The Pomp Podcast - #1105 Ranjay Gulati On The Secret To Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Ranjay Gulati is a Professor at Harvard Business School, author of the book "Deep Purpose" and host of the podcast "Deep Purpose". In this conversation, we discuss everything around finding purpose for your business. A company's shared purpose leads to creating resilient organizations, recruiting the best talent, and amassing larger corporate profits. ======================= Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U.S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: <Your Name.Blockchain> Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit https://compassmining.io/ to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= If you’re trying to grow and preserve your crypto-wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem.Alto IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard earned money. So, ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto CryptoIRA to invest in crypto tax-free. Just go to https://altoira.com/pomp ======================= Amberdata provides the critical data infrastructure enabling financial institutions to participate in the digital asset class. We deliver comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance. Download our Digital Asset Data Guide at https://www.amberdata.io/pomp =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ranjay Gulati is a professor at Harvard Business School. He's the author of a book called Deep Purpose and also a host of the podcast Deep Purpose as well. In this conversation, we unpack a lot of his research, including what makes resilient organizations, how leadership teams can recruit the best talent, why purpose is real and leads to corporate profits, and how he was converted from a skeptic

to a true believer in this idea of purpose and its importance in the corporate environment. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ranjay and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. After you get done listening to this episode, let me know on Twitter, what'd you like? What did you not like? What did you agree with?

And what did you disagree with? That conversation is really important for me. It's how I learn. And I hope that's how you learn as well. All right, let's get in this episode with Ranje. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast

are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

All right, guys. Bang, bang. I'm very excited about this conversation. I thought a great place to start is this idea of purpose. When most people hear that, you'll get some portion of the population is going to cringe up. They're going to say, oh, purpose, that's not for me. That's not my thing. I want to talk about profit. So I want to talk about something else. Talk a little bit about your evaluation of the state of purpose in kind of the public discourse before you actually began to interview people, write the book, and eventually start the podcast? So, look, honestly, I was a purpose skeptic. If you told me five years ago, Gulati, I have a crystal ball, and you, my friend, are going to write a book about purpose,

I would have said, you're crazy. Not a chance. Zero. Not a chance. And yet, here I am. uh and i think it's important to understand how i came to that realization you know because for me also i was confused people said purpose on the one side people were saying a purpose of business is shareholder value and the other was saying no purpose is anything but shareholder value some said is left wing some said is right wing it was just confusion around purposes attacks on business first of all purpose is a very individual idea right it starts at the individual level. And there's thousands of definitions for thousands of people have contemplated the purpose of human life. And I think one of the best definitions I liked was William Damon, a Stanford

psychologist, who says, purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self. So meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self. And I think it's important to understand that, that all of us deep down inside, some of us haven't thought about it, we're really too busy saying, I don't have time for this, and I'm going to wait for a while till I contemplate my purpose in life. But I think it's never too early to think about your purpose. And it's about really saying, what do I want to do that gives me meaning? And I believe all of us deep down somewhere want to do something that is consequential beyond the self. Whatever that

self, beyond the self might be. It could be your family, it could be your religious community, could be your church, could be your neighborhood, could be anything. And that's what gives us purpose. And I came to realize that purpose can really unlock human beings, but purpose can also unlock organizations. And that, to me, was the starting point into my journey, that purpose is good for us. It's good for us individually.

It's good for us in organizations. What's fascinating about this is, as I'm hearing you kind of describe your journey and some of the things that you began to understand, everything from military leadership schools to sports teams to even startups, right, where there is some big challenge that is laid out in front of them. A lot of times people will talk about the idea of leadership being the ability to bring together a group of strangers and get them to accomplish something that they might not have otherwise accomplished. And really, it sounds like your description of purpose and my understanding and prior descriptions of leadership, they go hand in hand, right? The

good leader lays out a strong purpose and then the group, the team, the company, whatever rallies around whatever that purpose is. And that's kind of what creates a special situation. Is that a fair way to kind of categorize this? That's a great way to categorize it. I think that it's interesting. One of the coaches I interviewed was Pete Carroll from the Seattle Seahawks. And Pete said the following to me. He said, there's magic when organizations can inspire people to align their own personal passion, self-understanding, and desire for growth with a common organizational ambition. It's about getting people to connect their own personal ambition and beliefs with some collective organizational beliefs. If you look at the Marine Corps, another organization I've been looking at, Semper Fidelis, I buy into some collective vision of who we are. And I think it's important to understand where this comes from and why it energizes employees.

I'm going to talk about customers and communities in a little bit. But why does it energize employees? I think it's important to understand that, you know, if you look at human motivation, how do we show up to work? The basic level starting point is work as a job, right? I do it for money. It's a transaction. You go a little higher than that, and then there was this work of what was called job satisfaction. I do work where I feel satisfied, when I feel I'm being rewarded fairly, it's safe, no excess bureaucracy, I get the tools and resources I need, and there's pay for performance, reinforcement.

If I work hard, I get paid well, right? So that's job satisfaction. Then along comes some researchers in the 70s who say, no, no, no, there's a higher level at which you can get people to show up. That's engagement. And engagement people are when they feel part of a team. They have some autonomy. They get to exercise some discretion. It's a positive culture.

And suddenly what became important was job design to make work interesting and interesting so that people feel engaged. And we started measuring engagement. There's a third level people started talking about in the last five, seven years, which is inspired, inspiration. I get meaning out of what I do. What I do, I believe, makes a difference in some way in the world around me.

And you can see that in startups, as you said earlier. You can see that in large companies, as you can see earlier. And by this way, when I feel that what I do makes a difference, I show up to work inspired. And by the way, inspired workers are more than twice as productive as satisfied workers. So how do I create a context in which people are inspired to show up to work? It's a situation where startups, I think, are such a great example because by definition, a startup is nothing that is trying to become something and the odds are stacked against it.

