The Economics of Higher Purpose

by Robert E Quinn

  The inclusive, or positive, mental model is more complex than the conventional mental model. It recognizes that the dynamics we’ve described exist, but it does not put the fault in the people. It does not put the fault anywhere. Instead, it focuses on the purpose and on the strengths of the people and on the fact that, under the right circumstances, they can become genuinely committed and connected and willing to go the extra mile.

  Jim told us that organizations need leaders who can “shrink-wrap” the complexity of “corporate speak” and give the people a picture or a metaphor that allows them to see and understand the whole system in a simple way. When people at any level come to understand the whole system, they become whole people who begin to connect to other whole people. The social network becomes a system of positive energy, learning, and adaptation. When this happens, reality challenges conventional theory. Executives begin to see that their organizations are filled with resources they could not previously see. Jim’s approach of simplifying and visualizing is a practical way to connect people to the higher purpose as well as to the strategy of the organization.

  Reaching Everyone

  Creating a purpose-driven organization is a great challenge. It requires understanding and implementing many principles that are counterintuitive. It means seeing the principal–agent problem as the principal–agent opportunity. It means believing that people want to contribute. It means taking the responsibility to extend this transformation all the way to the bottom of the organization.

  In chapter 12 we examined the evolution of KPMG and how the firm turned its midlevel managers into purpose-driven leaders.61 The story continues as KPMG did something that few organizations ever do. It reached everyone.

  Bruce and John saw the need for a bottom-up effort. People needed to see their own purpose and how that purpose can get realized at work. They encouraged people to share their own accounts of how they were currently making a difference. This effort evolved into a remarkable program called the 10,000 Stories Challenge.

  The program gave the 27,000 employees access to a digital program and invited them to create posters. In the process, it asked them to answer the question “What do you do at KPMG?” It then asked them to write a headline such as “I Combat Terrorism.”

  For example, under the headline “I Combat Terrorism” are statements such as “KPMG helps scores of financial institutions prevent money laundering, keeping financial resources out of the hands of terrorists and criminals.” Under the statement is a picture of the author. Finally, the poster reads; “Inspire Confidence. Empower Change.”

  In June the company announced that if 10,000 posters were submitted by Thanksgiving, it would add two extra days to the Christmas break. For the leadership of an accounting firm, this was a risky undertaking. As is almost always the case in initiating a positive culture, many people believed the entire process would be seen as “corny,” no one would respond, and the leaders would be left embarrassed. The leaders spent considerable time debating about moving forward.

  Nearly all leaders who desire to create a positive culture experience genuine fear. They need courage to overcome that fear, as we have seen in earlier chapters. When they succeed in such an effort, they are often euphoric.

  The program at KPMG produced a shocking outcome: The 10,000 stories were produced in a month, and the people earned their two days off. Not only that, but the process went viral. Although the reward was already earned, the posters continued to appear: 27,000 people submitted 42,000 posters (some people submitted multiple times, and teams submitted as well as individuals). It turned out that the people of KPMG had a pent up appetite for purpose and meaning. The company had found a brilliant way to help the people connect the collective purpose and their individual purpose.

  Did all the work on purpose matter, and did it affect performance? The company’s surveys showed that pride increased, engagement scores went to record levels, good-place-to-work scores jumped from 82 percent to 89 percent. KPMG climbed 17 places in Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For list, making KPMG the highest-ranked firm of the Big Four. It saw its turnover go down dramatically, generating advantages in terms of continuity, recruiting, training, and comprehensive savings. While we cannot show a causal link, we can note that the firm had an outstanding financial year and also achieved the highest growth rate of the Big Four accounting firms.

  A Warning

  We’ve seen the work by Jim Haudan in the beverage company and by executives at KPMG that provide brilliant examples of approaches for taking purpose to the bottom of the organization. You might yearn for tools that you could implement with minimal reflection and minimal risk.

  We wish to warn you that in nearly every case in this book we have learned of leaders having to enter uncertainty and learn how to create a purpose-driven organization. Human systems are not technical systems; they are complex, living systems, as are all individual human beings and collections of human beings.

  When the connections between the parts of a system elevate in quality, new collective properties emerge. When an individual like Shauri finds her personal higher purpose, she integrates her heart and mind, and a new, more integrated and authentic self-emerges. Sharui then becomes a leader. When a leader invites people to a higher purpose and they accept, the quality of connections in the network changes and new properties emerge.

  The process is not linear. The process is not controllable. Initiating the process requires both the inviter and the invited to engage in a journey of learning from experience. The journey seems to contradict many assumptions that hold in the conventional mind-set. To create a purpose-driven organization, you need the courage to learn while stimulating learning as it is happening in real time.

