(iStockphoto/PeopleImages)An organization’s mission is widely recognized as its reason for being. Enlightened leaders have long known and believed that the heart of an organization’s culture is described not just by “how we do things around here,” but also by “why we do them.” An organization’s mission is the starting point for its culture.
The nature of a mission statement matters only if leaders and their employees believe in it and live it. In my research, too often I’ve found that leaders are content to check the box on mission by writing and saying things like, “our mission is to be the best in our industry.” For years that was the case in too many organizations.
Then organizations like Google started adding loftier aspirations such as “organize and make available the world’s information.” More recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella led an effort to change the organization’s culture, shifting its mission from a product-oriented “computer on every desk and in every home” to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” The assumption is that “to be the best” just doesn’t measure up to “change the world” when it comes to inspiring and motivating employees.
Nikos Mourkogiannis cited four types of purpose that provide “sources of energy” for an organization:
- Heroism: The desire to change the world and society.
- Discovery: The challenge of adventure and innovation characterized by entrepreneurs willing to work 24/7 in search of the new or unknown.
- Excellence: When achieving high standards matters more than short-term performance.
- Altruism: When a company serves customers, employees, and others first and assumes that profit will follow.
Making money—a lot of it—may result from any one of these kinds of missions, but when money making is put before purpose, you get an Enron.
Ranjay Gulati, the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, recently identified this quest as a search for “deep purpose.” Gulati considers deep purpose not just another management tool, but “a foundational principle for organizing that reflects your company’s very sense of self.” It is intended to provide a rationale for why each employee comes to work.
In achieving deep purpose, Gulati maintains that tradeoffs in decision-making that will affect various stakeholders differently are necessary to achieve purpose with profit, one that finds “win-win solutions” and does “well along with good.” His study has struck a chord at a time when the need for enlightened businesses to serve a range of stakeholders is on everyone’s mind, whether you’re for or against it.
In crafting a deep purpose, Gulati suggests that we both “resurrect a fabled past” (nostalgia) and “break with an inglorious one” in envisioning the future (postalgia). This requires fostering a critical dialogue about the past. What accounts for why we’re here today? What didn’t work? It’s then necessary to “stress-test the purpose” by thinking about how it might have changed an important decision, had we had it in place when we made the decision.
My experiences in researching and putting a value on an effective culture tell me that if notions concerning deep purpose are to have practical impact they will have to be more sharply defined and measured for impact on the bottom line. It was more than 40 years after researchers Fritz Roethlisberger and William Dickson first suggested the impact on performance of some behaviors that would be included under the umbrella of what later would be called organizational culture. Practitioners like former Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke endorsed it, academics like Edgar Schein of MIT gave it a more definitive definition, and several of us put a value on it. Since then, the importance of organizational culture has gained acceptance and interest.
The question is of particular importance for a concept that inevitably will become confused with other developments in management. For example, how will answers to that question be clouded by the political debate surrounding the importance of ESG (environment, social, and governance) and investments in organizations professing allegiance to those dimensions of deep purpose?
Is there a risk of confusion between deep purpose and stakeholder management—with emphasis on serving employees, customers, community, etc.—as philosophies of business?
How many times do we have to say it: What gets measured is what gets managed. Is deep purpose just about feel-good ideas or is it worth something?
How much attention should be given to the bottom line in measuring the payoff from deep purpose? How should we measure the payoff?
How much does "deep purpose" matter to the bottom line? What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
References:
- Ranjay Gulati, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies (Harper Business, 2022)
- Nikos Mourkogiannis, Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
- Fritz J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, Mangement and the Worker: An Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago (Harvard University Press, 1939)
- Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership(Jossey-Bass, 1985)
Your feedback to last month’s column
Will Hybrid Work Strategies Pull Down Long-Term Performance?
This question produced responses that may encourage some of us to rethink what is happening in the ranks of those organizations pursuing hybrid work strategies.
On the one hand, we’ve heard from senior executives making the case for in-office attendance for at least substantial amounts—typically three days of time each week. They’ve stressed the importance of time spent together for creative collaboration as well as the need for team-building and the preservation of the organization’s chemistry.
On the other hand, we have responses to last month’s column. Roxane Romero was quite graphic in comments that reflected the views of others. She said, “… being in the office … can be fun, but it is like taking a day off. You have to make up for the lost productivity later.” She described “all the people with earbuds to drown out the noise. This makes it really awkward to even engage with the people in the office when you are there.” CJ added, “The most unproductive days I’ve ever had have been in an office environment. The open plan offices are laughable … Maybe we should just schedule one social day a week in the office and call it what it really is.”
Parmelee Eastman ventured the opinion that, “Hybrid work is here to stay… We now communicate differently—and better—in online meetings. We learned how to use these tools more effectively because we had to during the pandemic.”
Respondents didn’t stop there. They provided advice about how to make hybrid strategies work. Tamara commented, “Hiring the right people is far more strategically important than where they perform their job… As remote opportunities have become more pervasive, the main focus should be on the support structure you put in place to ensure your workers succeed.” Ekaterina Shatrova suggested that “… adaptations internally are required—some additional rules and steps should be implemented. For example, for managers … to make arrangements in advance and make sure everyone is present at that day in the office …”
Rob Drasin captured the sense of the majority of responses well when he said, “Hybrid work is to the new century what the assembly line was to the last century. Those who embraced the change prospered.”