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It has become fashionable in recent years to talk of the need to adopt a purpose: something akin to a guiding ambition, which defines what an organization does and stands for. The speed with which the word “purpose” has been adopted speaks volumes about just how purposeless much work feels now. When 181 business leaders, representing 30 percent of the U.S. market’s capitalization, signed a statement asserting that the purpose of all companies was to “promote an economy that serves all Americans,” many applauded a broader and longer-term vision for business.4
Will purpose statements turn into another vague management fad? Most are meaningless, lathered on top of old values statements and mission statements without any substantive change in power structures or decision-making. What the debate around corporate purpose most clearly articulates is how far organizations struggle to define or articulate a meaningful role for themselves in the larger world that they inhabit, and on which they depend.
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Creating a Purpose Reflected in Our Culture Nadella spoke about the immense challenge he faced when he became CEO of Microsoft. “I needed to make explicit the core beliefs of our organization. In talking with CEOs of other companies, it became clear to me that some might be taking for granted the legacy of their organizations and what the current purpose of it is. I felt I needed that sense of purpose that has been what Microsoft has been built to be rekindled. I landed on a plan that a sense of purpose and culture are the two pillars that I needed to become much more explicit.”
Nadella went on to say, “Microsoft’s strategy has been to build technology so that others could build more technology, products and services that empower.” This has become the core purpose of the company, to be a platform, tools and solution provider that empowers people and organizations to achieve more. And to do so, we needed a culture that stood for a learning. Therefore, Nadella and the senior leadership team bet our transformation on the notion of growth mindset—to be learn-it-alls, not know-it-alls.
We believe there is a straight-line connection between the mission of the company and the culture we create. It is the same binding we want for personal purpose to the organization’s purpose. If we are achieving our mission, our culture will reflect it. Given that our purpose is to empower, our culture and our actions must reflect that.
Our simple definition of culture is that it is the reflection of what has occurred, what is occurring and what the organization strives to have occur.
In her article “10 Things We’ve Learned About Culture,”5 Hogan observed that one of the key lessons in our culture journey was to have a purpose-driven mission. She noted that:
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“The majority of employees today want work that gives them meaning and purpose—they want to know they’re making a difference. While your strategy will evolve, your culture and sense of purpose should be eternal, or at least long-lasting. Culture paired with a purpose-driven mission allows your employees to use your company platform to realize their own aspirations and passions.”
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The Digital Age, especially now during a global pandemic, has brought uncertainty that manifests differently in organizations, personal life and society. We have spent considerable time studying neuroscience research to bolster our understanding of human behavior, and how in organized structures people react from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Neuroscience shows that uncertainty triggers the activation of the limbic system in the brain that generates fight, flight, freeze and flock responses.1
A key communication objective has been to help our colleagues to understand what automatic responses to uncertainty are and provide tools to navigate these situations. When “triggered,” we coach our employees to pause, zoom out and make a choice. We also know that the brain views uncertainty as a greater threat than bad news. The simple act of taking a moment, creating space and perspective, and considering what options you have before choosing an action has been incredibly helpful to us. This has also been a key exercise to demonstrate and build awareness around a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. In turn, these activities create inclusion.
It hasn’t been easy—it is one thing to say a growth mindset is needed. Nadella himself noted, “What is harder is me being comfortable confronting my own fixed mindset every day.” Every employee has had their own journey confronting what applying a growth mindset means and feels like. This reality created another part of our culture journey—clarifying the role of the manager and setting clearer expectations. Through our management excellence framework to model, coach and care, we not only ask managers to demonstrate a growth mindset, but also to help employees to define and understand their purpose and find ways to live that purpose at Microsoft (see Figure 3).
Start with Defining Personal and Organizational Purpose There are many ways to define your purpose. It does not need to be perfect. It can change, evolve and mature over time. Just a few years ago we would have said, your purpose at work can be different than your life purpose. Today, we believe that if they are complimentary and congruent this intersection is a powerful way to live your life and accomplish your goals.
We have worked with Dr. Michael Gervais for many years to bring the concept of purpose and high-performance mindsets into a corporate environment. Gervais refers to your purpose as your personal philosophy that “serves as a compass to align your thoughts, words and actions. It expresses your basic beliefs and values. Your personal philosophy guides every decision you make, influences the friends you choose, the love you find, the purchases you make, jobs you inhabit, where you live in the world, the way you feel about yourself and the possibilities you hold for yourself.”6
Gervais has helped thousands begin to answer some of the deeper questions in life (see Figure 4): Who am I? What am I about? What is my purpose? He also gives three simple questions that we share with our employees to help them get started defining their purpose including a power question to help get started, “Who are people that you look up to and what do they stand for?” The end result is a brief, yet very personal, purpose statement. When undertaking an exercise like this, Nadella had a simple rule of thumb to consider when defining your purpose, “What is unique that only you can do? What is it you like to do that challenges you and allows you to be a learn-it-all?”
