Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer for Procter
& Gamble, believes that businesses must rethink their purpose to achieve
far better results.
But not just the most apparent purpose, but a higher order
ideal or purpose. For example, Johnnie Walker exists to make great whisky, but
its higher order ideal is to celebrate journeys of progress and success.
Starbucks must make great coffee, but it must do more if it
is to attract people and innovate in ways that make life better for the people
they serve both inside and outside the organisation. “It’s necessary,” writes
Stengel in Grow,
“to want to be the best-performing enterprise around, with the highest
standards, the best people, and the most satisfied customers.
However, this
simply doesn’t aim high enough and look far enough ahead. To hit higher targets
and stay out in front of the competition requires an ideal. ”To that end,
Starbucks also exists to create connections for self-discovery and inspiration.
It’s what fuels passion and creates meaningful work. A brand ideal of improving people’s lives is
the only sustainable way to recruit, unite, and inspire all the people a
business touches, from employees to customers.”
Stengel believes that a higher-order brand ideal must
improve people’s lives in one of five fields of fundamental human values:
Eliciting Joy:
Activating experiences of happiness, wonder, and limitless possibility; create
moments of happiness that engage our thoughts and emotions as well as our
physical senses. (Coca-Cola, Zappos, Lindt)
Enabling Connection:
Enhancing the ability of people to connect with one another and the world in
meaningful ways. Key concepts in this field are connect, listen, reach, and
community. (Airtel, Fed Ex, Blackberry, Natura)
Inspiring Exploration:
Helping people explore new horizons and new experiences. Helps customers learn,
gives them powerful tools, and invites them to reinvent themselves and their
world. (Apple, Discovery Communications, Pampers, Red Bull)
Evoking Pride:
Giving people increased confidence, strength, security, and vitality;
supporting self-expression and inspiring passion. (Calvin Klein, Heineken,
L’Occitane)
Impacting Society:
Affecting society broadly, including by challenging the status quo and
redefining categories. (Accenture, IBM, Method, Seventh Generation)
Stengel’s bases his conclusions on a ten-year growth study
involving 50,000 brands. The study tracked the connection between financial
performance and customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy. The result was “The
Stengel 50.” In the 2000’s, an investment in these companies would have been
400% more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500. “If you’re willing
to embrace the same concept and align your business with a fundamental human
ideal, you can achieve extraordinary growth in your own business and your own
career. My research shows that your growth rate can triple.”
Stengel’s point is good psychology. Success is more complex
than any one factor. More good decisions than bad (intelligent people make silly
mistakes too); timing and luck all play a part too. And then great companies
get off track, not because they were doing the wrong thing, but because they
stop doing them or failed to adapt appropriately. The ideas presented in Grow
are what worked for Stengel for the time he was at Procter & Gamble and
properly applied may work for you too. Generally, if it is based on sound
principles, it’s always worth consideration. And Sengel’s ideas are.
One implication of
the study is interesting. Stengel reports that the “study challenged P&G’s
paradigm of moving people around frequently. The companies that were growing
the fastest had a different paradigm. In recruiting and hiring they looked for
people whose values fit with their brands, and tended to keep people working in
the same areas for much longer.”
He categorizes the people that run The Stengel 50 as
business artists. “The fastest-growing businesses in the world have a leader
whose relationship to the business is not primarily that of an operator, no
matter how savvy, but an artist whose primary medium is an ideal.”
The business case for ideals is about playing a role in the
lives of both customers and employees at a much more important level than the
competition does. It’s about connecting with people holistically: rationally
and emotionally, left brain and right brain.
Stengel recommends
that you continually ask four questions:
1.
How well do we understand the people who are
most important to our future?
2.
What do we and our brand stand for?
3.
What do we want to stand for?
4.
How are we bringing the answers to these
questions to life?
The power is in the answers and executing against them. What
is your primary purpose? What do the people you serve care about beyond what
they buy from you? Could you benefit from discovering your higher ideal?
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