If you ask everyone on your team if they know why your company exists, what would they say? And no, “to make money” just won’t cut it these days. You might not think such existential ponderings have a place when you’re fighting fires, closing deals, and growing the business – but nothing could be more important to your organization’s long-term success. Today, we talk with Denise Roberson, who shares her work and research showing that organizations with clear, actionable purposes enjoy many tangible and intangible benefits – profit and longevity being among the most impressive.
Today, we talk about what a Chief Purpose Officer does, and we parse out the word salad of purpose, vision, and mission so you have a better understanding on how they all work together. She shares examples from market leaders Unilever and others who are measuring the value and impact of purpose in more accurate ways. We also talk about big mistakes Boards and leaders make when thinking about purpose and what you can do to get maximum benefit instead.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- While vision, mission, and purpose all have different meanings, what is most important is that, within your organization, you are all working with the same vocabulary and all understand what you are talking about and what is most important.
- Purpose is important for every aspect of business: employees, investors, consumers, customers, and management.
- Empathy and purpose are important to every company, whether 100 or 100,000 employees. It makes a difference, it gives a business edge, and it is good for the world.
“Purpose has now become a really powerful operating system that goes across the top of the organization. It’s a great uniter: It’s got this juicy business case that helps attract top talent, reduce turnover, and protects against risks.” — Denise Roberson
About Denise Roberson, Chief Purpose Officer, Omnicom TBWA
In her role as the first-ever Chief Purpose Officer in the Omnicom and TBWA network, Denise is leading some of the biggest brands in the world to actuate their business case for purpose, through focusing on a scalable, differentiated, and business goals oriented approach. In this capacity, Denise is helping companies connect their brands to value and purpose, and using this unified strategy to create 21st-century value and growth across the entire stakeholder wheel. TBWA was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company and has worked with Fortune 500 and world-class brands around the globe such as Apple, Gatorade, Google, McDonalds, Intuit, Principal Financial Group, and the Grammy’s.
Denise is also serving as a marketing professor for Pepperdine University’s Presidents & Key Executives MBA program and has served in a board role for a number of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Resources Mentioned:
Five Mistakes Boards Make When Thinking About Purpose, by Afdhel Aziz, Forbes CMO Council
Connect with Denise Roberson:
Website: https://tbwa.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deniseroberson/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/denise.roberson.129
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deniseroberson_purpose/
Don’t forget to download your free guide! Discover The 5 Business Benefits of Empathy: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy
Connect with Maria:
Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com
Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Twitter: @redslice
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
If you ask everyone on your team if they know why your company exists, what would they say? And know to make money just won’t cut it these days. You might not think such existential ponderings have a place when you’re fighting fires, closing deals and growing the business. But nothing could be more important to your organization’s long term success. Today we talk with Denise Roberson, who shares her work and research showing that organizations with clear actionable purposes enjoy many tangible and intangible benefits, profit and longevity being among the most impressive in her role as the first ever Chief purpose officer in the Omnicom and TBWA network. Denise is leading some of the biggest brands in the world to actuate their business case for purpose through focusing on a scalable, differentiated and business goals oriented approach. She’s helping companies connect their brands to value and purpose. And using this unified strategy to create 21st century value and growth across all stakeholders. TBWA was named one of the world’s most innovative companies by Fast Company and has worked with Fortune 500 and world class brands around the globe, such as Apple Gatorade, Google McDonald’s into it, Principal Financial Group and the Grammys. Denise is also a marketing professor for Pepperdine University’s presidents and key executives MBA program, and is served in a board role for a number of for profit and not for profit organizations. Today we talk about what the heck a chief purpose officer does, we parse out the word salad of purpose, vision and mission, so you have a better understanding of how they all work together. She shares examples from market leaders, like Unilever and others who are measuring the value and impact of purpose in more accurate ways. And we talk about big mistakes boards and leaders make when thinking about purpose, and what you can do to get maximum benefit instead, take a listen.
Maria Ross 02:35
Welcome, Denise to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on this has been a little while in the making. But I’m so excited to talk about purpose, and your work with TBWA. And your work with clients and your work on helping companies create brands that mean something.
Denise Roberson 02:53
Oh, thank you, Maria. I’ve been excited and waiting for the day. I think we have so many points of intersection. It’s become incredible. So finally, we get to have this conversation.
