What is the purpose of a company's purpose? | with Hannah Grove & Jonathan Knowles

You're very welcome. It's episode 111111 of the shortlist. I'm Johnny Campbell, your host for today's show and most of our shows. I'm also CEO and co founder of Social Taunt. And today's episode of the Shortlist is going to be dealing with a topic that I personally been very passionate about for many, many years and something that I've tried to sell or share with anyone who listen over the years, particularly in my earlier career in talent acquisition. But today I think it's important for all of us who work in any organization or work with any people in an organization, particularly those who are in leadership. And that is what is the purpose of a company's purpose? Yes, we're going to be talking about purpose on today's show and for those of you joining us live, listening live on LinkedIn or YouTube, we'd love to hear from you, join in the chat, the conversation. You can ask questions of our guests today or put in your own comments. And we'd love you to contribute those listening to the podcast. We'll put any links that we share in the show notes and there are a couple of links I'm sure you'll want to check out in further detail. Let's get into the topic. Company purpose has become kind of a fashionable prop, so to speak. Post pandemic organizations have realized that they need one, but there's a growing trend towards the inauthentic purpose. Cobbling together a purpose that lacks substance is akin to building a house on sand. The unstable foundation simply won't support the positive impact you think it will. So what should companies do? Well, we sought the advice of two experts on this topic that we respect massively and we were super impressed by. And they are Hannah Grove and Jonathan Knowles who are joining us today. Hannah is the non executive Director of abrdm. Maybe it's Aberdeen. She'll tell me how I should be pronouncing it instead. And Jonathan is the founder of Type 2 Consulting and together they recently authored the incredible article what Is the Purpose of youf Purpose for Harvard Business Review, a link of which we'll share live. For those listening live and in the show notes, I encourage you to read that article, but we're gonna be chatting today to give you an idea of the sense of that article and to talk about the findings. And we'll talk about the importance of purpose, the confusion around the term, what organizations and leaders need to do to build an authentic purpose. And how is this linked back to Talent acquisition. Hannah and Jonathan, you're very welcome. Thanks both for joining us. I'm going to maybe ask Hannah to tell our listeners and our viewers a little about where we find you today, what your own background is, why this topic is purposeful for you and Jonathan might hand over to you after that to get your opinion.

Hannah Great Jonny, thank you so much. And we're really delighted to be here with you today. So I am joining you from the wilds of New Hampshire. In fact, if you looked out the window, you might even see some bear and deer. In terms of my own background, I suppose the best way to describe is I'm a recovering chief marketing officer. I spent 23 years in financial services primarily within a large publicly traded U.S. in fact global firm called State street, which is essentially an asset manager and asset servicer. And I retired during the pandemic and sought a non executive director career and delighted to be on the board of Aberdeen PLC as well as on the advisory board for Irrational Capital. And for me, purpose is something that, you know, you said it so well in your introduction. It's been a sort of light motif throughout my career, but particularly in B2B companies where I think there's been this sort of perception that you have to have this sort of rousing why. And for me it was really the connection to employee engagement and also client and broader sort of stakeholder engagement that really sort of drove my interest. So that's been the sort of foundation for me to explore this further.

CHARLES.

So if Hannah's a recovering cmo, I'm a recovering number holic in the sense that my initial career was almost uniquely dealing with numbers. I started my career at the, at the bank of England, did an mba, went on to do value based management consulting which was a very heavy, heavy duty Excel modeling, you know, allocation of capital. Before I had this Damascus Road experience that we weren't really creating value, we were capturing value for the companies. And I became obsessed with well, how do humans perceive and receive value? Which led me onto a very enjoyable detour into brand consulting and design and creating new brands or rejuvenating old brands that have somehow become rather outdated. But I really wanted to get back into it seemed disconnected from the business and I really wanted to merge that idea of how do we make work meaningful for employees and customers whilst at the same time helping companies run themselves properly. And so I got back to my numbers and I tried to fuse the two sides together in the reason why the company is called type 2 is a reference to errors in Statistics, which is the idea that if you leave something out, you have a mistaken idea about how business works. And my belief was that we often, because we lack a language, we leave the human component out of business. And so for the last 15 years, I've been trying to advise companies about how to make their businesses more human and in so doing, make their businesses more sustainable. And as part of that, I had the huge honor of working with Hannah to see whether this was, this really did work. So that's, that's a bit about me.

