iii. Attendance of 10 to 15 PEN members at the Positive Business Conference in May 2018 who will share three key learnings with their executive and with their teams/nodes; addition of these learnings to Positive Practice library for C3
iv. Introduction of PEN and positive practices at 8 to 10 PEN members’ all-hands meetings throughout 2018
v. Completion of 7 to 10 positive leadership/positive practice “lunch and learns” for PEN members’ teams throughout 2018
2. Create deeper specificity and understanding of the gaps being addressed by PEN through the following actions:
a. Enterprise Development
i. Focus group interviews on the topics of Trust & Empowerment, Purpose, Innovation & Addressing Fear of Failure, and Accountability & Excellence held and analyzed in spring 2018
ii. Creation of “From/To” documentation for the enterprise and each of the subgroup topics that identifies specific gaps and is finalized by June 1, 2018
iii. Building out of next-step action plan based on findings to best address gaps throughout the remainder of 2018 and into 2019
3. Solve a business issue through the application of positive practices as they relate to each subgroup topic (Trust & Empowerment, Purpose, Innovation & Addressing Fear of Failure, and Accountability & Excellence). This will be accomplished through the following actions:
a. By March 15, each subgroup:
i. Identifies a single challenge that is affecting one member’s team or department
ii. Articulates the gap and the desired outcome
iii. Brainstorms strategies around their topic (e.g., increasing trust among team members)
iv. Selects the appropriate course of action to countermeasure the gap
b. At the March 20 PEN team meeting, each subgroup will report out on their challenge and proposed strategy and will receive feedback from the larger team
c. After the March 20 meeting, subgroup team members will begin their experiment, and will document the outcomes and share with the larger PEN team at the September 12 PEN meeting
4. Bring growth mind-set to DTE through methods that are inclusive of all 10,000 employees, and will create energy and possibilities throughout the enterprise, through the following actions:
a. Personal Development
i. Each PEN member reads the book Mindset, by Carol Dweck, by April 1, 2018
ii. For a one-week period in April or May, each PEN member completes the activity of identifying examples of fixed mind-set in their day-to-day work, documenting ideas on how to transform examples into growth mind-set approach
iii. Through this exercise, PEN members build their expertise in understanding and identifying growth mind-set opportunities, and can teach and coach other leaders in the organization
iv. PEN members will share insights on exercise outcomes at May 15 meeting
b. Enterprise Development
i. Serve as Growth Mindset ambassadors at July Triannual (specific actions TBD)
ii. Make recommendations by TBD date to appropriate priority committee to remove organizational roadblocks that hinder growth mind-set approaches (e.g., policies and processes)
iii. Coach members of their PEN node on growth mind-set before and after July Triannual
iv. Other actions as determined by PEN members
In our last visit with DTE leaders, they were effusive in their description of the positive energizer network. The network was fully engaged and most goals were being pursued with passion. They are doing things that senior people would have never thought to ask.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Taking Action: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
In this book we put forward an economic theory of higher purpose and eight counterintuitive guidelines for creating a purpose-driven organization. In chapters 7 through 14 we offer exercises or tools that will help you get started. As we have pointed out, most executives avoid purpose work because they are unwilling to engage in something they do not believe in. Purpose work requires a transformation of conventional beliefs.
In this chapter we answer key inquiries that we have gotten from practicing professionals. The answers can allay some of your concerns and help you commit to taking action. The questions fall into three categories: the nature of higher purpose, the economics of higher purpose, and the creation of the purpose-driven organization.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Nature of Higher Purpose
Q: What is a higher purpose, and how does it influence an individual?
A: Higher purpose is an authentic or sincere intention to serve the collective good.
It is the highest contribution you intend to make. Because you are doing the most significant thing that you can do, the outcomes matter. By pursuing and producing the outcomes, you create a sense of meaning. Your highest purpose becomes your calling. You find intrinsic motivation in the purpose. You are less influenced by external rewards and punishments.
You pursue higher purpose with full engagement or love. When you pursue an intention with confident aspiration, you tend to accelerate learning and perform at a higher level. When you pursue a purpose with full engagement, you tend to create excellence, and the process reveals a new self; that self has more integrity, and a new system of deepened virtues. With this emergent, virtuous self, you gain genuine self-respect, and you gain a more positive orientation to others.
Q: Where does higher purpose come from?
A: Your personal higher purpose comes from your deepest motivation to make a contribution to society, so it is connected to the work you do. Similarly, organizational higher purpose comes from the deepest motivations of the people in the organization to make a prosocial contribution, so it is connected to the business the organization is in. You discover higher purpose through deep reflection, reflection that occurs outside the norms. This kind of reflection is work, and it is a form of labor that everyone tends to resist. Such reflection to discover your personal higher purpose is typically driven by personal crisis and leads to the discovery of a new identity and destiny.
