Towards the end of my time at Virgin Media, I was invited by the Chief Exec to build an action plan for the new company purpose following the merger with O2; ensuring it’s inspiring, credible, authentic and actionable. I’ve been pondering on my key reflections – here they are:
1) Purpose needs to be owned by everyone but driven by someone.
From the get go, I described my role as a ‘Jump-starter’ for Purpose - someone to get things going at a critical time. Purpose like Sustainability, should of course be owned by the leadership team and all employees. But to get going and make progress - particularly with the unique opportunity of launching a brand new organisation - someone needs to facilitate the actions that lead to a distinctive, inspiring and actionable plan being put in place. Ultimately my role was all about coordinating workstreams and projects, engaging senior leaders, tracking and reporting progress and maintaining overall governance for the programme.
In truth, not everyone outside of the boardroom shared this view – some felt purpose should sit in the organization with no one lead - but creating, launching and embedding purpose is a huge piece of transformational work and having one leader centrally responsible for facilitating the programme of activity in the early days is, in my opinion, key. I sometimes likened it to a theatre show producer or music conductor - someone essential for bringing every part together, someone who understands the vision but knows how each part comes together, can set the pace and rhythm, while removing silos and making connections. Someone, who after a while, fades into the background – from day one, I was clear that I thought one day my role would no longer be required.
I don’t think you necessarily need to have Purpose in the title as such, but what’s important is that there is an accountable leader for centrally facilitating this work - someone who has the legitimacy, skills to negotiate, internal network and that change making attitude - all of which my time leading the Sustainability function had set me up nicely for. Although perhaps the key difference felt like I was less of an expert and advisor more of a facilitator helping to ensure clarity and no duplication of efforts across the business. It certainly wasn’t a fluffy and easy role at times. Having a good internal network and being able to speak the language of the business was paramount – as was a positive mindset and belief that change would happen.
2) Purpose is best thought of as a complex and multi-year change programme.
Purpose impacts every single part of the business – how we think, how decisions are made, how we recruit, how we reward and so on. It’s a massive organizational shift that fundamentally feels like rewiring the business at times – except you’ve got to do this while transitioning and keeping the lights on at the same time. This requires ongoing momentum and commitment to change. It requires permission and vision from the Boardroom and energy and enthusiasm from everyone else. My role became about handholding and putting the guardrails in place to ensure decisions could be made in line with our purpose plan.
3) Like anything, being on the same page is key; everyone from the top to the bottom of your business needs to agree what it really means to be a purpose driven business.
I think every business has the ability to be purpose driven but the key question everyone must be aligned on is timeframe and intent. For me, in my role this meant spending time talking about purpose at great length - challenging what it is and what it is not, seeking different opinions and discussing them. I found opinions and real-life case studies from leaders in my role elsewhere (of which there aren’t many) far more helpful than those who were spending their time deep in Purpose theory.
As with leading the Sustainability function, I found myself once again coaching and educating senior leaders on what it really means to be purpose driven for our business, our people and the wider world. Education (and interrogation) to get everyone on the same page and bought into a shared understanding is essential. This was nearly always done in a fun and engaging way – finding creative ways to listen and share stories and ideas is something I love to do (it’s as much about the process as it is the outcome). Your action plan for delivering this activity needs to be grounded in total clarity and transparency around intention and appetite – this starts with asking the right questions and a board that fully understand and buy into this vision.
It’s certainly wasn’t a glamourous role, Purpose very much happens behind the scenes not in Marketing rooms. The relationship between what really happens and hard graft is important to get right.
4) Once you have agreed the intent you then need the killer plan that you never veer from.
To use purpose to drive meaningful change, it needs to be infused into the DNA of the business. To do this, you need an action plan and the tools to deliver on your intention. We set about creating a programme of activity that connected purpose with strategy, culture and the commercial operations. I thought of it as a spoke on a bicycle wheel – where every part needed to exist and work together. Showing leaders how to get involved and giving them some clear principles for decision making all helped to drive progress in the early days. Everyone has to come along for the ride!
5) Humanity and humility became my secret weapons in the role.
Becoming truly purpose driven takes a lot of hard graft and at times felt exhausting to coordinate and manage. However, most employees are motivated by feeling proud about what they do – it’s our human nature – and purpose provides an incredibly opportunity for energetic and positive conversations and action with colleagues. Something that gave me energy and optimism. But with purpose, you must create an environment that makes it possible to achieve real change and this sometimes meant asking people to leave some things at the door. Perhaps one of my key reflections that emerged is the reminder to ensure humanity has a seat at the decision-making table and that we all need to do more to bring humility and show our human side in the workplace, regardless of your role.
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