Thinking of becoming a BCorp? Here’s a compelling reason why not.
Do you genuinely believe that the reason your business exists is to use its profits to positively impact employees, communities, and the environment? That’s a huge ask for most companies. And if you can’t answer that question in the affirmative, the long road to B Corp certification really isn’t worth the pain.
And painful and long it is.
Becoming a B Corp is bloody hard!
Which is as it should be. When the movement says “certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose,” boy do they mean it. Becoming a B Corp is bloody hard. The standards of social and environmental commitments as well as governance and ethics of trading are far beyond any regulatory requirements. And the certification process to demonstrate these exist in the business is rigorous in the extreme.
All of which is saying that if you buy from, sell to, partner with, or apply to work for a BCorp, whether it’s Ben & Jerries, Body Shop or Beeswax Wrap Company, you know you are dealing with an exceptional business. A business that has had to demonstrate to its peers an extraordinary level not just of of integrity, ethics and social responsibility but also financial robustness.
So, what if you believe your business does exist to make a positive impact and not just money? Then, in our experience, the journey to becoming a BCorp hones and stress tests this belief beyond anything we could have foreseen. It makes you a better, clearer, more engaged business. A business full of people who know why they do what they do and are proud to do it. And it puts you in a community of like-minded business globally that inspire, support and love.
When we started our business several years ago, we wrote on our website ‘we believe that all businesses have a fundamental responsibility to protect and enhance the lives of the people who work for them, the societies we serve and the planet we share’. The process of becoming a BCorp has taught us the true meaning of those words. It’s been something of a humbling experience. And we’ve become a far better business; for our clients, our people and the societies we work within. What’s more, it’s a journey of learning and improvement we feel is only just beginning.
If you would like to know more about the BCorp movement you may be interested in this:
To find out more about how we became a BCorp you may like to read this:
So, now we’re a BCorp. Was it all worth it?
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Purpose, not profit, inspires companies to outperform
How do you know if purpose is working effectively in your culture. And if it isn’t, why not?
The single-minded purpose of business for the last 50 years has been simple; as exemplified in Milton Friedman’s maxim, it has been to generate profits for its shareholders. And it has been a spectacular success.
82% of wealth goes to just 1% of the population
Spectacular that is if you are an asset owner or senior corporate executive. Wealth has undoubtedly been created. But its concentration has been extraordinary. According to Oxfam, 82% of all the wealth generated in 2017 went to just 1% of the global population. It’s equally extraordinary that the consequences of that inequality were not foreseen.
As Paul Polman asks, “why should the citizens of this world keep companies around whose sole purpose is the enrichment of a few people?”
The tumbril or the mob?
Polman may not be threatening the tumbril or the mob but something just as terminal, if not as abrupt. And that is the creeping disillusionment and disengagement from businesses and brands by the societies they serve and the people they employ. In terms of disillusionment, according to Edelman, just 52% of people globally now trust business to do what is right. And as for disengagement, only 13% of people feel their work is meaningful (Gallup).
Just 52% of people globally now trust business to do what is right
Far-sighted business leaders see the threats and are responding; seeking to build businesses that hold to a purpose beyond shareholder return. A purpose that seeks to also create value for employees, consumers, communities and planet. This is not CSR. Nor is it reputation management. It is bringing a social purpose to the heart of business strategy. Surprisingly, this is nothing new but simply a return to the principles of business as a servant of society and the common good first articulated by Adam Smith.
A new model for capitalism?
According to Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, writing in the Financial Times (Jan 2019), this shift to a more holistic view of the purpose of business is “starting to converge into something that looks like a new worldview, shared by leading executives and investors and shaped by an unlikely alliance of consumers, employees, campaigners, academics and regulators”. In Edgecliffe-Johnson’s view, this could “break a consensus that has governed business for two generations and offer a new model for capitalism based on the watchwords of purpose, inclusion and sustainability”.
Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose.
That is quite a claim. Certainly, it is the moral duty of business to serve society and not just the narrow interests of shareholders. Even Larry Fink, at the head of the bastion of capitalism that is Blackrock says “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose.” But is this just a moral argument? Could doing the right thing actually be more than that? What if pursuing a pro-social purpose not only benefits society and planet, not only supports the wellbeing and fulfilment of employees, but actually enhances business performance and value creation?
Where’s the beef?