And usually it's not just can we figure out what's in front of us, but it's also we have to compete with somebody who has more resources, more time in the market, kind of all these seeming advantages. Now, for those people who spend a lot of time in the startup world, they see some of those things maybe are disadvantages and they try to use them against them. But you've looked at sports, you've looked at large companies, you've looked at founders, investors, you've talked to so many different people around this. Are there a couple of key components to every mission or purpose that you see being repeated over and over again across these organizations that really kind of resonates and allows for leaders to say to their employees, their team, or their colleagues, hey, this is where we're going, and gets them excited and inspired, like you're mentioning? It's a great question. The first thing I want to share with you, a precursor to this book that I wrote called Deep Purpose was an article I wrote in Harvard Business Review called The Soul of a Startup. And I went and interviewed a whole bunch of startup CEOs.

I have to admit, I had a biased sample. I looked at the ones that actually make it, not the ones that fail. And, you know, what I found was interesting was everyone thinks a startup is based on a great idea, a big idea. And yes, almost all of them, especially when they're successful, have a big idea. But I found that behind the idea was a grand idea. We want to change the way this thing works. We want to change the market.

Exactly what you were saying earlier. It's not the ambition is defined not just by an idea. I have a new widget that nobody has how to make. No, I'm going to change the way this entire market operates and the way customers buy, sell, transact. You know, that's Airbnb. B. That's Uber. I'm going to change the marketplace completely. So I came to realize that there was that piece of it, that the successful startups actually understand this. Now let's get to the definition of purpose. I think that was a great question you asked. So let me try to articulate

that for you. I want to first clarify, purpose is not a purpose statement. It's not like some mission statement only. Oh yeah, it's the mission statement. Purpose is bigger than a mission statement because it's the the mission is just a simple a set of words to capture the intent behind those the purpose itself it's just a verbalization what purpose is is kind of understanding for yourself it's a unifying idea of the problems you want to solve in the world profitably solved i should clarify so you're asking yourself what value are we going to create Who are we going to create it for? Customers, employees, shareholders, community, whatever.

And how are you going to do it? Now, if you think about this, behind this simple idea, it's about business, folks. Purpose is not about, I want to save the planet only and I don't care about shareholders. Purpose is about making a viable, successful business in the long term. So purpose has ambition, goals, but purpose also has in it duties, responsibilities, that we are a responsible entity. We care about our customers.

We really care about our employees. We really care about the communities where we operate because as a long-term business, any business that is trying to be successful, not just in the short term, but also long-term, cares about these different stakeholders. So we're not here to save the planet.

We're here to build a profitable venture But as a long-term venture, we have to think about all the different stakeholders that impact our long-term success. What you're really hitting on here, and I think it's so unique, I've talked to a lot of founders, and these founders are sometimes early stage. Some of them are series C, D, E, and kind of getting ready for public markets. But in those conversations, the thing that I believe most of them have learned, and I'm paraphrasing a lot of different conversations into kind of one key takeaway. is that if you don't have a crystal clear purpose or mission that you can clearly articulate to your employees, it creates a scenario where there's a vacuum of purpose. And then what happens is some of the employees want this to be the purpose, or they believe this is why they're here,

or other employees believe this or whatever. And so I've seen them all do it different ways, but what it appears they all have done is as there's been noise about a bunch of different purposes. The really good ones have said, no, we have one singular crystal clear purpose and it is X and each company is different for why they want to be there or whatever. And what it's done is it's almost served as a great recruiting mechanism because people who care about X, they show up and say, I want to work at your company. It serves as a great filtering mechanism because it seems like the people who aren't interested in X and are actually interested in Y or Z, they go find a company that's, you know, doing that. But then also it goes back to this inspiration that you

mentioned earlier, is now it's very easy for people to sit there and say, hey, if you're here at this company, you must be into X. I'm into X. Let's go all work towards this together. And so it's not just like purpose as like a kind of a flimsy thing that kind of floats in the air. To your point, it's like, no, it's a super crystal clear thing that like we really, really mean. And it almost makes the organization better because it gets better people. It weeds out the people who aren't there for the purpose. And then everyone's inspired to kind of work towards And so I see this in practice, and it sounds like that's exactly what you're laying out here, is that you have data from these conversations and interviews that's highlighting the organizations are better once you have that crystal clear purpose. So extremely well said, and your intuition is spot on.

So for the book, I interviewed companies, small companies that used to be small, at least Etsy, a company called Livongo that was acquired by Teladoc after it went public. I looked at Gotham Green, which makes, you know, salads and herbs that are sold in Whole Foods and grocery stores. And I but I'll tell you what it really came through to me was after the book, I was like, OK, now what? And then I said, OK, I've got to go find some other leaders that are really living some of the ideas that I try to articulate in the book. And I just finished a podcast. And one of the people I interviewed was David Velez, the founder of NewBank. It's the largest digital bank in the world, starting out of Latin America. Another one, and he had a very clear vision. I want to simplify banking, and I want to make banking more inclusive for all.

Now, that was the purpose of the business, right? And by the way, we're not trying to charity, and other things are woven into that. But that became kind of the marching, if you will, the guiding light, the North Star. Another one was, looked at Kareem, which is owned by Uber now, but it's the largest ride-sharing company in all of the Middle East and North Africa and in the whole region. And they started with a very simple idea that they wanted to make rides accessible to people who otherwise can't get access. In socially conservative societies where women were not allowed to drive with a stranger how are we going to make that possible how are we going to because without a driver

they can't they get immobilized they can't they're not allowed to drive themselves and they aren't allowed to drive with a stranger so how are we going to unlock possibility for them and then how are we going to make life better for the drivers who they call captains so that was kareem's story that you know we are here to unlock value in a profound way for people i looked at mom's world, Mona Attaya. And so these are all conversations I've had in this series of podcasts coming out where Mona talks about how she started Mumsworld, which is an online platform for mothers, young mothers in the Middle East. So, you know, you start to see founders in different parts of the world who really, the successful ones start with, as you said, an ideal. And the

Ideal does four things. So let me clarify those to you as well. The first you clarified very clearly is directional. It creates directional clarity for everybody in the organization, but aligned. We know what we're doing, why we're doing it, where we're going. The second one is motivational. It gets employees all excited and inspired around this ambition, vision. The third one is reputational.

