Our Best Of: Making Purpose Matter

Tech Sounds presents The Conscious Capitalists. Hello and welcome to The Conscious Capitalists, hosted by two of the co-founders of the Conscious Capitalism movement and co-authors of the Conscious Capitalism Field Guide from Harvard Business Press, Raj Susodia and Timothy Henry. Each week, this podcast covers current events in business news and Raj and Timothy's latest thinking on what it takes to build a conscious business. For more information and notes from the show, go to www.theconsciouscapitalists.com. And now, Raj and Timothy. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 12 of The Conscious Capitalists with myself, Timothy Henry, and my partner in arms, crime, and in momentum to make the world a better place, Raj Susodia. Hi, Raj. Hi, Timothy. Good to see you again. Yeah, it's hard to believe it's been 12 weeks that we've been doing this. Yeah. Wow. The dirty dozen we've got there. Well, this week, we have a wonderful opportunity to speak with someone who's been involved with the Conscious Capitalism movement from the beginning and who also played a very substantive role in supporting the book that you and I wrote called The Conscious Capitalism Field Guide. And that is somebody who, if you stopped and you said, what do Southwest Airlines. What do Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, Walmart, BMW, and the American Red Cross have in common? Raj, any guesses? Ah, I guess you need a lot of money for all of them. I don't know. To buy the stock? Well, they actually have our guest today, Haley Rushing, who has the wonderful title, my favorite title. I actually call her the queen of purpose, but her official title is the chief purposeologist Institute. And Haley is known, among other things, for being the person who co-wrote the book, It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For. And that was sort of one of the first and most important books, I think, written about the difference between a regular brand and a purpose-driven band and the importance of purpose. So without any further ado, here's our guest today, Haley Rushing. Hi, Haley. Hello, Timothy. Hello, Raj. I'm so happy that you're having me on your show. Y'all are two of my favorite people in the whole world, so I'm super happy to be here. Ah, it's great. And Raj, maybe you want to open up our session today? Yeah. So, of course, Haley is a dear friend to all of us and one of the most special people that we know and somebody who truly embodies an integrated life, I would say, somebody who is living her purpose and helping others to discover theirs. And, of course, it's always interesting. To hear about people's journeys. How did you end up in this line? How did you find your vocation? How did you discover your own purpose? Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how do we implement purpose in today's businesses? Well, it's interesting. I think of my personal purpose is to get to the heart of what matters most so life can be built in the service of it. And I think about that for myself and my own life. I'm always trying to explore. And reassess what is at the heart of what I care about most and am I living my life in a way that is advancing that or serving that. I try to do that with my girls and try to figure out, you know, what's at the heart of what matters most to them. And then how can I create the conditions and opportunities for them to live into that more? And I certainly have always tried to do that with my clients to think about if we talk to enough people in this organization, can we find the kind of common thread that unites us? Can we find the kind of common thread that unites everybody? So what is at the heart of this business? And then how do you start creating a business model and a culture that is 100% aligned with what matters to people in that organization? So that's my personal purpose. And I think I came to that because I spent probably the first decade or so or maybe two decades of my career really focusing on my strengths and what I was good at. And what I was really good at was looking at tons of different things. I was really good at looking at lots of data. My background is culturally anthropology. So I love, like, studying human behavior. I love research. I love understanding what motivates and drives people. So I was always really good at looking at lots of data and distilling it down to what's the most essential insight that's emerging from all of this data. I think early on in my career, I was rather agnostic in how that data then was applied in the world. And over time, I came to realize that my heart was really yearning. And I wanted to make sure I was using that strength for analysis and research to actually be of service in some way that was important to me and meaningful to me. And so when I actually just looked at the type of work that I was doing that I actually found personally meaningful, it started to just kind of become very evident that I really enjoyed working on behalf of organizations, usually with pretty visionary founders. I mean, Timothy, when you read the list of companies. That I've had the extraordinary good fortune to work for. I mean, Herb Keller, Sam Walton, John Mackey, all of these people taught me everything I know about purpose because they were just wired to build organizations that made a difference. And to the extent that I was able to use my skills in kind of getting inside their companies and making what had implicitly animated them from day one, like, how do we codify that? How do we make it explicit? How do we articulate it? As you go forward, you are destined to do it in even greater ways and not just kind of lucky to based on the founder's personal passion. But anyway, so that's a little bit. There was just an emerging sense of I want to use the skills that I have to help people build lives that are congruent with what matters. I love it. I love it. I love it. That's a great way of articulating that. And, you know, that'll be one of the themes today. You know, how do we make purpose matter in the organizations that we start to work with on these topics? And one of the things that hit me was last week in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about one of our favorite airlines. We've already mentioned Southwest Airlines getting aggressive and moving into Chicago O'Hare Airport and into Houston to challenge United and American