In terms of that idea of bringing the un I'm also going to share with her audience that Hannah used to rub shoulders with the likes of U2 and the Virgin Prunes in her punk rock days in the street Dublin City, where I'm broadcasting from today. But that might be the topic for another conversation, another podcast, a different day. What I particularly loved about the article that HBR published were the rich examples. And rather than being too academic, and it certainly came across as something that wasn't too academic, it was really grounded in reality or the amount of concrete examples, real companies, good and bad, to kind of illustrate the point on purpose. And I wanted to kind of open the conversation by discussing that word, first, purpose. Because I think for many of us, when we think of purposeful companies, we think of the likes of Tesla or any of, of Musk's kind of businesses, or we think of Patagonia or maybe Tom's Shoes, and we think of these organizations and it's quite obvious this kind of, you know, we're saving the world, saving the planet, or health care companies might have great purpose. Right hand. You touched on it when you said B2B companies perhaps struggle with that. Talk to me about the definition of purpose that you and your co authors defined in the article. Perhaps how it's a little bit different to that traditional save the world, or perhaps it's broader than that save the world purpose that many people might think of.

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm happy to kick off and then Jonathan, sort of hand over to you. I think for us it began with, as you said, Joni, the sort of definition of purpose. Because I think it's become very conflated between that which we define as individuals, a purpose, our individual sort of whys, and how companies express purpose. And I think there's almost, and you know, Jonathan and I have talked a great deal about this, this sort of anthropomorphization of companies as sort of human, living, breathing entities and needing to have a y or north. And I think the first thing for us in the work and in the article was to break down that there are in fact three different types of whys that might drive a purpose and that it doesn't always have to be this sort of North Star or sort of rousing why. And I think, you know, it's interesting, Johnny, I give social talent great credit because I would say you have a very good and clearly defined why around. I think it's sort of great. People deserve to work for great companies. And I think it's incredibly clear and it's inextricably linked to the strategy. And if I can sort of hand over to Jonathan to sort of parse that a little bit more in terms of those three types of whys and how we defined it.

Yeah. So as Hannah said, I, I think in some ways we, we owe a debt of gratitude to Simon Sinek in the sense that he elevated the, the idea of why. But in doing so he absolutely provided the wrong kind of framework because he, he defied your why in opposition to your how and your what. He said people don't care about your what. They don't care about your how, they just care about your why. So it's encouraged companies to feel that they have to define some world changing, highfalutin purpose that may only be tangentially related to their business. And I, I mean, I hate to pick on Hellman's because, you know, as a unilever company, they come from the very best place. But how a mayonnaise company can decide that its purpose is tackling food waste is the poster child for this kind of thinking that it's no, there's a nobility in making food taste good and that that is enough of a why. So we began from this idea that, that your why can actually come in three forms. There's, there's purpose as in function. So the purpose of a can opener is to open cans. It doesn't need a higher why. And so the purpose of certain companies is to do what they do and to make the very best product they can, whether it's mayonnaise or whether, you know, Mercedes talks about first move the world. And it's in inextricably linked with the what they do, but it is a why it. And then there are companies that we realized that where, where it didn't really matter what they did, it was more about how they did it. So they were encouraging a culture. So Zappos is probably the, the most prominent example of that, that it's not about Selling shoes. It's about delivering, as they say, delivering. Wow. So if there are competence companies, there are culture companies, so to speak, and then there are the cause companies that you, as you say, the Toms, the Patagonias, the Teslas of this world, those are the ones we default to, but they're not necessarily the model for everyone to follow. And particularly not B2B companies whose role in changing the world rather invisible. I mean, State street is a great example. So maybe I'll pass the baton back to you, Hannah, to talk about purpose in the context of a business that I don't think I'd unfairly characterize it as doing the plumbing of the investment management industry.

