A response to Harry Wallop by Jon Davidge
We want to add our voice to the ‘purpose debate’. As an organisation whose lived philosophy throughout the 50 years of our work in the field of leadership development includes the concept of ‘a common purpose’, Harry’s article about the Johnson & Johnson talc scandal
strikes a loud and deep chord. Especially since, as he suggests, we have been known to use J&J’s credo and the Tylenol recall as a case study in our work from time to time!
At first reading, and influenced by the dramatic headline, we were indignantly up for a scrap with a columnist we admire (his piece from April last year on rediscovering the tea break, citing of “the web of relationships that are cultivated through personal connections serve as the invisible threads that create meaning at work” was right up our street), but closer reading leads us only to disagree agreeably with the conclusion he draws.
Purpose (and its regular associates, values) are excruciatingly difficult concepts to nail. We have a couple of principles we use to help clients (and ourselves!) cut through foggy thinking and ‘blah blah’ drafting. The first is ‘don’t be ridiculous’ and the second is ‘make values aspirational’. A purpose is ridiculous if you do not, or cannot, make decisions based on its guidance. And if values are balding stated as actuals (“we act this way”), then even your most supportive and loyal colleagues will be able to catch you in a lie by the end of the day.
Purpose and values need to go through an uncompromising bullshit filter before they are anywhere near fit for public consumption.
And yet they must also be inspiring is there’s to be any point to them at all. To disagree with someone else we hold in high regard for a moment, if you believe that a business has no ‘higher value system beyond profit’ as Margaret Heffernan is quoted by Harry as implying, then you’re going to look elsewhere that purpose and values for your sources of inspiration, cohesion and meaning.
We do not doubt for a second that profit, and cash, are ultimately indispensable to a business. Research done a decade or so ago at The Roffey Park Institute on Meaning at Work tested three types of corporate purpose on a large and diverse audience. Rate the following generic purpose types in order of impact on employee engagement and performance, went the key enquiry: shareholder value, stakeholder value and customer service. Guess which came last by a stretch. Of course it did.
What was perhaps surprising is that ‘stakeholder value’ did not come first as the survey participants would themselves have been stakeholders in their businesses. Being of service won by a street.
To recycle an old metaphor, profit, as essential to the life of a business as oxygen is to humans, does not represent a powerful purpose any more than transforming oxygen into carbon monoxide offers much in terms of a meaningful purpose for humanity.
It is the job of a business to make money “while treating employees, suppliers and customers decently” as Harry says (although we’d want to slip in something about the environment too). But that tricky balancing act should go without saying.
Yet another of the thinkers whose work we have long admired, Barry Oshry the great systems thinker, said “all businesses have the same purpose; to survive and take advantage of opportunities.” True Barry, but not inspirational now, is it?
Jon Davidge