03:03
I love it. I love it. So let’s start off real quickly you our chief purpose officer for Omni comms purpose collective and TBWA. Yes, for folks that are fuzzy on what that actually means and what you actually do. What does what’s the role of a chief purpose officer? Because not every organization is lucky enough to have one?
03:22
No, the role was actually made for me almost three years ago now. And it’s interesting because I still have people in our organization that are like, what do you actually do. And what I actually do is I go in mostly with the C suite and board of directors and I help them create their business case for purpose. So a lot of folks that are of a certain demographic, they didn’t come up the ranks in business with purpose. So there are a lot of preconceived notions of what it is, you know, it’s soft and fuzzy, it’s getting hit with a pretty stick. It’s all these things. But we all know in 2020, to post the events of 2020, it’s now become a really powerful operating system that goes across the top of the organization. It’s a great uniter, it’s got this juicy business case, that helps attract top talent, it helps reduce employee turnover, it helps protect against risks. So I always like to think of purpose as two halves to a hole, you have risk on one side, and growth and innovation on the other. So we really try and tap into those two or three spheres of influence, and develop the best business case we can specifically for the organization. So that’s where I spend my days.
04:39
Oh my gosh, I love it. Now do you do this for clients as well? Or is this just internal? No, I
04:44
mostly work on the client side. And I get lucky sometimes and get to do this internally for our own organization. But this is done a lot through our various clients. So it’s wonderful because I get to touch so many different industries and sectors and what you get To see time and time again is that they’re more alike than they are different.
05:04
Mm hmm. And what are what are some of the misconceptions about purpose? Because I imagine you probably get a lot of deer in the headlights stares when you start talking about purpose. And people going well, I don’t know, is that just like, an inspirational vision statement? Is that, you know, how do you go about helping them understand what purpose actually is? Tell us?
05:26
I think by deconstructing it, really looking at where its source of power lies. It’s a great uniter, it’s a great activator. McKenzie did a fantastic piece of research, looking at what they refer to as the purpose gap. And what they identified is over 80%, of vice presidents and above firmly believe they get their purpose at work. Well, unfortunately, 80% and above of mid level managers and frontline workers firmly believe they do not get their purpose of work. So it really sort of an earth why a lot of people don’t feel like they’re getting that it’s because it’s not getting out to the furthest ends of the organization. So we have to spend a lot of time and energy figuring out how do we activate and meet employees where they are? Then we broaden that sphere, how do we meet stakeholders where they are? How do we meet investors, where they are? How do we meet customers where they are, and really start to use this purpose as a unifying lens by which all these organizations can start making really key critical decisions to the business. And it’s fascinating what starts to happen when you hold that lens up. Because all of a sudden, a lot of organizations have this gut instinct that they have to respond to everything. No, you don’t. You don’t have to respond to everything. And as a matter of fact, if it’s not part of your core, not part of your purpose, I would suggest potentially not, and maybe holding back and really focusing your time, energy and effort, where you show up how you show up when you show up through your purpose. And it starts to anchor things.
07:05
And do you think the language actually matters? Because you know, people throw around things like I mean, for me, for example, with my brand strategy and brand story clients, we talk about vision and mission. And really, vision is the what’s the future state that we’re here for what I actually tried to define it as, what’s the future state that could potentially put us out of business right day that if it was achieved, you no longer need our company? Right? And that’s where that gets a little scary. But does it matter what it’s called in the organization? If it’s called vision or mission or purpose? I’d love to know if that yeah, that nomenclature makes a difference.
07:39
I think we’re having a lexicon nightmare right now. And people are using words interchangeably that aren’t interchangeable. So one of the things I always do is ask if they use a word, what does that mean to you? So all here things like ESG and purpose be swapped out. Sustainability gets swapped out all of these words start, you know, mission and purpose are swapped out. And I don’t think that anyone’s necessarily absolutely right or absolutely wrong, because we don’t have these universal definitions. But I do think it’s very important that you’re speaking the same language. So clearly delineating what you mean, when you say those words, especially with any client, and as a client is speaking to their key stakeholders. Everyone has to understand what they mean when they’re using those words. So I think it is important because the way I see purpose, purpose is the strategic operating system that goes across the arc. It’s the umbrella concept, and things like ESG and sustainability and Dei, they hang on to that purpose. Right. So all of a sudden, we’re starting to create these layers and how they connect together matters.