Larry Fink goes on to say “to prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” This idea – that purpose creates performance – is rapidly becoming mainstream. But hold on. Is there really any evidence that this is the case? And, more importantly, can it be shown precisely how this process works in real businesses?
There is scepticism that the full impact of something as nuanced as purpose can be measured. Metrics are “the soft underbelly of the ESG movement,” warns Martin Whittaker, chief executive of JUST Capital.
Yet, the need exists if this is genuinely to be ‘a new world view’, as envisaged by the FT. EY’s Chief Executive, Mark Weinberger, predicts that the metrics around social and people performance will someday be as important to the Big Four as financial audits are today. But “nobody has yet devised a way to measure purpose that is as simple as the bottom line of a profit and loss account”.
Metrics around social and people performance will someday be as important as financial audits are today.
Yes, it is possible to measure purpose
It was to address this deficit that a global group of entrepreneurial practitioners and leading academics, led by Cambridge and Plymouth universities, has been working over the last three years. Specifically, this team aimed to answer two key questions: Is it possible to measure purpose; to create robust metrics of purpose impact? And, if so, can an empirical model show exactly how purpose works to trigger human and organisational performance and reveal where that impact is blocked?
At Contexis, we’ve always been fascinated with what drives human motivation and productive culture in organisations. Specifically, in the differences between agile, entrepreneurial businesses and scaled, legacy corporate ones. All of our careful observation of the differences fundamentally come down to one word – ‘purpose’. But not in the way you may think. It’s not about having a purpose. But what you do with it.
Yes, the best agile, entrepreneurial businesses are obsessively clear about why they do what they do. But that’s not the whole story. They also exhibit a set of specific cultural attributes that activate purpose to drive startling levels of human motivation and performance. And exactly those same cultural attributes are often suppressed in most scaled businesses – stunted by time, complexity and legacy.
It is these insights that form the basis of a new Model devised by the Universities with robust metrics that seek to establish reliable correlation and causality to show exactly how purpose is driving organisational cultures.
This is not a subjective, external view of purpose, nor is it based on proxy measures. It seeks to provide a clear metric of purpose performance that can be benchmarked internally, over time and against peer comparators. In other words, an Index of purpose effectiveness. It also provides an uncompromisingly accurate view of how purpose is working and where it is blocked in the real business, in real time.
It’s not purpose but its activation that matters
So, what does the Index reveal? It seems clear that an activated purpose galvanises specific positive human beliefs and behaviours. And it is this that results in enhanced business performance. Purpose has the power to maximise both human and business potential. It’s no longer a choice.
Employees who consider their employer to be purposeful are between 25% and 100% more positive than the median employee across a broad range of performance attributes. Think about that for a second; those people who believe you stand for something more than short term profit are up to twice as effective as the average employee. These people are, of course, more engaged. But they are also more autonomous, more open to ideas, more compassionate and more joyful. They are far clearer on strategy and make decisions faster. They are also around 50% less likely to quit their job. These are the people you really want in your business.
What triggers purpose is principally trust.
The key question is what characteristics in the organisational culture activate purpose to allow for these performance gains – and what is missing when purpose is suppressed. The answer is a combination of powerful human motivators, most particularly trust and emotional ownership. In other words, what triggers purpose is principally trust.
The honest conversation that transformed the humanity of a global Bank; and grew revenue by 15%
An example of this is provided by a major European Bank. The Bank had made purpose a top priority for its 150,000 people, and its stated purpose was well received in internal surveys. Yet it made little difference to engagement scores.
What had long been thought of as an engagement problem that could be resolved through driving purpose was actually an issue of fundamental distrust.
The leadership team couldn’t understand why purpose was not ‘working’ and decided to use the Index to find out. They were shocked with what it revealed. What had long been thought of as an engagement problem that could be resolved through driving purpose was actually an issue of fundamental distrust. The Bank’s Purpose was quite well understood. It just wasn’t believed or trusted.
The Index showed that less than 25% of employees really believed the purpose the Bank served. And, whether in terms of engagement, innovation, strategic clarity or happiness, those with a strong sense of the Bank’s purpose dramatically outperformed their peers. On the other hand, a sizeable minority of employees felt negatively about the Bank’s purpose. These individuals, concentrated in middle management, underperformed dramatically, particularly in terms of whether they trusted the Bank and its culture, whether they felt a sense of responsibility for its success, or understood and believed in its strategy.
