Rarely have organizations been forced to tackle volatility in so many areas all at once until the global coronavirus pandemic, demanding many to evolve in ways they hadn’t previously considered plausible, or possible to accomplish in such short timeframes. With the right approach, however, the gravity of the current situation can become an opportunity, a slingshot to accelerate transformation and speed an organization’s course to a more resilient future.
From witnessing the lightspeed changes being made in organizations around the world over the past few months, the latest report from our Organization & Culture experts – The Slingshot Effect – lays out the specific shifts organizations need to make now. With the right processes, commitment, workforce and mindset, others can learn how to ‘slingshot’ their organizations’ transformation, build the flexibility to thrive on change and the agility to respond to any future shocks faster.
In this report you will learn:
Why taking a human-centered approach remains a key element in any successful transformation
How to determine the most relevant shift in order to build resilience where your organization needs it most
Where to prioritize action and guidance on what to do next
Examples of how other companies are moving forward
Webinar Replay: Common Mistakes in Acquiring a Healthcare Startup
M&A offers healthcare companies an ideal way into disruptive tech. Here’s how to make sure deals go well.
58 min
Watch the webinar replay to hear from a panel of CEOs from leading startup incubators, where they discuss common mistakes large healthcare companies make in acquiring startups.
Webinar panelists include:
Jamey Bradley Edwards, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Cloudbreak Health
Webinar Replay: How to Take Your Brand DTC in 2021 feat. Canoo
In the wildly disruptive electric vehicle market, Canoo is pushing boundaries. Take a peek under the hood.
56 min
In this webinar, we hear from Prophet’s client Canoo, an award-winning electric vehicle subscription service. Bob Wolfley (Marketing), Lucy Ross (Subscription & Pricing) and Veronica Shea (Content & Communication) share how the brand redefined urban mobility and navigated the COVID crisis with a refreshed DTC approach.
Prophet is obsessed with helping our clients win with their customers. We are a global consulting firm, helping our clients unlock uncommon growth in this digital age. Contact us to learn more about what we are doing in all things direct-to-consumer.
How Internal Podcasts Can Liberate Your Employees with Prophet’s Mat Zucker
Mat Zucker inspired the idea for this mini-series when he interviewed Lindsay from Casted for an article he wrote for Forbes about internal podcasting. He has been a fan of podcasts for years. In fact, he’s been creating brand podcasts since the ’90s. This mix of passion and experience gives him a unique perspective when it comes to use cases for podcasts in the world of brands. In his experience, most use cases are usually for external brand podcasts. But with the rise in training and communication within organizations, Mat saw the opportunity to explore how internal podcasts can be a valuable asset to businesses.
In this episode, Mat dives into trends that he has seen in using podcasts internally to build a stronger community and connection inside the business.
Webinar Replay: B2B Leaders Series feat. Zurich & Maersk
Digital transformation offer special challenges for B2B companies. But there are more opportunities, too.
56 min
Watch the webinar replay in which you’ll learn the challenges and opportunities that B2B organizations face in undertaking transformation on a large scale. The discussion features Lindy Hood, SVP, Chief Customer Officer at Zurich North America, Sonny Dahl, Global Head of Customer Experience at Maersk and Fred Geyer, Senior Partner at Prophet and will include lessons learned in accelerating forward momentum as well as how COVID has impacted their transformation plans.
Two of the featured speakers, Fred Geyer and Joerg Niessing, co-authored ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation’. Get your copy of the book here.
If you have any questions or would like to learn how our Marketing & Sales practice helps clients identify a clearer path to a digital transformation that powers growth with real and measurable results, contact us today.
The Acceleration of Digital Transformation in Europe
Our research shows that employee collaboration and a new kind of agility are fueling regional gains.
Every January, the Prophet team sets out our predictions for what the year ahead might bring. This year one of the predictions we made was that 2020 would be the year when failed digital transformation initiatives would face a reckoning.
And then 2020 happened.
Since COVID-19 first emerged in Asia at the start of the year and then took hold in Europe in March, we have lived through a period of dramatic change – the pace of which nobody could have predicted.