08:48
Exactly. And when we you know, we talk about brand architecture, that’s where I try to get them to, you know, that’s actually not a mission statement. That’s a vision statement, a mission statement is more about the actions that you take every day in support of the vision. So I think it’s I think you’re right, it’s absolutely about can everyone internally at least come to an agreement about how we’re using these words and what they mean to us. And maybe you have another word for it, maybe it’s not purpose, maybe it’s our philosophy or a credo or whatever it’s called. But it’s the important thing you’re saying is they need to have it, they need
09:18
to have it, they need to understand what it is and how it applies to them. Specifically, I have clients that are allergic to the word purpose, you say the word, they’re immediately going to check out on you because they’ve had some negative experience and they can’t get past it. So we use other words, we just figure out how to define what we’re talking about, and that’s the word we’ll use. But if you look at the epicenter of purpose, this is over oversimplified, but it really gets to the why question. Why does the company exist? Sometimes it has to do with the founders story. There’s usually a really deep rooted explanation as to why the world would miss that or organization if they work no longer to exist. So the why is usually what we start as the epicenter and start moving out those concentric rings to build that in a meaningful way.
10:11
Well, I love this conversation, because I have a lot of clients in tech and a lot of startup clients where the company started by a technologist who just had a really cool idea for how to make something work better. And they struggle with this whole mission vision thing, because they’re like, but I don’t get it. It’s just there was this problem, and we created this piece of technology to solve it. We don’t think there’s any other story to it than that, oh, there’s
10:32
always more story to it.
10:33
Exactly. So tell us about that.
10:36
It’s part of you know, if you think about an onion and peeling back those layers, if you get a client like that, that genuinely believes we just did this, because it was the right thing to do. If we can make money doing it, we can make money doing that. Well, if you would like to have employees in the next 10 years, they care a whole lot. This next generation, we have five generations in the workforce right now. Yes, and the upcoming generations care a lot. salary isn’t number one, it’s not even two or three, it’s down at like five. So that’s usually compelling reason. Think about having employees and your well being and their turnover and their tenure with your organization. So we’ve got all those interesting facts. And then we look at the sustainability of an organization if we want a sustainable organization, and I don’t mean it being you know, kind to the environment. But if we want it to have longevity, and we want it to be here, it’s one of the cornerstones. So another facet, you know, it’s good for the company, this is good business. And we’ve got a lot of rich data from our friends in academia, and I sit on both sides of the hall. So I’ve got a lot of academic threads that have rigorous and robust research. And then we’ve got our consultants that have done some phenomenal things. And we now have a trend line, that’s pretty hard to debate. It’s, if someone now asks me to debate, the business case, I’m like, oh, yeah, I will, I’m happy to that’s the academic and male, gladly play both sides. And take your argument, and try and you know, kind of 360 find my way all the way around. But it’s so rich, it’s so detailed. It’s so deep now from every one of our key stakeholders, right? It’s kind of hard to say it frivolous, or it’s a law center, or some of these things I hear all the time.
12:31
Well, I think that’s part of the the job of, of those of us that are brand shepherds or communicators is to help give them the words because I find it’s not. Once I pull the story out of them, then I can articulate a vision and a mission a purpose, and it resonates with them. But they were not able to find those words themselves, right. And it’s just, I am convinced of the power of being able to articulate an idea because that’s what people can get behind. That’s the story behind stories
13:02
are the great thing throughout the ages that have united people and connected them and good storytelling is where this lives on in perpetuity. So super important.
13:13
Well, and not to mention, you know, you were talking about employees, which a lot of the research for the empathy edge was around that about millennials who are now in their 40s but and Gen Z coming behind them, how they’re not putting up with the same crap no put up with when we were coming up. Right. And I have always said this, for folks that have been listening for a while they’ve heard me say this ad nauseam. I’m like good on them. Because it makes it better for all of us that they’re just asking for the things we were too scared of exactly. We think we had the right, exactly ask for. And so not only that, but the idea of what consumers are demanding, whether it’s b2b or b2c, it makes no doubt their their purchase decisions, say something about them, they do. And they want to become part of communities that are aligned with their values, whatever those values are. So if you have that purpose, it stands to reason that you’re putting up the flag. Yeah, of this is this is who we are. If you know, if you’re I always say if you’re down with this, come work with us, come partner with us come buy from us,
14:12
right? And I would put investors on that list. Now. Yeah, we are seeing investors vote with their dollars. And we’ve never seen an explosion of ESG activity, purpose driven activity like we have in the markets. And it’s been really fascinating. And it’s happened both ways, because we’ve seen investors that are drawn towards companies with this values alignment. But we’ve also seen activist investors in the House who are frustrated or upset by the lack of alignment. And they can do a lot in a short amount of time. So we’ve seen both scenarios where its investors saying our values are not aligned, and we’re going to do something about it.
