Is Purpose Working?

“Personal purpose and personal vision and organizational purpose are part of what gives daily meaning to the work you do daily.” This week, we meet two very interesting purpose practitioners who genuinely seem to embody in their work that sentiment—Tal Goldhamer, Partner and Chief Learning Officer – Americas, EY, and his colleague Jeff Stier, leader of EY Americas’ Purpose & Vision Realized practice. In one of the best conversations we’ve had on an already strong season, we delve into just how central this major leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services thinks purpose really is.

An intriguing new purpose concept: nesting

EY doesn’t think or expect all of its global roster of 300,000 to get all they need out of that topline directive to build a better working world. What’s more effective: working with team members to identify what their individual purpose is, then chaining that to the larger vision, work it calls ‘purpose nesting.’

Why ‘purpose’ can’t do all the work itself

We hear how EY puts a lot of effort into supporting the purpose concept with vision and striving for long-term value—or as we hear it formulated in the episode: “purpose alone is not a magic bullet and it never belongs in a conversation by itself; purpose + vision + long-term value is the power equation.”

L&D as the great Trojan horse

Like other organizations we’ve heard from across our purpose journey, EY also believes L&D has a major purpose contribution to make—and again, that that has to be more than just ‘training’ or ‘learning’ as abstract concepts, but as inspiration and a means to find connection with colleagues and the wider organizational purpose: “We view the role of L&D as having a role in helping people become better performers, colleagues, leaders, better people… helping people discover and activate their purpose and vision almost immediately makes them better in all of those categories.”

Purpose as a vector for inclusion and belonging

A perhaps surprising side effect of formal purpose education: not only does it make you happier in your job, it can also make you a better colleague. “When you discover your personal purpose, and you realize that the personal purpose and vision, and you realize that that combination is unique to you, something also happens: you realize that everyone else has a unique, personal purpose and vision and that the diversity of that uniqueness is required to make up a team.”

You may be aware of the ASU GSV Summit — an annual event that celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “pre-K to Gray” learning and talent landscape, attracting thousands of attendees from the L&D and investor worlds. The organization behind it is a specialist venture capitalist outfit called GSV Ventures, an early-stage fund that works with entrepreneurs in the fast-expanding $7 trillion learning and talent technology ecosystem. One of the key takeaways from this episode is that the folks at GSV don’t see any conflict at all between having a purpose and making money. Indeed, as we hear from Managing Partner, Deborah Quazzo, you must never confuse philanthropy with running an actual company; no matter how great a founder’s purpose is, if there’s no commercial discipline to actually build a company, the conversation never goes forward.

An investment strategy that embeds purpose

Education and L&D are hot areas, with COVID accelerating interest in digital learning. While GSV doesn’t label itself as an impact fund per se, the organization strongly believes that if investments don’t demonstrate impact, they won’t be financially successful. This belief is ingrained in the fund’s 5P framework for investment analysis — people, product, potential, predictability, and yes, purpose. Companies with purpose “have stronger cultures and are going to inherently have stronger outcomes,” says Deborah.

Supporting the frontline team member

Deborah expects purpose to have more and more impact across American business, driving better outcomes for a whole host of reasons, with generational change being a big factor. The proof point is how many big corporations, from Chipotle to Disney, are making efforts to better support their frontline workers through the current crisis.

Democratizing learning

This opens up a big opportunity (and responsibility) for corporate learning. Elevating learning in the corporate setting shows commitment, and also benefits all stakeholders, making L&D an important tool for corporate leaders, e.g. as a furlough benefit. All in all, conclude Chris and the RedThread team, learning is definitely contributing to cultures of purpose that are springing up everywhere.

Is Johnson & Johnson the definition of a company with a purpose? There’s a lot to back up this argument: in 1943, just before it became a publicly traded company, the values meant to guide all its decision-making were spelled out in its Credo. Famously, this statement challenges everyone in this $85bn company to put the needs and well-being of the people it serves first. This includes promises to employees like an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual, and managers respect their diversity and dignity and recognize their merit.

In this week’s episode, we unpack these ideas — as well as Johnson & Johnson’s ongoing claim that the Credo is both a moral compass and “a recipe for business success” — in a conversation with its Global Head of Talent Development, Clint Kofford. Our verdict: the ideas do seem to hold up … and much can be learned from J&J’s example.

Sound mind, sound body?

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a healthcare company, purpose has not just an ethical or process face at Johnson & Johnson, but also a physical one: the company believes unleashing employee “spiritual energy” has to happen via developing the body, too, via nutrition and performance support. As a result, Clint tells us, L&D is a lot more than a facility with a bunch of classrooms, but all about helping the individual in all aspects of their lives.