The analysis was clear. There was nothing wrong with the Bank’s purpose. It just needed to be activated through a fundamental focus specifically on rebuilding trust, particularly amongst middle managers. The Bank took up the challenge, embarking on a structured programme of open conversations led by each team leader or Director.
Positive beliefs and behaviours jumped by an average 33%
The results were extraordinary. In teams taking part in the programme, positive beliefs and behaviours jumped by an average 33% after only 6 months of participation. In particular, the critical measures of trust, openness and compassion increased by 40%. Purpose was now working because it had been activated by trust; the negative purpose group had shrunk to less than 10%, whilst the high purpose group now represented over 50% of employees.
Most extraordinary of all, in a wholly surprising and unintentional consequence, revenues in the pilot teams had increased by an average of 15% in just six months. As the Director in charge of the pilot commented,
“we read these days that Purpose drives performance. In our case, this simply wasn’t true. What drove performance was actually trust in the purpose we serve. And that allowed our teams to take real responsibility for performance. In 30 years in the Bank, I cannot remember an initiative that has had anything like this impact. The commercial return has been extraordinary. But, more importantly, the well-being and sheer joyfulness of our people have been transformed.”
It’s not purpose but what you do with it that counts
What the Cambridge work and the Index results shows is pursuing a social purpose is more than a moral duty. Larry Fink is right to say purpose leads to performance. But pursuing ‘purpose’ without understanding the cultural attributes that activate it is at best a waste of time and at worst fundamentally damaging to the cultural fabric of the business.
The Contexis Index, for the first time, picks up the gauntlet thrown down by the FT to ‘measures purpose in as simple a way as the bottom line of a profit and loss account’. It shows that the key activator of purpose is not a set of words but the creation of a culture of trust and emotional ownership. And it allows organisations to identify accurately and with extraordinary granularity specific communities where the impact of purpose is blocked and to track the impact of interventions or communication on these individuals and to adapt these in real time to maximise the change and build cultures that are meaningful and productive.
As the director of a FTSE Pharma / Healthcare found
“this has fundamentally changed how we think about our people and their motivation. The clarity it’s brought has been extraordinary.”
By undertaking this analysis, companies also join others around the world in supporting important research into how purpose drives organisational performance by contributing wholly anonymised date to the University of Cambridge.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index can transform the impact of purpose in your business, and how you can help this important research please get in touch.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy this short EthWord film
You may also enjoy these articles:
How to make your people 30% more engaged, 29% more joyful and 26% more productive. Easily.
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
90% of CEOs don’t believe their business is moving fast enough to survive
How do I create an agile, high performance culture? How do I engage and align our people? How do I drive productivity? Land strategy? Create trust in our business?
There’s an old story about two hikers who are confronted by a large bear in the woods. One calmly sits down, removes his boots and puts on a pair of running shoes. “What are you doing!” his panicked friend asks, “you’ll never outrun a bear.” “I don’t have to” he replies” I only have to outrun you”.
Whilst CEOs may be right that their business isn’t moving fast enough, they only need to go faster than the other guy. It’s therefore worth asking who is wearing the running shoes in your industry. Which are the agile businesses you face, and what are they doing that you are not?
The answer tends to be the businesses that are smaller, newer, less encumbered with legacy; in other words, the entrepreneurial ones.
Entrepreneurial thinking; a mindset not a legal entity
Yet, entrepreneurial thinking actually has very little to do with scale or age. It’s a mindset. It’s therefore worth taking a really close look at what entrepreneurially-minded businesses, of whatever size, actually do. How is that they create that agility of culture, productivity of people and performance of management. And can this be replicated?
In our experience, a big part of what drives agile business is a compelling and engaging purpose which is authentically and consistently held in the organisation. This engenders the behaviours of alignment and engagement in people, clarity and velocity in management, and openness and creativity in cultures which are the hallmarks of the agile, entrepreneurial business.
And that is the point: the first rule of purpose is that, for it to have any impact, it must not only be credible and congruent to the activities of the business. It must also be absolutely authentic.
Most large organisations have come to accept the importance of holding a purpose beyond profit or the immediate interests of shareholders. This may be from a genuine sense of civic duty, an understanding that society is demanding more of business, or a consciousness of the direction of travel of regulators and investors.
But a general view is emerging that a socially responsible model of business isn’t just a moral good but can actually lead to a more sustainably successful business.
