 Welcome everybody to today's webinar on Purposeful Leadership and welcome back after the summer. So our last webinar in this leadership series was on Evolving Leadership on the 24th of June with Dr. Ludrake Aminesh Data and that is still available on the website. And today I'm being joined by Dr. Victoria Hearth who's an Associate Director here at CISL and most recently Assistant Professor at Plymouth. And also Ben Kellard who is our Director of Business Strategy. So welcome Ben and welcome Victoria who's joining us remotely. And welcome to all of you, we've had over 400 people sign up for this webinar and thank you for making the time and your busy schedules to be with us. We've already received questions from a number of you in advance which we will be addressing at the end of our initial presentation and you will see that there is also the functionality to have a conversation in the chat as we go along and also submit questions for us to ask at the end. So a couple of points just to cover off quickly before we get going in addition to that. Firstly recording of this webinar will be available afterwards so welcome to those of you who are joining us by listening to the recording. And secondly the next webinar in our leadership series is going to be on the 6th of November where we'll be looking at leadership development in the 21st century and we're very excited about that too. Alright and we'll be referencing a couple of recent reports from CISL during this webinar that are available on our website and those include rewiring leadership and also rewiring the economy. So with no further ado let's get started and in this session we're really going to be looking at a couple of things. So firstly we're going to be looking at what we mean by purposeful leadership and how to achieve it. Secondly we're really going to be unpacking the link between purpose and the definition of purpose leadership and also how purpose and leadership are inextricably linked with sustainability and sustainability leadership. So that's what we're going to be kicking off with in the first 25-30 minutes of the webinar and then it's very much over to you and your questions. So with no further ado Victoria is going to kick us off and Victoria want to start by asking you what we mean by purpose because this was something that we began to explore in the last webinar in June. Why is it so powerful for individuals and organisations and what does it mean for leadership? So firstly in good academic tradition Victoria can you kick us off by actually defining purpose for us? Okay yes absolutely. Before I do in good academic tradition I just want to make a couple of points. Firstly that's a really good question Zoe because unless we really and that's obviously very academic but unless we understand something and pin it down we can't hold it to account, we can't work out how to deliver it and we really also in this respect can't understand the leadership required. So it's really important to keep us on track if we really want to deliver purpose. And yeah so that's the first point to make and then moving on to the next slide just to outline some of the research that we've been doing on purpose. So yes here we go here are some of my lovely colleagues and we've been looking at the what, the why and the how of purpose in order to start to really pin down this idea of what is it, get the basics in place. Obviously lots of stuff being done and this is our contribution to it. Brilliant so thank you Victoria and as you said this piece of research comes actually at time where we're seeing lots and lots of real interest in purpose relationship to organisations. I picked up this copy of the Economist from the train station this morning I don't know why they were giving out an old one but this we've seen Financial Times we've seen a lot of articles so moving back to your particular piece of research what did you conclude in this piece of research? Well we interviewed, having interviewed a range of leading organisations in the area and also looking at range of other research. We concluded the definition you can see on the screen now. So the purpose is an organisation's meaningful and enduring reason to exist that aligns with long term financial performance, provides a clear context for daily decision making and unifies and motivates relevant stakeholders. So we felt that that sort of gave enough detail for people to really understand what we mean and what the essence of purpose is and I just want to pull out one word there particularly which is the word meaningful because by meaningful we mean about being aligned to the service of others and particularly the long term well-being of humanity. So meaning is at the heart of purpose and I will go into that in a little bit more detail in a minute. Brilliant okay so thank you for that fantastic definition there set us up. Now this feels quite different from the long held view and what I think we'd say is the old view of companies maximising profit for shareholders no longer being the core reason that an organisation will exist so this is a big change this shift towards purpose. Yeah it's a massive change at the very logic of an organisation and of economics really so we can't underestimate it. I mean what it means is that profitability still is key. So first thing to say we're not saying profits are bad or they shouldn't be you know they are absolutely core core to delivering purpose but it's not about profit maximisation profitability not profit maximisation. So what it means is that profits become an enabler of delivering your purpose and a really good marker of your success but not the point of your business. And that means also this is quite an important detail that whereas at the moment it's assumed that people will maximise their own well-being through the market and it's not the role of the businesses to sort of get involved with that just to sort of read what people are buying and then respond to that but actually purpose is about an organisation taking direct responsibility for delivering well-being and orientating their whole operations towards that goal. And we've seen Larry Fink the CEO the biggest investment management company BlackRock saying this recently in terms of that society is expecting that companies deliver directly on social issues and don't as would have in the past or currently leave that up to government. So it's a major shift but massive massive opportunity if we if we get this right and the Cambridge Impact Leadership Model as we know and for those that don't know puts purpose really at the centre of aligning a profitable business with a bright future for humanity. Fantastic so this leads me into this next slide and the next question which is the reasons for this shift towards profit