in two of their core hubs. And it was noticed that, you know, wait a minute. This is a time when the travel industry and the airline industry is supposed to really be suffering. And yet here's Southwest Airlines going on the offensive of moving aggressively into these markets and making announcements that over the next two months, they're really going to go hard after American in Miami. And the article was interesting. It sort of reflected on, you know, isn't it interesting? Southwest Airlines hasn't laid anybody off. And between the two of them, American. United have laid off 32,000 people. That's right. Zero versus 32,000. And then they went on to explain, oh, it's the business model of Southwest Airlines. They don't have an international business. They've really focused domestically. And, oh, my goodness, they have a clean balance sheet. They didn't go into the recession with a huge deficit. So they've been able to finance themselves at a pretty low cost right now. As opposed to the other airlines, which paid in enormous amounts and dividends and stock buybacks over the last five years. So I thought it was just fascinating. They went to this business question and they left out what probably is really the core of what makes Southwest Airlines tick, which is the purpose and the culture they've built around that. So maybe talk a little bit about what your experience has been or was when you were working with Southwest Airlines and trying to make purpose. What does really matter in a holistic sense in the business? Well, it's definitely not an overstatement to say that Herb Kelleher and Colleen Barrett taught me everything that I know about purpose. So back in 1994 or 95, I started working on Southwest Airlines and I worked with them for 15 or 16 years consecutively. And it became, you know, for years, they were just focused on highlighting the aspects of the business model that made them successful. So to your point in the Wall Street Journal article, a lot of people focused on their completely different kind of business model, low fares, frequent flights, friendliest people, hands down. And at one point, Herb said to me, Haley, I think by now people know how we're different, even though they love to talk about that and write case studies. What I want to know is what difference do we make? Like, what's the difference that that difference in our business model makes in the lives of our customers? And so we started asking that question, a little difference in the question, but it made a huge difference. And what we heard from people and they started saying things like, well, because of Southwest, I have the freedom to go and see and do more than I thought possible. I've got the freedom to take trips I wouldn't have otherwise taken. I've got the freedom to grow my business on their route line. So we went back and said, Herb, you're not in the discount airline business. You're in the freedom business. And he's like, I knew I was noble. I just wasn't sure how. So it was that became one of our first. And again, we didn't we didn't tell them we think you should be in the freedom business. It was what we discussed. discovered was the inherent value and what they were delivering to people. So all we did was help bring language and articulate it in a way that all of a sudden you could hold it up as the North Star and navigate by it. And not only did it drive their advertising for a long time in terms of, ding, you are now free to move about the country. So now when you hear that, everybody says that. But as you've intimated, it's fundamental they have a business model that the low fares support that in a meaningful way. The frequency of the flights support that in a meaningful way. And then they worked very hard to think about how do we embed freedom in everything we do? So one of the first things that we did was we actually said, if we're in the freedom business, how do we actually give freedom to our own people and give them? So we did an employee value proposition that had freedom at its core. So people had seven employee freedoms. You were free to solve problems at work. You were free to grow your career along a certain career path. You were free. You were free to fly. You were free to bring your personality to work and express it in its full glory. So we turned it inside. We would develop products. So when it came time to develop a loyalty program, for example, we're like, how do we create a loyalty program that people are actually free to use? And so we have the fewest blackout dates in the industry. And you could ostensibly have 100% of a plane filled up with rapid rewards redemptions, which is, again, you can actually have the freedom to use your thing. So again, it becomes just a filter by which you look at every kind of assignment or initiative in front of you and say, how could we look at this and use it as a potential way to fulfill the promise of our purpose in some new and fresh way? So I think of the pandemic right now and the links that they're going to ensure safety protocols that give people a sense of, I think I can fly. I think it's going to be OK. And so they've, I mean, all things considered, they've fared much better than the other airlines. And I love, you know, Herb always said, too, I think the other thing that purpose does when it's super crystal clear is it liberates people from having to have an overly prescriptive plan because, you know, here's what we're in the business of. We're here to give people freedom. So we do that. I love one of my favorite quotes from Herb. He's like, yeah, we have a strategy. It's called doing things. But you can only you can only say that when everyone in your organization is clear on what it is that they're there to do. If you've got 50 different opinions about what it is there to do, you can only say that when everyone in your organization is clear on what it is that they're there to do. You're going to have chaos and complete disorder. But when everyone knows we are here to do this, to fulfill this purpose, to deliver this kind of value in the lives of the people we serve, then have at it. You know, handcuffs are off. Go for it. And if you trust your people to make the right decision, you can you can see enormous momentum. And and eventually it's Raj that we loved his title is Firms of Endearment that actually had a lot of the clients that Ray and Judy had attracted at GSCNM. He's become