  Learning While Stimulating Learning

  The field of positive organizational scholarship was born at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.62 Ross has spawned much research on how to create organizations of higher purpose, organizations where people flourish in positive cultures and exceed expectations.

  Amy Byron-Oilar, who was hired as chief people officer (head of HR) at Ross, was exposed to such ideas and determined to apply some of the research by building a positive work community. Amy and the dean of the school agreed that the principles of positive organizing should be applied inside the school.

  Years later, we talked with Amy about the initiatives that were launched. The process started with two efforts in 2011, and the number increased every year. Yet Amy pointed out that the process was not so linear or systematic. What emerged was not the result of a conventional master plan. She said that what was done in subsequent years “could not be imagined in the previous years.” The process was an emergent one that required purpose, courage, and learning.

  Consider this unusual statement: “I wanted a plan. I tried to write a plan . . . over and over. That’s what we’re taught. Figure out where you are. Determine where you need to be. Chart your path. Execute, and, voilà, success! It was part of my personal journey to let that thinking go.”

  In Amy’s first year, she encountered high levels of staff dissatisfaction. So in 2011, at the suggestion of the dean, she established a staff involvement group with representatives from all areas of the school. This effort eventually gave rise in 2012 to a community learning group inspired by faculty research on the importance of learning in creating positive cultures. That group spawned mini-conferences that explored best practices and resulted in lists of “tips, tricks and new great stuff.” That in turn spawned better staff meetings, a staff lounge, and the return of a popular past practice called Green Clean, in which all members of the workforce were invited to participate in a day for deep cleaning the buildings.

  In 2013 faculty and staff members worked with a Zingerman’s training group (see chapter 11) to create a future vision. This seemingly small act clarified purpose and legitimized creating a positive future, and it empowered people. Suddenly people felt that they could create new initiatives.
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br />   One initiative began when a few people were trained and certified in teaching a program on crucial conversations. Then 150 members of the staff were trained. The staff had long complained of a lack of respect from faculty, and in one discussion, someone proposed that the solution might be for staff to increase their own respect for faculty. This led to a classroom observation program where staff could sit in on classes and see both faculty and students at their best. And it led to a comprehensive onboarding process to expose new employees to every aspect of life in the school.

  In 2014 a campus-wide effort toward “shared services” affected the staff of the business school. Many staff members were interviewed, and it became clear that they did not feel connected to one another or to the school. This led to a networking effort including bimonthly community-building exercises.

  Another initiative launched a selection boot camp that was run by staff to help other staff hire people more likely to contribute to the positive vision. An initiative put in place an annual health rally, and another one redesigned the performance appraisal tool to foster positive knowledge, skills, and abilities.

  In 2015 HR developed specific new modules for the onboarding process. Every other month the department selected a staff member and profiled the person to the entire school. With the new shared services program in place, many people were suddenly sharing workspaces, and this turned out to be as likely to generate conflict as it did cooperation. HR put in place a program to help people cooperate. It created a video that captured what it means to create and live in a positive community.

  HR also developed a related program on knowledge and practice sharing. Faculty members published a new edited book on developing positive leadership, and the department invited individual faculty authors to teach various chapters to the staff.

  HR recruited staff members to help share the positive vision with new staff by speaking about their own positive stories and experiences. Finally, it created a vision statement that contained many aspirations such as “Operate with the positive end in mind” and “See the good in others.” It turned these aspirations into an assessment tool so people could analyze themselves individually or collectively and explore avenues for their improvement. With all these efforts, the department intended to convert everybody in the organization into purpose-driven leaders in a way that had not been experienced before.

  In 2016 we met with Amy again. She shared with us the results of a recent employee engagement survey. The gains were large, and changes on 17 indicators were statistically significant. The producers of the report said they had never before seen a shift of such magnitude.

  As Amy reflected on this achievement, she returned to the notion of emergence. She said, “Someone recently suggested that we create a video about the faculty like the one we did about the staff. Two years ago it would have been impossible to have that idea. Every time we do something, it creates new possibilities. The process keeps expanding; we are learning our way forward.”

  We asked Amy about the impact of the achievement on her. She said, “Early on, I attended an executive education course on positive leadership given by our faculty. One of them taught me to ask, ‘What would you do if you had 2 percent more courage?’ Over and over, I have asked that question because building a positive work community requires courage. The impact on me has been very real. I am amazed, and my thinking has expanded immeasurably. I can do things now that would have been impossible at the start.”

  Amy has learned how to create a purpose-driven, positive organization inside a business school by creating a culture that invites everyone to commit to a higher purpose. Creating a purpose-driven organization required leadership, the courage to embrace a purpose, and the ability to involve the top, the middle, and the bottom levels of the organization.

