Identifying clear business purpose

There’s a love­ly sto­ry about Pres­i­dent Kennedy vis­it­ing the Nasa cen­tre in Hous­ton dur­ing the space-race era. He asks an old jan­i­tor sweep­ing the cor­ri­dors what his job is. “I’m help­ing put a man on the moon, sir,” came the reply. This was an organ­i­sa­tion with an inspir­ing sense of pur­pose.

A lot of com­pa­nies start out with an equal­ly well-defined idea of what they want to achieve. The founders have a vision which pro­pels them through the painful start­up process. It is a clear mes­sage which wins the con­fi­dence of investors, gives the prod­uct a pre­mi­um price over rivals and lures top-cal­i­bre employ­ees to join the mis­sion. Yet, as time goes by, things get chal­leng­ing.

When head­count increas­es, the com­pa­ny cul­ture gets dilut­ed. Diver­si­fi­ca­tion means the orig­i­nal brand state­ment feels a lit­tle out of date, so gets put to one side.

All too often a com­pa­ny will lose its iden­ti­ty. Employ­ees aren’t entire­ly sure what they are striv­ing towards. The job becomes a pay check.

This cor­ro­sion is well doc­u­ment­ed. Its effects are well known. What com­pa­nies want to know is how to keep that orig­i­nal sense of dri­ve.

This isn’t about shut­ting the senior team into a room and get­ting them to brain­storm. In fact, a com­mon mis­take is to approach this as an exer­cise in rein­ven­tion. You can spot this a mile off when buzz­words like “glob­al” or “inno­v­a­tive” start infil­trat­ing mis­sion state­ments.  These words just don’t mean any­thing to peo­ple.

What we’re actu­al­ly look­ing for is the pas­sion that orig­i­nal­ly brought the com­pa­ny into exis­tence

I’d nev­er say “Gosh, Deb­bie was very glob­al today.” As for “inno­v­a­tive”, show me a firm that doesn’t want to be.

What com­pa­nies need is a set of prin­ci­ples which every­one can under­stand. This ought to be like a mini-con­sti­tu­tion, writ­ten with the help of every­one affect­ed, which instant­ly com­mu­ni­cates the pur­pose and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the brand. It takes time to cre­ate and it’s often a process of exca­va­tion rather than inno­va­tion.

What we’re actu­al­ly look­ing for is the pas­sion that orig­i­nal­ly brought the com­pa­ny into exis­tence. It’s way beyond the busi­ness plan and growth strat­e­gy, it’s what moti­vates peo­ple to get up in the morn­ing and instils a sense of pride in their work.

That’s not to say you don’t need data. At Incred­iBull, we work with large tech and finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies, and as you’d expect, their board mem­bers are used to detailed analy­sis. Our process, how­ev­er, although thor­ough, aims to gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm and excite­ment. It’s about find­ing the eure­ka moments that get to the core of what the busi­ness is striv­ing to achieve.

Such was one client’s excite­ment, we were repeat­ed­ly stopped in the cor­ri­dor by board mem­bers want­i­ng to recite their new­ly artic­u­lat­ed pur­pose. This pur­pose and the accom­pa­ny­ing ele­ments of the brand box are rarely com­pli­cat­ed. In fact, they’re usu­al­ly a study in sim­plic­i­ty.

To find them, we use a trade-marked mul­ti-step process. It begins with work­shops with senior lead­ers to address the busi­ness objec­tives. There are inter­nal ses­sions with staff from all depart­ments. Con­tri­bu­tions from clients are sought. The results are con­densed into a set of state­ments:

•  The pur­pose which is why you get out of bed in the morn­ing.
• The promise you are going to make to your cus­tomers.
• The essence, a short phrase that goes to the heart of the busi­ness.
• The attrib­ut­es which dif­fer­en­ti­ate you from the com­pe­ti­tion.
• The per­son­al­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­at­ed with your brand – are you fun or sin­cere, extro­vert or demure?
• The iden­ti­ty, so all your visu­al and writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­port your brand.

Of course, before any of this is seen by your cus­tomers, you need to spread the mes­sage inter­nal­ly. I am a big fan of brand ambas­sadors who are empow­ered to speak up if any­thing hap­pens which isn’t com­pat­i­ble with your val­ues. You real­ly have to live what you say you stand for, so all employ­ees can ral­ly behind that.

When your firm can iden­ti­fy and express a clear, tan­gi­ble and mem­o­rable pur­pose, your staff, cus­tomers, investors and even your rivals, will all know you are work­ing towards some­thing real­ly spe­cial.

www.incredibull.com