A respected Lancaster University Management School leadership expert is shaping business practice to better embrace collective purpose through his new book.

Professor Emeritus Steve Kempster launched Realising Good Growth: A Practical Guide for Business Leaders – co-authored with Dr Stewart Barnes, CEO of digital learning and leadership development company Quolux – at a special event in Cheltenham, attended by more than 100 businesses.

The book launch was part of a wider masterclass on Realising Good Growth, and almost all of the businesses present have engaged with and been impacted by Professor Kempster’s work, either directly or through courses delivered by Quolux.

Professor Kempster has decades of experience helping companies develop purpose-led business plans. Realising Good Growth provides clear steps, case studies and digital tools to help that mission. It is part of the wider Good Dividends project, and the Good Growth programme that Professor Kempster has delivered through LUMS to organisations in Lancashire.

“Realising Good Growth is a practical guidebook for leaders,” said Professor Kempster. “It shows how profit supports the journey rather than defines it, and how this can lead to competitive advantage, top talent, enhanced innovation and stronger returns.

“But the real prize is enriching lives and enabling humanity to flourish. True success is measured by the future we create for all.”

Business leaders who have engaged on programmes informed by Professor Kempster’s work report considerable impacts. Among the presentations from businesses who have engaged with the work heard at the launch, Andy Barham, Managing Director of Premiere Kitchens, said: “It has given us the ability to create an engaged workforce and instil purpose into what we do.”

Drawing on the Good Dividends principles and embedding it in Premiere’s culture and strategy resulted in “transformational” improvements, with the business going from revenue of £11m in 2019/20 to £22m in 2024/5.

This success has been mirrored across close to 1,000 businesses that have engaged with the work via programmes delivered by Quolux in Gloucestershire and the Good Growth and other programmes by Lancaster University. Many examples are discussed in the book.

Dr Barnes added: “It was wonderful to see so many of our alumni in the room at the launch event as our guest speakers brought stories from Realising Good Growth alive. The event shows the possibilities as only a few years ago those speakers were in the audience wondering how they could take their first steps on the path less travelled.”

Geoffrey Newsome, CEO of ITSA Digital Trust, a charity that collects, services and distributes computers and technology to schools in Gloucestershire, the UK and across Africa was one of the attendees at the launch. He said: “Dr Barnes and Professor Kempster outlined an opportunity for businesses to divert from the path of minimal growth and global disaster and instead lead humanity into a new era in which organisations have strategies for growth, improved productivity and higher profits which can succeed because they are built upon the vital regeneration of people and the planet.”