LU Org Purpose

Hey, Kia ora team, let's see how this goes. I'm currently recording live from Queenstown in my friend's daughter's bedroom. So anything could happen.

So organizational purpose. We had some good thoughts and questions from y', all, so we'll use that as a bit of a basis. But obviously I'll just chuck in some other content that I think you need to know.

Let's buy this one. What are we going to talk about? So I guess the main things really that I want to get across are what is organizational purpose? Like, what actually is this thing? Why is it a thing right now? Have a look at some different levels of purpose that can exist in an organization. And I think what really came through from terms of the questions was how to differentiate from purpose light, as I call it. And there was also a couple of questions around the needs or how important is it that your purpose aligns with the organization, the purpose of the organization. So we will have a look into that as well as part of what we're talking about.

So you know how this works. Hopefully, Tracey will have some banging tunes lined up for you. Tracy, just play some music. It'll be fine. What I want you to think about to begin with, I'll pose the question, we'll pause the video, have a chat in your teams. Why does any business exist? Like, what is the reason for any business to be a business? Have a bit of a chat around that. Pause the video, come back in a second. I'll give some answers.

How was it? So what do you reckon? Why does any business exist? Well.

Realistically, a business is only ever created to solve, typically, a human problem. Because a business is generally, if it's business to business or business to consumer, a business exists because a human somewhere has got a need and the business can solve that problem. However, it's seemingly become a bit bigger than that over the recent years. And business, I guess, is increasingly about a vehicle to make money. And I guess this references back to the tools of influence and manipulation versus actually influencing someone for a shared outcome. And I guess it's also since about the 1960s, when shareholder primacy as a corporate concept became a thing. So Milton Friedman, his whole model of business is, you know, business. Business only exists to provide a financial return to the shareholder. So it's fair to say that the.

Business has kind of been twisted. The purpose of business in general has kind of been twisted, which is why we have so many businesses that are really not solving a genuine human need. And I guess it references also the Adam Curtis Stuff.

Happiness machines. If we can create a desire, create a need and then market to it, then we can create a financial return for the shareholders. And I'll talk a bit more about that. In terms of the personal connection.

Is there a need for the individual to have a connection to organizational purpose and how that plays within the organization as much as it is playing with us in terms of the consumer conscious, consumer capitalist system that we're currently living in? Which fits nicely into Maslow's hierarchy, which I talked about, I think on the influence on the purpose session. I can't remember now, but it is definitely worth reflecting on Maslow's hierarchy. And this is his updated hierarchy. So the traditional hierarchy has the physiological safety, security, social needs, self esteem, and stops self actualization. However, as I mentioned in the purpose session, he actually had this unpublished version of his hierarchy which has transcendental purpose at the top of it instead. I can't remember if I also mentioned Scott Barry Kaufman. I think I did to this group. I've been giving quite a few talks recently, so they're all kind of blurring into one. But Scott Barry Kaufman has taken Maslow's work and he now puts it into a sailboat as a different. It would definitely be worth researching his work and looking at the sailboat metaphor for how basically the physiological needs and the safety and security are the boat. And then I'm pretty sure he has the social needs and the self esteem is kind of like the mast and then the sails are your self actualization and your purpose. I think that's how we mapped it out. And what I think is also worth thinking about is as we sit potentially on the precipice of another lockdown. So you might actually all just be watching this video, not being in class, who knows.

Is thinking about the types of businesses during the last lockdown that were deemed to be essential. Now they were pretty much all businesses that were at the bottom tier of hierarchy. It was physiological needs, it was food, it was shelter, it was anything that you need to survive as a human. You could maybe make an argument for safety and security like the police, the military, in terms of border, border staff, making sure that people weren't getting in or what have you. It's worth reflecting that yeah, most of the things that we need that are essential for human survival sit at those two levels of the hierarchy. And in fact you could make an argument that the majority of them are actually at the bottom. It's the physiological stuff that we need is food, water, shelter, so on and so forth.