14:52
Now that’s interesting. That kind of takes me off on a little bit of a tangent because I’ve been reading a lot about how some ESG initiatives are getting sidelined because The state of the economy and the state of the markets. Are you seeing that? Or were you seeing sort of a robust commitment to purpose? Do you see that waning at all in the face of economic pressure?
15:11
I don’t in the sense that the organizations that are already using purpose as a source of growth and innovation, they’ve already seen the magic, it’s good business, it’s helping the business become more sustainable, and its growth in its trajectory. And all of those wonderful, beautiful little bits and pieces of the business case, for the companies who haven’t, and there may be very early on their journey, of course, they’re starting to ask the question, can we invest in this and still be good to our organization? And I think that’s a fine question to ask.
15:49
So can you give us some examples of folks that are doing this, right?
15:53
It’s interesting, because no matter who I say, there’s no perfect organization, there’s no perfect person.
16:00
So if I do it, 80%, right, yeah. 70%, right.
16:03
Unilever, I think is a great example. Because when I walk into a boardroom with the C suite, or the board of directors, they always want to get to that bottom line case. And it’s very, very difficult to compare apples to apples. That’s something that not a lot of organizations can do. Unilever does it beautifully. They’ve actually bifurcated their products into different portfolios that are based on the sustainable portfolio. And then nonsustainable portfolio. And what we can see is that sustainable portfolio is dramatically outperforming the regular portfolio every time year over year. So for the people who want to get right to that bottom line, which I think is a mistake, I think there are a lot of other wonderful details that ladder up to the bottom line. But they’re also very important to be measured, but I think Unilever can definitely hold its torch as the standout when we’re talking about that metric.
17:01
Awesome. Awesome. And that’s what caused that initiative within Unilever, was it consumer pressure, was it just gauging the winds of change, you know, that they were trying to create more sustainability to be more environmentally conscious. So they wouldn’t, you know, be made obsolete. Like what I think
17:20
it was within that nation, I was not in the room, but I do have friends that were there was a transition and a CEO, it was trying to define what the new era was going to be about. There was something about that, that really spoke to them in the early days. And that was their purpose statement for a really long time was, you know, really leaning into making every consumer sustainable. And I think it’s grown from there. And now they’re doing these wonderful things where they’re looking into supply chain, and they’re encouraging more diversity, not only in their employee groups, but in their supplier groups. And they’ve definitely kind of left the entry level Long, long ago. And they’re able to really fine tune and make these programs so much more robust. And I really commend them for that, because it’s kind of this great golden star to hold out for everyone to say, Oh, the financial case is very much there. This is really causing, you know, a ripple effect. That ladders up to fantastic business and growth. But we’re also having profound effect on the planet and people. Right, so it’s that win win win.
18:26
I know, I just I don’t see how there’s a loss there for anyone. And that’s why, you know, they’re one of the case studies in my book, The Empathy edge because of the ability to do it at scale. Absolutely. You know, because I think a lot of times, we tend to think, oh, this purpose driven stuff, this empathy stuff, it’s for smaller companies. And there is a way to scale it that way. You know, I have examples in my book, I’m sure you’ve worked with larger organizations that are global in nature, it doesn’t even matter. Because it’s just a collection of people, no matter what, no matter what 100 or 100,000.
18:59
That’s the thing, I will tell you, the companies that start with purpose at the epicenter from the beginning have an advantage just because it’s built into their DNA. So we have our B corpse, we have some organizations. That’s what their intention was all along. So it’s a bit easier because their hiring practices, most of their goals, their setting, and the KPIs that they’re tracking, all support that notion from the beginning. But it does not mean that a massive multinational, can’t have the same effect. It’s a bit harder, it’s a bit slower. It’s all the things you would think because of the size but you look at a company like p&g, who is also doing some fantastic things. I just had the good fortune of spending some time with their chief sustainability officer and she blew me away. I actually had some of the most fantastic stories of how she got senior leadership, particularly the CEOs, and they had quite a bit of turnover in a short amount of time. How she got them to own it and really make it theirs and I was just putting in her hands. Yeah.