It's good for brand. Customers seem to trust companies that have a purpose. And the last one is the one that we haven't discussed so far that I hadn't thought of either was relational. In a world of ecosystems and platforms where companies are trying to collaborate with others, companies with purpose are seen as transparent, trustworthy. I know where you're coming from. So I feel a natural affinity to want to work with you. So there are four benefits, if I may say, of purpose that I think small companies, some of them at least, have understood very clearly and so have many large companies. So when you see this around these four things, are there companies that can pick a purpose and actually mess up the business?

So whether that is they pick the wrong purpose for the team they have or the opportunity set or something like that, or they pick a purpose and then somehow don't execute, I guess, correctly against it. Like, how do you think about maybe the mistakes that could occur if somebody is going through

the process of picking a purpose? Great question. The first thing companies do wrong is they'll engage in what I would call purpose washing. They create a purpose to just kind of give themselves cover. Theranos had a purpose. when they were going to be accused of fraud, right?

Purdue Pharmaceuticals, that is responsible for the opioid epidemic. Their purpose was compassion for patients and excellence in science inspired our pursuit of new medicine. So that's the biggest mistake you can make is like, you know, trying to engage in what you might call superficial purpose or convenient purpose. But I think the point we need to understand about purpose is purpose is a forcing mechanism to ask yourself, what business do we want to be? Because to answer that question, you have to really debate and discuss. Now, having said that, could you get

the answer wrong? Yes. But then you periodically revisit your purpose. You don't do it every six months. But I think is that if you really thought about it, you give it a chance to really run it course and drive it in the organization in a serious, substantial way. But, you know, if you look at, you know, Microsoft's purpose, Microsoft has evolved its purpose as the market conditions changed. And I can just tell you, for instance, it used to be in the 80s, it was to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Under Balmer, when it didn't do very well, it was to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home or work and the goal for the activities they value the most you can see why

that didn't work right and now is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more best buy has evolved its purpose johnson and johnson with one of the oldest kind of purpose statements the credo has also evolved its purpose so we call it kind of modernizing or doing a refresh on your purpose lego did it so there's so many examples of companies that have been around for a while that will do a periodic refresh. When you have a really strong purpose, how does that help you during bad times? And I think a lot about being inspired. Everyone always thinks of, well, of course, you're more productive. You work harder. You get the goal, right? You accomplish more. But it also feels like during bad times, having a strong purpose may keep you

around, or it may allow you to kind of get, you know, punched in the face a couple times and not quit. Was there anything that came up in your interviews and kind of the creation of the book that really highlighted this? So that's a great question. And I think given the way we are right now in the economy with economic headwinds, it's a fair question to be asking ourselves, right? So the first thing I wanted to share with you, I did a 2010 study where I looked at companies during down markets and every single recession since 2000, since 1945. And what I found was that there are 9% of companies that actually use downtimes to get ahead. So never waste a good crisis.

Never waste a good recession, if you want to call it that. So what do we need to understand about these companies that do this well? Now, I won't bore you with that study that was published in 2010 in the Harvard Business Review. But I think the point I want to make over here is, as far as purpose is concerned, purpose is not the only answer for down markets. So I want to be very clear about that.

But what purpose, you know, when you're in down markets, you are forced to make very difficult trade-offs, very difficult trade-offs, choices. Where are we going to contract? Where are we going to expand? And that's a very hard decision. How do you take from Peter and give to Paul and say, I'm going to cut here, but I'm going to expand here?

The easy answer is the cheese slicer. Everybody give me 10%. Equal. Equal pain spread across. And that's a recipe for nothing. That's a recipe for mediocrity. Those 9% of companies understand how to do that. And purpose is a wonderful filtering system.

I just talked to somebody this morning who is a CEO of a company in Europe. And he said, you know, we are bracing for one of the worst winters ahead. We're going to have, you know, energy cuts. We're going to have to shut down our plants. We're going to have to, you know, send people home. and we've got to make payroll and we're going to have customers who won't have money to pay us.

We are ready for some really, really difficult months ahead. And the question is, can purpose help? Now, I'm not saying it's going to give you the... Come on, purpose doesn't give us the answers, but it allows us to think in some kind of programmatic

and systematic intentional way about how to consider those trade-offs. So I actually think that, and by the way, if you really use your purpose in these down markets, it's a crucible moment people will not forget. If you're looking for a way to really bake your purpose into your DNA, nothing like a down market where you lean into your purpose, invoke and remind everybody about why you're doing what you're doing and how that has been shaped by your purpose. So nothing like a good crisis. Never waste one. it returns to this idea of like tough times make tough people, right? And the tough people end up being very loyal to each other and they kind of went through the shit together and come out on

the other side stronger. But it does go back to whether it's good times or bad times, the communication of the purpose. So I almost think of this as you have to select a purpose usually that is done by the leadership of an organization. It may be in collaboration with people within the org or maybe not, but there is a purpose that is selected. Did you see any best practices or mistakes in terms of how to actually communicate this. And I jumped to a couple of data points that just kind of come to the top of my mind. I worked at Facebook for a few years, and there was not necessarily one single purpose that was plastered on all of the walls, but there were these kind of underlying ethos, right? Move fast and break things that were all over the walls.

And it kind of reinforced it almost implicitly, which then went up to the overall purpose of the business, which was to connect every person in the world. I also think about the reinforcement of maybe at an all-hands meeting or in weekly communications with the team, just constantly reminding people. What were the best practices there and maybe even mistakes that you uncovered in terms of how people communicate the purpose to their organizations? Another really great question. You know, I think is the mistake we make is we think of purpose as a change management exercise. You know, okay, tell everyone, you know, describe the change, communicate the change, break it down into small steps, get, you know, coalition on board, show some short-term wins. It's not a change.