and why is purpose important to businesses today? Yeah okay thank you Zoe yeah why are people making this shift such a big shift we've been doing it for a long time the other way why yeah absolutely well the reason that we found and here we summarise five of the reasons is that basically business is facing multiple pressures and one might say that most of those or a lot of those pressures are coming from having been overly focused on profit maximisation for a few people and so purpose comes along and therefore funnily enough seems to address many if not all of these really deep issues the business are facing and so yeah the five that you can see up there that we pull out in our report are firstly to maintain and increase legitimacy in business so that's really the social licence to operate you know why society lets a business exist in the first place to attract and motivate and retain talent to drive strong customer and stakeholder relationships to increase directly the employees psychological well-being and to increase business performance. Fantastic well those those are pretty powerful and I know that in addition to sort of academic research including yours there there's also as you referenced been a number of sort of practitioner reports which Yes yeah there are a number of reports that really pull out the sort of the detail of how purpose can positively affect business so we see some examples here two examples firstly on the left you can see Edelman's good purpose study perhaps the key piece of information here is what's circled at the bottom there which says when quality and price are equal social purpose ranks as the most important factor in selecting a brand and secondly on the right we have some stats from the global survey by LinkedIn and that showed a connection between purpose and financial revenue growth the key statistic here is 85% of purpose-led companies have experienced revenue growth whereas over the same period 42% of non-purpose-led companies experienced revenue reductions so the key takeaway here is that commercial success and serving society's long-term good can be highly compatible I've lost sound Zoe you're back Great all right well good to glad you can hear us back so I was just saying that those are really compelling date points Victoria and why is this now how can purpose be so powerful for business Well you know obviously purpose is a rich topic and we've got a short period of time but I'd just like to pick out I think the two underpinning pieces of the puzzle of purpose that really gives it its power so firstly when you look at how people talk about purpose one of the first ways so one of two ways the first way that people talk about it is that it's about generally doing good for all people particularly for stakeholders and not just shareholders so we saw what was coming out of the US business round table recently a couple of weeks ago echoing that and also echoing what Larry Fink said on purpose so in this way a lot of what some of these people are saying can sound a lot like what we know is stakeholder theory so the picture on the slide here is Ed Freeman the father of stakeholder theory and a really lovely man and he states here and he's also written a lot on purpose but we're just talking here about his stakeholder theory but the idea that business is about maximising profits for shareholders is outdated and doesn't work very well the task of executives is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders without resorting to trade-offs so here the responsibility of companies is to serve the good of stakeholders and by doing that they will ultimately benefit so this is also aligned with a long-term perspective of business value creation and also what is known as enlightened shareholder value but the real you know at the heart of why doing good is important is because what we know about humanity that as humans we're actually geared to serving the well-being of others so I just like to take a moment to just reflect on that and this links back to what I was saying about meaningfulness and meaning being at the heart of purpose so Victor Frankel drawing from ancient philosophy summarises this really well this core human motivation success like happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself and this is Victor Frankel's definition of meaning and for him a purposeful life is a meaningful life and these things are highly connected so we're hide-wide to want to have meaning we don't want to have meaningless lives it's totally cool to us so organisational purpose is about connecting a company with that motivation and this is what unlocks a lot of the power of purpose so again that's a massive shift for business because as we probably know businesses are generally based on the assumption that we're mostly driven by self-interest and money and that's quite hard-wired into business thinking so I'd further just just finally suggest on this point around the first point around business doing good is that global humanity I'd say probably has already an implicit shared purpose at the very largest level which is to achieve long-term well-being for all and if that isn't our shared project then what is so answers on a postcard so the question for leaders when thinking about defining their purpose is how can their organisation uniquely contribute to that in relation to other people in the marketplace and that's where organisation purpose, organisation purpose sits and what underpins it so that was the first key point of what gives purpose its power is fantastic so that's the profound first point in terms of doing good for others what's your second key point? Okay so the second way the purpose is talked about sometimes totally an abstract to anything around what I just talked about there is the purpose is about having a really clear goal that galvanises and energises Victoria we've lost your sound can people on the chat just let us know whether you actually can still hear Victoria or just sort out this momentary glitch it doesn't matter what kind of goal it is it doesn't have to be about doing good so in that way the mafia could be seen to be purpose driven however we in fact find that purpose is a unique combination of both these things so firstly it's a north star but all stakeholders no matter where they see where they sit in the constellation they can see this north star and they can understand it and they can make decisions in relation to it and at the same time purpose is about that deep motivation that human motivation to walk in the direction of that north star because it is deeply meaningful and motivational because it's about serving the good of others so for purpose to be a north star it's important to note that it has to be specific it can't just be too