The B Team

For other uses, see The B Team (disambiguation).

The B Team

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Formation	October 2012
Type	Non-profit
Location	New York, NY, USA
Founders	Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz
Managing Director	Rajiv Joshi
Website	www.bteam.org

The B Team is a global nonprofit initiative co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz that brings together international CEOs and business leaders to "make business work better."

In 2013, a group of business leaders came together following a series of workshops were held that included civil society leaders, systems experts, sustainability pioneers, economists and entrepreneurs. Inspired by the work of Lester Brown and the B Corp movement they labeled their vision for a better way of doing business 'Plan B' and 'The B Team' emerged. The B Team intends to achieve this vision by starting at home, working to advance Challenges in their own companies that get right to the heart of the issues that cause companies to remain rooted in 'Plan A' - business as usual, and to empower business leaders around the world to join them.

The B Team was incubated by Virgin Unite, the charitable arm of the Virgin Group, which had previously incubated such organizations the Elders and the Carbon War Room. In October, 2012, Branson and Zeitz announced the formation of The B Team, alongside the inaugural CEO, entrepreneur Derek Handley. Rajiv Joshi is the current Managing Director of The B Team.

The Challenges

'Plan B' is a vision for business that prioritizes people, planet and profit and the Challenges get right to the heart of the issues that cause companies to remain rooted in 'Plan A' - business as usual.

The Challenges are:

Drive Full Transparency: We depend on transparency in our companies, our industries and our markets. Better business means operating toward the highest ethical standards. It means providing accurate, timely and useful information for key stakeholders across the people, planet and profit agenda. The B Team has committed to being open, transparent and free from corruption, with good governance and accountability at all levels.

Foster Collaboration: Real system change needs new forms of collaboration and partnership; no business truly succeeds without them. The B Team has committed to work with other businesses, governments, trade unions, and civil society to forge new partnerships that accelerate positive change.

Restore Nature: Too often, economic activities override the boundaries set by nature. The B Team has committed to help turn things around and bring about a thriving, net-zero carbon, restorative economy that also respects other planetary boundaries by ensuring that B Team companies significantly reduce their environmental impacts and invest in new business models that help regenerate the environment.

Scale True Accounting: Accounting has enabled business to become increasingly efficient and effective at managing financial value. But today’s accountants often fail to track the social and environmental externalities created by businesses. The B Team is committed to tracking performance against multiple forms of value, including the human, social and natural forms to measure and communicate our social and environmental impacts, as well as plans for improvement.

Create Thriving Communities: Maintaining and restoring the social fabric is generally seen as a role for governments and the public sector, but it is also very directly in the interest of long- term businesses. Business can’t thrive in workplaces and communities that are failing—just as it can’t succeed on a planet that is failing. The B Team is committed to listening to the needs of our employees and creating an environment that helps them to thrive.

Reinvent Market Incentives: Successful markets depend on smart rules, regulations and standards and many market subsidies today incentivize the wrong sort of investment and behaviour. But the right sort of subsidies can also spur new industries and new markets. The B Team is committed to working with policy-makers to ensure that the relevant market rules encourage and enable business strategies that simultaneously serve people, planet and profit.

Ensure Dignity and Fairness: No worker should ever live in fear or suffer exploitation and businesses must respect all people—those they employ and those they don’t. The B Team has committed to ensure that workers are treated with dignity and respect, in a safe, equitable and empowering working environment where they receive a fair share of the value they create.

Redefine Reward Systems: Many business people have little or no financial incentive to prioritize people and planet and the divide between what the highest and lowest-paid employees receive has reached extreme levels. The B Team supports fairer rewards in business and will work to close the gap by integrating the latest generation of social and environmental performance targets and metrics into our compensation systems.

Value Diversity: In global markets, diversity is a critical resource - in terms of thinking, creativity, innovation, and cultural backgrounds. The B Team is committed to cultivating and celebrating diversity at all levels of business, while ensuring equality of opportunity for all employees.

Lead for The Long Run: Too often, short-term thinking stalls key governance decisions business leaders know we must take to secure the future of our organizations, by helping to solve environmental and social problems. But time and investment horizons can be stretched even where financial market dynamics push in the wrong direction. The B Team is committed to ending short-termism by adopting longer reporting cycles and nurturing inclusive, collaborative leadership focused on delivering long-term value to all stakeholders.

Collective Actions

The B Team is also committing to taking collective action, working together with leaders across sectors and industries to help end anonymous companies, tackle climate change and push for a net-zero economy, scale new metrics to measure the true cost of business activities, redefine work to ensure the wellbeing of employees and the communities business operates in, and foster new forms of collaboration to help re-invent economic systems in a safe and sustainable manner.

The B Leaders

The B Team Leaders Include:

• Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group and co-chair of the B Team
• Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Deputy Chair of The Elders
• Kathy Calvin, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation
• Arianna Huffington, Chair, President, and Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group
• Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel
• Guilherme Leal, founder and co-chairman of Natura
• Strive Masiyiwa, founder and chairman of Econet Wireless
• Blake Mycoskie, founder and Chief Shoe Giver of Toms Shoes
• Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance of Nigeria
• François-Henri Pinault, CEO and Chairman of Kering
• Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever
• Mary Robinson, Secretary of The Elders and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice
• Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of the Tata Group
• Zhang Yue, Chairman and Founder of Broad Group China
• Professor Muhammad Yunus, Chairman of Yunus Centre
• Jochen Zeitz, Director of Kering and Chairman of the board’s sustainable development committee; co-chair of The B Team