This is a more fundamental exercise about who are we and why do we exist. And I don't think it's, you know, putting the purpose statement out there and plastering it on the walls and emails ain't going to do it either. I mean, purpose has to connect to people at an emotional level, not only intellectual level. It's not only an intellectual exercise. You've got to connect it to, and that's why I think

telling it as a powerful story, connecting it to our past. Who are we? Where have we come from? In the Lego case, the Lego founder actually, the Lego CEO went back and understood the founder's journey.

What were they doing in 1930s to create this company? like what was the intent what was intelligent play the idea that you know playfulness can also have some cerebral effects as well how do we think about intelligent play and what does that really mean but at the same time looking forward this is not a recreating of the past so how do we learn to be both looking backwards while looking forward how do we have a forward-looking spin on purpose that is grounded in our who we are you know some companies talk about detecting their purpose not discovering their purpose, right? And then once you have it, how do you communicate it? You know,

at Pepsi, another company, you know, Indra Nooyi talked about purpose in very personal terms, saying, let me tell you about my personal life story. Here's where I grew up. My family had four buckets, which they could fill at 4am every morning when the water came for 15 minutes. And so I understand what it means not to have water. You know, I know what water shortages are really like. And here is why I think Pepsi needs to think about water conservation. So she was willing to go there.

So, and then that's not the CEO, other levels down. So how do we communicate? The CMO of Pepsi at the time, Frank Cooper, described it to me. He said, you know what? It was complete surround sound performance. As you see these organizations and these leaders who really kind of lean in, have a strong purpose,

communicate it well. Do we also have data that suggests that those companies end up not just performing well today, but enduring over the long term? Like one of the ideas around purpose is as the leadership, the founder, right, you mentioned Lego founder, they either retire, they pass away. I'm guessing that purpose would be very helpful in keeping that organization kind of on track, but I don't know if you have actual kind of research or data that would suggest that. so i'm smiling because i'm on the hunt for that right now because it's really hard to measure company purpose how do you measure their purpose orientation so people have tried survey research they use annual reports and try to create counts out of that there's a hunt on the on right now

to kind of index company purpose and then try to see if it correlates in some way to financial returns. And I'm part of that hunt. I would say right now, we only have suggestive evidence that suggests that purpose-driven companies are more innovative, are able to drive more top-line growth, have better 10-year TSR. And I think there's a large sample why this is very suggestive, but I can speak for my 18 companies that I looked at, I could see very clearly how they used purpose to drive their performance. It was a very connected idea

and that's where I got those four dimensions from. But the hunt is on. And I think people are looking for answers. Is purpose correlated with ESG? How does it connect? There's so many of these concepts out there. So I think we will have better data in the years to come, including for me, I hope.

So on that line, if we see that purpose can transcend leadership teams at the same company, and it can be persistent, even if it is updated every decade or whatever, when people are trying to fill leadership roles, should they be trying to find leaders that fit the purpose or do they hire people and then allow them to kind of change the purpose of the company as the leadership changes? Like, like it's kind of a chicken and egg question, but to some degree, are you constantly over, you know, a 50 or a hundred year timeframe, just looking for people who embody the purpose and, and that's the way that we see organizations be successful? Or does the purpose maybe kind of vary within some framework because the leadership changes and

everyone is a little bit different. So, you know, it's interesting. First of all, I want to clarify purpose is a two-step process. Having purpose means I want to know what my intent is, right? And then the second step is, okay, what's in that intent? You know, who am I here to serve and who's more important and how do I see my business model, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So one is having intent. Second one is what's in my intent. And I think it's important to understand. Now, to your point, I have a whole chapter in my book. And I've also kind of directly questioned this in two of my podcast interviews, where I ask especially strong founder leaders that how do you think about succession? Because purpose gets so woven up in the persona of that

individual. Howard Schultz, look at that. Poor guy can't retire. He keeps leaving and coming back leaving and coming back to starbucks and every time he comes back he says starbucks has lost its soul and so you see that happened to phil knight at nike so it's not uncommon you saw that at google so it's not uncommon to see these kind of founders struggling to let go um and i think we have to ask ourselves how do you think about succession as kevin johnson the former c of starbucks said to me he says my biggest challenge when i took over was to go from being a founder led organization to a founder inspired organization and this is not easy now to your next part of your question is should a leader should you bring in people who will change the

purpose or will you i think you first of all should be hiring people who are bought into the purpose you have today and i think those same leaders who are bought into the purpose today should be able to be smart enough to say you know we need but i think that purpose is a filter of who you bring in once in a while you change your purpose and sometimes you bring in an outsider so you say ah gotta change our purpose you know people are too wedded to what we do we gotta but a lot of times purpose shifts are not radical this is not like our purpose our business has changed completely overnight right this is not blackberry going from a device company to a software company so i think it's evolution and revolution in there and being able to challenge it but it's a it's a

fair question uh i don't think there's any research on it and i but i will tell you that founder-led is a hard one the purpose gets wound up it's like personality fixation this episode is brought to you by valor which represents what's next in the digital economy they provide simplified trusted access in crypto decentralized finance and web 3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the US under the DEFTF stock ticker and on the Canadian NEO exchange under DEFI. For more information or