In the 2020 State of Digital Transformation report, my colleagues at Altimeter, a Prophet company, have surveyed leaders across the globe to understand how their organizations are responding to the shifts and trends that are shaping how they transform. For those of us in Europe, it provides a fascinating snapshot of the way coronavirus has dramatically shaped the role technology plays in transforming businesses.
Agile Becomes More Than a Buzzword
One of the most significant shifts in this year’s study is the key drivers of transformation efforts. In 2019, the top driver for digital transformation was growth opportunities in new markets. But in 2020, in reaction to the global pandemic and the associated economic pressures, leaders have shifted their focus to operations.
It is in this area we see one of the key differences between the leaders of transformation efforts in Europe and their North American peers. In North America, the top transformation driver is increasing productivity and streamlining operations (41%), but in Europe, the need to work with greater agility is more likely to drive transformation efforts (35%).
“It has become vital for organizations to become more digitally mature.”
The need for agile business practices is particularly pressing in Europe, which experienced a faster and deeper lockdown than North America. This lockdown has required leadership to adapt its transformation efforts to address rapidly shifting customer demands.
Europe Leads the Way in Employee Collaboration
COVID-19 has accelerated the need to shift to virtual ways of working, which has been mirrored by a boom in virtual collaboration tools. The 2020 State of Digital Transformation report shows that Europe is leading the way in this area, with 58% of respondents reporting that platforms to enable employee collaboration was either a top strategic objective for digital investment, or that employees frequently connect over digital platforms. This is particularly pronounced in Germany, with 65% of respondents in the top two levels of employee collaboration and engagement.
Seamless Experiences Command a Price Premium
The rapid adoption of digital technologies throughout the pandemic has shone a light on the points at which experiences break, with issues around technology being the most commonly received complaint.
The 2020 State of Digital Transformation report reflects this, with 52% of respondents reporting that they were yet to achieve a seamless sales and service experience.
But the benefit of doing so is also clear, and it’s an area where Europe leads the way, reflecting a relatively higher adoption of digital tools for sales teams.
29% of European respondents reported that they were able to charge a higher price premium as a result of offering a seamless sales and service experience online, compared with only 15% in North America and 9% in China.
The global pandemic has undoubtedly changed our relationship with technology, and many organizations cite it as a key driver of their own digital transformation.
As we begin to think about the “new normal” shaped by the global pandemic, it has become vital for organizations to become more digitally mature. The 2020 State of Digital Transformation report provides organizations with the opportunity to measure and benchmark their stage of digital maturity.
The report also offers encouragement for European organizations planning for what comes next. EMEA-based organizations are twice as likely as ones in North America to be at the highest stage of digital maturity. Because they have built a strong digital foundation, their focus is now on leveraging data and AI to create great customer experiences.
The COVID-19 crisis caused a major upheaval in the first half of 2020. Within weeks, organizations made drastic changes that were expected to take years, like shifting employees to remote work and digitizing customer offerings. The digitization of organizations that was previously anticipated to take years happened in a matter of days.
There is now more pressure than ever for digital to perform in ways that can power meaningful business transformations.
This year’s annual State of Digital Transformation report:
Examines how organizations pursue digital transformation, analyzing differences based on digital maturity stage, industry, geography, and organization size.
Examines the impact of COVID-19 on digital transformation efforts.
Offers a comprehensive benchmark of digital maturity across five areas that define customer-focused digital transformation: Leadership and culture, customer experience, marketing and sales, technology and innovation, and data and artificial intelligence.
The report has four major takeaways:
Operations support, agility, and revenue are top priorities given COVID-19. The lead use cases are working from home (82%); digital marketing (78% investing to improve); digital selling (76% trying to close compatability gaps); virtual product/ service delivery (52%); and growth initiatives (37%).
The more digitally mature the company, the more they are focused on responding to and taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis. The less digitally mature the company, the more they are working on implementing digital basics.
Digitally mature companies are maintaining their strategic focus despite the pandemic; they focus on digitally-driven innovation, incorporating a new wave of technologies with an intensity that is outpacing the market.
Leadership from CEOs and CIO/CTOs — supplemented by CDOs, Innovation Officers, and Boards — helps ensure firms chart and follow their digital transformation ambitions.
The Future of Work Demands a New Approach to Learning and Development
Our research shows that learning and development can slow the Great Resignation.