really beloved brands in people's lives because they matter and because they actually bring real, real significant value. Well, I love that point about significant value. I remember one of the stories that your partner in arms and co-author Roy Spence used to say was the whole peanut story and how Herb Kelleher reacted to whether we should have peanuts on our flights. Maybe you want to because I think that one, you know, people talk about, you know, it's not about being soft. It is about paying attention to the numbers. And I thought that illustrated it in a really interesting way. So could you relate that? Well, clarity of purpose also tells you what you're not going to do. So Southwest Airlines was famous for just giving people peanuts. And when they started doing long haul flights, Roy was like, Herb, people are going to pass out. You need to feed them. You need to give them a Snickers bar. Well, Herb in his kind of way kind of leaned back and was like, do you know how much a package of Snickers weighs versus a package of peanuts? And he had this whole calculation. And apparently the weight of carrying Snickers would actually impact fuel costs and whatnot and would raise their prices and throw off their scheme. He's like, we'll give them two bags of peanuts. They'll be fine. But it was just a clarity of like, what matters? How do we fulfill our purpose? This happened over and over. Like when JetBlue came online and they had televisions and their people were decked out in Kate Spade outfits. So there were a lot of things like, we need entertainment. We need to jazz up the dockers. And Herb's like, we're not in the entertainment business. We're in the freedom business. So we're going to keep things simple and we're going to make sure that we have a viable, sustainable business. I love in conscious leadership, John Mackey talks a lot about there's the ideal and there's the real, but you can't forsake the real in service of the ideal. You have to know what is possible. Like if you're going to, if you're going to be dedicated in a sincere way to the ideal realization of your purpose, there are some realities that you're going to have to face that make it possible. You have to, how do you do that in a practical way? Well, you don't put televisions in, you don't give people heavy, heavy Snickers. You don't deck people out in Kate Spade or whatever the case may be. Same thing with, you know, when the, when the market crashed in 2008 and everybody decided, and the travel industry sank and people started saying, how do we compensate for that lost revenue? We're going to charge for bags. And they consultants came into Southwest and told Gary Kelly at the time, if you start charging for bags, that's $300 million to the bottom line, instantly everybody's doing it. And he's like, well, if we do it again, that's going to trespass against people's ability to fly. So go find the 300 million somewhere else. And by staying true to our purpose, we actually ended up getting a billion dollars in new revenue from people who left their old carriers and came to Southwest airlines because they were so mad at the nickel that it was going on elsewhere. So again, it doesn't make decisions easier. Roy always says that, but it makes them clear about here's what we need to do to stay true to our purpose. And that has implications to your business. It's not just something you say, it's something you have to live and bring to life in every action that you, that you take in your company. You know, the other iconic company that you all work with is Walmart. And that to me is an iconic company. And I think Walton was alive. And I think he started working with the company when he was still there. They had a clear purpose. In many ways, they were a conscious company, right? Save people money so they can live better. I mean, that's a pretty noble purpose. Recognizing that they're located in these small towns where incomes are lower and yet people pay higher prices for most things. So they can't afford to, and yet they have a worse selection and higher prices. So he said, I want to save people money on essentials so they can live better. After he passed away, the company lost its soul a little bit. It lost sight of its purpose. And it became just the lowest prices every day, or always the lowest prices, right? It just became about price. So they became kind of a soulless cost-cutting machine. And they lost the purpose behind that as to why they were doing that. I think people were treated with respect when Sam was around. And afterwards, they became interchangeable parts. And it feels like for the last seven, eight years, Walmart has been kind of on a journey to get back to their sense of purpose, right? And reconnect with those ideas. What are your thoughts about that? Well, I think it's fascinating. I was actually happy. John Mackey and his Conscious Leadership, the chapter on purpose actually opens with a quote from Sam Walton talking about when you're clear on your passion, it changes everything. And you're absolutely right. Sam Walton was super passionate about saving people money so they could live better. Literally, it's what he said on his deathbed that he hopes his legacy was, is that he saved people a little bit of money and helped them to live a little bit better quality of life. I think where Walmart has had to evolve over the last couple of decades is in reconciling a very clear core purpose that made a difference in the life of consumers with the cost to the other stakeholders. So you can't have a purpose for one stakeholder, in this case, the customer, that is born on the backs of your suppliers, your associates, the environment, and all of those kinds of things. And what I've seen is a real intentional effort to say, how do we still stay true to saving people money so they can live better? A purpose that is an evergreen purpose that especially in the days and times we're living in, I think has never been more relevant. But how do we do that in a way where we're also paying our associates a living wage and giving them healthcare? Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You have the Costco's of the world and numerous retailers showing, and I think Walmart's done an enormous, made enormous progress on that front in the last, they enacted the livable wage. They've come a long way on healthcare. I think they probably still have a long way to go on their suppliers. How do you create win-win relationships with suppliers? But one place where they've done really interesting work, again, from the multi-stakeholder model is on environmental practices. And I think they're a great case study of how do you think about something like doing things in a way that is right for your company's purpose? So when Lee Scott really was one of the first leaders there to say, okay, if we're in the business of saving people money, then it would behoove us to eliminate costs that are unnecessary that also, by the way, happen to be good for the environment. So why does, for example, a bar of deodorant need to come in a box? Let's get rid of that. We don't need the box. That just now saved our customers two pennies on it, and we just stopped deforestation and landfill waste. Or how do we reduce the cost of our or make our fleet of truck fleet more fuel efficient or how do we get to zero waste in our stores because all of those measures lower costs that can then be passed on to lowering costs for customers so i like that versus it's not like walmart is ever going to be a tree hugger like like a approach environmentalism like and like a patagonia would but they have just as much of a vested stake in operating in a sustainable way because it is like the next frontier of how they lower costs um that serves their customers so i think they're a great example of and i think it's one evolution that i've seen in the realm of purpose overall as i think early on people were just looking at the customer and how do i create a compelling purpose that benefits the customer and they weren't necessarily thinking about all the other stakeholders and now that's all part of the equation sometimes you see the emergence of a purpose that is designed to as using your language raj to heal the suffering that exists in one of the stakeholder groups and that's why that company exists and so that's been interesting to see that kind of evolution in the purpose space but i do think this this more holistic look at the entire wake that a company leaves and being mindful of as we go about fulfilling a core purpose which does tend to still be more customer focused how do we do that in a way that honors every stakeholder so i think in the in the early decades walmart's ability to lower prices wasn't on the backs of employees and even suppliers so much they had tremendous innovation in the supply chain right that the way in which products were delivered from suppliers and the amount of inventory i think if i remember now it's been a while since i taught that stuff but the hundreds of billions of dollars of inventory was sitting around in the pipeline about 80 days worth of inventory typically right and it was costing an additional 20 billion dollars a year and they pioneered sort of the just in time you know direct docking it comes into the warehouse and goes directly to stores as stuff doesn't just sit around and of course they got rid of all of the constant promotional cycles and the incentives and so forth became everyday low prices and also steady prices so the inventory moved through in a steady way rather than in a lumpy way so i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good so all of those things led to tremendous efficiencies which then allowed them to pass it on so they did that in a win-win way and i think later on they kind of took the easy path what seemed to be the easy part let's squeeze our suppliers and let's squeeze our employees but it's great to see them refinding their way now and i think that's that's one of the heartening stories in business lately well i want to go to another article that was in the financial times this week and it had the wonderful title the baffling search for purpose in a purpose statement so now there's an interesting challenge and they were particularly speaking about a french defense and technology company known as tails and probably a lot of our north american readers don't know much about them but they're in businesses from making drone software to train tickets to building subway cars and those kinds of things and they came out with a um a seven word purpose statement that says building a future we can all trust and it immediately lit up a sort of linkedin storm or another set of tweeting storms and and one of the quotes that i thought was that was brilliant was this one that says um bingo they've pulled off a trifecta in the corporate twaddle stakes a group that makes everything from train tickets to drone software has spent hours of company time on a statement so devoid of meaning that it could have come from any number of untold other firms so i i thought that was a real interesting you know they've spent six months putting this together they unveil it and it lands with a massive thud and leads to this wonderful article in the financial times where they're the article on it so i was wondering really you know how do you put the purpose in purpose well it's it's interesting and i you see a lot of that i can't i can't tell you how many times we get a phone call after an experience like that where as kind of at the cleanup crew it's unfortunate to me what that feels like is people tried to write something that was more like like a like a communications tagline than a concise clear statement of purpose that actually guides behavior and decisions so when we're articulating a purpose because i'm sure there was you can't go through that kind of exercise do those many interviews and not find hopefully some there there that's worth um um distilling and articulating but when it's said and just kind of i always say go for clarity over cleverness and like when you're when it just sounds kind of like a like a generic tagliney thing that people don't know what they're doing and they don't know what they're doing and they don't know what do i do with that then it it's not helpful it's not useful and it actually can create a whole host of cynical reactions rather than you know meaningful direction and so um so that's my first reaction i mean we have some general guidelines of how do you write a good purpose statement of really avoiding anything that sounds like a generic mission statement and you know it when you see it like if it just sounds like a boring platitude just go ahead and get rid of it jettison it you don't have to have your purpose say how you're going to do it it doesn't need to be encumbered