Yeah. I think just before I sort of delve into State street for a moment, I would also add, Jonny, that one of the catalysts for the piece for Jonathan, me and our co authors was the fact that it seemed to us that particularly during and post pandemic, there was almost a sort of surge of what we would call this sort of purpose posturing. And that I think people were almost sort of conflating this new arrangement they had with employees. The fact that during the pandemic, employers really had to sort of reach out and understand and connect with their employees in very new ways. And that there was a new dynamic emerging in terms of allowing more flexible work, really recognizing that caring was a very important part of the equation. But I think from that dynamic there grew this desire for companies to put their stamp on what is the sort of higher purpose that we fulfill. And I think it became quite a sort of follow marketing device as opposed to being sort of really authentic. You had a very good conversation with, I think, the chief people officer of Bus First Bus, I think, was your last interview. And he said something very important about the fact that employees, particularly during the great resignation. I think there's a little bit of a myth that people are exiting stage left primarily because of salary and salary arbitrage. And while I'm sure that is a factor, I think what he pointed out, and I fully agree with this, I think the biggest reason people leave is because of a misalignment around culture. And I think one of the things that Jonathan and I really wanted to land in the piece is if you have that gap between that which you espouse, this higher cause externally and what it is that you actually do and how employees experience that, that can be very, very damaging. And we've got examples of that in the piece. I think as it relates to State street, which, as Jonathan said is a B2B company. I mean, its clients are large mutual funds, asset owners, insurance companies, et cetera. I think for us it was to define a purpose that was rooted in our strategy which was to create better outcomes for the world's investors and the people they serve. Recognizing that if anything we had some thing of a backstage role, but a really important role and to rally people around that and understand, understanding what that underlying client experiences as a result of what State street does. But for us, honestly Johnny, the primary focus was in ensuring that we did it really well and that that was our differentiator and not having to own this sort of broad sort of social cause. I think the other sort of important thing that I would say is that having a competence focused purpose, which is often the realm that B2B companies find themselves in, doesn't mean that you can't take a stand on a social cause. But it has to be real, it has to be authentic and it has to be permeated throughout your policies and procedures. It can't just be a sort of knee jerk reaction. And I think in summary, what we have seen during and post Pandemic is a lot of window dressing and perhaps to some extent using purpose as a way to tick a box from an ESG perspective. And we would say that's not a good route.

I love that reference to authenticity. I know the article closes with a reminder that, you know, there's a couple of words that we're going to probably permeate the next decade of business strategy. And you remind me a little bit of, you know, to compare two examples, one that was referenced in the piece and one perhaps I referenced myself. You know, we look at Phil Knight and Nike and like he's taken a stand on many political issues over the years, consistently every year. Always it's been a thing, it's not always always in their marketing and media and messaging. But it's, it's known, it's been known from day one that this is what Nike does and the way that they, the board acts. And then you gave the example of, I think it was Pepsi and they put out an advertisement a couple of years ago, four years ago, that really just didn't work. Trying to again tap into social issues and you know, but it was very marketing and glossy and everything else. And I'll put a link of the YouTube video, the full video with one of the Jenners in that as well. And it really just to me contrasts the issues, you know, where you can, you can, you can use high production marketing and gloss around a public social issue as Nike has done in the past. It's extremely authentic, consistent. Then you see a company just going let's jump on that bandwagon. And I'm not saying that's what Pepsi were intending to do, but certainly how it's perceived by many and it goes wrong. As opposed to. When you think of B2B, you remind me of an organization we, I recently did a case study on this organization was mentioned in your article and I was on a program in New York recently and we went through two days of, of, of, of examinations of different cultures and the one we looked at was Bridgewater, which reference in the, in the article I hadn't come across this, I hadn't been familiar with this case study. For those who don't know Bridgewater and perhaps Hannah or Johnson might explain them a little bit better. Again, a company that most people won't be interested in, you know, asset managers and essentially not a sexy company from for the perspective of most people on the street. But they have an extremely different approach to culture and purpose that isn't about saving the world. It's a way of thinking, let's say it's a way of aligning to someone's values that works as a really, really strong magnet for a certain type of person to work for the organization and a really, really strong on the upside repellent for those who are just not a good fit for the culture and has consistently worked extremely well. And what hit me about that, not only just to kind of highlight a company that's really consistent and it's a purpose that's consistent with the type of business they are and it's extreme transparency, radical candor type culture that's focused on data and data drives decisions which when you think about an investment manager managing a hedge fund and making financial decisions, you want to remove all of the non data driven decision making which is so prevalent in that industry. And so therefore it really aligns and it, you know it brought me to the point one of the points in the article which was the alignment of strategy which I think is also interesting. So you know, there's lots to. I'm commenting about three issues here but maybe if I come to a question, maybe Jonathan, I ask you, I'll put this question to you. When companies do it wrong, when they go down the direction that PepsiCo did a few years ago, Nestle have done in the past and they had to backtrack, what's driving that do you think? When you observe all the companies that seem to make the mistakes. What's motivating them? What are the typical mistakes they make? How can you learn from those mistakes?