Much has been written about the new capabilities required for companies to thrive in the future of work. These needs add to the already significant demands on organizations to upskill their employees in the face of ongoing technological shifts related to digital transformation.
Prophet’s 2021 global research study “Fit for Change: Driving Growth and Transformation in the New Future of Work” showed that companies recognize the importance of equipping employees with the skills demanded by an ever-changing landscape. In our global survey, 81% of leaders noted that “our organization has increased investments in upskilling and reskilling our employees to thrive in the future of work.” Additionally, Fast Company recently reported that companies spent $165 billion on learning and development in 2020, yet 70% of employees say that they aren’t taught the skills needed to do their jobs.
“High-quality, relevant learning and development help reconnect employees to their organizations by creating visibility and access to the skills needed to succeed.”
So, how might organizations ensure that learning investments pay off in terms of achieving their business ambition and engaging and empowering employees? The answer: by taking an intentional, modern approach to designing, delivering and governing learning and development experiences that go beyond transactional training to continuous skills-building and growth.
Learning and Development is at a Tipping Point
Learning and development opportunities have increasingly been a key factor in employment decisions – and even more so now in this period of the Great Resignation of 2021. High-quality, relevant learning and development help reconnect employees to their organizations by creating visibility and access to the skills needed to succeed. It also allows employees to demonstrate commitment to long-term career paths.
Meeting the accelerated demand for modern skills development and relevant learning experiences has elevated the important role played by learning functions and departments. The time is now to ensure that employees receive real value through engaging learning and development content that can be applied and translated to day-to-day work and drive measurable business impact.
Four Steps To an Enhanced Learning Model
At Prophet, we’ve synthesized adult and transformative learning theory to develop our AR2 model for designing and delivering compelling learning and development experiences. The four steps of this model (Absorb-Recall-Apply-Reinforce) are designed to ensure learning experiences support both thinking (synthesis) and doing (application).
Below we walk through each of these four steps, to help you on your way to enabling transformation in the “Mind” of your organization:
1. Absorb
Initially, what is being communicated is still just information, not knowledge; the key is making the information something that the recipients will want to convert to knowledge. First, define clear learning objectives to ensure the information presented is targeted and relevant. Then, consider varying how recipients will consume the information to sustain engagement and stimulate different mental muscles. How might you deliver information in a way that requires recipients to alternately read, see, listen to and feel this content?
For example, Prophet worked with a large global appliance manufacturer, which needed to broadly upskill its marketing organization to enable digital transformation. We designed a full learning curriculum, in which one key module was focused on helping marketers truly understand and embrace their target consumer segments. The segmentation data was translated in a way that brought these consumers to life, versus treating them as data points on a page.
Also, an immersive exhibit allowed the marketers to “choose their own adventure” in terms of when and how they consumed information. Rich material within the exhibit included visuals that invited participants into the kitchens of these individuals and they were actively engaged through the use of an augmented reality app, which allowed them to hear the voice of the consumer first-hand through the unlocking of quotes and videos.
2. Recall
The Recall step is where learners “try” the content in preparation for its application in context. Studies show that every time a memory is retrieved, that memory becomes more accessible in the future. So, Recall focuses on retrieval and continual practice. Today’s virtual learning platforms offer plenty of functionality to find creative ways to aid recall. Real-time quizzes and visualization of results through tools like Mentimeter help drive instant engagement, while the breakout function offered within Zoom enables small groups to consider a thought-provoking question and how it links to what they’ve learned.
For example, with this global appliance manufacturer, our learning curriculum included designing two-week gamified online “Expeditions” around key topics related to digital transformation. After first absorbing the information, participants were engaged through quick quizzes, with points awarded for correct answers. Participants could also earn points and badges for posing questions, commenting and sharing related information, all ways of driving recall as well as a sense of community and competitive spirit.
3. Apply
Within the Apply step, learners must be guided to do something with the knowledge they’ve gained in the context of their job. Adult learning is most successful when knowledge is made clearly relevant to the learners and their lives. In fact, organizations can’t afford to not drive toward application within their learning and development programs.
The Apply step is where knowledge is connected to meeting key business objectives. Applying knowledge in a simulated and supported environment ensures individuals are equipped to apply this knowledge again when they’re faced with a similar situation in their day-to-day work. Tools such as templates, action plans and job aids (like checklists) both support and drive successful applications.