with the how that comes kind of later it should be really focused on the essential difference that you're trying to make in the world it should be as crystal clear i remember when we first wrote the purpose statement for walmart we i think i was trying to be very clever and have this nice alliteration and it was like to improve the quality of life by lowering the cost of living which is true but at the time lee scott's like i'm not sure my 2.4 million employees all are going to understand cost of living quality of life can we go back and like look at how sam talked about it and literally we found this clip uh from uh when he was receiving the um a presidential award and he said that's where he said i hope my legacy is i save people money and help them live a little bit better and i'm like okay save people money help them look better that's pretty good that's pretty clear it's a much like we say kind of so simple a five-year-old could understand a test you know um and then you do want to aim high like one of the things like you want it to be here's who we are when we're at our best or here is here's the desired impact that we hope to make when we're when we're truly um um aligned with our with with a with our best self so to speak i see a lot of companies that that try to they're like they second guess themselves or they overly critique themselves and because they're not doing that everywhere in all ways they don't necessarily want to say it so um i think even at whole foods it's kind of interesting because don mackie and again in the book he talks about how when he had safer way it was a pure play it was all about creating or selling things that nourished people's health and well-being but he realized he didn't have a viable business that way and he had to start selling beer and chocolate and meat and other things in order to have a viable real successful business now the ambition is always going to be to help contribute to the health and well-being of people and planet always going to be a high ambition and then there's also the reality of of okay well how do we do that in a way that still has a sustainable thriving business um so anyway you do want to aim high but it's it still should have clarity over cleverness it should be reflect your deepest kind of why one thing i will say that's kind of interesting though and i've because i i used to be super critical of other i just can't help myself i'd like look at people's purpose statements and i just like what is that you know because it's a it isn't it is art and science like you there's there's a you want to use data to make sure you are articulating the right thing but then there's an artistic element of how do we say this in a simple clear concise inspiring way but over the years i've come to appreciate that the statement is just it's just an indication of where you want to go you don't need to get too hung up on the statement if it's meaningful to the people inside the company so a great example of this is like mars pet care versus nestle pet so mars pet care had a purpose statement of um a better world for pets and nestle had one that was just better with pets or something like that it was pretty negligible difference in how they articulated their purpose and when i first saw a better world with pets better world for pets i thought okay well that's that's good it could lean into the tagline world but what they did with it is they said okay if we're going to actually create a better world for pets then we need to do a whole lot more than just sell dog food we also need to get into the veterinary services and health services to create a better world for pets we could do fitbit monitoring and create innovative like fitbits for our animals to actually track their health we could get involved with making cities more livable for pets and having more pet friendly cities we could have a venture like basically a business accelerator within our business to invest in innovative pet care products that actually create healthier happier pets i mean they took that purpose and they brought it to life in creating a whole new ecosystem of opportunity within the business and it's become the highest growth business unit within Mars is my understanding, one of the most profitable and one of the most highly engaged customer bases now with their business. If you compare that with Nestle Purina that just had a better with pets line, and they basically created a social media campaign that was nice. And it was about how people have better lives with their pets. It had zero impact on the business, on the strategy, on the innovation, on anything. It was just kind of a nice little way to describe about life with pets. So radically different execution. So the ultimate test of whether a purpose statement is good or not is whether it's meaningful to the people inside the organization and whether they're using it to drive their business. Another good example is, I don't, I'm probably not going to pronounce it right now, but there's a Finnish oil refining company called Nest, Nesty. And their purpose statement is, again, it's like creating responsible choices. And I think that's a really good example. And to me, that's kind of a yawner of a purpose statement. It doesn't necessarily, but I'm like, but what does it mean to them? Well, to them, it meant to make a responsible choice meant to radically overhaul their entire business to become now one of the top 10 most sustainable renewable energy companies in the world. They made billions of dollars of investments in new infrastructure. They moved their entire customer base to green renewable energy solutions. So responsible choices, they knew exactly what that meant. And they built a business accordingly. So that's, that's, to me, I try not to stand in judgment of a purpose statement until I actually lift up the lift up the hood and see, well, what's going on? Is it meaningful to them? Because that's what matters. I've actually done some work with Gemalto and Thales, the company that acquired Gemalto here. I think I know what they were trying to get at. And maybe they just need Haley's help to really make it come alive. Because they are in the technology business for the most part, right? The cutting edge of technology. So they are in a way building our future in multiple dimensions. And they're also in the business of cybersecurity and smart cards and all of those kinds of