Yeah, it's a great question, Johnny. I differentiate those who are well meaning and I put Pepsi and Nestle in that camp where the motivation is. Consumer interests are changing. We need to stay relevant. Let's show that we, we understand the zeitgeist. And those companies, I, you know, they may execute it poorly. And by the way, if listeners do go to the Kendall Jenner video, watch for the moment, it's absolutely classic where Kendall Jenner as she emerges out into the street, hands off, I think it's her wig to an African American assistant. So it's absolutely classic. Here is a, here is an execution that is supposed to be about solidarity and support. And yet, you know, the behaviors demonstrated in, it's like a half a second clip in that, and it reveals that, you know, Pepsi was not, you know, was just misguided. They did not get, they did not get this light, guys. But I don't think they were cynical. And I think there are companies that are cynical about this. And as you know, the, the article calls out the tobacco companies, particularly, you know, BAT and Philip Morris for absolutely jumping on the purpose bandwagon and both promoting this idea that they're contributing to a better future and when what they're really trying to do is just promote the next generation of, of smokeless addictive substances. So, so I begin by contrasting those who really want to just be relevant but don't understand that they, in this particular issue, they're not Nike. Nike had, you know, sport is the way for many underprivileged kids to get, literally get out of the back streets and make a success. And the story I love on this was, I think a while ago it was Barcelona Messi, when he was doing, I think it was a UN goodwill tour to Africa, he was stunned by the number of African kids who were wearing probably knockoff Barcelona shirts, but with Messi on the back. And I think he then arranged for a reverse sponsorship deal between Barcelona and unicef where Barcelona paid UNICEF to put the UNICEF logo on their shirt. So forget about putting Vodafone or Emirates and being paid a huge amount of money Barcelona actually paid to put UNICEF on their own shirts. And I thought that was just a wonderful example of, of understanding that the role that sport in particular plays in giving a chance, in leveling the field, which is often extremely unequal.

If I, if I could just sort of pile on in terms of where companies make a Footfall. I think one of the number one symptoms that Jonathan and I identified is when you might be going off piste on purpose is when you relegate the task of purpose to the marketing department. Now, that might sound counterintuitive from a CMO where, you know, my stock and trade was to grab as much as possible. But I think in doing that, it is ignoring a very important facet of purpose, which is something that Jonathan and Type 2 have long espoused, and that is that purpose needs to be inextricably linked to your business strategy. So when you park it with the marketing department, even if it's subconsciously, there's almost an acknowledgement that it is window dressing and a way to position and differentiate, when in fact, we would argue that purpose, when done properly, is a way to create alignment across a whole range of stakeholder agendas. So I think that's kind of gap number one or misstep number one when you say to the CMO or the marketing department, here it is, you know, sort of come up with our purpose, do some focus groups, and off you go. And then I think the other thing, Johnny, that we have the benefit of today, which wasn't the case sort of 20 or 30 years ago, is a to do a good thing to do is use the data. So if you think about everything from engagement scores, which companies are now fielding on a much more regular basis, so it's not sort of just an annual big survey, to net promoter scores in terms of what your clients think about you, all of those things need to be sort of factored into the equation. So Jonathan and I would advocate for a multidisciplinary approach to purpose and not to think of it as being synonymous with a brand or sort of, you know, external perception, because that's where you're going to go down the wrong path. And you know, my favorite example, and it's so much in the news today, again which is hard to believe, was the, you know, the we Work piece around. I think it's sort of elevating the world's consciousness. Well, I think we all know that the experience of an employee at WeWork was anything but elevating the world's consciousness. It was often sort of having to wake up the management team from a, you know, party fest. And I think how that sort of manifests in culture is tremendously important. So that's, you know, as I said, footfall number one, avoid the marketing department alone.