For example, a capstone of the learning curriculum for the global appliance manufacturer was a three-day summit for their top marketing leaders. Action planning often gets crammed into the final module of a session, but an “apply as we go” approach was taken instead. Time was carved out each day to iteratively build action plans, applying the knowledge gained each day to build and refine the thinking. Teams for action planning were carefully constructed to mirror typical working teams. This was, to ensure the action plan was relevant to real objectives, versus a theoretical learning exercise. Finally, the summit incorporated mechanisms to drive accountability, such as sharing action plans with peers and inviting feedback.
4. Reinforce
The fourth and final step is to Reinforce. This means both creating incentives to sustain new behaviors related to the knowledge gained, as well as developing long-term opportunities for reinforcement (to ensure knowledge is not forgotten over time). Simple incentives, such as social kudos or visible symbols (e.g., a custom notebook, with a checklist insert), are fun and effective. The most powerful incentives, however, are ultimately those that are incorporated into development objectives and performance management, to help embed the learning within day-to-day work and expectations.
For example, the learning curriculum for the global appliance manufacturer paved the way for a more expansive effort to transform and embed digital capability within the marketing function. The skills taught throughout the learning curriculum became core to job expectations for the company’s marketers and each marketer was expected to apply the knowledge gained to help the company evolve toward world-class, consumer-led marketing.
Relevant, compelling learning experiences – designed through approaches such as the AR2 model – are necessary to help companies make the leap in leveling up their workforces around critical new skills. Executed as part of a comprehensive learning and development curriculum, these learning experiences create greater employee capability, engagement and ownership in the new future of work.
If you’re looking to pursue an upskilling/reskilling agenda and want to understand how to adapt employees’ skills and roles to the future of work, then our Organization & Culture experts can help – get in touch today.
Is Your Employee Value Proposition Ready for the Future of Work?
Serving diverse audiences requires multiple perspectives, harnessing the contribution of many voices.
Every employer has a value proposition to deliver on to its people, which includes looking after both personal and professional growth and wellbeing. That has taken on new dimensions in 2020, as employers find themselves needing to be their employees’ friend, therapist, safety supervisor, community builder and megaphone for social justice. That’s a lot of hats to wear, and yet it’s clear these and more will be part of the new baseline expectations employees have.
Companies are finding they must make sometimes large transitions to play these roles, and are doing so amidst a background of significant tensions. The current economic climate is forcing a contraction of the workforce at the exact moment employers are being called on to deepen their commitment to their employee base. Financial concerns are ever more urgent but are often at odds with being a good world citizen. And digital transformation is accelerating faster than ever before, at a moment when people are desperately seeking more humanity. Let’s take a closer look at what to keep in mind as your organization begins developing an employee value proposition for the future.
The facts of developing an employee value proposition for the future
The pressure to be on the right side of history in such a cataclysmic moment is very intense, and historic efforts haven’t always threaded the needle of these tensions successfully. We’ve all seen companies that have made big statements on purpose, culture, social responsibility and diversity—but in an effort to prioritize customers and shareholders, many have not delivered on them. 2020 has served as a fresh reminder that businesses can’t pick and choose amongst stakeholders anymore—the survivors of this crisis will prioritize customers, shareholders and employees, as well as communities and society, to truly be good corporate citizens.
“The survivors of this crisis will prioritize customers, shareholders and employees, as well as communities and society, to truly be good corporate citizens.”
This moment demands that employers strike a new deal with their employees.
Serving customers means serving teams. Customer centricity is critical, but your teams can’t be customer-centric if they are themselves drowning. Taking care of employees’ health, wellbeing and work-life balance need to be an explicit part of any go-forward plan. In fact, 64% of employers believe that COVID will have an outsized impact on employee wellbeing and many are already expanding their efforts to respond.
Serving diverse audiencesrequires having multiple perspectives in the conversation. Supporting a diverse network starts by harnessing the contribution of all voices within an organization. A business that makes diversity and inclusivity part of its business strategy now will see this investment pay off when it acquires better, more relevant work and when its position is elevated as a desirable place for top talent to build careers. Interesting that in our own recent research into successfully managing transformation, “harnessing many voices” was seen at the top attribute required by leaders at global organizations.