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How do you filter in the interview process to actually know somebody is aligned with the purpose versus just feeding you a bunch of nonsense that sounds good, but maybe they don't align? Is there anything that you've uncovered there of, you know, you're going to hire a new CEO, you're going to hire a new executive, maybe even just a mid-level manager. How do you know that they actually are aligned with the purpose versus they're just a good interviewer? So look, you're asking the universally hard challenge about how

do you filter and screen people? You're supposed to have the answers. That's why I'm here. Anyone will tell you one of the hardest things we struggle with is hiring. Yes. How do we filter in people? And I'll tell you, I wrote a case on Netflix not long ago. now netflix is less about purpose and more about their culture okay so big on cultural fit so what do they do they actually publish their cultural day culture day now they call it a culture memo they got rid of powerpoint so they made a culture memo but they put it out there for anybody competitors anybody to see and then they want recruits to have read it now they're not going to ask you to mouth off and repeat what's in the culture memo but they'll try to suss it out by

asking you about your life experiences what have you done moments you've faced in life so people always try to get at these values questions i think by asking people like tell me about adversity you've had to deal with you know tell me about a difficult moment that came up in your life um tell me about choices and trade-offs you've had to make i but i do think that you know know at netflix they call it we only hire fully formed adults now i'm not implying any kind of what is fully formed or partially formed i won't go that far but you know we need to ask ourselves like here's the okay let me give you the rub the rub is going to be you find someone who's an absolute star performer the perfect competence capability experience that you really want

either hiring them or they're already in your organization but they don't fit the purpose they don't fit the values they don't fit

the culture what are you going to do that's where the rubber hits the road what is interesting about that is at a startup

of a smaller company I think it could be absolutely catastrophic to hire that person because

if you've got 10 people and this is going to be one of the 10 10 of your employee base right doesn't fit the culture and values that might be a pretty big deal what i see large organizations do is they still may hire the high performer or whatever but to your point i don't know if it's because they know it's not a culture fit or they're just not screening or filtering or asking the questions around do you align with

the purpose like it's actually pretty rare if you think of these large organizations how many of them you know if you had to grade i don't know the s&p 500 and you gave a you know an a to f grade i don't know like how many do you think you'd give an a on purpose to so look i think at one level you might say like some people in these organizations might believe that you know it's large numbers one person through everybody notices of course promotions bonuses these are massive signals of what is expected of us here. We have one of our absolute best cases at Harvard Business School. It's called Rob Parsons at Morgan Stanley. And it's about this guy. It's fictional. The name is disguised, but it's really Morgan Stanley. And it's from like 20 plus years

ago. He is brought in by his boss to build a new business. They've been struggling to break into this business and he's been told if he delivers he's going to make manager he was managing direct in a year and boy does he deliver he nails the market they have double digit share of the entire market in a year 25 years ago he's bringing in 60 million dollars in fees that year alone he is absolutely a rock star on every dimension unfortunately they started at 360 that year and the behaviors he's showing don't fit the culture you know they haven't got a purpose yet so there's more of a culture fit story than a purpose for sure but there's noise around this guy and so that's where the case stops and the question is you're the boss who hired him you promised him

promotion in one year you have to now make a recommendation as to whether you're going to to recommend him for promotion or not? And the class splits. Half will say, yes, I promised him he's delivering. And the other half will say, no way. It's a great case to teach. I got to tell you, people clash a lot. And I saw this in, again, in these interviews I did, you know, the great leaders are very clear about who they hire. Mona Atiyah at Mumsworld said that was a clear filter for her. She said, I didn't even talk about their competencies. We can teach you competencies. I wanted to know, why do you want to join us? What's exciting to you about wanting to come and work at Mumsworld? What are we doing that seems to resonate with who you are?

That was the filter, right? And so versus walk me through your resume. Let me do a rundown. and this is to another organization's large company i mentioned one more i was long time ago now this is dated maybe eight ten years ago i was sitting next to a pilot on the plane and he was off duty and he said i said what are you doing and he was interviewing for jobs he was from a regional he was going to national carriers and i said so where do you want to work and he said oh no question i wish southwest gives me a job i said why he said all my other interviews they were technical interviews they wanted to ask me technical questions and i went to southwest there were three pilots there and all they wanted to talk about was me

and at the end of the interview i thought i really bombed it so i asked them i don't want to ask technical questions they said look we have your flight records we know you can fly a plane we want to know if you really fit us because only if you fit us will you really do what we hope you will do and so you know i think great organizations understand that they create the guardrails the the barriers to who they want to let in, and then who they're going to promote and reward and how they're going to reward. Yes, we need performance. Please, I just want to be very clear. I am not anti-performance. I'm saying, yes, we need to reward returns, performance, but we also, as we hear the late Jack Welch used to say, performance and behavior slash values. And I want to be very

clear. Yes, performance, but the other dimension was behavior slash values. And if you're low on the value of behaviors. As you see leaders who are able to set these purposes, clearly articulate them, recruit the right people, how do they talk to shareholders about the purpose? And shareholders and employees or colleagues, hopefully having signed aligned incentives, where if the business does well, the employees will do well, and the shareholders will do well. But it is a different group of people. And I'm not sure, other than usually the most controversial leaders or stocks, do we see people drawing lines in sand and basically saying, you know, if you're X type of shareholder, we don't want you. Usually they're much more politically correct and a little bit

more polished than that. But it does feel like purpose is somewhat of a line drawing exercise. We're here for X and we're not here for, you know, other things. Do you see anyone doing this well, or did you get anything from your conversations and interviews with now, you know, hundreds of people around shareholder communication around purpose? So, excellent question. Let me start, can I flip it around first for why do shareholders care about purpose? That was puzzle right and then let's get to how do you communicate purpose to shareholders so uh let me start low so you know as you know larry fink wrote the forward to my book and i was inspired by larry to actually write in this book but i was puzzled at first like why would a

shareholder or representative of shareholder care about purpose i then also talked to um temasek the sovereign wealth fund of singapore and i interviewed dylan pillay the ceo there and i came to realize that the vast majority of investors are long-term investors of course we have some short-term investors too who care about short-term returns but the vast majority of us are pension funds retirement funds you know index indexing out there for the long horizon we have a long horizon into business so and their take was how do i ask a business to keep an eye on the prize and purpose is a way for me to understand what is your long-term vision and by the way remember what i said earlier when any business tries to