I love this because the cynics who might think this is newfangled nonsense and oh this purpose crap. Right. And do companies need this? You know, I'd ask them to check out a reference you made I hadn't seen before in the article which I love which was the Johnson and Johnson creed which dates back if I'm not mistaken, like some 70 or 80 years and its language feels so modern. But to your point Hannah, it if you read that and you go to work in Johnson and Johnson, you're quite clear and as you said aligned and on what we need to do, how we need to treat different people, the priorities you need to place it is it does have the power of creating that real strong culture that's really aligned around the same values, the same motivations, the same priorities. And whilst it's a longer paragraph than your snappy one liner that folks try and go for these days, it really encapsulates and we'll share the link out on the chat in the show notes it's in the article as well if you already have that you'll get a link from it and I really really think it just works really well to capture that broader alignment to strategy. And to your point it's not just a marketing speak, it's quite obviously something that isn't written by market, it's written by a founder. It's written consideration to the values that I imagine were already in place at the time in Johnson and Johnson wasn't written before the company was formed. The company was promoting a long time which you'll point around and I'll remind everyone listening if you haven't read the article the three areas and I like the way you summarize them as competence, cause and culture. Cause of course being what most of us know the Patagonia type example but competence being more the Mercedes example that you mentioned Jonathan and culture being one I think a lot of organizations aspire to around the intent which folks run their business. It reminds me a little bit of a book I ready go I read a while ago on this subject. I don't know if either you read it by Aaron Hurst on the purpose Economy it's about six, seven years old and in that he framed it as personal, social and societal. Again a different angle but same idea of him breaking it up and at the same time that book came out I'd watched if you remember Anne Hathaway and and oh gosh, Robert De Niro were in the Intern. Yes I use that as an example for those in the recruiting profession to understand what drives people and I related to that because in that was an Example of somebody who went to work for a big faceless company that Anne Hathaway was the CEO of. And this was De Niro, who was a retiree who was. You remember, his wife had passed away. Don't have spoiled the ending for those who haven't seen the movie. But he took this job. And in taking the job, the purpose, he realized, was social. It was a place where people felt that they needed him and he needed them. And he found his. His group of people, somebody who actually was every day going, where's my colleague? Because I need them. And it struck me as, that's not the type of purpose people think about. It's not the kind of. It doesn't sell goods. It's not the big thing you put on your.

Your.

Perhaps your career site. But it's really important for people. You know, it's. It's back to that culture piece. It's kind of going. You might just want to work with really good people, people and have that sense of community and family, irrespective of what the product is, whether you're changing the world, is that I want to work with these really cool people. That's the purpose I get out of my job. And in that, like, you know, folks, when they're trying to think of these different ways of positioning, let's say, an organization as an employer to either, you know, attract new talent, retain the existing talent they have, motivate the talent that they have. If you're looking at your own purpose and those listening today and watching today say, who might say, gosh, ours is just completely out of whack and we don't know what it is. And I met with one of our customers recently who's in a very senior executive position, and I asked her, you know, how are you doing with hiring and what's the messaging on DVP and purpose? And she said, nobody knows. Nobody knows why they work here. I can't tell you why somebody should work here. I said, how's that working out for you? She goes, it's a disaster. Attrition has gone through roof. We can't recruit folks. But if you're at that point where you're like, okay, I agree with Hannah and Jonathan, I gotta fix this. And I wanna. I get the. That there's three types. What are the steps that one would take and what's the framework? You recommend that if you're in an organization, you're an executive in particular, you can say, these are the things to. To do, or these are the steps to take. To get you towards, you know, hopefully writing that purpose or coming to that purpose and you can then communicate it to stakeholders involved in your business.

Shall I take this one, Hannah? Well, there are five steps that we put in the article, so I, I won't go through them all in, in sequence, but I'll highlight two of them. The first is to recognize that your purpose can come in these three forms. So get out of the the what, how, why mindset and into the competence culture, cause mindset. And then think about your four business agendas that we again put in the article. Because the goal, as Hannah said, is to achieve alignment between four things. You want to generate demand from customers because without customers, you don't have a business. You want to have employees really feel that their work is meaningful. You want to feel and behave in a way that is consistent, that is sustainable. Sustainable in the narrow sense of ecologically sustainable in the broader sense of ESG and in the even more broader sense of this is a business that is seen to be socially legitimate. And then finally, obviously you need to think about your business model because companies exist. You know that all companies only have one purpose and that is to ensure their commercial sustainability. Companies are not people. They do not have a higher purpose. And I think that's where people, you know, get into trouble. So the process of generating your own at your purpose as a business is to say, well, what matters, what matters to customers, what matters to employees, what matters to our societies, what matters to investors? If we can work out how we nudge our business forward in practical, or provide a little bit of a guidance around that brings those four audiences together, then we will have a sustainability sustainable business. So it's, it's hard work. I mean, you can't outsource this stuff. You need to get the right people into the room. You need to get them thinking about more than their own narrow agenda of I, I've got so many wrecks I need to fill. I've got to have this highfalutin purpose because that's going to put more people into our recruitment funnel. They have to get, they have to recognize that that's a motivator. But that can't be the only motivator. That's, that's what I'd say.