Your life narrative is your theory of self. In a crisis, your narrative is disrupted. By disciplined reflection you can repair and enhance the narrative. You can achieve the same end through the choice to engage in daily, disciplined self-reflection. In doing such work, you renew and enhance your life narrative in small episodes.
Q: How does organizational higher purpose compare to personal higher purpose?
A: Like personal higher purpose, organizational higher purpose often comes from crisis. It can, however, come from some form of collective reflection. The organization must tap the deep feeling of multiple actors and integrate their needs in a collective statement.
Q: How do you find a higher purpose?
A: You do not invent a higher purpose; you discover it. The discovery requires hard work in the subjective realm. Leaders must come to know and understand the deepest needs and interests of the workforce and customers or clients. For insights on how to discover and articulate a higher purpose, see chapter 8.
Q: Is higher purpose something you actually achieve, like an objective?
A: No. Higher purpose is an aspiration that, like the North Star, provides stable direction and guides contribution over time. If your higher purpose is “to inspire positive change,” you seek to do that in every situation. You may fully succeed in one situation and not at all in another, but you look to the purpose in every situation. The same is true for the organization. The organization looks to the purpose as its North Star to guide it every step of the journey.
Q: Does higher purpose change over time?
A: The world is constantly changing. Individuals and organizations must always be adapting. When an individual or organization follows their higher purpose, they move forward into uncertainty while engaged in deep learning. They produce valued contributions and attract valuable resources. They go through a dynamic learning process.
As purpose-driven people and purpose-d
riven organizations move forward, they continue to reflect. As a result, they occasionally come to increased clarity and they modify their higher purpose. The change may be large or small, but if it is authentic, the people begin to respond.
Q: How do you sustain higher purpose?
A: When you pursue higher purpose, you achieve profound learning and contribution. From these outcomes you get intrinsic satisfaction and a desire to produce more of the same. You create a self-referential, virtuous cycle. The cycle sustains itself, yet the cycle is fragile. If you fail to monitor and nurture the cycle, it collapses. You must continually integrate reflection and action.
Q: Can you have more than one higher purpose?
A: At the individual level, you might conclude that you have two higher purposes, one at work and one in your personal life. The two statements can be powerful aids. In such a case, you have moved many steps toward finding your higher purpose. Yet one challenge remains. When you find your highest purpose, it integrates all aspects of your life, and it is the arbiter of all decisions. You must often take time and patience to connect with it. For the organization, it may have more than one higher purpose as well, but these must reinforce each other. For example, Zingerman’s higher purposes of serving its customers and training its employees to be future entrepreneurs reinforce each other, and create employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
Q: Why do you emphasize authentic higher purpose?
A: The word authentic is perhaps the most important word in this book. People who make the conventional assumptions about hierarchical economic life cannot conceive of the notion of authenticity. Many of them cannot imagine what authentic communication looks like. An authentic person lives in integrity with congruence of heart and mind. When managers become leaders, they become more authentic and more purposive.
When a higher purpose is inauthentic, it destroys trust and collaboration. When higher purpose is approached as a tool in a transactional game, the employees immediately recognize the hypocrisy. They become more cynical and the managerial mind has done harm to the organization.
Avoid purpose work if you cannot elevate yourself into the state of authenticity. For help with this issue, we recommend the book Lift: How to Live in the Fundamental State of Leadership.63 (There is also a digital course available. See “Becoming Who You Really Are: How to Grow Yourself and Your Organization,” Michigan Ross, https://michiganross.umich.edu/programs/executive-education/becoming-who-you-really-are-how-grow-yourself-and-your-organization?event=4147.)
Q: Is higher purpose related to spirituality?
A: Researchers who study spirituality struggle to agree on a definition. Yet one element of the definition is commonly accepted and is captured in the statement “I feel like I am part of something bigger than myself.”
People who have spiritual experiences tend to describe them as “oceanic.” They have a feeling of being part of one great whole. Theists often have experiences that involve God, yet atheists may have such experiences in nature, music, or some other realm. In an organization, higher purpose often leads to trust, bonding, collaboration, collective intelligence, and the co-creation of the future—characteristics of a purpose-driven organization (PDO). In such an organization people may often feel part of one great whole and may have experiences that are spiritual.
The Economics of Higher Purpose
Q: What is the “economics” of higher purpose?
A: The “economics” of higher purpose refers to the premise that higher purpose is not charity, something detached from the main business of the organization. The economics of higher purpose is intimately connected to the business of the organization. Indeed, because higher purpose is the arbiter of all business decisions, we focus on the intersection of higher purpose and business purpose. Consequently, it affects employee behavior and business decisions, and the pursuit of higher purpose has economic consequences.
Q: Why do we need an economics of higher purpose now?