imagine their long-term reason for being they naturally will have to think about employees customers communities and even the planet right so i'm just asking you hey i have long-term investors I want to share with them what your long-term vision for your business is and long-term vision for anyone encompasses shareholder value, customer value, community value, employee value. All of them feed into and reinforce shareholder value, actually. So I just want to know what is it that you really believe in? It's a statement about who are you and why you as a business exist. What's your unique place in the world? So people have confused this into like, oh, investors are forcing businesses to do ESG and they're really forcing them to do sustainability

and it's pushing their agenda onto them. They're saying, if you're a long-term business, you have to have some ESG standards because society is going to impose them on you. So you better have a perspective on this because it's becoming mandatory almost in the world. So I, as an investor, really care about that. So I think there's a kind of twisting of this logic that has happened. So investors care, keeping in mind long term value of a business, viability of a business. Now the question becomes, how do I communicate that to shareholders? And I think is, you know, I think it's the clearer you are about the choices you're making. I've interviewed a number of CFOs for this actually, to understand that CFO story, that how do CFOs present themselves

to the market and at first i think there's a you're right about one thing your instincts were that there's a bit of a matching that happens in the shareholder market what kind of investors do i really want to have in my you know mix of investors and clarifying how you're imagining your business makes it easier to see what kind of investor pool you're going to attract but beyond that you're creating kind of expectations with investors like look we are right now, even when we do large investment projects, we say, look, the quarterly returns for the next several quarters are going to be a little soft because we are about to embark on this huge initiative that is going to double our manufacturing capacity in Asia. And you're going

to see payback out of that three quarters down the road. So I think, you know, purpose is level setting in some ways with investors, as it is with other stakeholders, employees, customers, and communities. I think one that we don't talk about, we somehow imagine investors as this kind of incredibly myopic, only quarter-to-quarter returns-driven individuals. And there are some who are like that, but there are others who are not. As I hear you talking about the shareholders and purpose, I think a lot about in the crypto decentralized world, whatever, they're not businesses, which I think everyone, at least at the moment, they're not viewed that way and don't seem to operate that way. But what I do find fascinating is that when something is decentralized,

it's the equivalent of a company with no leadership team, right? If you took the CEO, the CFO, kind of the C-suite out. Now, you and I probably could think of a million reasons why that would go horrifically wrong, right? Without leadership, without hierarchical structure, without some sort of true purpose and planning and strategy, like that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Probably many case studies inside of your classroom end up being some version of that. But what I do find fascinating is that if you take something like a Bitcoin, there was a creator, we don't know who it is, but they put purpose or some sort of direction down on paper in the white paper, and they disappear. And it's almost like a founder kind of retiring or leaving or

whatever. But there hasn't been the reinforcement. And so I always think about like, first of all, the idea is big enough and quote, unquote, powerful enough, right, where people get excited about it without having kind of all the normal aspects of a business. But also the purpose was so clear that it has persisted. Now it's only been 13, 14 years, but if it continues the way it's going, it really is this like powerful, clear message. And so the reason why I use that is like that is succeeding against the odds, right? If you're able to take a really clear, powerful message, and then you have a CEO, you have a board, you have kind of all the things that we know make businesses great. It feels like this is almost like a secret weapon for the businesses

that understand it and as you've talked you know kind of through our conversation it does feel like maybe companies are waking up to this and realizing that some did it naturally and that was their intuition and there wasn't so much a strategic reason as much as that's just how they operated their business but now do you hear and see founders or executive teams talking about this from a strategic standpoint saying hey we've been in business for 20 30 40 years we don't have a purpose that is clearly articulated, we need to do it because it is a talent retention tool. It is a, you know, advantage in the marketplace. It is, you know, A, B, or C reason. Or is it, no, the companies that start out with a strong purpose are the ones who keep them, but you don't really see companies

who start out with no or weak purposes end up being able to transition into those strong purposes. So let me start with the first part of your question around decentralized finance and That's a fascinating question also. So I look within our organization first. Then we'll talk about these kind of diffuse entities that are not even organizations per se. What do organizations do? As soon as you have 5, 10, 15 people coming together,

even two people coming together in a household, we have a division of labor problem. Who's going to do what? Ask coordination. So we want to have collaboration and coordination of that. So who's doing what and in what sequence And now we're going to do this, that and the other. As you get bigger, there's a collaboration problem that kicks in.

And the other one is what we call the consistency problem, right? How do we build standards that we have to repeat and do things in a consistent way? Now, what do we do? We build elaborate organizational structures. We build silos. We build KPIs. We build metrics. We do all this stuff to kind of build processes.

So we call it structures and processes and culture. Structure, process, culture are the three kind of control systems we use to regulate the individuals who are in that small or large organization. Right now, some would argue that structure and process stifle our creativity. It bogs us down in bureaucracy and we resist, but we can't. We need silos. We need accountability. We need process discipline. now if you believe that process purpose is another way to regulate behavior if you want to call it that culture is a control system so is purpose it creates guardrails it creates guidelines and if it's a deep purpose and you've internalized it is really going to be

a guardrail for you does that then allow you the chance to loosen your structure and loosen your processes and so what i saw was companies that were you know everyone talks about empowerment but there's a lot of people talking about fake empowerment you talk about it but you don't really do it right with purpose possibility i'm not saying it works always because purpose is not like people are buying in all the time you have the possibility to loosen your structure and processes to create more real genuine empowerment i wrote a whole chapter on this by the way now you've taken it to an interesting stream of like can you have confederations of organizations connected through a purpose or individuals that are somehow able to

find alignment with each other and trust with each other open question i think possible i don't think there's enough research for me to definitively say that you know if only ethereum and bitcoin and others kind of articulate a purpose they're going to really be able to create alignment among the disparate entities and individuals who are operating and working in those markets i think it's an idea it's interesting it's an intriguing thought i don't really have an answer to that one but i have to i did mention earlier to you that organizations with purpose are perceived as more transparent and trustworthy by others, which is in the eyes of the beholder. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is either.

