How can Boards of Directors help build a high-performance company for both Profit + Purpose?
As an executive, a key part of your role is to prepare and present to the Board of Directors.
As you approach your next board meeting, take a quick minute to check if you nervous energy is coming from a place of dread or a place of excitement.
Your Board Members provide their time, skills and experience and accept the legal and personal risk the the role requires in return for a reward. This reward in for-profits may be financial. This reward in non-profits may be personal.
In for-profits and non-profits, when the motivating factor is first and foremost a shared-sense of purpose across the Board of Directors, the board members will have a common framework to navigate through those places of dread and fear when crisis hits or excitement and blue-sky thinking when creativity strikes.
Boards of Directors are realising that the missing piece of their structure is a clearly defined PURPOSE.
“Are you a set-it and forget it board or do you keep referring to your vision, mission and strategy goals during board meetings? ”
What is Purpose?
Purpose is different from Vision, Mission and the Strategy.
Purpose is how your organisation is going to make the world a better place.
If you company is in growth-mode, you have defined your Vision, Mission and strategic goals for at least the next 18 months.
Purpose is a clearly articulated statement of:
HOW specifically you are going to do this.
WHAT impact or change you will make in the world.
In this blog, we provide three essential articles for you to get started.
Our goal is to provide you with resources that will deepen your understanding of PURPOSE.
By strengthening your knowledge, you will have the tools to define the purpose of the organisation and start building higher performing boards who are all working with a shared sense of purpose, financial profit and personal motivation.
The Larry Fink Letter
On 12th January 2018 Larry Fink, Founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, Inc. posted an open letter to the CEO’s of public companies. That letter sparked the global movement in companies to urgently define and serve a social purpose.
In the letter, Larry Fink writes:
“ Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose.
To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.
Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.
Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential. “
Read the full letter here:
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/01/17/a-sense-of-purpose/
Larry Fink, Founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, Inc
2. PepsiCo lead the way
PepsiCo are leading the way in their ‘Performance with Purpose’ goals.
They are committed to ‘HELPING TO BUILD A MORE SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM’.
This links you directly to the PepsiCo website, where you can see how the executive leadership team define the purpose and track progress.
3. Shift from Panic to Purpose
Defining your purpose does not mean tearing-up your vision and mission and staring over again. Often, it is just requires a reframing of the products and services you deliver and connecting them to your purpose.
This Harvard Business Review article provides excellent examples of how corporations from Mahindra to Microsoft reframed their purpose in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the article here:
https://hbr.org/2020/04/shift-your-organization-from-panic-to-purpose
About the Author
Anne is the founder of Boards123 | Digital54 Ltd. She is passionate about building high-performance, purpose driven, diverse and profitable Boards of Directors. Anne lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