Toward wholly-personalized career pathways

A fascinating aspect of purpose at this 130-year-old company is how much stays the same and how much changes. A recent re-orientation means a new focus on purpose as a talent development factor, with Clint and his team starting a whole company-wide conversation about skillsets and an aim of wholly-personalized career planning.

Purpose: the great gift L&D’s been waiting for?

The takeaway for Dani, Stacia, and Chris from their conversation with Clint is that purpose really could be the glue that holds talent together — but that internal paradigms may need to shift to make that happen, especially around the status of non-full-time employees. They also conclude that purpose may, in fact, be what every learning professional has been dreaming of all these years: as a way to harness the truly unique talent of an organization to bring out its best.

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If you’re a company seeking information products that inform increasingly important business metrics like your impact on the environment, you might well go to the researchers at S&P Global. That’s not only because its 22,000 staff have the expertise; it’s also because they have an explicit purpose statement: S&P Global’s work needs to accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence essential for companies, governments and individuals to “make decisions with conviction.” In this episode, we find out what that looks like from the inside, with the company’s Global Head of Talent and Leadership, Rachel Fichter.

Growing skepticism of “talent” as a key HR term

S&P Global is one of a number of organizations that has started to de-emphasize the term ‘talent:’ internal conversations suggest it can be dehumanizing and elitist to categorize colleagues this way, stressing skills and knowledge over the person as a whole. We also learn how Fichter and her colleagues think increased use of data is really the only fair way to structure high-potential (HiPo) employee programs.

From HR to People

That’s not the only way HR is getting changed-up at this S&P Global. Across all functions,  new projects now adopt agile methodologies, with people coming together in teams for specific purposes. That means that lots of things are different—including a complete reimagining of the performance review process, ‘Thrive’ (COVID-inspired, but now looking permanent). Also out, too, is talk of HR at all—it’s now about People: the organization even has an identified Head of Culture.

Where training fits in a context of rapid HR evolution

Rachel explains how S&P has never had a centralized L&D function at her company. But now, a mix of decentralized and centralized work, as well as input from corporate communications, public affairs, and branding has led to a dialog across the whole organization. Its outcomes include new benefits like a six weeks global care leave, but also greater company commitment to training, such as a raise from $5,000 to $20,000 for tuition reimbursement a year, among other measures.

Dangers

S&P Global has consciously embraced purpose. But it knows this is a journey: Fichter acknowledges potential obstacles like complacency, and the danger of organizational drift. The answer, she suggests: keep tapping into people’s energy. Also important: being willing to experiment, and trying to scale purpose-driven change quickly.

“Learning used to be one small team’s responsibility,” she tells us. “But in the same way purpose is the whole organisation’s, we’re trying to make development accessible for everyone, not just a few any more.”

In 2014, Aaron Hurst’s book, The Purpose Economy, brought the idea of purpose front and center for business, launching a revolution of sorts in how we think about personal, professional, and organizational purpose. Hurst had previously founded the Taproot Foundation, a network he set up to connect social change organizations with business professionals willing to donate time and expertise to build capacity. Hurst is a key figure in the modern purpose story, so this episode’s conversation with Chris Pirie from Learning Futures Group and Stacia Garr from RedThread Research is the perfect place to start the season’s journey toward finding out if purpose really is working.

Why Hurst founded Taproot — then moved on

We first hear about the personal and family journey that is the basis for all Hurst’s work, including what he’s doing with his new peer coaching platform, Imperative. We then explore the frustrations that led him to move on from pro bono work: a recognition that people need to feel a purpose in what they do at work; too many are “driving blind” because they can’t get to one; and that purpose needs to be systematically integrated into the flow of work.

Purpose does not equal supporting social causes

Purpose is set to become what creates value for people as employees and consumers, as well as sparking loyalty to organizations and brands. It is also, we learn, not to be confused with merely supporting good causes — and actually much more about new insights into human psychology and deep needs we all have. (Think, more autonomy = more sense of purpose.)

What does HR need to do?

All these shifts have big implications for HR and talent management. There certainly is a need for new metrics on how to measure purpose’s success in the workplace (and Hurst has some key messages for leaders, especially not just tracking growth, but also relationships and impact — as he does for HR and what its opportunity is with purpose).

Will purpose survive the pandemic?

The conversation stress-tests some of Hurst’s ideas against COVID, the gig economy, and other realities: deciding what’s real and what’s not can be tricky right now. Then, we ask the key question of the episode: how does purpose specifically connect to workplace learning? This requires a shift in organizational mindsets away from command-and-control thinking and the idea of optimizing human “resources” towards helping people as human beings.

The purpose bottom-line for Learning & Development as a practice

L&D’s role here could be as a key part of the change management process, we decide —getting organizations into this new mindset. A core concept here: L&D can act as a builder and embracer of a coaching and learning culture that supports continuous employee growth and development. Conclusion: It’s time to retire talk of “hard” versus “soft” skills — and move to teaching human skills instead.