According to the FT’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, this shift is “starting to converge into something that looks like a new worldview, shared by leading executives and investors and shaped by an unlikely alliance of consumers, employees, campaigners, academics and regulators”. which could “break a consensus that has governed business for two generations and offer a new model for capitalism based on the watchwords of purpose, inclusion and sustainability”.
This is great news. But there’s a problem. Even where adopting a more socially purposeful approach is fervently held by senior leadership, it is still a top-down exercise that struggles to penetrate much beyond the ExCO bubble.
For many organisations, it’s a mystery why their carefully considered purpose isn’t making a jot of difference to the behaviours in the organisation. Why there is a big gap between the purpose at Board level and the experience of employees and customers.
Entrepreneurially-minded organisations achieve agility not by having a purpose but what they do with it.
Careful observation of the best agile, entrepreneurial businesses provides some of the answers. They just use purpose in an entirely different way. These agile, entrepreneurially-minded businesses have a clearly defined set of attributes within their cultures that are the secret to bridging the ‘purpose gap’.
And that secret lies in the first rule of effective purpose; that it must be credible, congruent and absolutely authentic.
The first and most fundamental attribute in any agile, purposeful culture is TRUST
Which is why the first and most fundamental attribute in any agile, purposeful culture is TRUST. Companies where purpose lives and breathes tend to be open, compassionate and creative rather than inward looking, fearful and controlling. In more traditional cultures based on control, people are instinctively fearful and therefore distrustful of the purpose. Hence it has no power to change things for the better.
What drives trust is a marked difference in the organisation’s approach to people.
What drives trust, allows purpose to thrive and transforms cultures is the organisation’s approach to people. An example of this is provided by a major European Bank. The Bank had made purpose a top priority and it was well received in internal surveys. Yet it made little difference how people felt or behaved. The leadership team couldn’t understand why purpose was not ‘working.’ Research showed the Bank’s purpose was quite well understood; it just wasn’t trusted. In fact less than 25% of employees really believed the authenticity of the purpose.
The solution was nothing to do with ‘purpose’ itself, but rather demonstrating its authenticity and rebuilding trust by a fundamental reappraisal of how people were treated and encouraged to treat each other.
The results were extraordinary. In teams taking part in the programme, positive beliefs and behaviours jumped by an average 33% after only 6 months of participation. In particular, the critical measures of trust, openness and compassion increased by 40%. Purpose was now working because it had been activated by trust. Most extraordinary of all, in a wholly surprising and unintentional consequence, revenues in the pilot teams had increased by an average of 15%.
To find out more about creating agility through building a trust culture read here.
With trust comes the second major attribute of entrepreneurially-minded, purposeful businesses; a company-wide feeling of, and desire for, OWNERSHIP.
Unless everyone in the organisation feels – and feels allowed to feel – a powerful sense of ownership of the business it will not flow through into agile employee behaviours.
Organisations in which everyone feels an emotional investment demonstrate employee behaviours of alignment, engagement and autonomy. And the simplest and most compelling route to creating a culture of ownership is to create a feeling of ownership of the purpose the organisation serves.
Organisations need to reframe the relationship between the company and the employees from one of control to one of self responsibility
This is about a critical shift in how management at every level of the organisation thinks and behaves and about shifting the relationship between the company and the employees from one of control to one of self responsibility.
Research in a large pharma/medical group suffering from a significant problem of engagement and motivation uncovered an intriguing truth. Although disillusionment in most managers was resulting in ineffective decision-making and a critical lack of strategic implementation, a small group thought and behaved in an entirely different way. This group felt emotional ownership of the organisation an extraordinary 45% more strongly than the median manager, which translated into some remarkable differences in their commitment, effectiveness and willingness to take responsibility for successful outcomes.
And what made these managers different from their peers came down to one thing: the degree to which they believed in the purpose the business served.
It was clear that individuals who felt their company to be authentically purposeful (as distinct from having a stated purpose) had a far higher sense of ownership and responsibility, and were consequently dramatically more effective as managers (as well as, incidentally, being far more joyful and far less likely to quit). To find out more about creating agility through developing ownership and responsibility read here.
The final driver of entrepreneurially-minded businesses is the ability to manage in CONTEXT. Whilst trust drives cultural agility, and ownership drives engagement and autonomy, the ability to manage in context defines how effectively and efficiently management behaves.