20:02
Oh my gosh. Well, and that actually brings me to another question. What are the what are the ingredients required? If a company is going to say, Yeah, we want to, we want to commit to purpose, we’ve got to actually define what our purpose is. Yes. Does that is it a combination of leadership, driving the conversation, but then also getting input from all levels of the organization? Does there have to sort of be one champion? That is, you know, again, you know, with the with the expression too many cooks in the kitchen, you know, when you actually have to get to a point where we need to decide what our purpose statement credo is going to be. Is does it have to be clear from the onset about, you know, this is where we’re gathering all the input, but then these are the people that are going to make the final decision, you
20:50
should be interested in the tactics, yeah, you should try and endeavor for that, what it usually ends up being is you have to have the CEOs buy in, if you do not have CEO buy in, it’s destined to fail itself. It is, and it’s tedious and difficult. And for your passion players that have shown up, this really means something to them, it’s just a source of incredible frustration. But I will add to that, getting your CEOs personal purpose to mesh with the corporation’s purpose, that’s where the magic happens, when they start to see how that works. And how that intersects. One plus one starts to equal four, or five or six, it’s really an exponential growth factor. So I think you have to have the CEO, but I wouldn’t necessarily have the CEO own it. Because the CEO has a lot of other tasks during exactly. You need the CEO to champion it, but you need a person to own it. And then you need a committee to support it. But I believe strongly, yes, you’ve got to have the participation, you’ve got to have the interaction and the collaboration. And I’ll use the word co creation, with your employees at every level, if it isn’t speaking to them, and they can’t see themselves in the purpose. It’s a lost cause.
22:09
So true, so true. So how you got on my radar is that I read an amazing article that you were interviewed for, which was called five mistakes boards make when thinking about purpose, and as you said, it could have been five mistakes leaders make when thinking about purpose. So can you talk to us a little bit about what those pitfalls are maybe just a few highlighted ones, I’ll put a link to this article in the show notes for my listeners. So don’t you worry, you’ll get all five, but maybe other some highlights in there to nice that we can, we can dig into and maybe what’s the antidote? For some of those.
22:43
One of them is what we were just talking about. And I had the good fortune of writing this article with off Dale Aziz. And he’s just fantastic. He’s also a fellow purpose practitioner. So it was us really dreaming about what we wished we had when we were sitting in the boardroom, especially with people who have not come up with purpose as something that was a lever in an organization that had power and a lot of potential behind it for this, you know, notion of growth for this notion of how to innovate, and for reputational risk. And again, we’re kind of coming back to that. But the last one, I will tell you, I got a lot of chatter online about and that was not having a Purpose Committee and assuming everyone is responsible dollar for every time I can archy, I sit on a lot of boards. And you know, there’s a lot of we will leave out the first part, but the splaining Oh, everyone’s responsible for that. I’m like, great, who owns it? Who’s responsible for the KPIs and measuring this and making sure it’s enacted? Then you get the kind of HA base, I have Great Danes, and they’re infamous for making the you know, cut a Hefei sucking their head to the right. That’s it. And I’m like, oh, then we have a problem. Because even though yes, I agree. Everybody should own this. If someone doesn’t own it, it’s never going to be developed into something that’s meaningful, rich and robust. And if we’re not doing it at the board, or the C suite level, the rest of the organization is not going to perceive that it’s important. Yeah. So that, to me is something that it’s that notion of modeling. You’re asking your organization to adopt it, your board had better adopted and your C suite leaders have to adopt it. So I think the board sometimes exempts themselves. And that’s for the executive team. That’s for the employees. That’s where whatever the truth is, no, you should be mirroring a great culture and if the culture is purpose driven, you had better be purpose driven on the board. And there are just some key things that at the end of the day if you’re missing them, boards not representing the community that was another one that I was that
25:02
was that was one that really resonated with me, tell us what you mean by that. So or doesn’t represent the community. That’s a big mistake. We’ve
25:08
got a lot of dei issues right now that people are contending with and trying to rectify a lot of wrongs that have been out there. One of the fastest ways to identify whether or not that board is taking things seriously is to look at its composition. Does it look like the community it’s representing? Or does it look like a lot of unfortunate other boards where you see the same gender the same same age demographic. And if that’s the case, you should probably reconsider, because you’re not representing your stakeholders, if that’s the case. So I think it’s really important to look long and hard. And not just against one or two of these slices, and demographic, but multiple slices. Age is one of them. I think it’s really important. There’s a, like I said, Five generations in the workforce, we should probably have people that can speak and represent them in a really authentic way. Gender salutely. As we all know, the big fight is California sort of kick things off. And you know, women on boards is become something that we’ve got so much data to prove that the boards and the companies improve.