general so it's got to be about therefore about certain groups that you're serving whilst of course taking care of your stakeholders help you to achieve that purpose and that was a point that Professor Eccles made on the front page of the FT recently might have seen but of course purpose therefore is about both these things so purpose cannot just be about serving all stakeholders and it can't just be about any old ambition which is gone fantastic so thank you Victoria and thank you for mentioning that other recent piece that covered off purpose in the financial times that people on the webinar might have seen super so you've effectively unpacked the first piece in terms of purpose now the second piece in terms of connecting purpose with leadership and what purpose means leadership can you take us into that? Yeah absolutely and as I said purpose is a rich topic and it really transforms what we need to think about in terms of leadership a lot of that thinking has already been done but it's about bringing it together and being really clear and obviously this is a short webinar so I'm just going to outline three key areas and these align very much and build on what's in the Cambridge impact leadership model which you can see here so that bottom part the leadership we need the three areas there are guided by purpose cultivating the necessary thinking values and practice and being reflective and adaptive so I'm going to mention three areas around purpose and how they interact with those points so the first point I'm going to mention is about being brave bold and humble this is the sort of leadership that we're talking about and just to say that this and all these points really are about this bringing humanity back into business so that underpins a lot of this thinking and particularly this point here so for any company who's about to set out on a purpose journey or start a purpose driven business but particularly if you're transitioning it's a long difficult and uncharted road for change I mean any change is difficult this is massive and so we had a lot through our research people talking about the need for brave and vulnerable leadership so think about Marx and Spencers you walk into a shop now and you'll still see things that do not fit planning that are not very sustainable at all however we're okay with that and why because from the very beginning the leadership was very clear but M&S are not perfect that it would take many years to implement their purpose intent and that they would get lots of things wrong along that journey but that they were nonetheless 100% committed to that purpose intent because there was no plan B, there is no plan B and so this approach, this brave vulnerable leadership is reflected in the Cambridge Impact Leadership Model in their emphasis on being reflective and adaptive because you really have to be tuned in in order to be able to be brave and vulnerable and open out to your stakeholders rather than being closed and isolated so that's point number one point number two is about being clear that this is about leadership that is not heroic it's not about having all the answers it's about setting a frame and not making all the decisions and purpose really is a frame the very highest level is a clear, bold and motivating frame and therefore it actually one of its key benefits is that it allows you to take out lots of that micro decision making and strategy because you're not trying to stop people being self interested and you're not trying to dictate what they do you're trying to enable them to to achieve the purpose so basically leaders need to be really astute to how much guidance they need to give in relation to the purpose so they need enough so that that frame is clear enough and that people know how to interpret it and it is relatively consistently interpreted at that high level but if they give and they can do that through written statements, stories, proof of points but if they give too little then people don't really understand what the purpose is but if they give too much then they basically end up feeling like they have no ownership that they can't connect and really lead that purpose they're being led rather than being enabled to lead so again reflexivity and adaptability from the Cambridge leadership model is critical to this so yeah this is about leadership in context Okay, finally third point is to focus on the purpose really focus on the purpose and people's emotional connection with it because the answers are there if your purpose is truly meaningful and contributes to the well-being of others then leading the purpose is about making those connections between what people do in their work and achieving that purpose on behalf of others really reinforcing those connections and academics like Bartlett and Gauchel and this was actually back in the 90s a great article they wrote is that a leader's core role so it's especially senior leadership their core role is to help employees and stakeholders connect emotionally with the organizational purpose not to dictate strategy so as a leader the amount of time and energy you put into both yourself and others being able to think through how their work delivers on the organizational purpose and what that therefore means for the good of others the more that that can be done the stronger the purpose will come to life and be lived Fantastic, so thank you very much Victoria I think that that last section in particular how to lead the purpose was really powerful in showing the connection between purpose and leadership and just to note any of the references that are made in this webinar are at the back of the webinar so if you want to dig in some of the articles that Victoria mentioned Super, so we've heard from Victoria in terms of the connection between purpose and leadership and now I want to hand over for a few minutes to Ben Callard who's going to take us from purpose and leadership through to the relationship between purpose and sustainability so tell us about that Ben Well I guess last year I was really struck as I was hearing more and more about the purpose debate and looking into it and talking to great people like Victoria so there's huge potential with purpose but like a lot of the leaders I was working with was saying how do these fit together are they compatible if so how and so on and so as I was talking to purpose and sustainability experts over last year they have shared that same impression that there was unclear how this fits together so at the end of last year I basically got essentially a dream team of experts together from both the purpose side of the debate and the sustainability side of the debate to thrash this out and what we came up with you can see the great group there many of who seem very familiar we came up