Neil McKie - CEO & Founder

Member : Neil McKie
Company: Stance

Why I joined:

To be part of a community with a shared vision of a sustainable, prosperous country.

What I hope to get from it:
Collaboration and new perspectives.

What I do in business:

Founder & MD of Stance, which is a design and innovation company specifically focused on identifying, designing and scaling opportunities to make organisations more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable.

We combine strategic design and creativity with behavioural science and sustainability to help our clients adapt to the needs of today while ensuring their business will remain viable tomorrow. We find opportunities in changing customer behaviours, co-create products and services, and make organisations more innovative, sustainable and human. We know that net zero is only going to happen if there is an incentivised business case to do so. We help our clients identify, implement and scale those opportunities.

Optionally share a hobby or passions I am happy sharing to the community:

Cycling has always been my hobby and foundation of physical and mental health. I’m particularly passionate about getting more people riding bikes more often, which has inevitably become part of what we do at Stance, working with a few active travel and cycling clients.
 

Personal actions I have taken or plan in their NetZero journey:

Reducing my high-carbon travel, a much more plant-based diet, any meat bought locally, renewable electricity supplier, and almost all of my finances or investments are with companies that have strong ESG creds.

Company actions I have taken to accelerate NetZero:

We’ll be net zero by the end of year or sooner. We’re aiming to be B Corp certified in 2022. We’re publishing all the tools, processes and impact information (good and bad) along our journey. We have a work from anywhere policy. We’re about to implement additional payments for home working (power mostly). We incentivise no-carbon commuting. We dedicate at least a total of 5 cumulative working days / month across the team to focus on internal or pro-bono ‘sustainable innovation’ projects. Our performance metrics are grounded in ESG — working with Stance will reduce your scope 3 emissions in comparison to a competitor. We have integrated sustainability into our methodologies, both as a risk mitigation tool and more importantly, a lens for opportunity.

What expertise, knowledge, services or products they can offer to other members to accelerate their NetZero path:

We have invested a great deal of time in building Stance in a certain way and our clients work with us to help accelerate their net zero journey by making a business case for building more sustainable businesses. I’m always happy to share our knowledge or give some perspective on others challenges. Specifically, speak to us about strategy, product and service innovation, customer experience, culture and capacity building if you aim is build something that creates broader value.

Finally, something people might not know about you that makes you memorable:

I was in a film alongside Scarlett Johansson.