From Profit to Purpose: How Culture Change Drives Business Success In today's competitive business landscape, organizations are constantly seeking ways to stay ahead and drive success. While profit may be a dominant focus, it isn't too late to join the growing movement towards purpose-driven organizations.
Here is the headline: Stoneage programing 1.0 tells us to contribute to the tribe, to care for it's members, to contribute to the tribe's purpose, survive then thrive.
If employees "feel" the dominant purpose is to make money for people they don't see, then connection to purpose is harder, if your organisational purpose benefits wider society, it feels much more motivational.
What is the business benefit of nice feelings and a connection to purpose?
A Korn Ferry study found that while purpose-driven consumer-products firms grew their sales at a 9.9 percent annually 2011 to 2015, their peers averaged only a 2.4 percent growth.
According to a study by Fortuna Advisors and the CEO Investor forum:
1: Companies that scored high on corporate purpose metrics outperformed their lowscoring counterparts on common measures of financial performance, market valuation and shareholder value creation.
2: The COVID crisis provided another important insight: the valuation and value creation advantage for companies scoring high on corporate purpose widened, sometimes materially, as the crisis developed and progressed.
3: [We] find that the average EBITDA valuation multiple earned by High Purpose brands is over 4 turns higher than that of Low Purpose brands. If sustained over time, this means High Purpose brands would double their market value over 4x faster than Low Purpose brands.
Whilst it is easy to generalise, please think on this
Healthcare is going through crisis after crisis.
Context: The regard society has for healthcare professionals is high, regardless of your country or culture, this is a consistent societal view largely because of social purpose.
The purpose that healthcare professionals have is to care for society, the "feeling" drives: you care for me, I care for you, I have almost intrinsic respect and a liking of you because of your purpose to help the tribe to survive then thrive.
So here is the question: Is the "felt" purpose of healthcare companies profit or care?
Now ask yourself, if profit was "felt" as a means to provide better care, would healthcare professions be more motivated, or more controverisally, if healthcare professionals were asked to use resources and adopt practices that were more profit than care focused, what would the disconnect in purpose drive?
Profit is essential, but given the research, a motivational connection to purpose delivers the best of both worlds, this isn't and/or; if/but; this is and and.
Step 1: Find your social purpose.
Some of our clients start with vision/mission statements like "be the best in what we do", and why not? We were in a workshop with an R&D company that had such a mission coupled with a technical name that we didn't understand.
When we asked about "social purpose", leadership were confused. It was obvious to them what they did and the implied social benefit.
Then came a story:
It started when one VP got call from reception. A gentleman had arrived and wanted to meet some people that worked there. The VP asked why, the gentleman showed a photograph on his phone with a batch number of a product they manufactured and asked if he could meet the team that made it to say thank you.
He was introduced to the team, the gentleman said "this medication saved my life, my family and I thank you".
Imagine the room, the emotional connection to their work saving lives. Not everyone directly manufactured the product, support groups like finance and HR felt a little distant from that activity, but they certainly felt an emotional and motivational connection to what they do now. Help society survive and thrive.
So, if you dig up ore, how is it used to helps society?
I worked with an engineering consultancy on a mining project in Africa, the projects purpose was to increase mining volume, manufacuring capacity and logistical infrastructure. The social purpose was to raise the intellectual capacity of the country and produce fertiliser to help feed africa. Which do you think motivated the team more to contribute their best self?
Step 2: Connect your internal purpose with you external purpose.
So lets talk about your company as several social groups with diverse skills structured in tribes. The HR tribe, the Finance Tribe, the operations tribe, etc. The wider tibe is the whole company. Each tribe has a purpose, but do they compete or collaborate, selfish benefit or shared benefit?
Stoneage programming 1.0 tells us to help the tribe survive and thrive. Our inbuilt "social justice" and fairness compass quickly works out which departments help us contribute to the tribe and which ones either don't help us and/or don't help the wider tribe.
It's like the profit question, we know we need it, we know it is essential, we know it is important, but it isn't our purpose, so I'm not motivated to engage. If we don't value another tribe's purpose, it is probably because it doesn't help my tribe's purpose, I don't value what you do and I'm not motivated to engage.
So, if the tribe of HR or HSE or Procurement, or Finance seem to get in the way of our contribution and what they ask us to do, provide, or not do, seems like it is helps their purpose not ours, we disengage and loose out on their wisdom, guidance and influence.
What you do on purpose, is your purpose. If your department performs audits to find fault or mistakes, and then point them out socially, stoneage programming 1.0 says we don't belong in the same tribe and your purpose is to grow and protect your tribe not mine.
If on the other hand departmental services provide advice, guidance and support, useful help in you growing your contribution, then we are connecting on purpose and to the wider tribe. Collaboration comes from common ground and increases with trust and respect.
Step 3: Include the diverse perspectives of your different tribes and co-create your future. At OrgTreeMe, we have a range of tools, techniques and workshops that help you find and connect on purpose, to purpose. We help you navigate stoneage programming 1.0 and tribal behaviours to discover the values in play from your business interactions, and co-create a connected culture where everyone cares for the organisation you care about.
Or you can do it yourself. Just ask your tribes, what is important but not helpful. Then stick them in a room with the task of creating mutual benefit that helps us delier shared purpose. Relationships change when groups help each other, we benefit from knoweldge shared and we are willing to repeat what feels good: being helped and helpful on shared purpose.
Better, more informed, resilient decisions make for better outcomes. Just happens they are also more profitiable, but that shouldn't be the purpose, it should be a benefical outcome that serves your purpose.
Please visit www.orgtree.me or contact us via curious@orgtree.me
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