Contextual Management creates clarity, adaptability and, above all, velocity in management decision-making.
An increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world requires a significant amount of adaptability; and that is something that entrepreneurial management is all too familiar with. Whether because of the speed of development, newness of the market or paucity of resources, entrepreneurial management has long been adept at navigating an ambiguous world. The key skill entrepreneurial management demonstrates is the ability to make decisions contextually to create clarity and direction rather than getting bogged down in the content. And this is a skill that can be taught.
Where management uses a clearly articulated purpose as the context for key decisions, within an environment of trust and where the whole team is willing to take responsibility, it creates enormous velocity. It also ensures the purpose links the business up from top to bottom. To find out more about creating agility through managing in context read here.
It’s easy to agree that purpose is a good thing for employees and for society at large. But with the life expectancy of a S&P 500 company down to 15 years, it’s also easy to identify that the behaviours of aligned, engaged staff, open, innovative cultures and agile, clear-headed management are the key to survival.
The problem is the gap between purpose and behaviour.
Without the entrepreneurial attributes of trust, ownership and context, muddle, distrust and cynicism will persevere in middle management and purpose will not take root. What drives the extraordinary agility of the best entrepreneurial businesses is not ‘having a purpose’ but that purposefulness is credibly, congruently, consistently and authentically lived in the organisation. It is that which unlocks the human capital in the business allowing both people, and the business itself, to achieve their full potential.
Without these entrepreneurial ways of thinking no business can hope to be agile. It will always be outrun. And in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world the bear is very large and very real.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index can transform the impact of purpose in your business, and how you can help this important research please get in touch.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy this short EthWord film
You may also enjoy these articles:
How to make your people 30% more engaged, 29% more joyful and 26% more productive. Easily.
How rediscovering its purpose transformed a stalled business into a rising star
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash
The CSR trap – how not to confuse Purpose with 'doing good stuff'
It is easy to confuse being #PurposeLed with doing ‘good stuff’. Yes, an organisation’s Purpose is about how they treat people and how they treat the planet, but it also has a clear and coherent commercial reason for being.
@jrosling explains the difference in just over 2 minutes.
How can you create ownership in a large organisation
So how do you create this sense of ownership in a large organisation?
@jrosling discusses with @theethword.
1 minute watch
#PurposeLed
It’s not about having Purpose, it’s what you do with it
What drives high-performing, agile businesses? What do they have that is missing in so many sluggish ‘corporate’ organisations?
It’s a question that we have become obsessed with – and spent the last couple of years researching with leading institutions including the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth.
It’s a question we think we may just have answered.
The missing link
That answer is rooted in how agile, entrepreneurially-minded organisations behave. Yes, it’s about clarity of purpose. But it’s more nuanced than that. In large organisations, beset by complexity and legacy-thinking, there’s a missing link between Purpose at the top and how it is received in the real business. That gap doesn’t appear in the best entrepreneurial businesses.
There’s a missing link between Purpose at the top and how it is received in the real business
By studying entrepreneurial thinking, combined with cutting-edge academic research, we believe we’ve identified why that is – and codified it into a tool any business can use to transform organisational performance. Our research can show you where this gap exists in your company, however large or complex, and provide the data to support targeted programmes of change.
And in gaining this key insight you are also contributing to important global research.
It’s clear that Purpose-led companies are more attractive and empowering places to work. In some circumstances they can also commercially outperform their profit-led peers. As a result, 90% of CEOs now claim to be actively engaged in implementing or exploring Purpose. And many are finding it’s making not a jot of difference to the beliefs and behaviours of their people.
What has not previously been clear is why the gap between purpose and impact exists, how it can be bridged in the unique circumstances of a particular organisation, and the specific pathways that directly link Purpose to the performance of the business. Without this clarity, it is hard to fully activate Purpose in a business.
The entrepreneurially-minded businesses where this gap does not exist
The Contexis Index® provides this clarity, with robust metrics that reveal how Purpose is working and where its effect is blocked. The Index is the result of research into high performing businesses, and particularly entrepreneurially-minded businesses, by Contexis and researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth. It employs rigorous measurement scales to assess a broad range of organisational performance metrics and links these back to Purpose through a defined set of cultural characteristics. The Index provides these metrics, in detail, by demographic (age, sex, seniority, time in business etc.) and location.
The Contexis Index® reveals how Purpose is working and where its effect is blocked.
