital, that story is vital, and having the confidence to respond to questions and also to be very firm in that long-term outcome.

I think James Bartle from Outland Denim is a great example of someone who embodies a commitment to a long-term goal and is not prepared to compromise for the sake of short-term concerns or challenges. There are many examples, but that’s a very recent one that I’ve encountered in the marketplace. Having gone through capital raising and having cheques written and put on the table and all sorts of pressures applied in the face of short-term challenges in cash in bank, was firm, really firm.

The other thing I wanted to mention that I’ve noticed is that often the products and services that fit feminine impact business models have to actually lead the market, like Katie described. You actually have to see the future differently.

You have to see a future that doesn’t exist today, and design for that future and create the things that you think will get us to that future. That takes an enormous amount of design thinking and anticipation of an objection handling. You become everybody.

You become your future customer, your future banker, and your future board director. I think women are really good, and people with a feminine skill set are really good at playing different roles because we do it day in, day out.

I couldn’t agree more about all the roles that we play.

Katie and Ingrid, do you have anything to add to that?

[Ingrid Burkett] – I think one of the things that really stood out for me, and you mentioned it just before we came on air. I’ll have to repeat Angharad, you were talking about how this is a moment for that multitasking. I think so many of us have experienced that multitasking on speed in this moment.

Also, what I think is really interesting is that sort of shift of focus into much more female dominant areas like care, and that we’ve had this sort of swing over the COVID period, into the exploration of what those more female dominated areas could look like. I wonder whether that is an opportunity for us who are interested in impact-led enterprises to really open up this conversation and say that there are so many opportunities for these really innovative business models to stand out in designing the future of care models.

[Katie Richards] – One of the things I’ve noticed as well is, I think we’re getting a little bit better as social entrepreneurs and females as well at cutting ourselves a bit of slack and not expecting that you have to have things perfect from day one.

One of my massive downfalls in the first few years of business was I just thought I had to do everything, that I had to work a hundred hours a week.

There weren’t as many female businesses at that time, and so you felt like you had to keep up all the time and have these incredible businesses that are 10 years old. But you only pull things together over 10 years, you have to start somewhere. I think we’re becoming more supportive of each other, not pulling each other down if things aren’t quite right. I think that’s sort of been a good development that we’re starting to see as well.  

It’s about letting go isn’t it? What is your important goal? What is that impact that you want to make? That’s your overarching goal. What are the other things that we can just relax a little bit on?

We can finish on some insight from all of you. What can we do in this sector now to help females in particular, to build strong foundational businesses that support their impact? What are you seeing? You’re studying, you’re looking at trends we’re in this new kind of era of working. What’s this future look like and how can we best support each other going forward? Who would like to go first, Angharad?

[Angharad Lubbock] – I really love the discipline of how does this help us create impact in every meeting and every conversation. I think that’s really what Katie talked about earlier in staying on track, having our purpose and our impact model as central to every conversation. Not finishing a conversation but talking about how this relates to our impact and how can we make sure that’s captured and who’s responsible.

I like the distinction of accountability and authority as well. The decision makers aren’t the ones responsible for making sure things happen. Katie, you’ve got people who know that you can trust to tell you if things aren’t on track so that you don’t have to be in every single thing.

Building that team that is sharing the accountability for the impact, I think responds really well to the female way of leading impact business.

[Ingrid Burkett] – I really liked that Angharad, I think that’s great. It makes me think too about how we share the stage with teams, and that ecosystem that’s needed in order to make these businesses happen.

One of the things I’m hoping to explore is not just putting women forward but putting groups of women forward. It’s not just a hero entrepreneur or intrapreneur, it’s a whole group of people who are working with each other to create future businesses.

I think that’s what’s going to fundamentally shift the business narrative that happens about the strong man or the hero who saves the world. It’s teams of people.

[Katie Richards] – I think one of the things is we also need to support each other with moving forward. They say that guys will apply for something or go for something when they have 10-20% of the skills required, and females will wait to collect 80% of what they think they need, or the resources to go ahead and do that.

What I’ve been noticing especially from other female businesses around us is women are just taking a chance, taking a bit more of a punt just to see if they can actually do it. I think that’s one of the things that we need to foster in the mindset of the younger females in groups and teams coming through.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve only got 20% of what you need right now, let’s sit down, let’s look at how you can be resourceful, and dig deeper. You may actually have 10 times more skills than you realise, you just haven’t accessed them before, you haven’t drawn on them. You don’t know that’s what you’re capable of. That’s not just for females, that’s for everyone. Teaching people just to have more confidence, rather than hiding behind social media profiles all the time. Actually dig into yourself and see what you could do, just give it a go. I think that’s really important.

Only last night I was talking about this fact that when we work on ourselves first, and really understand the games we play out in our own selves, that sabotage what we do and sabotage other people, then, and only then, can you go on and have true outstanding impact. This is because you’ve recognised that you might be in the way of what you’re trying to do.

Thank you so much for being part of this panel.