What is interesting if you've, if you've watched the Happiness Machines by Adam Curtis is that most of the marketing, as our old mate Edward Bernays picked on, is aimed at the self esteem. So it's your fear, it's your desire, it's your need for approval. That is where pretty much all modern marketing is aimed. And that's where a lot of businesses have been created to fit, fit in to, you know, to basically make you buy shit you don't need so that you feel better about yourself. And that's really where we sort of cap out in the, in the modern world we don't get through to self actualization or purpose because we're so busy just buying shit that we don't need to make us feel better.

About that. If you want to pause at any point, have a bit of a chat about any of the stuff, what I'm just rambling on, feel free to do that. Tracey, it's your show without me being there.

This I feel is a perfect example of a modern consumer capitalist system creating a product that fundamentally creates or is fulfilling no human actual need. I mean it bemuses me that there's a company where someone came up with this as an idea, but, but then also manage to convince potentially hundreds of other employees to design this, to make this, to market it, to manufacture it, to box it up, to create a box for it, to design the logo for it all that's also that you can get a perfect picture every time of you and your dog. Yeah, you can definitely pause the video here and discuss this one. I mean in a world that is literally burning itself to death, how do you justify the existence of something like this when you could, like if you really wanted to do this, you could just hold a tennis ball on top of your, your phone. I don't know. There's a million one solutions around this that you could do without having to create that product.

All right then, so this is definitely a pause in chat. And what is organizational purpose? That like what is the definition of organizational purpose? Have a think.

Well, pause. Well, we'll go to that one as well. It turns out that organizational purpose is just the same as individual purpose. It's you contributing to something bigger than you in the service of others. And so a business has a unique genius, it has a unique spirit, it has a unique set of talents, skills, abilities, it has stuff that it can do. And there is a human need. And this is exactly what I've just been talking about. It's like, is it a genuine human need? Where does it sit in terms of that hierarchy? And if you think of the world's most inspiring brands, organizations that are really, really doing stuff that matters, they're all playing a game that's bigger than themselves. They're not just trying to sell you a dog selfie phone attachment.

Beyond just making a financial return for the stakeholders, they are taking on a social or environmental stance. They're trying to contribute to making the planet a better place for more people.

I think it's really worth reflecting at this point. Like when you think back to when we were groups of hunter gatherers in a tribe and look at any indigenous tribe, it's really clear that most people within that tribe, they have a role that is to contribute to the future survival and thrival of the tribe. And this is all sort of pre industrial revolution.

And it's what's, I guess like another depth into this is some of you might even have surnames of these natures like Cooper, Fletcher, Baker. You know, we have surnames that are still alive today that are based on the contribution that your ancestors made to your tribe. Yeah. So Fletcher is a arrow maker, Cooper is a barrel maker, Baker is a baker. And there are lots of those surnames that are given to, were given to people based on the contribution that they made to their tribe, their society. And pre industrial revolution, it was really, really easy because if you're the, the cobbler. I can't remember what cobblers are called now. Shoemakers. Well, some people, like in Germany, there is even the name Schumacher, you know, shoemaker. If you are the shoemaker, if you are the cobbler in your small little community, or you are the blacksmith making stuff for your little community, you get to see the people who are buying your products and you get to see the direct influence of the good that you've done to help them live a better life. So that is the root, I guess, of where organizations appeared from is this idea that you are directly contributing to the benefit of the people around you. Now, there are some good modern examples coming to the fore. This is from Volvo.

I don't know if all of you are aware, but question for the room. Pause. What is it that Volvo are best known for in terms of their.

Their vehicle, being vehicle manufacturers? Well, the answer is safety. And what they've just recently done is they did a whole lot of research and realized that.

The average male does pretty well in a modern vehicle if they happen to be involved in an accident. Whereas if you're a female or not the average male, you don't do so well. So they have shared 40 years of their safety research data with all the other car manufacturers because they kind of said, well, actually, we don't just want Volvo drivers to get home safely, safely, we want everyone. And for me, this is a great example of a company that is wanting to contribute to everyone being better, rather than just themselves being better.

