17 Things We Actually Believe

On manifesto writing, feminist business, and why ‘quietly radical’ is not a contradiction

We were in a room in Salisbury at the end of May 2026, mid-conversation about the difference between performing feminism and practising it, when someone said: we should write this down.

So we did.

What came out of that session was not a mission statement or a set of brand values in the “corporate” sense. It was something more like a reckoning: a list of things we have tested, argued about, got wrong, tried again, and now actually stand behind.

We called it The Quietly Radical Manifesto.

Why ‘quietly radical’?

Because this is not content about loudly dismantling things. It is about the slower, more persistent work of building differently.

Ipsa means ‘herself’. We named the business that because the work has always been about showing up as you actually are, not a polished version of what you think the market wants. That is, in the current business climate, a fairly radical act.

We are not interested in shouting about who we are. We would rather let the work speak. That does not mean we are quiet about our values. It means we express them through what we do, not just what we say.

We actually wrote three

The workshop started with a question: who is this for?

That led us to separate out three things that had been muddled together for a while: the internal culture document (what we expect from each other, how we work, what we hold ourselves to), the external brand statement (what clients and collaborators can expect from us), and a third thing, harder to name, about what it means to run a feminist business in practice.

The third one is ongoing. This post is about the first two, collapsed into a single set of 17 principles that apply in both directions.

The Quietly Radical Manifesto

Here it is, with some of the thinking behind it.

1. We practise feminism, we don’t perform it.

This is the one that started the whole conversation. Performing feminism is posting the right things and attending the right events. Practising it is how you structure your contracts, how you price your services, how you respond when a client’s husband takes over a call you were already running. The practice is in the detail.

2. We are all equals, no matter our title.

Sociocracy, which is principle three, only works if this one is true first. Title is useful for clarity of responsibility. It is not a hierarchy of worth.

3. Sociocracy is the aim.

Most businesses are still running on a top-down model that was designed for a different century. Sociocracy is a governance structure built on consent and distributed authority. We are not there yet. It is the direction of travel.

4. Human first. We know our limits and we own them.

We do not have set working hours because humans are not reliably productive between 9am and 5pm. What we have instead is a mutual agreement to communicate: about capacity, about what is hard right now, about what we need. That requires more honesty than a timesheet.

5. We’re all adults. You do you.

Micromanagement is a trust deficit dressed up as process. We do not babysit, and we do not expect to be babysit. If something needs saying, we say it. If something needs doing, we do it.

6. Get it done, or communicate otherwise.

Two things. Either the work happens, or we have a conversation about why it cannot and what happens next. The third option, which is silence, is not available.

7. Group meetings are sacred.

Time is finite. When we are in a room together, we are all choosing to be there instead of doing something else. That deserves full presence, not half an eye on a screen.

8. Have the courage to speak up.

This one is specifically not passive. It requires something. If you disagree, say so. If you see a problem, name it. If someone is heading in the wrong direction, tell them. The culture only works if people use it.

9. But deliver it with kindness.

Eight without nine is just aggression. Honesty is not a licence for cruelty. You can be direct and still be decent.

10. Making mistakes is part of the journey.

I have made most of the mistakes I now advise clients to avoid. That is not incidental. It is the education.

11. Fear is what growth feels like.

This is the one I have to remind myself of most often. If something feels uncomfortable, that is usually a signal that it matters, not a signal to stop.

12. Progress over perfection.

Perfection is expensive, slow, and mostly theoretical. Progress is real. Ship the thing. Learn from it. Iterate. This applies to marketing, to websites, to business plans, and to manifesto writing.

13. We meet every client where they’re at.

Not where we wish they were, or where they were last year, or where the case study says they should be. Where they actually are, right now, with the constraints and context they have.

14. Leaving things better is the baseline.

Not the aspiration. The baseline. If we have been involved and things are not in better shape than when we arrived, something has gone wrong.

15. Prove the concept first, then plan with conviction.

Do not build a strategy for something that has not yet demonstrated it works. Test it cheaply. Test it quickly. When you have evidence, then commit.

16. Self-integrity, but not at any cost.

Know who you are and hold to it. But be open to being wrong. Integrity without flexibility is just stubbornness.

17. There is always hope. Always.

We put this last deliberately. It is the one that holds all the others up.

What this is not

It is not a set of values we aspire to. We have tested these. Some of them the hard way.

It is not a brand exercise. We were not trying to produce something that looks good on a website. We were trying to produce something that is actually true.

And it is not finished. Any document that claims to have everything figured out is lying to you.

If any of this resonates, or if it puts you off entirely, either response is useful. We are not trying to be everything to everyone.

We are trying to be honest about who we are.