Serving employees’ hearts and minds means serving the world. Corporate Social Responsibility is fast becoming a thing of the past as companies are being called into Corporate Social Justice. The calls for social justice made in 2020 are only solidifying the existing trend toward employee-employer shared values. The workforce of tomorrow will only work where they see their employer not only aligning with their values but also making non-optical external commitments to advancing a better world.
Deals go both ways – employers also need new things from their teams:
Flexibility and agility. Agile is not a new concept. Events of 2020 have demonstrated the need for workforces that are able to “embrace the unknown” and pivot on a dime.
Learning at the speed of change. With the increased acceleration to automation, companies are imagining fewer and new types of roles. The moment of “meet your new colleagues, they’re robots” is coming to us all. Not just keeping pace but learning ahead of and outside of one’s current job will be critical to success.
Resilience. If this year has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. Employers will value team members that are not just able to change, but willing to lean into what’s next—even when the future is still shrouded in ambiguity.
3 Steps to Future Proof Your Employee-Employer Relationship
To successfully achieve this new contract, employers will need to go beyond standing up one-off efforts to the side of their central business strategy. Serving employees and the world cannot be done with an “initiative,” because it needs to show up at many levels every day and must include many voices to be relevant. The annual planning season is upon us! So what can your company be doing right now to future-proof your employee relationship?
1) Take stock of your entire employee value proposition.
Identify the current deal you offer to your employees and set a vision for what you will offer and expect from your workforce tomorrow. Go well beyond traditional mechanisms like salary and benefits to think about long-term progression, social impact, education and community.
2) Prioritize building an employee data strategy.
Data will be central to this story. You’ve likely spent years building up your customer data strategy, but most companies either have poor workforce data or are not set up to use it well. Workforce data will be crucial for responding to real-time dynamics and quantifying your impact on people.
3) Seek an active relationship with your employees.
Look to move from a passive relationship with employees to more active, dynamic participation. Just as companies have now practiced maintaining ongoing relevance with customers in a changing world, they must look to build their employee relationships in the same way. They must truly get to know them as individuals not just numbers.
Successfully setting this new deal will bring us closer to hiring, retaining and building the workforce we desire to achieve our business and social goals. And we’ll probably see happier and more productive employees too.
Customer-Centricity: Closing the Gap Between Digital and Human
As bots get better, brands are challenging their assumptions about effective machine communication.
The past few months have made it more apparent than ever that shifting to more virtual offerings and seamless interfaces are now the main way for businesses to survive and thrive in our online post-COVID world. These changes – accelerated but not triggered by the pandemic – have fundamentally validated one of Prophet’s core convictions: customer-centricity shouldn’t be determined by what companies think is technically feasible. It has to start with us human beings, putting the real needs of people at the center of every decision. It is clearly digitally driven, but at the core, customer-centricity is always a deeply human endeavor.
For too many companies for too long, the strategy has followed what is technically feasible instead of the other way around. But for the few that have been focused on a people-first approach, having their strategy informed from what humans need first before shifting to what is possible on the back end, the success is apparent.
“It is clearly digitally driven, but at the core, customer-centricity is always a deeply human endeavor.”
Companies like Amazon or Netflix – two highly relevant brands and businesses everyone would agree – are heralded as paragons of the digital age but these brands have become the powerhouses they are because they are human-focused. While there are billions of dollars of tech investments behind each, their unwavering focus on their customer and delivering an experience for them that is fast, simple and incredibly gratifying drives what they do and their bottom line.
Of course, for companies in manufacturing, life sciences or financial services, reinventing themselves as digital entities is more complicated than for say a company with a digitally native business model and their failures often show a similar pattern – namely that their strategies demonstrate a lack of clear thinking from the customer’s standpoint. They’re preoccupied with their products, their sales and their success. But now it’s time to look at everything through the lens of the customer, this is where it should start. Success starts with knowing the buyer. What is then required is a holistic view of the digital landscape with technical feasibilities assessed early on. That is how you bridge the often missed gap between a customer-centric digital strategy and a human-focused one.