I think the key, one of the key tenets of a purpose driven organization is exactly this. They're not competing against their competitors. So it's something that I frequently say, if you're competing against your competitor, you can't be on purpose because purpose means you're fighting for something bigger than that. So how are you collaborating with your peers rather than your competitors to solve a bigger problem? And this is a really great example from Volvo doing exactly that.

So question for you then in the room is, can you think of any other examples similar to Volvo, where a company or a group of organizations have come together to take a stand, take a stance against a social or environmental challenge where they're going? Actually, it's not about us selling more widgets than, than you. It's about how do we collectively use our widget or our service or our product to combat a bigger problem. So have a pause on that video. Pause on the video right now. Have a chat around that.

I don't have any other live examples for you. You're smart people. Hopefully you've got some answers. If there's some really good ones, let me know and I'll include them in future presentations. Thank.

You. All right, so why is it a thing right now? Why is this purpose stuff really coming to the forelight? You are a bunch of very smart students about to go out to the real world. And Tracey has very nicely convened this program and is including a megaton of purpose into it. It's the first time that Lincoln Uni has done this, so it's not been a thing before. There are other similar courses that I'm involved in in other institutions that, you know, historically this wasn't a thing, but now it's a thing. So clearly this is a thing right now. So pause the video. Why do you think the rise of purpose driven or the interest in organizational purpose is a thing?

Cool. Well, I guess on the meta scale, there is certainly a whole lot of stuff that's really easy for us to collectively identify where things aren't going so well anymore through the mechanisms of social media, highly distributed news, the ability to get information out really, really quickly and really, really extensively. It's definitely a thing. So it's now pretty easy to see globally trends around climate change, biodiversity loss, things around about inequality, mental health, addiction challenges globally. You know, we can start drawing some connections globally around what's. What are causing things. Whereas, you know, if you're just in your own town or city, you might just think, well, it's just us. So there's definitely, I guess, identification of challenges globally that we are all playing a part to. And I think allied to that is this increasing recognisation by business that it could actually be your business that historically has been, I guess complicit in causing some of those challenges. So businesses seem to be in general recognizing that they can play a part towards that. And that's also being driven by. There are three key groups that any business needs and that is customers, employees and investment. And all three of those groups are increasingly recognizing the desire or recognizing the benefits of business having a higher purpose and working towards something more than just a financial return. So customers, I think I've mentioned it already a couple of times. The Colmar Brunson Better Futures Report. That is definitely something to go and check out in terms of what Kiwis are looking for from a consumer perspective. But year on year Kiwis are increasingly saying that they want to support brands that are doing the right thing. If Tracey wants to remind me, there's a McKinsey report I've just recently downloaded that's showing that Covid globally is driving a rise in more conscious consumerism. And it's actually, it's a thing. You know, it's not like a lot of these surveys will say, yeah, people will buy more ethical brands, but then they don't actually do that in the supermarket. But the latest research is showing that actually they are as well as wanting to buy those brands to support, you know, more purpose driven brands or conscious brands. They are actually also backing that up Again. Colbert Brunton survey 86% of Kiwi said it was important for them to work for, for a company that was socially and environmentally responsible. That was up from the previous results. And I think I've also mentioned in terms of the investment side of things anz just recently $100 million.

Environment, sustainable governance. So ESG linked loan to Kathmandu based on them maintaining being a B corporation. So the three main groups of people that a business needs to thrive and survive are all seeing or I guess are all demanding that business does, does more. So that's why it's a thing.

All right, so we talked about the benefits for you as an individual to being on purpose. So what do you think are some of the benefits for an organization to be on purpose? Have a pause, have a chat. See you in a second.

Oh, so some definite benefits. Increased team performance. So if you remember some of the benefits of for an individual to be on purpose. Well, if you imagine a team of people or being more resilient, more focused, being more engaged on task, you can see how that is amplified when you have an organization that is doing that.