It is a very unique thing, which obviously I think has kind of taken the world by storm. But when you think of it through this purpose lens, it is, yeah, it feels like there's something there and it's hard, obviously the intuition versus the data will take a long time to kind of clear out. One of the examples I think I'm personally most fascinated by is the company Coinbase, which, I don't know, maybe it was last summer or so, the CEO and founder of the business came out and said, look, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on internally, kind of this idea of like the lack of clarity around why we're here. And so he put together a piece and clearly articulated. We are here to do this. And it was really around financial empowerment and kind of

why he started the business. And a couple of takeaways for me were one, it's easy for the founder to do that because he could say, hey, I started this business. You know, we're almost a decade later. Let me remind everyone why I started this business. And so coming from him, I think was powerful. Two, I thought it was fascinating. He didn't just send it internally. He published it publicly to your point. But the third thing was, he got a lot of blowback. And there was a lot of people who said, not even so much, we don't like your purpose. It was, we don't like the fact that you're stating one purpose and saying we are not here for these other purposes. And so I think in hindsight, a year later, if you were to ask him, and I've seen him on interviews and stuff talk

about. He's very happy he kind of took the route that he did. He thinks it was a net positive for the business. I also think that it takes a special type of person and a unique business to do that versus if that had been Disney or Coca-Cola or, you know, one of these businesses who was not founder-led anymore, who had not been around for only, you know, a decade or so. How do you think about this? So I don't know enough about the Coinbase story, so I don't want to comment on that necessarily, but I think there's an interesting idea behind your question. So one of my colleagues, you mentioned Disney. So one of my colleagues actually, once Steve Jobs realized that he was going to pass away in a finite time,

he hired two of my colleagues to come and start to write cases about Apple. And he wasn't going to do a purpose of Apple. That was not his thing. He didn't want to, he didn't believe in one-liners, But he felt it was important to capture the philosophy, the principles that made Apple who it is. And he thought the best way to do that is capture historical decisions they made and the rationale and how they thought through those decisions. So purpose was going to be inferred through these key decisions that Apple had made in the past. And there was a story behind that because Steve had been on the board of Disney. And what really frustrated him at Disney's board meetings was whenever they had a difficult decision to make, somebody on the board would say, let's think about what Walt would have done if he was here.

And Steve said, Walt is not here. He died decades ago. The world has changed. Why are we trying to channel Walt right now? and we need to be thinking forward so his idea of distilling the apple secret sauce was let's look at some key decisions we have made over time and i want every employee to go through this these discussions of these decisions because through them they'll understand the essence of what makes Apple, Apple. And when you see that, does it take the type of leader who is willing to hire your colleagues and say, I know this is special. I want to document this and kind of is self-aware enough to realize that not every corporation has the purpose, has the process, has kind of the ethos and everything that makes Apple special. Is that the same type of leader

that is needed to actually execute correctly as well? Like you need self-awareness to be able to set the right purpose and kind of really drive it home on a consistent basis with the employees? I think you have to buy into the idea that this essence of an organization is key to your competitive advantage.

It has to be a priority for you. It has to be, and I think Steve only realized that when he himself saw his own mortality and said, oops, I'm going to be gone. and of course Tim is going to do a great job which he has done but I want to be able to distill the essence of what makes us special

and our purpose which I can infer through these key decisions and moments will allow people in generations to come to capture that special element of Apple it's not a culture document

it's not even a purpose statement it's something that has to be distilled and inferred And I want people to remember that. And I think some leaders understand that there is an essence about this. What is the secret sauce? The founder of Kareem said, it's our superpower. It's really what makes us different.

And people, he said, most businesses don't seem to realize that. He's an ex-McKinsey consultant. And he said, I never realized it. But now that I've been in it and built a billion-dollar business and successfully built it and sold it and I'm still running it, I've come to realize, he said, from my experience, it is our superpower. Why did David Veles say that? Or the founder of Arco Dorados, the largest franchisee of McDonald's in the world with over 1,500 locations.

Why would he say that? I found these podcast interviews I did to be fascinating because a lot of the founders talked in very eloquent terms about having this essence being the secret sauce. And they appreciated it because they said, as we grow bigger, it's naturally easy to lose it. It fades away. One aspect that I think is very interesting, you said you've interviewed a lot of sports coaches. And so if you especially think at the college level and a little bit at the professional level, inside of a business, you get people that are hired and you hope that they stay and work with you for 10, 20 years. If you're a college coach, I think you mentioned Pete Carroll, Nick Saban, folks like that.

At the college level, every three or four years, basically you have a whole new team, right? Because they come in, they're there for three or four years, and then they go, and hopefully they go play at the next level, or they go and they get regular jobs and kind of they're off the team. Having a purpose that is able to bridge between each one of these different teams, because really every year is a different team, but there's a lot of overlap, feels like a pretty good way to ensure that you can build some of these dynasties that these coaches have built. because really that's one of the only things between the coach and what the purpose or kind of the mission of the organization is. Other than that, almost every year, a lot of things change. So look, you know, the first thing I learned from these sports coaches who are extraordinary individuals, by the way,

is that as one of them said to me, Pete said to me, he said, look, I unlock human potential. Right. My job is to take an individual who's saying I am performing at my best and take them to a level that they didn't think they could do. Right. That's what we do as coaches. And I think college sports is one of the most extraordinary illustrations of that, where a coach takes a team and gets them individually and collectively to perform at a level that they didn't even think they could do. And it's individually and collectively. Right. And I think is now, you know, this as well as I do, People will do a lot for themselves when their own self-interest is at stake, but if they have a commitment to a collective, a tribe, a family, their team, we know that people

are willing to do even more for a collective that they really buy into than they are for themselves, right? And so what we are trying to do is help people. How do you bind them to the collective in a way that they feel so identified with the collective? And purpose is one way to do that. It's also self-awareness. What's your purpose here?