things. Because trust is a big issue when it comes to new technologies and AI and the surveillance state and all the rest of it and hackers and so forth, right? So they are really passionate about protecting us, right? And making sure that we can trust the new technologies that are coming. So it kind of gets at both sides of their overall business. But I agree that it could be expressed in a way that doesn't sound so vanilla. But there is substance behind that, I believe. Well, I love that. I think Haley's raised a number of really critical and important points. And one of the things is that your purpose has to be clear enough that you can use it to make good decisions for the business. And, you know, your discussion about Southwest Airlines and sort of saying, you know, when we're thinking about having to make a strategic decision, and we look at it through the lens of purpose, is it meaningful enough to give us guidance? One. And then two, is it significant enough to the management team that they're willing to put that kind of energy behind the purpose so that it is meaningful to them? They're willing to take on and base their credibility of the purpose on the fact that they use it. You know, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, then did the tree really fall? So if you create a purpose statement and it's never used inside the business to make decisions, then, you know, it's the tree falling in the forest and nobody knows. So I think that was a really important point that you raised for a couple of the examples you brought up, is when you look under the hood. You also touched a little bit on the, you know, making it matter. There's sort of that external part. Are we using it around our business model? Are we using it around our strategy? But I think there's also that part, isn't there, around the culture? And Haley, I was wondering if you would like to reflect on maybe a couple of good examples where people have made purpose matter inside to their organization in a way that's really, in your mind, been significant. Well, certainly you see the next generation wants to use their talents in the service of something they believe in. Like you see from the, just on the pure war for talent, having a clear purpose that is meaningful to people and that your business is built to support will attract and start, and your people inside your organization will gravitate to those kind of more purposeful projects. But I'll say real specifically, and I don't know if this is exactly at the heart of your question, but one of the things that we've started doing is developing purpose-inspired employee value propositions. So every company does employee value propositions of what are our benefits? What are our work-life balance? What are our compensation model? But when you're really a purpose-driven company, I am a believer that it's hard to ask people to champion something that they themselves are not the beneficiaries of. So how do you turn your purpose inwards and have a unique manifestation that's designed for your people? So one fun example is we did VF last year. They're one of the largest lifestyle apparel companies in the world. They own companies like North Face and Smartwool and Vans and great lifestyle apparel companies and I'm sorry, apparel brands. And so we said, okay, well, let's go inside our company. They were working on an EVP and it was like, what would it look like to have an active and sustainable life at work? And so when we went and asked people that question and they're like, well, an active and sustainable life at work is one where I have work-life balance and active and sustainable life at work is where I'm growing and thriving and I'm not stagnating. And what would that look like for career plans? It might also include immersion in the lifestyles that I am intended to advocate for. So if I work at Vans, then I should learn how to skate a half pipe. That should be part of my management training. Like how do you actually turn it inside and let your people have, it's funny. I remember I was talking to one guy who worked in one of the distribution centers and he's like, I'm glad we're helping other people in the world have active lifestyles, but I want my own active and my own active lifestyle and my own momentum in this company. And so how do we, how do we bring that to life for our people? And so I was like, I'm glad we're helping our own people. So that was really fun to basically take the things that you would normally do. And just, again, I know Raj likes acronyms. So we talk about living the purpose life and the life stands for the lens. I filter everything through like, how do I look at this through the lens of my purpose and have it take shape. It doesn't work for everything, but it sure works for a lot more than people are probably using it for. Well, I love that. I am a client of mine. The body shop came out with their new purpose last year, fighting for a fair share of people. And I was like, well, I'm going to do this. I'm going to more beautiful world. And one of the exercises we did with the executive team, as we were playing with that in terms of how you bring it to life was they came up with this idea that we'd all be joyful radicals in trying to fight for a fairer, more beautiful world. There was a funny exercise to have all the executives, give them some crayons and a blank piece of paper and say, okay, draw a picture of you as a joyful radical. What does that mean for you? It was fascinating and fun for them to sort of say, you know, as we bring this into the culture, what does it really mean to be a joyful radical? And then they added one other point, which was, and purposeful entrepreneurs. So if we're joyful radicals and purposeful entrepreneurs, then that will be the critical pieces that we're going to drive into our culture that how we're going to start to live our purpose. And it was just fun to see people draw with crayons what it meant to be a joyful radical. So Haley, I'm, I'm curious, what were some of the influences that you had thinkers or people that you met or books that you've read on this journey that, that really inspired you and impacted you and that our listeners might also benefit from? Well, is it too much of a kiss up to say you? I'm a huge, you know, I'm a huge fan of your work. I mean, it's funny, Raj, in the beginning of my career, I, again, I, I'm just blessed to have, you