3 future-focused lessons from international business and accounting conferences

ICSB SME World Forum, Baku, Azerbaijan

Circularity and the value of legacy

I attended the 2023 International Council for Small Business (ICSB) SME World Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, as incoming chair for the ICSB.

The opportunity to speak with small business leaders and policy makers from around the globe is always incredibly valuable – but this year I was really struck by the synergies between some of our conversations we were having and our surroundings. 

Bakuis at the crossroads of the East and the West, of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The official language is a Turkic language, and there’s a strong Arabic influence on the city. It sits between many cultures, and the city and its people offer an incredible perspective on how you can bring all of that together and retain the best parts of each. 

My main session at the ICSB conference was about circularity. I shared insights to help attendees empower and enable businesses in their regions to adopt circular practices that ensure every resource within a business is reused, recycled or repurposed at its highest value.  

But walking out of that session, I saw lessons in circularity all around me.  

The city has also seen many very different eras and fortunes – and these are evident in the buildings and structures. I saw 1,000-year-old buildings next to amazingly modern skyscrapers.

Rather than demolish all of its older buildings to make way for new developments, Baku has repurposed and maintained some older structures, preserving the city's heritage and negating the need for the resource-intensive construction of new buildings.

Repurposing relies on understanding the highest value of each building. The historical caravanserais, for example, were once rest stops for merchant traders on the Silk Road.

Baku’s value no longer lies in its position on the Silk Road trading route – it is now part of the Entrepreneurship Road. As ICSB President and CEO Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy wrote, in collaboration with me and our ICSB colleagues, the Entrepreneurship Road is a path to a more equitable and sustainable future, with entrepreneurial efforts aiming well beyond economic gain to solve some of humanity's greatest challenges. 

Entrepreneurs, small businesses and leaders here in Australia can take an important but simple lesson from the adaptive reuse of the caravanserais – now hotels, tourist centres, cultural centres. They have been repurposed to capture their greatest value while respecting their past, a large-scale example of the value of circular approaches to natural, infrastructure and other resources. 

The lessons on circularity that I shared and developed at the ICSB SME World Forum in Baku include:

1. Value heritage as a resource: Find innovative ways to integrate and repurpose existing resources.
2. Minimise waste through reuse: Don’t default to ‘take, make, dispose’.
3. Cultural and community engagement: Respectfully engage with local communities and cultural narratives to collaboratively create more sustainable and inclusive practices.
4. Innovation in sustainability: Creatively rethink operations, products and services to find opportunities for adaptive reuse.
5. Economic benefits of circularity: Transparently report the economic benefits of circularity alongside the environmental benefits.
6. Collaborative approaches: Build relationships and partnerships with government, community groups and other businesses to create sustainable and circular business models.

UK: Institute of Financial Accountants

10 ways to make the most of CSR opportunities

At the International Conference of the IFA, which is part of the IPA Group, I addressed IPA Group members from all over the UK, as well as from Ireland, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Lithuania and beyond.  

It was an opportunity to discuss arguably the greatest growth opportunity for accountants – advisory work around corporate social responsibility (CSR); environmental, social and governance (ESG); and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The growth opportunities are in helping clients and small businesses to create strategies for each, to implement those strategies, and to measure success and outcomes against set objectives – all of this will become part of an accountant’s advisory work. So the accounting professionals who master this first will have a headstart on their own business or career growth.

Part of the challenge for small business accountants is making it clear that CSR is not just a big business concern. Yes, we see larger businesses and enterprises with great capacity to donate products and profits, or to grant thousands of hours of paid volunteer time off to staff. Larger businesses can make an impressive impact quickly. 

Smaller businesses, though, are often integral to the communities they operate within – and the knowledge and connections this afford them can increase the impact of any resources dedicated to CSR. 

At the IFA International Conference, I shared 10 ways that smaller businesses can take action on CSR, ESG and SDGs, and amplify their impact in collaboration with local communities, charities, client groups and beyond. These are just as relevant here in Australia.

1. Host or participate in education and awareness events. Invite your community members to a regular series of workshops, in which your team leads discussion on local ESG considerations and how the community can work together to achieve ESGs – including sharing what you're doing to achieve them.
2. Transparently report on your own ESG impact, demonstrating your commitment and encouraging others to follow your lead.
3. Supporting local suppliers to shore up the local economy and reduce the environmental impact of transportation.
4. Establish a CSR fund or charitable giving program to financially support local initiatives.
5. Make community engagement and ESG principles part of your long-term planning.
6. Share ESG-related content with your audiences on social media and in other content regularly – carve out space in the schedule and make it as much a priority as your other messaging.
7. Collaborate with industry associations and networks, and form local partnerships.
8. Implement sustainable business practices.
9. Consider how your products and services can have positive rather than negative impact, and communicate efforts transparently to the community. 
10. Encourage employees to participate in volunteer activities within the community, and consider providing paid time off for that volunteering. 

CSR should always reflect the values of the business and should always be led by the business’s core purpose. With purpose evident throughout a CSR strategy, a business can truly stand for something and really compete.

Barcelona, Spain: Global Five

The economic empowerment of women is a key factor for gender equality 

I presented virtually to a conference in Barcelona while I was in Europe, and joined a panel to share my experiences as a woman in the workforce and in business.

Each panel member was asked to speak about the barriers we had faced and how we had overcome them. For me, that meant speaking about working as a lawyer overseas, particularly in Papua New Guinea. 

I experienced a lot of discrimination, and I saw a lot of discrimination against local women. I was a lawyer and many of my clients were men who just dismissed me out of hand. 

Particularly within some of the bigger corporations, the perception was that because I was a woman, I wouldn’t be able to do the work. Full stop. 

That was a giant barrier.

I developed three tactics to deal with the discrimination and continue to build my career: 

1. Resilience
2. Building a network of women
3. Picking the right battles

The first tactic was just to carry on, ignore the discrimination and do what I had to do – to be resilient. I was in litigation, which has a very clear measure of success and value – you win or you lose. As long as you keep winning you're okay.

But even winning didn't help me with the rest of the job – I was in charge of the litigation section and all of the other lawyers were men who did not want to report to a woman. So they would just try to ignore me, working out ways to get around me. 

Even aside from questions over whether it’s right or wrong that anyone should need to build resilience to deal with discrimination at work, resilience was not enough. The second tactic came into play: building a network of women who supported each other. 

I worked closely with the administrative and support staff, who were all women, so that when the male lawyers tried to get around me rather than reporting to me, I had more advocates and sources of information to rely on. 

It wasn't a one-way street either – our network paid off all round. Having the support staff onside helped me circumvent some of the men’s actions, but at the same time I could see that the women in support roles had greater value than was being recognised. I found out what they were being paid, and I argued for and secured pay rises for them. 

Being close to the administrative and support staff’s work enabled me to support the women in many different ways, and building that network of women worked. It didn't stop the discrimination, but it helped all of the women in the building at that moment. 

That’s where picking the right battles – my third tactic – became important. I did witness discrimination on a wide scale and I did witness a lot of family violence. I did what I could to improve the situation of the women I worked with on both fronts, but I protected myself by picking the battles that I could win without compromising my safety. Economic empowerment – pay rises, and even advances when needed, went a long way to improving equality for the women I worked with.

These lessons, and the valuable insights shared by the rest of the panel, are relevant today – for women and migrant women entrepreneurs navigating male-dominated business communities, and for the small business leaders building diverse teams without discrimination.

Vicki Stylianou is the IPA Group Executive for Advocacy and Policy; and the incoming Chair for the International Council for Small Business.