26:16
I had someone asked me once about that and say, Well, I’ve never seen any, you know, we talk a lot about the fact that if you have diverse executive teams and diverse boards, but is there actually any data and I literally sent this person an email with like, nine, just just nine good ones, I could find that like, how’s that? First? I want to say that my page of a Google search do more and Yeah, well, the other one that really resonated with me, too, was the first one which is focusing on the short term versus the long term, because this is an issue. I don’t, it almost doesn’t matter what vector if it’s purpose, if it’s brand, if it’s customer loyalty, customer experience, there’s there’s such this desire to shortcut everything. I don’t know if that’s because we’re not lifers anymore in our jobs, that we just think about, like the next two or three years that we’re going to be in this role. And then it’s somebody else’s problem. I don’t know where that comes from, but But how can you get an organization to think about purpose, longer term, even if those players might not be around?
27:19
I have empathy, first of all, because exactly short term, you know, those quarterly earnings calls, they’re no joke, and they’re no fun, yeah, it will get put through is really difficult. So I have a lot of empathy, because you can’t abandon the short term wins, no, but you can recontextualize them, you can look at those wins as stepping stones towards your long term goals, you can reframe the conversation to be looking at value creation. And once you really set that as the epicenter, the conversation begins to change. The problem is you have a lot of demands coming in. And if you aren’t able to have alignment on your leadership team, and at the board level, you don’t have the armor to be able to say, we’re not putting all of our time, energy and effort into those short term goals. Those short term goals are going to ladder up to our long term goals. It takes a lot of humility, it takes a lot of strength, it takes a lot of action and support to get to that place. But the companies that do there’ll be along around for a very, very long time. So I think it’s really important that we start reframing that conversation. And the good news is if we look at our investors, our employees and our customers, they’re looking for a lot more in terms of value, alignment, values, alignment, and having those the value ladder up to creating value. So it’s a good time to have those conversations. But you’ve got to have people that are supporting you, you’ve got to have, you know, like I said, the leadership team has to have the Board of Directors agree on on all of this. And you’ve got to have those concentric rings of support to be able to make that transition. Once you do you can see it you can see the believers, you can see the IP as you can see all these organizations that are able to do it and do it successfully and are still incredibly financially viable.
29:21
I love that. And, you know, to to stress your point about how important it is the tenor that the board sets because I’ve been a part of many startups in the the merry go round of Silicon Valley and the first bust in 1999, and then recent recessions. And if if that board is the one that’s just focused on the short term pressure, that’s where it’s all coming from. It’s it’s from them. It’s not necessarily that the leaders wouldn’t like to do things differently. It’s they’re, they’re doing those quarterly reports every year, every every quarter, and they’re the ones that have to take the heat right And so if but if you have a supportive board that has a longer term vision, and is willing to be a little bit more risk tolerant. Yep. Then what you’re what I hear you saying is that it’s worth it. It’s worth it.
30:14
Absolutely. And if I understand Patagonia is not a publicly traded company, but they just set the bar for this new expectation. I mean, Mother Earth is their only stakeholder now. And right, I think all of us that read the news, were just like, wow, just when you think that Patagonia clothing right now, yes, when you think they can’t set the bar any higher. I know, there you have it. And it was incredible to see. And it was incredible to see the reaction, because people kind of felt like we had hit some sort of ceiling. And all of a sudden, they just blew it clean out of the box. And people were like, Okay, we have a lot more to do, and a further way to go, and it sort of energized and excited people. So it was wonderful to see once again, our champions went out there and just blew apart these conceptions of how it had to be. Yes, that a whole new standard for what could be
31:08
right. And I love that, you know, these, these companies come from positions of strength, Rei just did something recently where they said health care for everybody, regardless of whether you’re a part time employee or a full time employee, all these little actions, the thing that frustrates me, and it might frustrate you too, is when I see all these other leaders lautering these, these actions, but then being unwilling to take them in their own organization, like they have all those, they have all those management books on their bookshelf, and those leadership books on their bookshelf. But yet, when it comes to their day to day, yeah, and how they’re leading their companies, it’s like they forget, the supports are
31:45
there. It’s kind of deep held. And I think antiquated belief that if you want to have a successful business, these are the metrics we have to hit and be measuring. And the truth is, it no longer holds true. society changed. All of our key stakeholders changed. And we’re now accountable brands and one of the things that I love brands used to be singularly created in a funnel. One way communication, the company was totally in control, they would push it out. Brands are co created now. And there’s nothing you can do about it. And the company itself has very little control of their own brand. They Bray they can hold on to bits and pieces of it. Right? The truth is, it’s being co created across that entire stakeholder echo system at lightning speed with technology, what it is today, and levels of transparency, what they are, the consequences have never been higher.