know, amazing purpose-driven entrepreneurs as my mentors. Like, I don't know how you could have a better mentor than Herb Keller and Colleen Barrett or the John Mackeys of the world, or just, I just had great leaders who I just, by good fortune of having worked at, in a capacity where I could be kind of in the trenches and working on their business with them. I just saw how they operated and that's how the, our book originally came about. But lately I feel like I've used this year in particular to see what the world of, of purpose could learn from the fields of psychology, mythology, spirituality. And so I've been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey. And so how could a leader actually use that framework to say, if our home base has been shareholder-based capitalism, how could we answer this call to adventure, to think more deeply about it? And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a really, really important thing. impact in the world and go on a journey to become a conscious capitalist, so to speak. And what does that look like? What lessons do I need to learn? What demons do I need to fight? What challenges might I endure that then I can come back and integrate those into my business? So I'm reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and how that hero's journey plays out as a metaphor model. Just to interrupt you for just one second. I think Joseph Campbell, in terms of purpose, he talked about, you follow your heartbreak and you follow your bliss. Most people will just say, follow your bliss, But he added, follow your heartbreak. What is it that you… look at and it really breaks your heart and somebody else can just walk right past it and then what is your bliss and somewhere in there is that's a hint you know you can triangulate from there what is your real purpose right and that that gets to suffering right reduce suffering elevate joy through whatever I love that and there's so there's so much suffering that exists in the world that it's not hard to look out at the look out within your own field of influence and say where is my what is what is what is it my responsibility and where do I have the will to step up and and make a positive impact there so I love the I love Joseph Campbell and what mythology can teach I also am a huge Viktor Frankl fan and I've taken this time during the pandemic to reread so many of his books I mean everybody knows his book man's search for meaning but he also has the unheard cry for meaning logo therapy he built a whole school of therapy his contention was so much of the anxiety and depression and suffering that exists today is a crisis of so much of the anxiety and depression and suffering that exists today he built a whole school of therapy to say let's actually counsel people on finding the meaning in their life and that will help eradicate so much of the existential void that people are feeling when you you know well anyway so I'm looking at his work which I think is fascinating and then I'm actually right now I'm sorry to interrupt again it's one of my favorite books probably in my top three and I've always felt that you could change the name of that book to the corporation search for meaning and all of the same lessons apply right human beings pursue happiness the way companies pursue profits and as he said happiness cannot be pursued it ensues it is the outcome of living a life of meaning and purpose and same thing with profit on the on the corporate side well you know Raj that raises an interesting question in a sense both of you come to this idea of meaning and Viktor Frankl and and Haley you know when people call you up and say I want you to work on our purpose they're going to be from a coming at it from a whole spectrum of different places some will understand the Viktor Frankl argument or discussion and and they'll know Joseph Campbell and they will have read some and some will be like who what and and yet here they are saying okay I want to work on this purpose yet they come with this broad spectrum that they they approach it with how do you begin that discussion with someone who's maybe not so far over on the Viktor Frankl side of things but maybe more on the hey I've heard purpose it's a good thing but I don't know it's a good thing we ought to have one yeah it's it's a really good question because for better or worse I think a lot of people are coming to purpose because of all of the the studies that have been done looking at it as a driver of performance and so if the only reason that you are considering um going on a purpose journey is because it appeals to you from a performance and profit perspective then paradoxically it won't work like your motivation matters you have to you have to be sincere in your desire to use your business to help create value in the world or and just in and so from wherever that might originate and from every leader I've worked with it's always a different backstory as to why they show up on and say sign me up I'm ready like I'm ready to go on this journey I never know it could be a crisis in their business that they're re-evaluating everything it could be a personal epiphany that they've had you think about Ray Anderson and like his personal epiphany that kind of came out of left field when he had an understanding of the resource resource I don't what do you call it like over demand of resources and what the fate of the planet might look like if he didn't step up and take responsibility for interfaces footprint and so like that's one example of somebody who had like a moment of deep deep epiphany of their impact in the world so Haley I love your your your comment about you know what many people today are calling purpose washing right you know the whole idea I need a purpose doesn't purpose drive performance and and I love your your insight that yeah of course if motivation matters and if you come at it with the wrong motive then you're probably going to end up in the wrong place at the end of the journey but on that spectrum there are some people who you know are a couple steps up from I just need a purpose because I've been told I need one or I need it because it drives performance but they're not quite you know at that other end of the spectrum so how do you handle someone who's sort of just starting to dip their toe in the in the purpose water well the first thing I'll say is you don't need everyone on board with the