Kemone S-G Brown recently joined Blue Patch as a board member, bringing her expertise as a transformation strategist to support founder Jane Langley in developing the Blue Patch: It’s Good Business course. This series of in-person events, funded by Southwark Council, is designed to help SMEs take meaningful steps towards sustainability and carbon reduction.
As Jane explains, “we need to ‘transform’ attitudes to attain sustainable transition. Transformation is key to an industrial ‘green’ revolution”.
Kemone’s role centres on that – she is a transformation strategist. She takes on an organisation’s challenges, works to identify the root cause, and builds practical long term solutions. Rather than applying quick fixes, she goes beyond the obvious, digging deeper to find the underlying issues that hold a business back.
In her work with a non-governmental organisation that wants to access funding she will look for what is limiting their access to funding. It might be a lack of documentary proof of their impact. It might be a lack of systems to monitor and report on financial management or operational setup – which can be a sticking point for funding partners. It might be that they are not ready for growth yet and that they need to establish the basics first.
For SMEs, this approach is particularly valuable. Common barriers to growth or funding include:
- Limited evidence of environmental or social impact
- Weak or inconsistent financial and operational systems
- Not ready to scale or external investment
A transformation strategist finds the underlying cause of the issue. For example, an NGO submitted a funding bid to the same funder three times. When they were rejected, the cause of the rejection was included in the response. But the organisation had not resolved the issues raised, so they were never going to be successful until they did.
Kemone works with NGOs, commercial businesses, and large scale enterprises across the world. She has also helped individuals to set up their business ‘right from the first time’. Part of her approach is to set up systems and processes that are practical and proactive – helping businesses to stay on track with triggers to flag issues before they become a problem.
As Kemone puts it, “So it’s really about finding the problem, helping you find the solution, building out solutions for you.”
Her work – and the Blue Patch course – helps businesses to define what sustainability means for them. By deciding on the goals for their business – growth, long term resilience or legacy – organisations can prioritise the right actions.
Kemone has played a key role in shaping the course work for Blue Patch: It’s Good Business, ensuring it delivers accessible and actionable information that can be used in a business of any size, at whatever stage they are at in their carbon reduction journey. She has also supported Blue Patch in developing systems to secure future funding, helping to expand the reach of this training.
If you need a transformation strategist in your business or organisation, contact Kemone at https://www.kemones-gbrown.co.uk/
If you would like to learn more about Blue Patch’s carbon reduction training, contact us on team@bluepatch.org