with this definition which is so a sustainable purpose is a meaningful, enduring reason for an organisation to exist that provides solutions to global challenges like the SDGs or benefit society but in a way that sustains the social and environmental systems we rely upon and so that's where we kind of got to so building on the great work of Victoria I was delighted that she was able to be part of that and you can see the definition and so I think what that's doing is it's delivering a sort of crucially a couple of other additional benefits to purpose in isolation which is I think helping businesses say well what do we given that the level of the change taking place in society is exponential so is our business, our business model and our purpose resilient and relevant in that future and that's where it's helping answer that question I think by bringing sustainability to bear with purpose so you're combining both that relevance and resilience into the future with that positive articulation of a business's contribution towards it and I think that's where the power of bringing these two ideas together and we just felt that the group that it was both inextricably linked purpose and sustainability Fantastic now where do the SDGs fit in all of this because obviously a lot of people when they talk about purposeful leadership they mentioned the SDGs Yeah we know from so as the research you can see here is showing that we know a lot of businesses are looking at the SDGs thinking what it means for them and that's not just here in Europe but across the world we're seeing that and I think that that provides a really powerful tool the SDGs to help think about what the business model needs to look like into the future and think about well what would that business look like that purpose if it were delivering the SDGs to help both understand whether if you like the big draw downs on natural or social assets are but also crucially the contribution they can make to well-being as Victoria describes as this research shows as well that this comes only just from last for this year which is that 34% of businesses and this is over a thousand global responses are mapping SDGs against their future strategy and 46% are in the process of integrating the SDGs into their broader strategy so it seems there's this alignment opportunity between potentially bringing purpose into that above and beyond just looking at the SDGs Deloitte did a piece of research a couple of years ago which found that they looked at the FTSE 350 so 350 biggest companies in the UK and found that only it was 13% were both having an explicit purpose that was linked to sustainable development in some way be that the sustainable development goal so already we know it's quite a minority at the moment but we also know a lot of companies are looking at this Great, okay so if a lot of companies are looking at this what does how do we make an organisational purpose fit for purpose what does that look like? Good question well I think one of the things that CICEL has already set out in the rewiring leadership of these characteristics that makes a fit for purpose and so the first is that relevance to the nature and scale of the challenges we're facing we sometimes call that evidence base so that as I was talking about you're really thinking about what does the future hold how does it, is it addressing those exponential changes that we're facing be that climate change, biodiversity loss and so on the other thing is that it's holistic so it has to look really across the whole business it's no good looking at just your media who you're buying or selling from but right across from where you're buying raw materials sourcing them right way through to how the product is used and disposed of it needs to be authentic coming back to what Victoria was saying that it really needs to be, you know people that need to be walking the talk in the business and I think particularly we've seen when businesses particularly big businesses have been profit focused are shifting to a more broader purpose everyone's watching and saying okay one of those moments of truth decisions where you're really evidencing that that authenticity is important and also I think that the purpose becomes prior to both the business model and strategy it forms and underpins both and that's something we see when when businesses are figuring out what their purpose is often there comes that point where they realise that their business model isn't resilient in the future and so we have to come back and say well what does that need to be adaptive to find a purpose which is relevant and resilient in that future so it can then inform strategy planning and so on and then finding that it's owned across the organisation so it's not just been an executive team or the board it's really seen as something owned across the organisation and yeah so I think an example of that might be so OLAB are an interesting business they're based out in Southeast Asia huge great agricultural business and their purpose is to reimagine global agriculture and food systems and they've underpinned that by saying they want to be regenerative and positive in key areas like communities agricultural techniques and the farmers and so they're bringing that idea that underpinning that purpose I think that's something that's struck me Fantastic and thank you for that because I was going to ask you to bring some examples to live of ones that you particularly like that you've seen, super so you've outlined five key characteristics there of how to have a purpose that is fit for purpose now on the flip side what are some of the pitfalls to avoid so we've got a lot of people on the webinar talking about how they integrate sustainable purposes in their organisation what are the watch outs So I think there's probably three I'd pull out as sort of quite typical if you like pitfalls I think the first is not engaging widely enough and as Victoria was saying as we're shifting from this idea that organisations are like big complex machines or cars with drivers who are the executive team you know pushing a decision through the organisation as we're shifting to more and make agile responsive organisations I think it means that you need to engage the culture and there's examples of where that's both bottom up top down, inside out, outside in and a combination of those work well a lot of organisations are going back to their original heritage I mean you know there's an example of that where their purpose of making sustainable living commonplace echoes Lord Lever's making cleanliness commonplace that underpins the original Victorian soap business So there's definitely that I think also diluting these powerful ideas of sustainability and purpose and diluting them or maybe not