Which, you know, team performance, team engagement would be too very much interlinked. But that'd be kind of two of them for you as soon to be released into, you know, the big wide world. I would. And the fact that you're doing this course with us would suggest that you probably want to work for a company that's making some meaningful contribution to solving a big problem in the world. Well, and that is the general consensus of evidence that's out there. So attracting and retaining the best talent is definitely a reason why companies are looking at getting their purpose organized and being able to prove and demonstrate that increased profitability. I'll talk about this specifically in the B Corp session, which is I think next week or whenever that is about some of the ROI on being a purpose driven business. There is, I think I've also mentioned the science of purpose.org I've also got some stats in an ebook that I'll get through to you to Tracey to have a look at after this session. There is no evidence to show that having purpose in your business is detrimental financially. There's been a whole lot of work also through conscious capitalism. Conscious capitalism, they've done a whole lot of research again showing that businesses that are outwardly focused on contributing in a meaningful way to social and environmental causes will outperform long term. So it's a given. Excuse me, we talked about customers. You know, purpose driven businesses are getting. You have raving fans that will just support you to the ends of the earth. Simple fact. But for me the really big one is as a employee, as a manager, as a business owner is getting to sleep well at night knowing that you've done the right thing. And that is completely priceless. So why wouldn't you.

So just breaking down the link between organizational purpose and the individual. So this is from a mate of mine, Zach Materio, based in Colorado. And you kind of got the intersection of the three wheels. So you've got the organizational purpose in the bottom left, you've got the personal purpose at the top. And then does the world need what we're all kind of interested in, about and at the intersection of all of those is really this link between organizational purpose, your personal purpose, and does the world actually need what we've got? Now, one of the questions that came through from a few of you was, well, do we need to have this alignment between personal purpose and organizational purpose? And basically, yes, you do. Because as we talked about in the individual purpose session, if you're working in that lack of alignment, that head, heart, hand alignment and it's just shit, you know, it's going to suck.

Why would you knowingly work for an organization where you don't align with their purpose? Yeah, it's really, really hard. There's a YouGov survey, it was from, I think it was in 2015, where, you know, 37% of British people surveyed felt that their job provided them with no meaning. Why? Why would you sit in a job that provides you with no meaning and you don't have a sense of the contribution that you're making it you going to spend 80,000 hours on average in employment in your lifetime. You might as well do something that has a meaning for you. The other one.

To think about is.

If you have no meaning at work, there is a 99% chance that you will lack overall meaning in life. So the correlation is massive between the two. So definitely find that connection. Now, coming up on this next one.

Is going to be a little video. I won't actually play the video here now, it'll just be easier. I'll send Tracy the link. But basically there's a little snippet of a video. It's a keynote talk that I give which talks about my personal experience of how I was seeing the disconnect between who I was and the organizations I was representing and how that affected me with my own mental health. And yeah, long term, it led to me getting out of the career that I was in. And for me, this is proof of that lack of alignment. And where does it lead for you as an individual? So I won't play the video for this here. We will scoot past that one, but listen to the video and maybe have a bit of chat around what your thoughts were on that, depending how we're going for time, I guess. Who knows? I'm not there. Well, I might be there, I don't know because I might be getting out of Queenstown tomorrow morning now instead of tomorrow night. Who knows? It's all going to hell in the handbasket currently. So one way to think about organizational purpose, it's sort of maybe sort of four levels of purpose that typically exist in an organization.

And I'll overlap this when I talk about the B corp stuff next time. In terms of five levels of impact. I could probably hybrid the two models together at some point in the future to make it easier. But in general, purpose already exists in an organization because an organization was created to serve a human need, Whether it was a need that was kind of created or manifested, or whether it's a true physiological social need that a human has. But in general, there's typically sort of four levels of purpose at work in an organization. So at the bottom level, you might have some kind of corporate giving. So, you know, we support a charity. X percent of our revenue goes to supporting a charity. And that's pretty cool. But typically it's quite meaningless, typically for the employees, typically the charity has been chosen based by the CEO and they have a pet charity that they want to support.