I, I would also sort of add with, add to that. Jonny, in the case of the client example that you gave, often the answer lies deep within. And what I mean by that is if you are listening to your employees and talking to them, ask them about how they feel about the things that they do really well the things that are unique to that company. It might be really good at collaboration or opportunity for development. And I think using that as a foundation to expand. Obviously you need to align with the business agenda. But I think too often, as I've said before, companies almost start the exercise as a top down and you know, purpose ends up manifesting on posters and screensavers. But it doesn't really resonate with how the company actually behaves. I think what Jonathan and I are huge proponents of is not to have a gap between that which you espouse and how the employee actually experiences it. Because I think the big thing that's changing when people talk about the how consumers are much more sort of motivated by sort of purpose or cause related sort of platforms, we can't lose sight of the fact that those consumers are becoming all the more educated and they are driving change and they can see through when things are inauthentic. You're starting to see for example I think quite a backlash with Amazon with people really starting to dig into how are their employees treated, how are creators treated. And I think that will only continue to grow. So I think start within. I couldn't agree more with what Jonathan said. This isn't something you can outsource or sort of have an agency handle and, and really I think therein you will find a lot of the answers.

Let's say we fast forward and we've done the hard work, we've surfaced the purpose, it feels right. Although it may be an authentic purpose. I have many discussions with folks about how you communicate that because I'll give you an example of a conference that I was lucky enough to be invited to this year where we had a couple of hundred CPO CHRO's come together in Ireland. And we met the night before the conference and we had some workshops and one of the workshops we had, I was in a smaller group and we were talking about this very issue of purpose but the communication of it. And one of the senior heads of hor from a massive US multinational who won't mention big tech company, told a story about how her organization put a hundred million, a hundred million into investing in education for underprivileged communities last year, extremely noble cause, aligned with their purpose and it fell flat in its face because they, they trumpeted this, told the world they were doing it, did a lot of media and press and coverage around it versus another CPO of an insurance company who told a story about when he joined the insurance company, how he'd come Across a claim that was made by somebody who had to be repatriated from Asia, who came very sick and had two weeks to live. The claim came in and the claim for repatriation. It turns out that the policy didn't cover this. It turns out that this person actually wasn't covered in. The insurance company, which is going to face massive costs getting them back to their home country, shouldn't have paid it. But they looked at the documentation, realized they shouldn't have paid it and said this is, this is the right thing to do, and they paid it and they footed the bill. And he said, we don't mention any of these types of things in our website, in our press, but everyone in this company knows these stories and there's many of them. And these two contrasting examples were presented to the group. We kind of, we didn't land on, on a, on a conclusion, but we were trying to debate when should you tell the world, when should you not? Especially in an age where people can find things out, how much do you control it? Like, even if the purpose is genuine, the authentic communication of that is still difficult. So my point being, I guess, Jonathan, when you get to the end of, I think is the end of the road, you've managed to come up with what is all agreed in authentic purpose. Maybe Hannah, with your marketing hat, what's the right balance between how you market that out to the world? What's your experience or thoughts on that?