understanding them well enough to say how can they really inform that future direction of business and having a robust evidence based approach to thinking about the business's role in the future and I think then finally is it can often get very fragmented and diverged across an organisation so you might have a purpose directors or sustainability directors strategy teams who aren't talking to each other aren't aligned and so I think what this so I think connecting those together so it's really becomes one and the same where you might then as a result of a purpose have roles and responsibilities for functions but they're connected together so it's really underpinning decision making at all levels of the organisation Brilliant, okay so we've nearly come to the end of our talking and I'd like you to just also talk about really interesting though so you mentioned rewiring the economy and rewiring the economy that a recent report that we published also brings in elements of purpose, what are the related tasks there? So I think the four tasks for business that's within rewiring the economy are great ways of avoiding those pitfalls so we've already talked about the importance of aligning that purpose strategy and with sustainability I think one just thing to add there is that often I think that from working with businesses there's often that moment when you realise the current business model isn't fit for the future so there is often a point where you need to engage the exact team and the board on saying well what is a relevant purpose and business model, how do we need to be moving towards that setting evidence-based targets as part of that underpinning it like Olam have done setting evidence-based goals is really important and the last nine which is about embedding it in working practices now some working practices are more important than others depending on the business you're in so if you're a product manufacturer probably your new product development process is really important to make sure that those stage gates are reflecting the purpose in a meaningful way reward and recognition is really critical I think we're going to come on and talk a bit about that but getting into people's personal objectives and building on what Victoria was saying, making sure it's going to make sense of that and then finally playing that role of engaging externally we know that a lot of organisations are within systems where that's precious from capital markets or distribution channels, supply chains that are currently unsustainable and they need to play a role in shaping that to create where they can't fix these issues alone where that's deforestation human rights, playing that external pro-aggressive role and the sort of final thing I think to mention often people talk about trust and resilience as if all trust and reputation is something you can go after I think as Victoria was saying that I think it's also something that comes from doing other things it's a result of being transparent being consistent and actually delivering great products and services so trust and reputation I think is an outcome of doing these things it's not something you go after as a goal on its own Great, super, so lots and lots to consider there and I'm sure people will be visiting these great ideas so final your final owlish words for advice what would they be? So I guess just picking out a couple of other things I did write a piece of blog looking at 10 questions to consider when aligning purpose sustainability and strategy and I just want to draw out a few I guess is we've talked about the importance of engaging widely within the organisation there's a big multinational that use an online platform to engage with 70% of colleagues which is really powerful look at the importance of looking at the overall business the whole of the value chain and using evidence based science to inform what's important and what the goals are I think another thing is being clear about once you've got your purpose what are the key strategic priorities or plays over the next sort of 3 to 5 years where are the big investments like for example for vertically integrating the supply chain or going down a certification route so that can provide connections between functions so that say brands can draw on investments in the supply chain talks about creating space for innovation and interpretation by people in functions like in product development or marketing also building the capacity particularly of key populations are going to have to take the lead on this first and that might be taking it to market and developing the products in the first place and it's really important I think that's done you do embedded in the business before you know shouting too much about it some businesses have been caught out by talking very quickly about their purpose without really delivering the goods because I think it's doing these things getting into the organizational disciplines which is where the heavy lifting is and that's the bit where the performance is delivered that's where the benefits are accrued and that's also very hard and I think once you're doing all that stuff telling the story showing the metrics where you've got it but also using storytelling to show the progress you're making along the way Great, fantastic. I want a brilliant point to end on telling a compelling story always one of my personal favorites super so I am actually not going to cover off the key takeaways because I want to get onto the questions but I think in summary what we've done over the last 30 minutes is we've taken you from definitions of purpose connecting that to leadership and then finally with you Ben talking about the connection between purpose and sustainability so what I'd now like to do with no further due because we've got a lot of people on the call is get us into our questions now we did get a few questions in advance so thank you to people that submitted those so I'm going to kick off with a couple of those and so a first question Victoria which I'm going to come to you on if I may we had a question about how do you begin to identify purpose and meaning at an individual level so what's our starting point well yeah I would just refer back really to the point that I made earlier about that warm glow so I don't know if people are familiar with that sense of warm glow that you get when you open the door for someone or pick something up for someone and that's really the hard wiring that I talked about earlier in terms of humans wanting to serve others so if you're going to start to identify purpose and meaning for yourself or for others it's really starting to tune into that to begin with and that can be from those little things that you do and really starting to realise that it's then maybe