Are you here to just be a great football player and make a lot of money and join the NFL? Is that your life purpose? And that inspires a lot of people to do a lot, right? People are willing to do a lot for pay for performance. But if you remind them that, listen, you also can imagine what your individual purpose is in life and put money and success in perspective and hopefully then think about how am I becoming

a better player, a better human being? How am I advancing my own whole self through my sport? You might show up differently. And I think that's the beauty of what I think some of these coaches understand, that, you know, you're not trying to be naively idealistic here, but you're also trying to say, I want to elevate their thinking and elevate how they show up. I mean, look at what's happening in the war in Ukraine, folks. I mean, think about it. I don't, are you telling me that Ukrainians are genetically more courageous than anybody else? When you are bought into a cause, you show up differently. of a lot easier exodus is one of the most popular crypto wallets for mobile and desktop and they

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that type of stuff. But also, I think at the individual level, and I know that you have used purpose to have more honest conversations with individuals. I know that you think the talk of purpose elicits different types of responses, maybe avoids the CEO speak. Talk a little bit about throughout your career, you've talked to a lot of people, right? And at all degrees of success. And it seems like this topic specifically has led you to a different type of conversation with people that one, you enjoy, but also two, it seems like you've learned different things about certain people that maybe you otherwise wouldn't if you weren't talking about purpose. So I have to confess to you, this is all new to me. And the way you said it is exactly right.

I wrote the book, I interviewed people about their company purpose. And I was like, tell me about the company purpose and how you did it and then when i started this podcast series i first started my first you know like okay tell me about your company purpose and what did you do and then i stumbled into asking the question tell me about your purpose why are you here tell me how did you come to realize your own purpose when did you first start thinking about your purpose and i have to tell you these are very i felt very fortunate to be talking to these very influential important successful leaders from all over the world the conversation shifted it was a much more i would say authentic and intimate conversation and i learned you know every leader there's a

story behind a story you you can talk to them as ceo of an important company and what they're doing for the company, but it's really hard to tap into their humanity. Like, who are you really? And this purpose conversation about their individual purpose, before I even get to their company purpose, led to, I would say, a very different set of conversations. And I learned so much about leadership through these conversations in the process. What has been the most surprising thing? So you went in, you said you were a skeptic. now you're not a skeptic so that's like surprise one is just it seems like you you're a convert right which uh which is good but is there anything that outside of just now i believe

that has really surprised you and and kind of looking back you're like i can't believe that's the thing i took away from it so the first thing i realized was purpose is good for business right that's one thing like who's gonna say oh we don't want to have a purpose the other thing about purpose is good for us individually there's data research showing that people with purpose not only are more satisfied and engaged at work they have healthier health better health outcomes you know they are less likely to get sick chronic diseases you know heart heart attacks stroke dementia having purpose is good for us i mean what does it mean not to have a purpose. I don't want to have a purpose. And we then say, oh, I don't want a purpose is

only making money and shareholder value. It's like breathing, folks. We all need to breathe to live. Of course. But do we live to breathe? I don't think so. That leads me to my last question, which is like the softball of all. What's your purpose? so i have to tell you you know i feel very fortunate to be working at an institution where my purpose aligns very closely with the organization's purpose we educate leaders who make a difference in the world and that very closely summarizes how i think about my work related purpose which is we i educate leaders who make a difference in the world now remember our life purpose has many sleeves to it. Work is one, family is another, you know,

avocations is another one. So for me, I feel very fortunate that my purpose that is related to work very close, I educate leaders who make a difference in the world, hopefully positive difference in the world. What about your personal purpose? You know, I think we, I really believe that my purpose is to be able to have a positive impact on the communities and the people I'm surrounded by. And so what does that mean in terms of, as you've done all this work on purpose, how do you actually live that on a day-to-day basis? Because I think one of the pieces is people will listen to this and they will say to themselves, I get it. Purpose is important for business. Purpose is important for better life and kind of the inspiration and all that stuff.

How do I take the purpose and apply it on a day-to-day basis? So the first thing we have to realize, purpose is an evolving story. My purpose when I was in my early 20s was different, right? My purpose when I was a young parent became different, right? Suddenly my purpose had changed into my family, my children. I have responsibility for them, right? My purpose today at this age and stage is different. And I look at my own self and I ask myself, like, have I made a positive difference in

anything that I've done today? you know where am i through my research through my teaching through my interactions you know i think we very sometimes we focus on value capture right we all measure like okay what came in the door today into the bank account value capture i think at some point you start to say i want to focus on value creation value capture happens when you naturally when you're creating value value value capture happens. But how am I creating value in the environment and the communities where I operate? Have I had a positive impact in a meaningful and real way? Yeah, that's incredible. I love the idea of the interesting value capture and kind of creating

the value. I think it's a very important distinction. Where can we send people to find the book or download the podcast as the, as they get excited about listening to these conversations? So look, the easiest place to go is deeppurpose.net, which is where I have the summary. There's some videos summarizing the book and my research. You can also find me on LinkedIn. There's a newsletter. I don't flood my LinkedIn feed, but I periodically every few weeks will put out something that relates to my larger interest in unlocking value, unlocking possibility. And so DeepPurpose.net or LinkedIn,

which is just Ranjay Gulati, my name. And I want to thank you. This has been a most enlightening conversation. You have pushed me hard in a good way. So I appreciate that very much. So thank you. I'm very interested in this. I find it absolutely fascinating

and the way that you articulate it, I think is incredibly powerful. So I hope that everyone who is watching or listening to this goes and check out the book and then looking forward to many of the conversations. You pretty much had a who's who's list of people that I'd want to hear on the purpose side. So I'm excited to listen to that as well.

And thank you for your time today. I think people probably learned a ton from you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

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