  Summary

  It is not enough for an organization to simply discover an authentic higher purpose. The organization has to connect the purpose to the people and their emotions. Both middle managers (chapter 12) and first-line employees have to take ownership of the purpose and be energized by it. Connecting the purpose to the people requires leaders to act in ways that contradict their basic assumptions about how they should behave in organizations.

  Some leaders learn to do this. They transcend convention and provide leadership we do not expect to see. They communicate an inspiring and authentic vision in ways that help people find their purpose and the organization’s purpose. Purpose-driven leaders understand the importance of doing this, for everyone including those at the bottom of the organization. Thus, the seventh counterintuitive step in creating a purpose-driven organization is to discover the possibility of connecting first-line people to the higher purpose of the organization. In other words, the seventh step is to connect the people to the purpose.

  Getting Started: Tools and Exercises

  Hold a discussion and structure it as follows:

  Phase 1. Have everyone read the chapter.

  Phase 2. Have everyone write answers to these questions:

  What do you understand about purpose, connections, and emergence?

  What key principles can we derive from Jim Haudan’s work at the beverage company?

  What key principles can we derive from the implementation of higher purpose at KPMG?

  What key principles can we derive from Amy’s journey at the business school?

  Phase 3. Discuss the answers and review the list of guidelines for engaging middle managers that you created in chapter 12. Now jointly create a list of guidelines for engaging all the people.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  STEP 8 Unleash the Positive Energizers

  One day we ran into an old friend who directs human resources in a large organization. We inquired as to how she was doing, and she told us that things were not going very well at work. The people at the top faced difficult challenges and were responding in conventional ways. They were becoming increasingly negative, and the negativity was flowing through the organization.

  We asked her to consider a counterintuitive question: What would happen if she went back to her organization and selected people whom she knew were inherently positive, committed to the collective good, and competent? What if she invited them to become a network of positive change agents? What if she assembled them and asked them what they wanted the organization to look like in the future? What if she asked them what they could do to bring that vision into reality?

  We asked these questions based on our experience. Every organization has a pool of purpose-driven people. The pool often goes unrecognized. We refer to this pool as “the invisible network of positive energizers.” Spread randomly throughout the organization, positive energizers are mature, purpose-driven people with an optimistic orientation, people like Corey Mundle, whom we described in chapter 7. They are open and willing to take initiative, and they naturally energize others. Once invited, they can assist with culture change. These people are easy to identify, they radiate positive energy, and they are trusted.

  Our proposal was not a conventional one. For our friend, it raised many immediate concerns, but it did intrigue her. It gave her a small ray of hope at a dark time. We told her to go home and sleep on the idea, then give us a call so we could discuss it.

  She did call. She said that, on the one hand, something about our proposal seemed radical and uncomfortable. It did not conform to the conventional assumption that all change efforts should be directed from the top and flow down the hierarchy. On the other hand, she suggested that it was her responsibility to lead the way in creating a better culture. She concluded that taking care of the people in the company was not only her job; it was at the heart of her personal purpose. She concluded that she was going to move ahead because it was the right thing to do.

  She had already held two meetings. She reported that she was overwhelmed by the interest and commitment of the people who had assembled. They were “fellow travelers” who felt as strongly as she did, and they were willing to go the ext
ra mile to accomplish something. They were an amazing resource that until now had gone unrecognized. Moreover, she no longer felt alone.

  The group analyzed the current state of the organization and then the desired state of the organization. On the one hand, the company was full of inherently good people who were loyal, ethical, dedicated, proud, and hungry to collaborate and win. The people knew they were surrounded by external opportunities, they recognized that the company was at a crossroads, and they were anxious to see the company succeed.

  On the other hand, the people were full of anxiety. They saw that the competitiveness of the company was in question, that the focus was only on metrics, that there was no unifying vision, that confusion and conflict were increasing, that people were becoming increasingly territorial and fragmented, that fear permeated the organization, that people tended to be trapped in their old ways, that blame and finger pointing were increasing. They felt that there was a growing sense of exhaustion, and people were not anxious to get out of bed in the morning.

  The group wanted to have a successful, competitive, growing company, with a clear mission and purpose. The company would be customer focused and always changing. It would have a learning culture. It would emphasize clarity, trust, candor, and collaboration. It would have people who were confident, innovative, energized, and empowered high performers making speedy decisions. It would be profitable because the people were committed to growing the profit margin.

  This vision exhilarated the group of positive energizers. They were anxious to take the next step, but they were not sure what that was. Our friend invited us to meet with the group. We asked the group to teach us who they were and what they really valued. For an hour they talked with enthusiasm. We then asked them to make a list of the most important questions they wanted us to answer. They asked very thoughtful questions that fell into two categories: how should they personally and collectively operate so as to make a difference?