thinking about some of those bigger issues that really drive meaning for you and that could be something you've had experience of like maybe you're really concerned about disabled people in their families because you've had a disabled person in your family or you really know about climate change and you're really concerned about it so focusing on those topics but the point is to really get beneath the topics to remember that this is about if you're human then being purpose driven is about helping everyone so getting out to that broader level if you possibly can but I think it's about taking that time I'd say the beginning steps are taking the time to really think about what purpose means for you and what that feeling is and what it does for your life noticing it where it's not sometimes even the parents for example like you're doing some work you might not realise that you're doing something meaningful so try and unpick how you might be doing that that's brilliant thank you yes and we all recognise that warm glow it's when everyone can hear the webinar right the way through great okay so Ben another question that we had which was a nice one which was what are some of your favourite purpose statements and why did they resonate with you and this is just you personally I asked you to consider some that you've found and we always want to give practical examples to people so I thought it was a good question so you've got a few that you could draw on yeah a few I mean I'd still like to see a lot more but I think there's a whole clutch of what I call values led businesses who've got some fantastic purposes like seventh generation which is around transforming the world into a healthy, sustainable and equitable place for the next seven generations and they make home care and personal care products they're a US based company they've actually been acquired by Unilever but also we're starting to see some of the big companies big multinationals shifting towards the same all purposes like Dono and DSM so DSM have a purpose which is creating brighter lives for all so they're interesting their roots are in the mining industry but they're now a science based company looking to deliver solutions to health nutrition, climate change resource scarcity, energy needs using their science so I think there's some interesting purposes there that have caught my eye lovely thank you for those examples and by all means if there's anyone on the webinar that want to throw in some examples that we can give to others for inspiration then please do Victoria we've had a question come in on the webinar just now and I believe this was an area that you covered in your research as well so I'd like to put this one to you for me it's around targets so a question that we've had is how do we find tangible concrete targets in the domain of purposeful leadership that can overlay traditional metrics and actually that aligns with a question that we also had in advance which was around examples that you might have a reward strategies that shift the focus from short term to longer term performance results so be interested to get your thoughts on those two related questions absolutely and like Ben said before its purpose is not some fluffy nice thing that sits there its got to be made tangible you need to have targets around it even if some of those targets are more difficult traditionally and yes I think that the question around say particularly targets that might interact with incentives is a really interesting question so in the research that we did one organisation was a large education provider that was more than one with a large education provider and they had centres that people would come in off the streets and then connect online and engage in some online learning and previous to that and for a long period of time the people who ran those centres were incentivised on how many people came through the door paid up and logged on to the system and I'm sure people will realise that's a common sort of way of incentivising people in an organisation they then went to a very profound purpose journey where they wanted to focus absolutely on the well being of those people that they serve of those learners so it was very much about how can we improve their lives and so that made them change their incentive structure for the people who worked in those centres to be around what was the learning that was gained by the people that came into the centres and that totally prevented everything transformed the productivity, the morale as well as of course delivering on the purpose and bringing better results to the learners so that's I think one example Brilliant, thank you and any other sort of comments on tangible concrete targets and how you overlay those on traditional metrics Oh sorry, well there's a lot of work being done in that area obviously we already have lots of progress around so there's a difference between organisational specific targets and I know some organisations might for example when they're going on a purpose journey they might have their traditional targets and then bring in almost in parallel purpose driven targets and then live with that tension and use that tension to work out where the issues in the organisation you know where that is so that's one approach and I'd say in the realm of saying what are the sort of targets that might be shared across organisations so we can start to benchmark performance in this area, I think that's a really emerging area at the moment and I think we should expect to see a lot coming out of that that draws on all of the great work around sustainability targets sustainable development goals, SDGs and brings that together so I think it's an emerging and interesting area Super and perhaps well definitely related to that actually another question that we've had come through the webinar is how it's related to the B Corp accreditation so obviously that's something that's emerged over recent years so Ben your thoughts on that question how effective do you think B Corp accreditation is in achieving the aspirations that we've talked about today? Yeah I think in a couple of ways so one of the significant things that B Corp does is it requires the purpose beyond profit to be part of the articles of the business which is a significant step and there's a lot of exploration in corporate governance code at the moment and there's even a movement that all listed companies should have a statement of purpose so that's the first thing that it enshrines it in law with B Corp. The second thing is that I think they've got fantastic criteria which help a business really think through robustly how it's adding value to society and beyond so it's a great framework for businesses to do that. I think where it's typically been adopted by