A: Surveys suggest that younger employees are deeply interested in higher purpose. They want to find meaning in their work. Customers want to buy products that represent fair value and inherent goodness. Investors are slowly beginning to see the emerging demand for organizations of higher purpose. The movement has developed slowly but is now reaching a tipping point. The demand to create PDOs is growing and will soon become intense. If companies do not adopt authentic higher purpose, dissatisfaction with capitalism will grow, and our whole economic way of life will be threatened.
Q: What is wrong with conventional economics?
A: Nothing is wrong with conventional economics. Conventional economics is based on sound principles of self-interest, and it produces a clear objective function for firms. In a PDO it is complemented by higher purpose, which provides a powerful way to incentivize employees to behave like purpose-driven leaders and owners who subjugate self-interest to the common good without explicit monetary incentives to do so. In a PDO the contracting frictions and consequent losses of value in the principal–agent framework are reduced.
Q: If you pursue a higher purpose, can you optimize profits?
A: Yes. You can find the intersection of business goals—maximizing profits and shareholder value—with the pursuit of higher purpose.
Q: What are the economic payoffs for creating a PDO?
A: When higher purpose is authentic—pursued without the expectation of economic gain—and clearly and constantly communicated to the organization, it positively affects not only operating measures of performance like profits and cash flows but also forward-looking measures like stock prices.
Q: What does higher purpose have to do with capitalism and socialism?
A: A recent Gallup survey showed that a majority of millennials, for the first time in the history of the survey, favor socialism over capitalism.64 Millennials feel that way because they have seen the dark side of capitalism—unethical behavior, fines, bailouts of failing companies at taxpayers’ expense, and so on—but the prosocial contributions of companies in the capitalistic system are not as evident. They become disillusioned with capitalism, in part because the alternative—socialism—is viewed as utopia. For capitalism to recapture the hearts and minds of the young, companies must not only embrace authentic higher purpose but also make their pursuit of higher purpose visible and salient.
Q: How does higher purpose manifest internally versus externally?
A: Internally, higher purpose energizes employees because they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. Externally, it attracts customers and others who like to associate with the higher purpose.
Q: If higher purpose is so impactful, why do so few organizations embrace it and create it?
A: Organizations have qualms about adopting a higher purpose because embedded deep in the heart of higher purpose is a fundamental economic paradox. Higher purpose produces positive long-term economic gain, but only if it is not undertaken with the objective of harvesting that economic gain. Organizations are reluctant to pursue something without the intention of generating profit. Doing so goes against so much of what managers are taught in business schools and in the practical school of experience.
Q: How will investors react to the idea of higher purpose?
A: Stakeholders will respond according to their assumptions and beliefs. Narrow economic thinkers will be skeptical. They will be offended unless you can inspire them to a new level of understanding. Here, authenticity plays a key role. If higher purpose is a clever technique, a trick to be played, you will lack the capability to persuade and inspire stakeholders. If purpose is a genuine endeavor, you will become increasingly capable, and external stakeholders will be drawn to the discovery and the embrace of higher purpose. Note that purpose is becoming familiar to the community of investors, and the idea will continue to spread. A tipping point will likely be reached when higher purpose will become a requirement of investors.
Q: What metrics reflect the success of higher purpose?
A: Higher purpose should never be measured with the usual economic indicators of success. It should be assessed based on whether it is truly the arbiter of all business decisions.
Creating Purpose-Driven Organizations
Q: What is a PDO?
A: A purpose-driven organization is a social system that pursues a higher purpose. The organization takes the purpose as its guiding principle. The PDO pursues a purpose that is authentic and shared because the purpose intersects strategy and is the arbiter of every decision. It has a purpose-driven culture that serves to both stabilize and inspire the people. It is able to transcend the tension represented by the principal–agent problem in economics, or the self-interested behavior of the worker, and every person becomes a principal. It has an engaged workforce that is composed of people bringing their discretionary energy to their work.
Q: How do PDOs come into being?
A: Typically, an individual makes the personal journey from manager to leader. This leader begins to live a more proactive and intrinsically driven life. The leader is more fully aware of their own potential or growth, and transcends the conventional mind-set. The leader begins to inspire other people to see and to behave in new ways. As the social network begins to behave in innovative ways, the people, together, co-create a new culture and a new organization.
Q: What turns a manager into a leader of a PDO?
A: Through crisis or through disciplined self-reflection, the manager goes through deep change and acquires a new identity and destiny. The person becomes driven more by conscience than by culture. They take on new desires and increased sense of purpose, integrity, courage, authenticity, empathy, humility, and other virtues. They manifest these individual virtues, and their positive emotions become contagious. They become a positive social virus.
Q: How do you communicate a higher purpose?
The Economics of Higher Purpose Page 19