And equally. Not all charities are created evenly or equally. There's a lot of charities that actually don't do much good. They take a lot of money, they use a lot of money, but the end user doesn't really get a great result. It's a very, very loose group of organizations that many of them create very little good. So, you know.

What impact are you actually making? The second level up might be some kind of corporate volunteering where it's slightly more embedded. Companies might give employees time off to go and volunteer in their own, you know, in their work time. The I guess what the big example this would be the BNZ close for good. They have an annual day where they close all their branches and their staff go and do some volunteering locally. And again, that's kind of cool. You know, it's like your staff get to have a bit of engagement. They get to go and do something that they might want to do. But the number of charities I've spoken to or worked with where they say, look, you know, this is great, but if you're a corporate accountant, you're good with numbers and spreadsheets. You might not be so good at planting trees, or you might not be so good at serving food in a soup kitchen. And so quite often there's a massive disconnect and the charity doesn't really get the full amount, you know, that it could do from a human capital injection. And equally, it's maybe not that inspiring for the individual if they're being forced to go and do a volunteering day on a topic or with an organization that they actually don't care so much about. I'll Just move that video for you.

Next level up might be what I call kind of purpose light. So there might be some permission for individuals to bring their purpose to work. There might be some little passion projects that are working on the outer. And at this level you might also be getting into the realms of sort of corporate social responsibility. So they might be doing some giving, they might be doing some volunteering. They might also be making some good noises about.

I guess how they're offsetting carbon. They're kind of getting into doing some of that stuff.

Yeah, but it's still not fully embedded in the organization. And then at the top level you've got what I would call that purpose fuel performance where you know, everything that the company's doing is clearly defined. Everything is built around the purpose of the organization. It's completely embedded, it's integrated into everything that they do. So hopefully that makes sense. Maybe have a pause, have a bit of chat about it, see how you go for time.

Cool. So this I think would be a really useful exercise for you. So what I want you to have a do have have a do. What I want you to do please is have a look at two different organizations. So the one on the left is called Monday. They're a Kiwi based hair care brand product, do cosmetic hair stuff. Have a look at their website particularly there's a page called the Monday Ethos which talks about this kind of sustainability and what they do.

And just generally have a good look around their website. Maybe go have a quick look at their social media presence, see what's what and then I want you to then go and have a look at ethic and particularly have a look around that. There's a whole lot of kind of giving you a clue here but there's a whole lot of stuff around the sustainability. There's like four or five pages of sustainability stuff that etiquette's got. But what I want you to do is maybe, you know, Tracy, see how much time you've got left after this. We haven't got too much more. So you can use this as a really nice time filler if you've got a lot of time you need to fill. But what I'll have you do please is go and check out the two websites and just start comparing and contrasting what you see as some differences are between these two brands. And which one would you describe as being more purposeful and more, I guess, authentic and more truthfully good.

Based on what you can see of the two brands? Because I guess this links to those few questions around people saying what are some things to be looking for when identifying companies with good business purpose and what is a benchmark to define a business purpose. So have a look at the two because I think this will be quite enlightening for you and have a chat, see what you come up with.

So for me, I think.

I found it quite interesting that sort of Monday was talking about how they're doing a lot of good. They've got, you know, low toxins and what have you in their products but you know, fundamentally they have a plastic bottle product. They have no independent certification to prove the good that they're doing. And in fact if any of you went really big on your searches, you would have found in.

It was on, I think it's in the news. There was a big thing saying about how people were claiming that it was burning people's hair and there was some, yeah, some interesting challenges that they had out there. Whereas Etique genuinely for me, I mean they are one of the highest performing B corporations globally. They, they regularly hit the Best for the World list which is like the top 100B corporations globally based on their social and environmental performance. You'd have seen hopefully at the bottom right hand corner of their website they have I think it's like six certifications at least. I think maybe even more than that, including B corporation so independently verified to be operating at higher standards of social and environmental performance. The fact that the product itself is, you know, Brianne's whole mission is to rid the world of plastic bottles. So there is a clearly articulated mission that they want to remove plastic and toxins and chemicals from health and beauty and they're doing it. So hopefully it was pretty clear the difference between one that's kind of making some claims that aren't so easily backed up versus one that is making some bold claims and has some bold visions and, and is actually doing it.

