The purpose of purpose

A Luminous discussion with Richard Hytner, Adjunct Professor of Marketing, London Business School, and founder of the creative management consultancy, beta baboon 

We talk a lot about purpose with our clients at Luminous. How do you define it?

Purpose is multi-faceted, so thinking of it as a singular ‘it’ can be misleading. Some people mistake purpose for a lofty ideal captured by a sentence that might elevate a strategy document without considering what it involves: what do their people and customers expect of them; how do they go about fulfilling those expectations; what concrete steps are they taking to pursue their purpose? At its best and most useful, purpose is an overarching aspiration together with an ambition for the enterprise as well as its values: who you are, what you believe in and what you stand for. Any organisation that thinks it’s ‘doing purpose’ by focusing on just one part of this is missing the point.

How does purpose differ from vision and mission? 

Purpose should involve a comprehensive, compelling articulation of ‘what we do, why we do it, how we do it and who we are’. So that encompasses an organisation’s vision – the world it would most like to see and its role within it, as well as its mission, the measurable ambition of the enterprise.

What about corporate and brand purpose? How do they interrelate?

In many contexts, single product companies for example, or professional services, the business is the brand, they are one and the same. In other contexts, corporations with multiple brands, there should be a reciprocity between corporate brand and product or service brand. Take Unilever as an example. If its corporate purpose is, ‘To make sustainable living commonplace’, the purpose of each of its brands should elevate, in some way, Unilever’s ability to deliver that corporate purpose. Unilever should be amplified by the purpose of each of its brands. What you cannot have is a purpose over here for one brand and a purpose over there for another, with no real connection between them at a corporate level, and assume that your stakeholders are going to find the corporate purpose easy to understand, coherent or consistent – they are more likely to see a rambling collection of disparate initiatives instead. 

What, in your view, makes an authentic and credible purpose statement?

One that sits between a snapshot of the organisation as it exists today and one it can stretch to be valid in the future. Neither a selfie, nor a fantasy. I hear too many leaders say, “We’ve got a brilliant social purpose, a lovely, lovely idea of why we exist”, when their behaviour clearly signals a different pursuit, invariably to make money. The two are proven to be entirely compatible. In fact, the ability to sustain and generate returns in the future will depend to a great extent on adherence to one’s purpose. But profit and purpose as separate pursuits is still more in evidence in the cultures I encounter. Part of the problem with purpose efforts and the suspicion of it as a topic, particularly from CEOs, is that they look at a purpose statement disconnected from the organisation’s strategy and they rightly dismiss it. Only when supported by the right activities, ambitions and plans will a purpose make sense. Everybody loves LEGO’s ‘We fuel every child’s imagination’, precisely because it so readily drives all the work the organisation does with all its accompanying values. 

So where do you get purpose from?

From what’s gone before; from your foundation beliefs, probably those of your founders; from what drove them to set the enterprise up in the first place. It’s about delving into and amplifying what has made the place useful, purposeful, distinctive and special, and getting rid of everything that has diluted it. It’s about being true to your roots, getting back to the core of who you are and what you stand for. And then, of course, it has to take account of context: what is happening in the market and what your customers, employees and stakeholders care about. A great purpose has to be born out of all of that and be inspired by all of that.

Should purpose be both internally and externally facing? 

Yes, it’s both. The most important thing is that it works from the inside out. If your purpose document were to fall into the hands of your customers or your investors, you should feel relaxed. In my experience, the particular challenge is that great B2B businesses are 100% focused on their customers which means it often tilts the emphasis of purpose to the outside stakeholder group as opposed to what it means to people inside. So, I see a lot of B2B businesses that reflect well what their customers care about but which house employees who are burnt out and feel that the company is letting them down. In other words, the business has become a customer-driven enterprise, not a purpose-driven enterprise.

Who would you say is getting purpose right?

