Impact-Led Leadership: Embedding Meaning into the Machine

The word “impact” gets thrown around so much it’s beginning to lose its shape. Brands talk about impact. Startups pitch it. Investors demand it. But too often, it is nothing more than a buzzword,  a sticker on the side of businesses that were built to scale, not to serve.

For me, impact isn’t a marketing angle. It’s not something you "add on" once the business is proven or the board is happy.

Impact is the brief.

It always has been.

That’s why it shaped every venture I’ve built. It’s why I obsess over impact across design, data, and culture in equal measure. And it’s what I believe is required for the next generation of leadership.

If we want to build companies that matter, we have to embed impact everywhere. From hiring to product. From the boardroom to the brand voice. Not just in mission statements, but in the mechanics of how we operate.

1. Design with Purpose from Day One

Too many founders treat impact like a bonus round. They’ll build the MVP, chase product-market fit, scale operations and then think about how to “do good.” But you can’t retrofit purpose. It either lives in your design, or it doesn’t.

When we built Healthy Nibbles, our very first supply chain decision factored in sustainability and health equity. It wasn’t always easy or cheap. But it meant that as we scaled to £10m+ ARR, we weren’t constantly undoing past decisions.

Design-led innovation means asking harder questions up front:

• Who does this exclude?
• What behaviours are we incentivising?
• What environments are we shaping, subtly or overtly?

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being intentional and solving real problems.

 2. Scale Culture, Not Just Revenue

There’s a reason I talk about values with the same energy I talk about ARR. 

In one of my earlier ventures, we scaled fast. Too fast. We were hiring people who looked great on paper but didn’t align with the mission. Over time, the team fractured. Morale dipped. Progress slowed.

Since then, I’ve led with clarity around values, rather than just capabilities. In fact, it changed my entire interview style to be values based.

At Healthy Nibbles, we built a culture of trust and autonomy, paired with data-informed accountability. Our benefits weren’t just perks, they were signals of what we stood for. From anonymous feedback systems to our “One Small Thing” initiative, every decision built up to a culture that valued people, not just performance.

The result?

A 100% CEO approval rating. 82% of staff would recommend us to a friend. Our fulfilment SLAs hit 99.5% over three years.

Culture isn’t a warm fuzzy feeling, done right it can be tracked and mapped.  

3. Translate Complexity into Clarity

One of the biggest blockers to embedded impact is complexity. Impact-led leadership means being the translator. The simplifier. The person who can take complex systems and build a narrative and an operating plan that people can actually execute against.

At Visergy, my innovation agency in East Africa, this was everything. We operated in diverse markets with deeply embedded nuance from language to legal frameworks. Our job was to make the invisible visible. To turn human behaviours into strategic direction for global brands.

That muscle of decoding complexity and building strategy from it has served me ever since.

If you want to build businesses that shift systems, you need this skill. Because your team can’t build what they can’t see. And investors won’t back what they can’t understand.

4. Measure More Than Money

Revenue matters. ARR matters. But they aren’t the only markers of value.

In the ventures I’ve led, we built dashboards that looked beyond the commercial:

• How many people did we help access healthier choices?
• What percentage of our client base improved their wellbeing metrics?
• How much carbon did we save through smarter logistics?

Impact is becoming a commercial differentiator.

5. Be the Mirror, Not the Mask

I’m often described as a “cheerleader” for founders. And I love that. Because that’s how I lead - with support, honesty, and belief.

But I’ve also had to look founders in the eye and tell them that their model was not fit for purpose. That their UX was inaccessible. That their team was burning out.

Impact-led leadership requires moral clarity.

You don’t need to be perfect. But you do need to be honest with yourself, your investors, and your team.

Are you really building for health equity? Or just an elite customer segment?

Are you investing in team resilience? Or just grinding until burnout?

Are you walking the talk? Or just marketing the message?

Founders are the tone-setters. Whether you like it or not.

So be the mirror. Hold yourself and your business to the standard you’d want others to.

6. Embed Across, Not Down

Impact belongs across your entire business. It should be part of how you brief your designers. How you write your job descriptions. How you build partnerships and tech stacks. This is what I help founders do through Well Purposed.

We don’t just advise on strategy. We operationalise impact. We help companies move from saying they care about equity, access and ethics, to actually building those values into the bones of the business.

7. The Long View is the Only View

When I think about what it means to be an impact-led leader today, I think of this quote by James Clear:

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

It’s easy to say you want to build something meaningful. Harder to structure your business so that it delivers that meaning daily. If we get this wrong, the stakes are real. And if we get it right, the upside is massive, not just commercially, but culturally.

My weekend encouragement? Reflect on where your business is currently, and identify how you can build better. Because we all can.