concept of purpose in order to start the journey you just need a nice little you need you need a critical mass of people who get it and believe in it and are sincere about pursuing it and knowing that hopefully over time over the course of the journey you will bring more people on board I actually think about there's a great parable uh Christian parable where Jesus talks about the sower sows the seed in the fields and there's four kinds of soil there's some seed that's going to be thrown on uh paved ground and it's going to be eaten up by the birds and those are the closed hearts and closed minds and the people that are so entrenched in the status quo way of operating they can't even hear it then some is going to be thrown on rocky ground where it takes root and there's a quick flurry of activity where it's like oh this is exciting it reminds me of the blue bonnets in Texas in the spring where like they come up but then the second that the sun comes in or a storm comes in it's over like they don't know what to do and they're they don't have good enough soil to stay there so you actually see a lot of that happening where people get excited about the concept of purpose and it takes root and they have big launch events and they do big anthems but they don't have the discipline to actually weave it and sew it down into the roots of the business and the strategy and other things so it just kind of gets washed away and some of some of the seed gets sown on like a rocky ground and the rocky ground is like what are all the other competing agendas and competing interests and the we and thorns that exist. And the weeds and thorns to me are old ways of doing business, old myths about how business has is a zero sum game, the old myth that you can only you have to serve just shareholders. So these are all the weeds that are going to pop up and like choke out these new concepts in your business, right? And then some of the seed is going to fall on fertile ground, good soil, good open hearts, open minds, that understand it's got to be watered, it's got to be nourished, it's got to be tended to you got to weed out the weeds that are invariably going to come up, you know, and so and if you've got good enough soil with in enough of the hearts and minds of your people for it to start to take off, and you're weeding out the weeds, and you're plucking out the rocks, over time, you're gonna have a harvest like that's, that's my thing. So you can't get too worried about well, we got some weeds over there. So let's just scrap the whole thing. Like any good farmer, gardener knows, you just gotta know. It's gonna work. Yeah, no, I love that. I think that's a great way of describing it. And I've also loved in the, you know, that, you know, in many of the discussions we've had, the way you sort of simplify the making it matter discussion sometimes. And I'll never forget at one point, we were in some discussion. And I said, but you know, how do you align it with the strategy? And your answer was, well, if you were living your purpose, what would you do differently? And it was like, well, immediately people and sort of say, oh, if we were really living our purpose, we would. And I thought that was great. What are, can you give us an example or two of where you've seen a company sort of really move the needle on that when you've moved from here's our purpose, to if we were living our purpose, how would we be different? What are one or two examples that come to mind for you of businesses that, that really moved the needle on this? Yeah. Well, I will say there's no, I've never worked on a client that had a purpose that they were living 100%, a hundred percent aligned. We're done. You know, it probably is an indication that your purpose isn't big enough or bold enough. If you're a hundred percent on, you know, got it. So there's always, I say that because there's always going to be a gap between the ambition and the reality. And that doesn't mean it's not a legitimate ambition. It just shows you where you got work to do. So even, even, you know, I've never worked on a client that had a purpose that they were living 100% aligned. We're done. You know, it probably is an indication that your purpose isn't big enough or bold enough if you're a hundred percent on, you know, got it. And even an exemplar like Whole Foods, when they were after, they've always had, they've always had clarity of purpose, trying to create a world where people, communities in the planet can flourish. And so it was a number of years ago that somebody pointed out that the animals in the system were not flourishing. Like there was actually a huge amount of suffering that existed for the animal stakeholder in the industrial food system. And so John Mackey, to his credit, investigated everything, learned everything he could about animal welfare, and then set a course to actually create animal compassion and animal welfare standards that not only served as the standards for Whole Foods, but then were disseminated industry-wide because in order to actually make an impact on that point, you needed them to be systemic, not just specific to Whole Foods. And so that's, to me, I love those kinds of examples of companies being brutally honest about, okay, here's where we are living in. There's obviously got to be, you know, a lot of evidence that we're capable of doing it, or we wouldn't have had it emerge as a purpose. But let's be honest. And usually in the company, people know where those gaps are. And so to say, okay, now let's roll up our sleeves and get to work on closing those gaps. And every company is going to be different. I mean, there's countless examples of where those kinds of gaps exist. And it's, it's fun to, to me, that's where the work really begins. Haley, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciated it. Love to be talking to the queen of purpose and get her insights on this. Thank you. Super pleasure to be here. You are, you are the modern day, Victor Frankel in the world of business. Thank you for that. And thank you for being with us today. And we look forward to seeing all of our listeners next week. Thank you all. And if you are listening to this, please feel free to press subscribe on whatever channel that you're watching it for or listening to it on your podcast. And we'll see you again next week. Thanks so much. See you Raj. Okay. Bye guys. Bye Haley. Bye Raj. Bye Timothy. you