Data for the Index is gathered via an on-line Survey or smartphone App. Results are provided in an interactive Dashboard that allows you to interrogate the data in real time and compare the performance between demographic groups across the business, or in a detailed Report with data presented graphically together with detailed analysis and recommendations.
And can the gap be bridged?
So far, the results of the initial companies to take the Index whether they are entrepreneurial businesses or complex corporates have been remarkable. Purpose does drive performance. But only where it is activated. Activated purpose leads to an average increase (over the median employee) of 30% in engagement, 36% in openness to new ideas, 29% in joy and 26% in performance. And the results are showing how this activation is achieved and the specific cultural markers that appear to bridge the gap between stating a purpose and bringing it alive in the business.
Purpose does drive performance. But only where it is activated.
As Rupert Lee-Browne, CEO of FX group Caxton, observes “Without Purpose, a company can only flipflop around without truly consolidated, effective effort. What Contexis has developed with its Index is a very clever way to measure the impact of Purpose on Performance, enabling companies to really motivate their teams. Contexis Index did it for Caxton”.
And this is where you come in..
We are now looking to work with a small number of additional companies. We have the research funding to conduct a pro bono analysis of a limited number of organisations and we are looking for specific types and scales of organisations. I’d love to hear from you if you would like to know more.
By undertaking this analysis, you will develop remarkable insights into how purpose is working in your organisation and where it is not. You will also be supporting important research into how ethics drives commercial performance by contributing wholly anonymised date to the University of Cambridge.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index® can transform the impact of Purpose in your business and how you can help in this important research please get in touch.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy these short films
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index®; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
Photo by Shirly Niv Marton on Unsplash
How can inspirational entrepreneurs drive social progress?
EY are doing great work spreading the message that purpose is brilliant for business, and we enjoy reading and sharing their insights.
We particularly love this article which brings together purpose and our other passion - entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs play a key role in creating a world that works better – through the jobs they create, and through their ingenuity, can-do approach and a focus on leaving a positive legacy
Read the full article here
Purpose drives performance. End of…
If you are occasionally frustrated by the sometimes woolly debate about Purpose, you are not alone. It’s made us determined to definitively prove that Purpose-led businesses are better businesses – both ethically and commercially. And to do that we needed to measure exactly how Purpose is working to drive performance in real companies today.
We are determined to definitively prove that Purpose-led businesses are better businesses – both ethically and commercially.
After extensive work with Cambridge University, the University of Plymouth and others we think we’ve cracked it. We think we can now definitively measure the impact of Purpose and, in doing so, help companies to understand how it is working in their business – and where it is not.
We think that this could play a part in promoting a better way to do business. And if that sounds like a useful ambition you can help take this research to the next stage – and, as a bonus, find out how Purpose is really working in your own business.
We know Purpose inspires and engages employees. But, if Purpose is driving strategy it also creates clarity and velocity – critical in today’s ambiguous business world.
Employees who get your purpose perform, on average, 26% better than the median employee
The positive benefits of Purpose are clear in terms of employee engagement and wellbeing. But that tells only half the story. Circumstantial evidence has been around for years that Purpose-led businesses can commercially outperform their profit-led peers. But why? What has not previously been clear is why and how Purpose drives this commercial performance; and the specific pathways that directly link Purpose to the performance of the business.
Without this evidential clarity, it is hard for organisations to understand and fully implement and activate Purpose.
If you can’t measure it, what’s the incentive to change?
That’s why, working with leading researches and academics, we’ve developed an Index to provide robust metrics that reveal how Purpose is working and where its effect is blocked. The idea is to give companies the evidence that will enable them to run their business more compassionately for their people, more ethically for society and more sustainably for the planet. And to design highly targeted interventions and cultural change programmes with a great deal of confidence since they are based on reliable empirical data.
The new Index employs rigorous measurement scales to assess a broad range of organisational performance metrics and links these back to Purpose through a defined set of cultural characteristics. This provides, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the drivers of an activated Purpose on organisational performance. The Index provides these metrics, in detail, by demographic (age, sex, seniority, time in business etc.) and location.
Initial results have been remarkable; and remarkably consistent
In aggregating these metrics, the Index provides a single headline measure of business performance in three defined areas of activity; people, culture and management/leadership. Within each of these areas the Index provides a measure of the specific behavioural characteristics that are known to be primary influencers of performance. The Index then measures the critical moderating characteristics of ownership, trust and contextual clarity that are seen to act as pathways between Purpose and performance outputs.