For defining our organization purpose, throughout our culture journey we collected a tremendous amount of input about what is working, what is not, and what would make us better. We have used focused groups, surveys, team discussions and created cabinets to gather input. Equally important was ensuring alignment at the senior leadership team level. The senior leadership team at Microsoft often uses a tool called debate-and-decide, which can be rigorous, lively and at times result in contentious discussions about what choices to make. In the end, an aligned and committed executive leadership team is critical to long-term success. Put another way, we don’t believe the CEO can just declare what the purpose of the organization is. Taking the time to co-create and debate creates clarity, generates energy and will deliver success in achieving the mission of the company.
Harvard Business Review published a study by Thomas W. Malnight, Ivy Buche and Charles Dhanaraj called “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy.” In it they explained how executives can develop a purpose at their organizations through retrospective or prospective action. It also describes the benefits they are quite likely to see once they do: a more unified organization, more-motivated stakeholders, broader impact and more profitable growth.7
Malnight, et al, shared some other important findings to consider: - Companies have long been building purpose into what they do, but usually it’s seen as an add-on—as a way to, say, give back to the community. The high-growth companies in the study, in contrast, had made purpose central to their strategies, using it to redefine playing fields and reshape value propositions.
- Leaders need to think hard about how to make purpose central to their strategy. The two best tactics for doing that are to transform the leadership agenda and to disseminate purpose throughout the organization.
- By putting purpose at the core of strategy, firms can realize three specific benefits: more unified organizations, more motivated stakeholders and a broader positive impact on society.
Making It Real and Measuring Success A critical step once your purpose is defined is to make it real and measure success. We use two simple change and measurement models in our culture transformation work at Microsoft. This framework served the critical function of focusing on the importance of using a stepwise approach to instilling understanding of our culture transformation (see Figure 5).
Our change model starts with creating meaning and understanding of the desired future state. Second, activate the shared vision of what we want to achieve and how we expect to get there. And third, learning real-time what is being done and understood in the system, and adjust actions and plans accordingly.
When measuring culture change, it is vital that you continually ask: What is the distance between the organization’s espoused purpose and the daily lived experience of employees, external staff, partners and customers working with you? Our measurement model aligns to awareness, adoption and advocacy as reported by employees.
Using our mission as an example, step one is to ensure each person is aware of our mission—its meaning both to the company and to them personally. Step two is to invite each person to adopt that mission into their day-to-day lives. How are you, personally, empowering people and organizations to achieve more? Step three, as an example, is to ask that each person explain the mission, their understanding of it and how they are making decisions and taking action to achieve it. This advocacy step is based on the belief that in a learning culture, those that can advocate by explaining and coaching others about the topic, exemplify the high form of engagement and achievement we seek.
We are measuring change with data using a whole system approach looking at the following parameters. Figure 6 shows the four-year trend of two questions as an illustration. We collect these responses through Microsoft Daily Pulse and annual focus groups. We provide this data regularly to CEO, CHRO, senior leadership team, and broadly to organization leaders.
While we are pleased with the progress over time, we are intensely focused on continuing the ascent we are on to achieve the culture and lived experience we seek. A key learning we have had is to not focus on the positive satisfaction only. We spend more time now on understanding what is behind the dissatisfaction responses, who those populations are and consult with them on how to improve. Purpose Is Foundational to the Future of Digital Organizations At Microsoft, we have observed a straight-line connection between our company’s mission and its culture. Additionally, we have found the straight-line connection between personal purpose and organizational purpose to be increasingly significant. Both become interconnected: employee purpose aligned to the organization’s purpose helps achieves our mission and is reflected in our culture.
As we continue to transform in the Digital Age, and since the future is one of technology being a ubiquitous component of organizational and personal life, we believe striving to achieve our purpose as an organization and as individuals will continue to be a worthy aim. We also do not believe we have cracked the code on how to transform. We share our story only in hope that it may be helpful to others as they create their own. Meanwhile, we continue to challenge ourselves, every day: How can we be better?
Joe Whittinghill is Corporate Vice President, Talent, Learning, and Insights at Microsoft. He can be reached at joewhit@microsoft.com. References
1 David Rock, email message to author, August 6, 2020.
4 Margaret Heffernan,
Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2020). |