I also sent through this, it's called the Purpose tapes which I had a conversation with a friend of mine in Australia who is a similar, he does similar purposely be corpy stuff to me and I kind of read through some of the organizations that were in this.

Document and how they were being held up as paragons of purpose and in particular like NatWest bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Kind of like really, are you really as purpose driven as say Ethique or Little Yellow Bird or Patagonia or some of these really established B corporations that have really taken on big social and environmental commitments?

You know, NatWest here, the CEO Alison Rose saying, you know, Their purpose is to champion the potential of people, families and businesses. And you kind of go well that sounds all right but realistically you could put that against any, any business in the world I think. So it's pretty unclear as to, you know, if you took NatWest CEO Alison Rose there, that could be any organization. But I think this was a real, this was a real interesting one for me. So I just did a bit of research on, on NatWest and it didn't take me too much to find this. So NatWest faces criminal case OVER MONEY laundering so I think this was from the 16th of March, I think it was this year.

And I think for me this is one of the clear differentiators of purpose is.

You need to be doing no harm whilst you're doing your good. And again for me that's why an organization like Ethique really, really stands out because it is so hard. I would dare to say it's impossible to, to fault them in anything that they're doing. Their product comes in cardboard boxes wrapped in paper. It's all 100% genuinely compostable, recyclable. There's no ifs and buts, there's no but. Our plastic is home compostable. Blah blah, blah blah blah. They're providing their supply chain is really well looked after in the Pacific Islands. They, I think they source their coconut based or coconut based for their products from the Pacific Islands. They're looking to eliminate plastic bottles, they're toxic free in all their products. It's like it's really, really hard to hate on them. Whereas you look at someone like NatWest who has this, well you know, we're here for families, business and what have you. And yet somewhere people in the organization were clearly involved in money laundering. So this is like a clear, that whole purpose tapes document to me was a case of that's purpose light. It's big organizations who are claiming to have a purpose but they clearly, clearly don't.

Hopefully that has kind of made some sense. If you've had some time to read through the purpose tapes it'd be really, really interesting for you to just have a bit of a chat about what you thought around the levels of purpose and how those organizations were expressing their purpose.

If it hasn't, it's hard for me to be making this video without having sort of interaction with the room to be able to answer some specific sort of comebacks. So maybe hopefully on the next session, the next session will be able to. If there's any like real questions that you have or if it wasn't in terms of the articulation as to what makes a truly purpose driven business versus a sort of purpose light, let me know because it's kind of, it makes sense in my head but I might not have verbalized it completely. I'll also, like I said, I'll send a couple of. I'll send one document because the second one will give the game away. For the B Corp stuff next week I'll send through a document, an ebook of mine, so you can see a little bit. We'll just reinforce maybe about the purpose stuff.

So one of the other questions was, you know, what's the benchmark to define a purpose driven business? Well, for me it kind of is B Corporation because you have to have some higher purpose to sort of even get into the through the gate to be a B Corp. I mean it's certainly, well it's certainly harder to think about B Corp certification if you're not thinking about how much good you're creating as a business. So. And I think it also segues quite nicely to next week about, you know, what is B Corporation? You know, it's not an easy certification to bluff your way through and it takes a decent amount of effort, time and energy to go through the certification and you're not going to do it if you're not committed to wanting to do more good. So for me, in all the research I've done in terms of global certification systems and platforms that are out there, this just makes the most sense for me. And you'll find out why next week or whenever we meet again. Who knows, we might be on Zoom next week. So that's it for me. Hopefully it's made a bit of sense and hopefully it's filled just the right amount of time, Tracy. So yeah, but if it wasn't clear in any way, more than happy to pick it up next time we meet on the B Corp session and go through any nuances of any questions, but hopefully that's out to some things. Thank you for your attention. Apologies that I couldn't be there in person. It was. Yeah, it's all been a bit of a mission as you said.