Data for the Index is gathered via a simple on-line Survey or smartphone App taken by all or a sample of employees. The App also offers the ability to ‘pulse’ survey all or specific groups in real time to assess and test changes as the result of interventions or announcements in the business.
And what does it prove..?
It’s early days but initial results have been remarkable; and remarkably consistent whether a small private business or a complex corporate. Purpose drives performance. End of..
Put another way, employees who get your purpose are, on average 30% more engaged, 36% more open to new ideas, 42% stronger in feelings of ownership and self-responsibility and 44% in trust, 29% more joyful – and they perform fully 26% better than the median employee. And the methodology is starting to
show exactly how these impacts can be achieved.
As Rupert Lee-Browne, CEO of FX group Caxton, observes “Without Purpose, a company can only flipflop around without truly consolidated, effective effort. What Contexis has developed with its Index is a very clever way to measure the impact of Purpose on Performance, enabling companies to really motivate their teams. Contexis Index did it for Caxton!”.
And now we need your help
You can help take this research to the next stage – and, as a bonus, find out how Purpose is really working in your own business
We are now ready to open the analysis to the next tranche of companies. We have the research funding to conduct a pro bono analysis of a limited number of organisations and we are looking for some very specific types and scales of companies. I’d love to hear from you if you would like to know more.
By undertaking this analysis, you will develop remarkable insights into how purpose is working in your organisation and where it is not. You will also be supporting important research into how ethics drives commercial performance by contributing wholly anonymised data to the University of Cambridge.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index can transform the impact of Purpose in your business and how you can help in this important research please get in touch.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy this short EthWord film
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
Purpose: If you can’t measure it, what’s the incentive to change?
Our ambition is to measure the commercial impact of Purpose and show specifically how Purpose is acting to change human behaviours and drive business performance.
It’s widely accepted that Purpose-led companies are more attractive and empowering places to work. But can it be indisputably and empirically proved that ethical businesses also commercially outperform their profit-led peers? Is a robust measure of Purpose Efficacy possible?
Can it be indisputably and empirically proved that ethical businesses also commercially outperform their profit-led peers?
A clear set of purpose metrics
If it is, it could have a significant impact on promoting a better way to do business globally. It would enable organisations of all sizes to embed Purpose and ethics into their strategy, confident of the long-term benefits to commercial performance and value creation, based on a clear set of metrics and an understanding of exactly how Purpose can drive performance in their specific organisation. The Contexis Index® solves the measurement problem for the first time, providing credible metrics based on the latest academic thinking on the impact of Purpose on human performance in businesses today and showing how this is working so that you can activate Purpose right across the business to enhance staff and societal wellbeing whilst also supporting long-term value creation.
The Index is the result of research into high performing businesses by Contexis and researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth.
The Index is the result of research into high performing businesses by Contexis and researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth. It employs rigorous measurement scales to assess a broad range of organisational performance metrics and links these back to Purpose through a defined set of cultural characteristics. This provides, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of where the gaps exist between Purpose and organisational performance. The Index provides these metrics, in detail, by demographic (age, sex, seniority, time in business etc.) and location.Data for the Index is gathered via an on-line Survey or smartphone App. Results are provided in a detailed Report with data presented graphically together with detailed analysis and recommendations.
Are you clear as to how purpose is really working in your organisation?
Running the Index through your business will give you a clear understanding of how Purpose is working in your own organisation and where its effect is blocked. It will also enable you to design highly targeted interventions with a great deal of confidence since they are based on reliable empirical data and ‘pulse’ survey all or specific groups in the business to assess their impact in real time.
And in gaining this insight you are also contributing to important global research.
Running the Index through your business will give you a clear understanding of how Purpose is working in your own organisation and where its effect is blocked
We are now ready to open the analysis to the next tranche of companies. We have the research funding to conduct a pro bono analysis of a limited number of organisations and we are looking for some specific types and scales of organisations. I’d love to hear from you if you would like to know more.
By undertaking this analysis, you will be joining companies around the world in supporting important research into how ethics drives commercial performance by contributing wholly anonymised date to the University of Cambridge. You will also develop remarkable insights into how purpose is working in your organisation and where it is not.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index can transform the impact of Purpose in your business and how you can help in this important research please get in touch.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy this short EthWord film
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
How to make your people 30% more engaged, 29% more joyful and 26% more productive. Easily.
