Interviews
Liam Black ... Talks Impact
Only two of these things are true…
“I published a fantastic book on leadership last year, I am universally liked and respected, I have four grandchildren.”
Founder, CEO, chair, speaker, writer, investor and mentor, Liam has done it all during thirty plus years in the UK’s social enterprise movement. He has created and led over a dozen purpose driven businesses in the non-profit and private sectors. In the 1990s he ran Liverpool’s furniture recycling company FRC which led to a spell as CEO in the Jamie Oliver Group.
Liam has published several books, the latest of which is ‘How to Lead with Purpose‘. He co-founded the Social Enterprise Coalition which evolved into Social Enterprise UK, helped create Impact Ventures UK which has invested £40 million early stage growth capital into social enterprises and ran Muhammad Yunus’s global solidarity campaign.
We sat down with Liam to ask a few questions about social impact –
What is your personal motivation for creating social impact?
I was brought up a Catholic and, although I abandoned the sexist institution long ago, the social teaching went deep. This evolved into leftie agitation in my twenties and then into social enterprise as a way of achieving change. Maybe ‘social enterprise’ is just another faith system with our own priests, liturgies and sinners!
What’s been the best impact you’ve seen in your career?
For staying power I’d choose the FRC Group in Liverpool (which I ran for 10 brilliant years ) where honest impact assessment feeds into operational and strategic decision making. When we started what we then called social accounting we were pretty much alone. Genuine pioneers.
Without naming names (unless you want to!), what has been the worst?
I’ve seen SO much BS and ‘impact washing’ over the last forty years it’d be hard to name names because the list would be too long. But the Indian social entrepreneur feted at Skoll and WEF who lived in a luxurious home, flying business class, and banging on about ‘the poor’, whilst his actual enterprise was a joke, would be up there.
Also the shameless criminality of Abraj and its fantasy ‘impact investing’ scam must get a dishonourable mention https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/14/the-key-man-simon-clark-will-louch-private-equity
What frustrates you most about people/ businesses/ organisations trying to achieve impact?
The parroting of the words whilst avoiding doing the deep work required. And sounding like the old grandad I am, young social entrepreneurs who don’t learn what has gone before and insist on reinventing the wheel.
If you could change anything about how people talk about and report impact, what would it be?
That they start using the Trust Impact platform
What is your biggest wish with regards to the future of impact?
In the words of Elvis, a little less conversation a little more impact.