32:39
So and I always I always love to tell my clients that very lesson, but also say so all you can do is intentionally take the actions you can take to make that a narrative you want. And so you don’t have to throw your hands up and be like, well, it’s whatever people want to say we are no it’s going to be all what they say it is and how they perceive it is going to be based on all the actions big and small that you take. So isn’t it in your best interest to do the best intentions have the best intentionality about those actions so that you’re in sync with those customers? And again, hope and pray that their perception of the brand is what you actually wanted them to have? Well, I genuinely are Yes. Oh
33:23
100% were in alignment. But I also describe it as putting deposits of goodwill and credibility in the bank. It’s not if a disaster happens, it’s when it’s when it’s going to happen. The transparency is so high now due to all the technology we have the fact that every person is a citizen journalist. I mean, we just have employees striking now and boycotting. I mean, we have so much happening now. It’s when Yeah. So if you’re making those deposits along the way, the chances of those stakeholder groups are giving you giving you the benefit of the doubt, believing that there was no mal intent if there wasn’t any
34:00
right and that it’s Yeah, exactly. Asterisk. Yeah. But also understanding that that’s an outlier, not the norm. Exactly. It’s when you get that for good. You’ve got a track record. Yes, exactly. And it’s just like, like you said, it’s deposits in the bank. And it’s, it’s when you consistently under deliver and let people down that that’s the problem. But if you can build up that goodwill, enough. And by the way, circling back around, that’s where being committed to your purpose, helps people say, Well, this is my career, I understand.
34:31
Yeah, empathy, all those beautiful things that work together harmoniously to create this greater hole. They all have to be firing and they all have to be utilized constantly. It’s not a one and done. You don’t do something truthful once and that’s it, you abandon it, you have to do this daily. It has to be part of the fabric of who you are as an organization. It has to be part of the culture. It has to be a part of everything you do, but when you do it and you do Well write, it’s amazing how much strength it provides when you need it most. Right?
35:06
I mean, I wrote about the empathy veneer in my book, which is the you know, we’re empathetic because we give to the food bank once a year at the holidays, right? So I, I also sense from what you’ve said today, there’s there can be a purpose veneer unless you are actually walking your talk and embedding this, I call it operationalizing empathy, but operationalizing purpose salutely Not just as we talked about the pretty poster on the wall. But what are you doing with hiring? What are you doing with rewards? What are you doing with performance evaluations? What are you doing with culture, it has to be at every level of the organization has
35:40
to be embedded across the entire organization. And I always suggest to people do as much as you can internally before you push it out externally. Yes, hold on to it. It’s your baby, like nurture it, grow it. Make sure every level of the organization understands how to see themselves and how to participate in the purpose before you feel like shouting it from the rooftops. Right. It’s better than make it genuine. That’s it. And it’s better to have difficult conversations internally with friends than it is with the markets. That’s a little upset with you.
36:13
Well, this has been such good stuff. Denise, thank you so much how, as I like I mentioned, we’re going to have your links in the show notes. But where can people find out more about you or more about the work that you’re doing with
36:23
LinkedIn is always a great place. It’s where I keep most of my current articles, and you can find me pretty easily. So that’s always a fantastic place to connect. I love meeting new people. I think that’s how we met very first time. Yes. So it’s just a wonderful opportunity to get to say hello to get to figure out other people’s interest to get to learn more about each other. So I welcome the LinkedIn connections.
36:48
Awesome. Alright, folks, you heard it here. Connect with Denise writer note first to tell her that you heard her on the podcast, so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell or something. And I just I really enjoyed talking with you. I could have talked for you with you too. About this for another hour. So
37:03
I think I could have well thank you, Maria. This has been fantastic. And hopefully we’ll get to do it again. Yes.
37:09
And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. As always, if you liked what you heard, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And don’t forget to rate and review and until next time and our next insightful guest. Please remember that cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