What powers the performance of the most successful companies on the planet? What do they know that is lost on so many slow-moving traditional organisations?
It’s a question that we have spent the last couple of years researching with leading institutions including the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth.
It’s a question we think we may have answered.
The purpose gap
That answer, of course, is rooted in the cultures of these organisations. Culture is unique to a particular organisation and takes years to build. But what if the key elements of how agile entrepreneurially-minded organisations behave could be codified and therefore replicated? What if it could be understood ‘at source’?
there’s a missing link between Purpose at the top and how it is received in the real business
Yes, it’s about clarity of purpose and that’s nothing new – 90% of CEOs now claim to be actively engaged in implementing or exploring Purpose. But it’s more nuanced than that. In large organisations, beset by complexity and legacy-thinking, there’s a missing link between Purpose at the top and how it is received in the real business. That gap doesn’t appear in the best entrepreneurial businesses.
By studying the very best entrepreneurial thinking, combined with cutting-edge academic research, we believe we’ve identified why that is. It’s not about having a social purpose – it’s what you do with it.
Our research identifies 9 key attitudinal behaviours which drive business productivity and performance. And, in entrepreneurial businesses, these behaviours appear to be the outcomes of an actively engaged purpose. The key question is what is the source of these productive behaviours – and what is the missing link in more hierarchical, corporate organisations?
It’s not about having a social purpose – it’s what you do with it.
It’s clear that these ‘entrepreneurial’ behaviours are, to some degree, suppressed in most corporate organisations. And the source of this appears to lie in a weakness in three key cultural markers; ownership, trust and contextual clarity. Research suggests that Purpose in the absence of these is unable support the positive performance behaviours typical in an agile culture.
A lack of ownership, trust and clarity creates a gap between purpose and people in the business.
And that’s where the Contexis Index® comes in. By understanding the cultural relationship between purpose and performance and codifying this, our research creates a tool that any business can use to transform its human capital and organisational performance.
The Index is a measurement tool that provides robust metrics that reveal how Purpose is working and where its effect is blocked. It employs rigorous scales to assess a broad range of organisational performance metrics and links these back to Purpose through a defined set of cultural characteristics. The Index provides these metrics, in detail, by demographic (age, sex, seniority, time in business etc.) and location.
Data for the Index is gathered via a simple on-line Survey. Results are provided in a detailed Report with data presented graphically together with detailed analysis and recommendations. This will enable you to design highly targeted interventions to bridge the gap with a great deal of confidence since they are based on reliable empirical data.
And can the gap be bridged?
So far, the results of the initial companies to take the Index, whether they are entrepreneurial businesses or complex corporates, have been remarkable.
Purpose does drive performance. But only where it is activated.
Activated purpose leads to an average increase (over the median employee) of 30% engagement, 36% in openness to new ideas, 29% in joy and 26% in performance. And the results are showing how this activation is achieved and how to bridge the gap between stating a purpose and bringing it alive in the business.
As Rupert Lee-Browne, CEO of FX group Caxton, observes “Without Purpose, a company can only flipflop around without truly consolidated, effective effort. What Contexis has developed with its Index is a very clever way to measure the impact of Purpose on Performance, enabling companies to really motivate their teams. Contexis Index did it for Caxton”.
And this is where you come in..
We are now ready to open the analysis to the next tranche of companies. We have the research funding to conduct a pro bono analysis of a limited number of organisations and we are looking for some specific types and scales of organisations. I’d love to hear from you if you would like to know more.
By undertaking this analysis, you will develop remarkable insights into how purpose is working in your organisation and to what extent the key markers of ownership, trust and contextual clarity are activating purpose across the business.
You will also be supporting important research by contributing wholly anonymised date to the University of Cambridge.
To find out more about how the Contexis Index can transform the impact of Purpose in your business and how you can help in this important research please contact me at jrosling@contexis.com.
To find out more about the thinking behind the methodology you might enjoy this short EthWord film
John Rosling is a writer and lecturer on entrepreneurship, CEO of Contexis and Head of Thought at the Contexis Index; ever curious as to how entrepreneurial thinking is the key to activating purpose, stimulating agility and velocity and fulfilling human and commercial potential in global organisations.
Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash
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