Faux humans: The rise of bots
The reason we have opened our doors in such large numbers to tools like Siri and Alexa comes down to convenience, ease of use and the fact you speak to them as you would a human. They are customizable, often adapt to your preferences and deliver an experience you can consistently count on. And companies are eager to take advantage.
One of our favorite examples of the successful use of artificial-intelligence-driven empathy comes from the global insurance company, AXA. To help it successfully grow its business in Asia, AXA had the desire to develop a new digital customer engagement proposition, one that humanized the experience and provided a consistent customer journey and brand experience across the region. Emma was born – AXA’s first humanized user interface, which has become the core of the brand’s new digital customer experience, handling everything from claims to servicing, health content to symptom checks and helping individuals find the solutions and content most relevant to their needs. She’s not just efficient and accurate. She’s a friendly embodiment of a brand committed to assisting people as they strive for financial wellness, whilst successfully bridging the gap between digital engagement and financial advisor partners.
And recognizing the massive gap in helping people deal with the mental-health challenges posed by the pandemic, AXA expanded Emma’s skills to deftly field calls about mental-health questions. That’s a high-risk undertaking, but initial tests show customers don’t just appreciate the effort, they’re using the service extensively.
Challenge definitions: What does it mean to be human?
It’s easy to make assumptions, and companies often mistakenly believe they know everything there is to know about their customers. That’s seldom true, especially in a period of such massive upheaval. It’s critical that companies take this time to go deep as they gather insights, with an entirely rededicated sense of empathy and rigorous analytics. For us, that typically means finding out which drivers are the most essential, right now, for customers and prospects. What makes one brand relevant to them and another forgettable? Are they looking for inspiration or efficiency? Do they feel the brand is available to them when and where they need it? Do they sense it meshes with their own values?
With each new wave of technological development, the digital age shifts shapes and speeds up. And it’s vital that leaders focus on the potential of emerging technology. It’s critical that companies do not let themselves fall behind in efforts to continue to be as connected, nimble and data-driven as can be. They need to continually ask: What tools do we have? How digital is our go-to-market approach? How automated is our production?
But too often, we have seen companies spend tens of millions – and sometimes hundreds of millions – in tech investments before understanding how these initiatives might help customers and eventually drive growth. The critical decisions must always balance both: What do your customers need most right now and what is your company capable of providing?
Digital investments, like any other use of capital, should only be made when companies are clear on how they will serve the largest purpose. Addressing just the digital possibilities in a siloed view is a surefire way for a business to fall short in today’s reality. It is the combination of instilling a human-focused process with digital capabilities and prowess that sets up a business for customer-centric success.
If you’d like to learn more about how a customer-centric strategy can improve the growth of your business then reach out today.
Shaping Your Brand Around the Future of Next-Gen Gaming
As the metaverse gets closer, there are more ways than ever to dive in. Is it time for your brand to play?
Shaping Your Brand Around the Future of Next-Gen Gaming
As gaming companies, technology giants and entertainment conglomerates fight for engaged consumers, it’s become a new race to own the engagement platform – and gaming is the momentum behind the acceleration.
Take a closer look at our infographic below to learn more about how cross-publishers and platforms are building towards the future of content engagement, how the gaming experience has evolved, and how brands can engage in this direct-to-consumer ecosystem.
Prophet is obsessed with helping our clients win with their customers. We are a global consulting firm, helping our clients unlock uncommon growth in this digital age. Contact us to learn more about what we are doing in all things direct-to-consumer.
Examples of Brand Purpose in Action: When It’s Needed Most
Stakeholders are calling brands out on hypocrisy, mixed messages and failed efforts. Not all will survive.
Sixty-two percent of global consumers say their country will not make it through the current crises if companies don’t step up. Customers and employees are looking to their favorite brands to help solve problems, creating an enormous opportunity for companies that are purpose-driven.
But while purpose is essential for any brand today, just having one is not enough: Brands are on trial. Stakeholders are calling brands out on hypocrisy, mixed messages and failed initiatives. Even companies that thought they had a clear purpose need to prove they are investing in substantial change and not just “woke washing.”
Defining and living your organization’s purpose is hard. It’s messy. And it’s never-ending. But the most successful companies in these trying times will derive their purpose from shared human values, stay true to what they do and be relevant to what their stakeholders need. And they’ll act on it every day.
