The Power of Purpose in Business | Ashley M. Grice | TED

In 2019,

I took a 9am flight from Atlanta to New York City.

I was the first person to board that day.

So as I death-gripped my phone to step over that little crack

that leads to the runway,

I caught a glimpse of the flight attendant.

Head in her hand, like this, eyes closed.

The moment she heard me, she looked up,

she put a smile on her face and she said, "Good morning."

"This is not your first flight of the day, is it?" I asked.

"No," she said,

"it had been a really early one."

I made some silly sleep joke and she laughed,

and I went to go sit in my seat.

She couldn't have been more than 25 years old.

During the flight, we exchanged pleasantries,

and at one point she came to offer me a snack,

and she asked me what I was going to New York to do.

I said that I was going to deliver a speech

and that honestly, I was cutting it kind of close.

"No time for lunch?" she asked.

“No time for lunch,” I said,

and I took a bag of almonds

and I tucked it into the pocket of my backpack.

After the flight landed,

I was on my way out of the plane, and she stopped me for a moment,

and she handed me a plastic bag.

It was about this big and it was weirdly heavy.

She said, "I know you didn't have a lot of time today, so I packed you this.

Good luck."

That was nice.

So as I'm walking through LaGuardia with my bag and my bag,

I peer inside

and there are about 30 packets of almonds inside that bag.

It was a bag of bags.

And when I was in the taxi on the way to the speech,

I found this little note tucked inside:

“Ms. Grice, thank you for coming on

and putting a smile on our faces with your sweet words.

You have been so kind,

and we are very lucky to have you as a loyal Delta customer.

Thank you.

I know you are gluten-free

so here are some almonds for the road!

Thank you for your kindness!

It goes a long way!

Sarah, Delta flight attendant."

Now reading this, my heart gave a little jolt.

My day job is to help companies excavate and execute their purpose.

And this little note on this little napkin was purpose in action,

specifically that airline’s purpose.

And I know because I had helped to articulate it over 15 years before.

In 2003, purpose was just one element

of a much larger strategic transformation that Delta Airlines undertook.

It was a company still reeling from the aftereffects of 9/11

and one looking for a North Star to guide them through

would eventually become Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

But in 2019,

for a flight attendant who was maybe in elementary school

at the time that purpose was articulated,

it was some almonds for a hungry customer.

It may be that Sarah never saw that purpose line we articulated,

but no matter, she didn't need to,

because purpose was alive and well at Delta.

It had become muscle memory.

It had become cultural norm.

Now let me be clear in what I'm talking about here,

I'm talking about embedding purpose.

I'm not talking about your mission,

which is what you do every day,

or your vision, which is where you are headed.

Both mission and vision are important corporate drivers,

but they play a different role in purpose.

And mission and vision will change with changes in leadership,

corporate contacts, competitive landscape, merger and acquisition.

They are important, but they are also temporal.

In my experience,

they often have a time horizon of, say, three to five years.

But purpose is your "why."

It is found at the intersection of who you are at your very best

and the role in the world that you are meant to play.

It comes from your ethos.

It is married to your aspiration,

and because it is ethotic, it is also timeless.

Now, there are plenty of data out there to say

that well-embedded purpose across organizations brings immense value.

Studies that will link well-embedded purpose

to elevated total shareholder return over 10 years,

increased employee engagement, retention,

even higher levels of productivity.

Because of all this data,

it is rare in my work that a CEO will come to me and say,

"Ashley, what is purpose" or "Why do I need to do it?"

Instead, what they will ask is "When I have my purpose,

how do I embed it across my organization so well

that it brings the most value,

that it becomes muscle memory?"

As I've been doing this work for almost 20 years at this point,

I have a ready answer.

First, I tell them it needs to be authentic.

Purpose that is rooted in your ethos,

distinctive to your brand,

meaningful to all of your stakeholders

and consistent with your values

is authentic.

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, the CEO of Optus,

a Sydney, Australia-based telecommunications company,

can speak to her company’s purpose --

powering optimism with options -- with conviction,

because it is authentic.

Optus is, by its very nature, a challenger brand,

and it is a brand synonymous with a brand platform of positivity

since options breed action

and optimism breeds hope.

How they pull their internal relations together

with their external reach-out to customers

is very consistent and incredibly authentic.

Now on the other end of the authenticity scale,

I once worked with a CEO

who really wanted purpose to be about environmental sustainability.

"That is great," I said,

"except for your company struggles to even recycle in your offices.

I know, I've been there."

While they admire the aspiration,

if we had come up with a purpose line

that was solely about environmental sustainability,

it would have been dead on arrival.

Specifically with employees.

Secondly, I tell CEOs that they must be critical

in excavating purpose from the inside out.

Purpose is uncomfortable.

It should be,

because you are introducing a tension between idealism and realism:

who you really want to be and who you are capable of being,

today and in the future,

based on competencies and ethos.

And purpose can be particularly discomforting

because even once you have it,

it takes a while to implement it.

In fact, you may set your purpose once

and spend your entire career living up to it.

Now, purpose is particularly uncomfortable for companies

who are on a forced evolution of change,

companies in industries like oil and gas, for example,

or for companies who maybe have bad behaviors they need to leave behind.

Finally, I tell CEOs that purpose must apply

to the whole of the organization.

Purpose is not a CEO vanity project.

Sure, it may help cement the legacy of the CEO

who is in charge at the time it's articulated,

but it's not about them,

it’s not about him or her.

It’s about the value the company brings.

It is about the role in the world that it’s meant to play.

Now purpose at the C-suite level should be a unifying construct

that brings together mission and vision

and influences your strategic agenda.

It should help CEOs think about how they redefine metrics for success,

what types of topics they may want to speak with analysts about,

or maybe most importantly,

how the board ought to hold them accountable as managers.

Purpose at the middle-management level

is about much needed clarity and authority.

The middle-management layer of any organization

is often the most difficult to motivate

because they have so many different stakeholders to please.

But by bringing clarity

with purpose-driven expectations and guardrails,

it allows middle managers to understand which battles to pick

and that the micro decisions they make on a daily basis

affect the company [as] a whole.

Finally, front-line employee purpose helps employees at that level ensure

that they are seen.

When purpose is excavated and executed top floor to shop floor,

those on the shop floor understand that their work matters

and how it adds up to the overall value for the company.

Well-embedded front-line purpose is the tenet behind that legendary story

of John F. Kennedy and the NASA janitor

back in 1962.

You know, the one where JFK supposedly asked the janitor,

"What do you do for NASA?"

And the janitor said,

"I'm putting a man on the moon."

In this story, the janitor understood that his role was to prepare the building

for the engineers who were going to come in and crank on the math.

But he also understood the importance of that role

to the overall vision and objectives of NASA.

That janitor understood his role in the universe,

so to speak.

So many iconic business stories begin on the back of a cocktail napkin.

But it wasn't just this napkin or even the nuts

that caused me pause that day.

It was the sentiment behind it.

It was the idea if you execute purpose across culture

and strategy and brand consistently for years,

it does become muscle memory.

It becomes a cultural norm.

And it is that norm that encourages an employee to make a gift,

which becomes a story

which then a very loyal customer tells to the world.

So since I am here, Sarah,

thank you for your kind words that day,

and for the almonds.

You helped make it a great day

because you were right,

I was hungry.

Thank you.

(Applause)