CULTURE, LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION / LAURA BELLO

Nowadays we hear companies talking about purpose and the initial question is: why?

Today, purpose can be classified as a "hot topic", so to speak. In recent years, a series of events have been triggered around the purpose that have aroused the interest of companies and society in this topic. Larry Fink's last 3 letters, the manifesto of the association Business Roundtable in 2018; the latest Davos forums, or the rise of sustainability are examples that indicate the need for new organizational models that go beyond profit maximization. I believe that corporate purpose has a lot to say in all of this.

That it is a "hot topic", as you say, is positive?

It is positive because there is greater interest and organizations want to do things. However, you have to do things right, if you want to deploy and promote the purpose , you have to get into the deep end. It is not enough to define a purpose and affirm that you are an organization with purpose. The great challenge facing companies today is to move from declaring purpose to living it. The purpose has to reach the day-to-day and impact the way things are done. Therefore, our research is focused on the implementation of purpose.

The model you have developed together with your team has the purpose of measuring precisely how the purpose is lived, how is this achieved in the organization?

The Purpose Strength Project is a research project in which researchers from Tecnun, IESE, the Chair of Mission Management and Corporate purpose of the UIC work together with professionals from DPMC and Corporate Excellence-Center for Reputation Leadership with the goal of generating knowledge that helps companies to effectively implement their purpose. With professors Nuria Chinchilla (IESE) and Carlos Rey (UIC) we developed the Purpose Strength Model, with which we evaluate the implementation of purpose in specific organizations and we are generating a data observatory on the reality of companies around corporate purpose . Combining qualitative dynamics with quantitative analysis and with the internship experience of DPMC we intend to analyze and understand how to successfully implement purpose in an organization, and see what benefits are triggered as a result of an effective implementation.

From your research , what do you understand by purpose implementation?

When we talk about purpose implementation, what we are basically doing is assessing the extent to which there is a shared sense of purpose in the organization. We like to explain it with the triangle knowledge, identification and contribution. A purpose will be more shared to the extent that it is better known and people in the organization are able to explain it in their own words. Knowing the purpose provides clarity and financial aid to prioritize what is most important from what is not so important. Identification refers to the fact that the purpose has to excite and be a source motivation for people. It will be to the extent that the corporate purpose connects with people's personal values by proposing a goal that is not only valuable for the company but also for many employees. Finally, the contribution reference letter to the fact that the purpose has to be felt in the day-to-day, through actions and objectives, seeing how the daily work contributes to the development the purpose.

Once the three dimensions of the purpose have been defined, we propose to evaluate the Degree its implementation, in order to better understand to what extent there is a shared purpose and to see how it can be further promoted.

What differentiates corporate purpose today from the traditional corporatemission statement?

From my point of view, one of the major differences between the mission statement approach and the purpose is the bidirectionality of the latter. Let me try to explain. Both the mission statement and the purpose try to give meaning to the day to day, to define why we do what we do and what is the contribution that, from the organization, we intend to make to society. What happens is that the meaning is staff, everyone's, and it cannot be "imposed". In any case, we can help to discover it. Everyone finds his or her own meaning in a unique way. The mission statement has been worked from a more unidirectional and top-down approach ; defining the "mission statement" and then deploying it throughout the organization. The purpose has a more bidirectional approach . The core topic of the purpose is to be able to connect the organizational purpose with the people's purpose staff in order to generate a shared meaning. When this happens, both parties are enriched. The business is enriched because it has people who connect and connect strongly with the goal. At the same time, the person finds a place to work with a project that fulfills him/her because it presents a cause with which he/she identifies.

What challenges do human resources areas face in the proper implementation of corporate purpose ?

research has made it clear that measurement allows us to know the organization better and this is a core topic for improving it. In this sense, in addition to a good conceptualization, it is necessary to develop tools to evaluate intangibles. This is one of the great challenges we face in the Personnel Management Service world.

Another important challenge in the implementation of purpose is the alignment of management systems with purpose. For example, it is necessary to study and propose solutions to enhance the development purpose through human resources policies, or to see which work systems make it easier to live purpose better. Here we still have a lot to do.

A third challenge, and this is the last one I will mention so as not to be too long, is everything that has to do with sustainability. purpose and sustainability are two concepts that are connected. There are companies that are very interested in being more sustainable and have reflected on and redefined their purpose , explicitly incorporating it as a sustainable contribution. In this way, the implementation of purpose will lead to the generation of a shared sense of sustainability. On the other hand, I believe that the unity of purpose will facilitate inter-company partnership , a core topic for industrial symbiosis, for example, and here too there is no small field of work to be done.

What is your opinion on whether corporate purpose is profitable?

This is a complicated topic and I believe that yes or no answers are not enough. On the one hand, there are several programs of study that show that purpose has a positive impact on talent loyalty, increased commitment to the organization, improved collective unity, productivity, and even corporate reputation. Could it be said that these variables lead to improved profitability? On the one hand, it seems reasonable to affirm that the more committed people and the more productive they are, the better the economic results will be. But, at the same time, we must be aware that there are other variables that have an impact, and not a small one, on economic results, for example, the pandemic. We have seen organizations with a high level of employee engagement that have drastically decreased their bottom line simply because people are confined and have drastically decreased their sales.

As for the direct relationship between purpose and profitability, the current reference letter study is the article that Claudine Gartemberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim published in Organization Science in 2019. After analyzing a sample of 500,000 workers from more than 400 companies, they found that companies whose strategy was aligned with purpose and whose middle management had internalized it did have better economic performance.

Now that you enter into the current topic of the pandemic, it has been seen that the evaluation of the companies by the employees, in many cases, has been positive. Do you consider that in this crisis that we are living is financial aid to a better internalization of the purpose of the organization?

I think the pandemic has made us reflect on what is important and readjust our priorities. I don't know how we will end up, but it is clear that the current status requires character, drive and determination, and this is where the need for meaning intensifies. purpose brings meaning, and therein lies its potential: it clarifies the direction we are pursuing, proposes reasons for why we do things, keeps us united ..... purpose makes the difficulty more bearable and at the same time makes us grow in the difficulty because we have an exciting and valuable goal to keep fighting for every day. I believe that the companies that have worked on purpose are noticing its fruits and those that have not are rethinking how to find a meaning that is the engine of change.

Now let's talk a bit about the relationship between purpose and corporate culture, how can purpose be deployed to guide corporate culture?

It all depends on how you define corporate culture. For me, purpose and culture are two terms that are closely related. Traditionally, organizational culture has been defined as the set of shared values that exist in the organization. For example, at the University of Navarra, we have a culture where we share values such as service and generosity, joy and magnanimity... However, values run the risk of remaining on the web page or being something that is alluded to at official events but lose prominence in day-to-day life. This is where the need to move from the declaration to the experience comes to the fore. Values have to be felt in day-to-day life and this is where I see that purpose and culture connect. Values manifest the organization's identity and purpose defines the contribution that the organization intends to make to society (logically, the contribution is made from identity). From my point of view, the purpose has to be more operational than identity-based. Therefore, for the purpose to be operationalized, it must be connected to the business model , it must be transmitted through communication, it must be distributed through leadership and it must be empowered through management systems. This is how we promote the generation of a culture of purpose