“Make sure your purpose is grounded in shared human values–including employees–and take responsibility when things go wrong.”
These four companies are using purpose in powerful ways, and working hard to live it in challenging times:
Citi: Inspiring growth and progress
Citi’s purpose–to provide financial services that “enable growth and progress”–took on electrifying new meaning as the economic impact of the pandemic shook its employees, customers and neighborhoods. Citi went beyond what most banks did – loan forgiveness and mortgage relief– to not just delay devastation but truly deliver on that purpose. “Citi’s mission and purpose have long been rooted in enabling growth and progress. As the world continues to search for solutions to address the global pandemic, racism, and more, at Citi we know that our role is to identify issues to stand for and influence in order to enable relevant and meaningful progress for our clients, colleagues and communities,” said Mary Ann Villanueva, Director of Citi’s Brand Culture and Engagement.
Efforts included committing $100 million in support aimed directly at that promise of progress, launching Restarting Together to encourage startups supporting society through the crisis, helping customers secure PPP loans, and helping those most impacted by the pandemic including the World Central Kitchen and National Disability Institute and many more. Citi has also expanded beyond financial progress to support racial equality through recent campaigns and commitments to the Black Lives Matter movement, including investing in Community Development Financial Institutions, which play a vital role in low-income communities and communities of color.
Airbnb: Deepening authenticity
When a company’s purpose ties directly to what it does, brands feel more authentic. This becomes even more important during times of change. Airbnb exists to “create a world where you can belong anywhere.” With sweeping travel restrictions and lockdowns, the company had to pivot quickly to find new ways to express hospitality. Open Homes for COVID-19 frontline workers gave hosts an immediate way to help. And it began creating online experiences that allow guests to learn new activities and meet people from around the world. By enabling people to connect, even while stuck at home, Airbnb is finding new ways to stay relevant.
Glossier: Listening builds a shared community
Shared purposes are not just relevant to one audience, they are felt deeply by each–employees, customers and communities. That calls for genuine listening to make sure that actions, products and services align with the values and beliefs of those stakeholders. Glossier’s purpose is “to give voice through beauty” by “leveraging the power of the personal narrative.” Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Glossier’s most frequent request was for a product to help with increased irritated skin from repeated handwashing. Inspired by stories and comments, Glossier quickly developed a hand cream, donating thousands of units to first responders.
The company is also recognizing that obsession with that external community has a downside, leading it to prioritize the needs of customers over that of its own workers, especially people of color. When shoppers engage in racist behavior, for example, the company’s “the customer is always right” stance gets toxic. Glossier isn’t running away from that dissonance but trying to learn. The lesson? Make sure your purpose is grounded in shared human values–including employees–and take responsibility when things go wrong.
Walmart: So actionable, it’s indispensable
The final dimension emerges when companies demonstrate that purpose is not just an empty promise. If companies can’t deliver, it doesn’t matter how inspiring or authentic they are. People pay attention to what brands do, not what they say. Walmart has long struggled with negative perceptions. But it continues to make progress through finding new ways to act on “saving people money so they can live better.”
Because of its vast size, it pays great attention to subtleties and the importance of multiple actions. Among the steady drumbeats that help all people “live better”? In addition to cash bonuses for employees, it’s closing all locations this Thanksgiving to show gratitude. It introduced Express delivery so customers can avoid crowds. It turned parking lots into drive-in theaters, showing movies for free. And in requiring all employees and shoppers to wear masks and supporting expanded testing efforts, it’s helping everyone.
Just as people look to friends, family, and government during hard times, they are holding a magnifying glass up to businesses. Customers expect companies to treat people well, engage the community and evolve to meet a changing world. Workers are questioning employee value propositions. They want businesses to put people over profit. Words and actions matter.
Does your purpose…
Make the world better? Even companies with a pragmatic purpose can inspire others.
Create believers? When businesses connect purpose to the way they earn money, it’s authentic and makes perfect sense.
Apply to all audiences? The right purpose resonates with employees, customers, communities and investors.
Translate into action? If an organization can’t deliver on promises, everything else is pointless. Enabled by leaders, companies constantly need to bring their purpose to life.