smaller values led start-up businesses but it's definitely going increasingly mainstream so famously denown or credited to European business and it's looking elsewhere I know there are other big multinationals that are looking at the criteria to help them think through how they can be same in the future so I think it's definitely part of the movement, it's very powerful they've also done a really interesting piece of work at the moment helping organisations respond to the climate crisis and they have what they call a playbook that's further work they've been doing but I think it's one of a number of tools it's not the only way, there are other frameworks out there not least it's the same with development goals but also a future fit business framework there are other tools to help businesses think through how they can be resilient and relevant in the future. Yeah, super, great thank you for that so I want to move on to a question that actually is a common theme to come up, this idea how do you leave from wherever you are in the organisation and so the question that we specifically had was someone on the webinar just now how can the cogs in a bigger machine need more junior employees drive change in purpose so interesting your thoughts on that Yeah it's a really good question I think if you're in one of those big companies that are treated like a machine, run like a machine it's important to be realistic about that having said that I think what can really help is be really clear about where your boundaries of control and influence lie and often people can underestimate their boundary of influence in particular so of course there are lots of things you can be doing within say with your team, with your direct reports for example Traders Bank they have meetings at the beginning of every day to think about how are actions today going to activate purpose or if you haven't got a purpose you could still ask that question for example we use the Sustainable Development Goals and say how can we contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals for example and I think the other thing is using questions is really powerful of those around you both with peers, with senior managers and a lot of the businesses I work with one of the main reasons they're looking at this is to attract and motivate talent so and one of the really interesting insights from the Edelman recent research was that people actually trust their employer it has one of the highest ratings of trust so there's a really important relationship there so people shouldn't underestimate the influence they can have Brilliant, thank you for that and actually Victor I want to give you an opportunity to jump in so a slightly different question that we got in advance the webinar was do you have thoughts on how you can begin to identify purpose and meaning at an individual level Yeah quite similar I'd say my response that would be similar to what I mentioned just before so probably really trying to focus in on your personal what matters to you not just so that you can then change jobs and try and make your organization fit that but so that you can really try and understand how you are as a meaningful human being and what it feels like to produce meaning and then be able to think through the work that you do on a daily basis and the meaningful impacts that it's having that you might not have noticed yet and if you can think about those whilst you're doing that work you're going to be more motivated with what you're doing and you're going to be more attuned to your individual drive for purpose Great, thank you Now there's an expression that we've managed to avoid so far on this webinar but it's kind of snuck in through the questions which is Purpose Wash and one of the questions that we had was is there a risk that Purpose is the new Greenwash and actually another question that we had which is related and then I'll get Ben's thoughts on this first is is there a danger that some Purpose School leadership is a transient fashion so Ben, is this a fad and how do we avoid Purpose Wash, there you go I've said it so for those who aren't familiar with the idea in the same way that you had Greenwash was this idea that the company is making great environmental sustainability that comes without backing them up the same can be true of Purpose I think there's a huge risk of that and that's one of the reasons I think I'm really passionate about integrating Purpose with sustainability because I think it's one of two ways in which you avoid that risk so the first is by not diluting these concepts and thinking robustly about how the business can provide value to society within environmental limits into the future and if you're doing that and your products and services are delivering that, that's going to be credible. I think the second piece is around really ensuring that it's embedded well in the business, really integrating decisions at all levels and that as Victoria said is a long and deliberate journey for an organisation to go on and as long as you're not over claiming along the way then I think there's huge potential in the movement to create businesses that are generally delivering that sort of outcomes and we know they have to engage in the systems around them because they will come up against powerful external dynamics that might limit it so I think there's huge potential for the positives but there is also potential for getting this really wrong if we don't anchor it into business and sustainability Yeah absolutely and what I'd say is revisit this webinar because there is an awful lot of great advice and guidance in here to actually make sure that we're not getting into the new types of greenwash. Victoria just want to give you an opportunity to come in and comment if you want to, if not I'll go on to some other questions. Yeah just to underline I mean you know that's one of the reasons why we wanted to really pin down that definition because once we're clear what it is then organisations can be held to account for it and I think that's really critical but not everything about purpose will be able to be held to account to a figure on a spreadsheet and a percentage mark so it really is an art and it's going to require all stakeholders to hold organisations to account ultimately some of that will end up in legislation and regulation and we certainly need change there but that will never drive the deep culture change we need so it's really about everyone being part of saying no this is too precious as a concept so let's slip to be another trend because honestly if we don't grab purpose and implement it I can't see anything else on the horizon that is going to be able to transform business as we need to. There you go I think that's a mic drop just ten minutes early