Perhaps I'll, I'll start off and Hannah, you'll pick up. So I'll, I'll give you one very simple rule which is if you spend more on the marketing than you're spending on the good works, you're so Habitat for Humanity. Home Depot spent more on their campaign than they did on the work. This is going back a number of years. Coke spent more on saving the habitat for polar bears. Sorry, on promoting the fact that they were investing in the habitat for polar bears than they actually spent on the good works themselves. Altria ran a campaign. So you get, you get my point that if you're, if you're spending more on the publicity than you are on the underlying cause, that's a, you know, that should lead you to question, you know, whether your motives are, are correct. It's a really tricky one, which is why I'm probably going to invite Anna to deal with the, with this one of, you know, the tree falls in the forest. If we're doing these good works and nobody knows about them, you know, do they even matter? And, and I think the, the answer, at least internally, is that people, the grapevine works a lot more efficiently than we, than senior management actually realizes. And so even if the outcome is just simply that a few employees do something good, other employees find about it. They're either motivated to talk, talk about it internally, or they're motivated, even better, to say, well, I don't feel particularly strongly about that, but I'd like to do this. I think that's the way that you nudge the world forward in, you know, authentic ways. Because I don't think, in general, I don't think consumers are idiots. They don't, they don't believe that companies do things genuinely philanthropically. So it's actually quite hard for a company to say, look at all the good we're doing in the world. It's much better for a company to say, we're in business, we're in this business, and we choose to do this business as ethically and responsibly as we can. That's a more authentic stance to take. But, Hannah, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I, I couldn't agree more. And you know, one of the things I always said at State Street, Johnny, was that our 35,000 employees were our most important brand ambassadors because if their experience was positive, if they really felt the impact of our values and our actions, then they were going to do far better good than any sort of marketing campaign. And you know, trust me, I, I was, would definitely be advocating for sort of brand spend. But I also think Jonathan's measure is completely perfect if you're spending more trumpeting your good works and the actual good works. And I think you have a problem. I absolutely think you have to start within and you have to make sure again, that alignment word that we've used often exists. And I don't know the specific instance of the example you gave of a big tech company, but one of the things I would ask is, so you were investing and I think workforce development and education, but was that something that your employees also experienced, and is it something that they could also take advantage of? Because I think that sort of job number one. I have a pet peeve right now, not to get sort of super political, but with the sort of Repeal of Roe vs Wade in the US Many companies have stepped up to say in states where abortion is becoming illegal that they will step in and help pay for travel costs. Now, I think that's great, but is it really steeped in reality? And insofar as how many women would comfortably want to disclose to their company A very sort of personal decision. But then also I would want to look at how are your policies to begin with, how's your maternity leave, how's your paternity leave? How do those things really manifest? And I think what the preliminary research has shown is there in this kind of land grab to look like you're doing the right thing. Is it actually sort of manifesting externally, so internally. Excuse me. So I think that gap, I think starting within what you do well, how your customers experience it, how your employees experience, will ultimately manifest in a much more real purpose than anything that you might come up with, you know, on a whiteboard.

The opposite is also true in that anything negative to your point around, if you don't have the right paternity maternity policies, your employees will tell the world quite fast about undermine the efforts which I think the article points. Whilst the benefits can be extreme, the negatives can be extreme in the same opposite directions.

Yeah, Johnny, maybe I can give a shout out to one of my clients here because I think they, I'll leave them anonymous so that it isn't seen to be promotion, but they've devised this mechanism whereby, so they, they build industrial plants. So these are, they can be as big as liquefied natural gas, polyethylene cracker plants, combined cycle gas turbine. So it's the energy infrastructure. And typically, you know, people don't want these things built in their backyards. And you know, they could have gone the way of saying, you know, we're building America's energy independence. They could have gone for a grandiose purpose. But they, they went for just making a difference. And the mechanism, and this may be useful to some of your listeners, was that they, at the corporate level they did a, a matching program and they selected, it doesn't matter who they selected, but they actually selected United Way and, but they left it to the, so they've got work sites, you know, maybe 30 different places, typically around the Gulf coast and then down the, the Florida Panhandle. But they left it to the discretion of the local employees as to how those, which of the local charities they would, the funds would be allocated and they would co work. So in certain communities, the people who were going to work every day, they knew what that community needed. Maybe it was help with, you know, alcohol and drug addiction. Maybe it was a communal space that the community needed so they could come together. So they'd, you know, they build a pagoda in the middle of the sort of public park. Maybe it was a ramp on a community set. So they use their practical talents to, to make a difference. And I always thought that that was just a really good way of of, you know, making it easy for people to make a difference right where they were working. And I don't know whether that's relevant to certain of your the people listening, but the idea that you can speak sponsor something at the corporate level but allow the manifestation of that investment or to be dictated by the people at the local level.