I admire companies who declare their intent alongside an open acknowledgment of what it will take to get there. Few can doubt their sincerity because their leaders have been candid about the place from which they start – “This is us now. This is where we need to be.” I respect purposes that invite other people to help, too, with an admission that they cannot achieve their aspiration on their own. Most of all, I love purposes that are backed up by action today. The overnight withdrawal of plastic bags by Waitrose from every one of its stores; the switch by McDonald’s to paper straws despite customers moaning that paper straws go soggy. I saw their CEO on TV saying, “There comes a point where consumers just have to get over it. If we’re going to save the planet, this is what we have to do.” Not enough CEOs use the privilege of having the microphone to lead their consumers. And that’s what purpose should be about – it’s what you fundamentally believe in. 

And which companies are getting purpose wrong? 

I’ve seen corporations with clear ambition and a strong sense of who they are, but with a purpose as an addendum to their agenda and that’s not helpful. Sky’s ‘Believe in better’ comes to mind. It’s fantastic that they are committed to cleaning up the oceans. But what’s the connection to their daily business? Why Sky for that? I think the social cause that you champion should feel like it really is yours to champion. If that’s driven by the CEO’s desire for clean oceans, great and I really admire it, but I don’t see how that sustains itself. It’s got to feel core to the fabric of the company and I think the best ‘purpose’ companies have that. 

I was bemused by Twitter, whose original purpose was, ‘to shorten the distance between people and their passions’. Entirely credible and ownable by Twitter, the foundation upon which it was built, in fact. Say what you have to say in 140 characters. And then customers complained that 140 characters was too restrictive: ‘My passion deserves more than 140 characters.’ Twitter’s knee-jerk response was to increase the limit, which undermined the spirit and distinction of what it stood for in the first place. I think if you’re prepared to walk away from your purpose that quickly, you’ve got a really flaky purpose.

How do you recommend getting your workforce onside with your purpose?

To be done effectively, it’s a massive undertaking. The CEO has to instigate and own the process but involve many more people in its creation and implementation. It’s not a case of ‘You will now go and use this on your presentation and pitch documents.’ At its best, it is a sincere invitation to use the purpose to make better decisions every day, in the context in which they are being made. For example, at Saatchi & Saatchi, we had a spirit of ‘Nothing is impossible’, but we would not expect people to trot out the same story to evidence this. People used it to navigate their own ‘impossible’ each day and to think, ‘The last time I was confronted with the impossible, this is what I did.’ Leaders need to encourage people to put themselves into the purpose and to tell their stories in their own words. Insistence that everybody recites the purpose suggests you are running a cult. It is more like sheet music, committed to paper and codified but for people to interpret and sing in their own voice – bass, alto, tenor and so on. 

Can you give us your top tips about developing a corporate purpose in a B2B environment?

First tip, if you don’t believe the leadership team is up for living according to the purpose themselves, walk away. Why be complicit in making promises the leaders know full well they cannot keep? Second tip, purpose is strategic, it demands that leaders make choices and that takes candour and courage. One of the things I’ve been teaching this morning is that if, as a business, you try and please everybody, you please nobody. So, particularly in B2B, generic statements and commitments by leaders have to be confronted; it’s their obligation and responsibility to the next generation to make some bold choices. Somebody set up the firm for a reason and I believe it’s incumbent on all leaders to live and drive a strong sense of purpose for their organisation. To manage and lead a company purposefully is a privilege, it is a platform from which to make an impact on the world.

The Luminous view

At Luminous, we counsel strongly against seeing purpose as just a ‘tick-box’ exercise. Some clients come to us well intentioned, but they often don’t follow through with a concrete plan of how they will deliver against their shiny, new purpose statement. As a consequence, their purpose and any other newly written strategic components (vision and values, for example) live in a PowerPoint and that’s it! For a purpose to have any impact and traction with customers and employees, it needs to live beyond the page and fully inspire the strategy, tactics and communication in your organisation. Our advice: if you’re going to ‘do purpose’, do it right. 

Richard Hytner
Adjunct Professor of Marketing
London Business School

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