okay so just carrying on through the questions so we had a question with regard to whether the learnings and the guidance in this whether webinar only apply only to business or how they also apply to SMEs, NGOs, public sector so would welcome a comment from one or either of you on that I could kick off with something short only because this is something very very passionate because and one of the reasons we call the organisational purpose is because really this is a concept that spans all organisations I personally don't understand the difference between profit and not for profit when you look at it you have a system you know resources go in, business will happen and things go out whether your money comes from donors or from customers you know the system is the same so really this concept is the same a lot of it's borrowing and learning from maybe some of the social sectors beforehand but that's not to say that because you're in the social sector you're purpose driven and I think one of the main benefits of it coming into what would be traditionally the traditional for profit place is that there's cross learning that can be done around what do we really mean by this and how do we really deliver well being for the long term great fantastic and I absolutely agree with that I think to add the absolutely relevant that because NGOs, public sectors we know are under huge strain, huge changes they're facing into all the same challenges that businesses are but in a similar way that for business it will look different depending on how regulated it is how big it is, how dynamic the space is so what was happening in tech is very different to what's happening in the energy sector in a similar way so I think that absolutely it's relevant and you need to work but I think that whole idea of how are you again resilient and relevant in the future and then working back from that to say what contribution you're making is just as essential for whichever sector and of course we're also seeing blurring so actually we don't have these hard lines anymore and that's a good thing because we need to be collaborating across silos to be coming up with new solutions and this was just picking up that point I think we are at an unusual point in history where there is this astonishing alignment between the sectors actually between what government what NGOs and even businesses now I think we're probably at a more aligned period of history probably than we have done for some time yeah and civil society of course yeah yeah great okay so we've got a few minutes left and a nice big juicy one for you here Ben so is profitability still a marker of success yeah good question so this is obviously a key question a building on what Victoria said so Simon Sinek a great thing in this area talks about the analogy of fuel in a car he said profit is like fuel without it the car won't go anywhere but you don't get in the car to drive to the petrol station and I think that's a great analogy it's that our capital markets and external reporting on financial reporting is set up to look at purely financial value the reality is it's not telling us at the moment I think what other forms of value creation are going on there so it tells us a company's how much money it's made but it doesn't tell you how it made it or its ability to make into the future and I think it's investors like through the increasingly waking up to both the risks and increasing the opportunities of businesses thought through their resilience their value creation model into the future and particularly around this is tied into the whole area of understanding intangible assets but also understanding what natural and social assets you're both drawing on and at the moment that's not really appearing on balance sheets at all and so I think that yes it's important part of success but increasing what purpose helps us to do is unpack how that's leading to other forms of value creation that are needed to support the profit value creation as well. Brilliant. Tell us something that you think feel very passionately about. Victoria I'm going to hand over to you for the final question and I know that you've got something you want to add here which will just leave me a couple of minutes to wrap up and say what's coming next so Victoria just a question for you in terms that we had in advance was do we make a decision to become a purposeful leader or is there a maturity process that one goes through and if so please can I have it any thoughts on that Victoria just to sort of finish off the questions here and we can't hear you so you might still be on mute Victoria we're not we're not hearing you here but maybe some other people are sorry okay I lost sound I'm back again now. Yeah fantastic welcome back. Okay so the question could you just remind me? Sure yeah so sort of final point on this so we had a question do you make a decision to become a purposeful leader? Okay yeah interesting point yeah I think yes I would say you do because it is a it's a skill to be able to lead purposefully to know yourself well enough to be a purposeful leader and to lead others and to understand how you're operating in context so I think you do need to decide and and go on that journey absolutely and I think the point at which you decide that is probably a shift from when you're thinking about how do I optimize the meaning I feel in the work I do which I talked about earlier and how can I feel more meaningfully about my work to saying how can we actually optimize the outcomes for others so not just how can I connect with what I do for others but how can I expand that so that I can impact the well-being and that long-term well-being for all meta-frame what can I do how can I change my organization how can I change myself and how can I work with others to deliver that to the maximum in the period of time that I've got with the skills that I have and I think that is the real shifting point. Brilliant thank you well thank you I think that's a super point on which to end so I would firstly just like to flag that our next webinar in this series is on the 7th of October and we're looking at leadership development in the 21st century and then we're going to squeeze one more in before the end of the year so stay with us on this leadership webinar series but before we finish first of all I'd like to thank everyone that's on the webinar for being with us today we know that you're joining us from many parts of the world and many of you are not existing within our network before so welcome secondly I'd like to thank Ben, Ben Kellogg thank you very much for joining me and also Victoria Hearth thank you very much for joining me too this webinar has been recorded and will be available on our website along with all our webinars in the series