I'm hearing a theme of through all this around purpose, it's connect from the people and then through the people. It seems to be a good mantra. I can't believe we're at time. I'm going to move to ask you both for your you can leave our audience and quickly share some comments. Alan Boyle has said he likes the Bridgewater example that the principles or values help shape purpose. And Shirley o' Neill Intention and authenticity are the key. I think we'd all agree with those comments. So we are at the point I can't believe already we're over time on the show we could talk about this topic forever. I think most of our audience can would relate to that because it's extremely important and it has so many layers and as both of you have acknowledged, it's complex. It's not easy. But the best problems are the hardest ones typically to solve and the ones most worthy of solving. We ask every guest who comes to the show, all 110 previous episodes we've asked and we're going to ask again of both of you today, but hopefully get two for one. What piece of advice would you give? And I'm going to ask ask Jonathan to answer this first. What piece of advice would you would you give to our audience or share with your audience that's either being garnered from your own experience through your own career or it's been passed on to you by somebody else wise in their experience and career that you think is worthy appropriate for this show to share with our audience today?

Jonathan, can I cheat? Because what, what Shirley just said just triggered a thought that I think is really important. But I'd also got one that I prepared earlier. So I, I do think I'm just reading Shirley's comment. Intention and authenticity are key. I think there's so the piece of advice would be identify what you care about and what you're responsible for. So is the advice. So it's, it's not enough. I mean by all means care but, but, but be responsible for changing things. So that may mean focusing the locus of your, your care on something quite Specific. And the piece of advice that I. I'd previously prepared, which was, I think it was by another parent. So we've got three kids with. Born within four years of one another. And I remember the person saying to me, do not assume that you will ever have more time than you have right now. And I thought, you're crazy. I've got a dog, I've got three kids, I have no time. And they said, exactly. And if you think that way, you will free yourself from this tyranny of. Oh, well, I'll get to that tomorrow. I'll get to that tomorrow. And you realize you never do get to it. So let it go.

The Frozen advice.

Very good. We need to burst. Love it.

These songs from your punk rock career are vice.

Listen, Johnny, I think actually my first piece of advice might relate to the punk rock career and that is embrace failure. Don't be afraid to fail. The fact that I could barely string a note together I think was sort of an emblematic point of my punk career. But you try, you learn and you move on. And I'm a great believer in fail fast, learn from it, and it's a piece of growth. And then the other piece that I think relates to Jonathan's advice that has. Is really a huge thing in my life, which is, you know, we're here for a good time, not a long time. So really enjoy what you do and always be kind. Make other people's lives better. I think in corporations, you know, there's a school of thought that the tougher you are, the meaner you are, the better you are. Well, try kindness because I think that can, at the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, it can really change the world and change someone else's day. And so those are my two pieces of advice. And children, do not go into a punk rock career. It's not a good idea.

My evening, by the way, will be spent this evening. You might appreciate it in Dublin at the 3Arena for gorillas and Bands. So again, life's too short. You gotta enjoy it. It's a Wednesday night, but heck, go for it. Thank you so much for spending the last 45 minutes with us sharing your insights and thoughts. It's an absolute pleasure, love to do it again and wish you both every success in your careers and lives. And yes, life's too short. There is no waiting for tomorrow. Just do it as.

Thanks so much, Johnny. This has been huge fun and lovely.

Thank you. Thank you.

Loved it, Johnny.

Well, thank you and thank to our audience for listening and for participating as well. As always, it's been an absolute pleasure. We'll be back next week for episode 112. And next week we're going to be doing a replay of one of our previous episodes, a fantastic episode if you haven't listened to it. The wonderful Amy Bateman joined us to talk about tackling imposter syndrome in the workplace. And a quick shout out to Amy, who since appearing on the show a few months ago, has had a fabulous baby boy, Harry. So congratulations to her and her partner on that. But Amy's going to be sharing her really personal insights on tackling imposter syndrome, which is such a huge, huge issue for a lot of people out there. And if it resonates with you or someone you know, you got to be tuning in next week. You can join us Live. That's 24th of August at 4pm UK Ireland time, 11am in the east coast of the US 8am on the west coast are dropping wherever you get your podcasts on Wednesday Evening next week, 24th of August. Until then, take care. And don't forget the power of your purpose. You gotta find it. Take care.

Sam.