Interview: the business of purpose and the purpose of business

Summary

The purpose movement has been around for a few decades and is now gaining serious traction. This article explores what purposeful business is really about and why we so desperately need it.

It is easy to assume that humans and organisations are fundamentally ‘good’ and seek to create value in the world. It follows that high functioning organisations will contribute to a vibrant society and sustainable livelihoods. What alternative aims are we serving, if not the betterment of life for us all?

The reality is far more murky: politics, technology, regulations, competition, anxiety, and conflict preoccupy energies and efforts at work. As a global community we are now coming to terms with the fact that our roles and organisations may have unintentionally contributed to long-term outcomes that go against our best interests as a civilisation, and life on earth in general. The purpose movement intends to nudge us firmly back on track.

Purpose isn’t the same as ‘mission’, ‘ambition’, or ‘goals’. Purpose is ‘served’ or ‘fulfilled’; it is not ‘achieved’, ‘won’ or ‘delivered’. It is about meeting a need from the world around us rather than satiating a desire within us, and that is why it can offer such a profound shift in thinking.

Jane Craig is founder of otherkind, a collaborative community seeking to bring purpose back to the heart of business. I spoke to her about the formative experiences that brought her to the business of purpose, and what it really takes for us to evolve our thinking about the purpose of business.

“Value creation is about how we meet a need in society in a more effective way, but it has now become about how we make more money.”
- Jane Craig otherkind

What were your initial impressions of working in a large organisation?

Early on in my career I worked in the sales team at Mars. We sold around the product by talking to vets about product trials and how they treat kidney disease. It had meaning. When I moved to grocery and other core parts of the business, they sold based on promotions and margins; the value being created stopped being the leading factor. Margins matter, but if it’s at the helm we quickly lose our way, we lose our meaning. Value creation is about how we meet a need in society in a more effective way, but it’s now become about how we make more money.

The assumption is that ‘you need to lose for me to win’, but that’s just a race to the bottom. We’re fighting that battle with the planet and the planet will win; we’ll die out and the planet will prosper without us. The relationship is all off with customers and other stakeholders. It’s common sense to consider the longer-term impacts on customers and the planet: these are relationships that we depend on for the long haul.

I’ve been told I’m ‘too idealistic’ as if it’s a bad thing, but I think this is one of my greatest qualities. I always believe things can be better than they are.

How did that show up in your childhood?

I grew up in a traditional Catholic family, working class, and traditional gender roles. At most my brothers had to mow the lawn and keep their shoes clean whilst I was expected to cook, knit, embroider, clean the house…, it just didn’t make sense to me. I was a real tom-boy and wanted to do all the things my brothers did. It seemed unfair to be treated so differently. I became fiercely independent, even a bit defensive about being helped by men. I always felt the need to prove that I could do what they could do!  Fairness was important to me from a very young age. 

What happened to the rebel part of Jane?

It has always been there below the surface, not always showing. I have never accepted the status quo, or the idea that it’s hopeless to try to change things. It’s in my nature to want to make things better.

I first trained as a veterinary surgeon: if I wanted to make things better then medicine was an obvious route. I got tired and dissatisfied with the working environment and I wasn’t prepared to settle for it. I tried different specialisms and species but couldn’t find anything satisfying or meaningful enough. That ultimately led to my move into industry. It wasn’t long before I found some real passion in people development.

In a way I went from making things better by working with animals, to people, to society. My work became about growing people to be in service of something bigger: a fairer society. 

Let’s go back to your corporate career. Was there a moment when things changed for you?

I became increasingly uncomfortable with inequalities in general…the dissonance showed up in different ways for me. As I became more conventionally successful and was earning more money, I couldn’t understand why hard-working friends weren’t earning as much. My brother became a multi-millionaire, and despite being very talented I couldn’t reconcile it with that level of wealth. I felt conflicted within myself and thought ‘I want to do something that changes that’.

It’s as if there is a sickness in society and I’m trying to figure out what it is and how to treat it. I can see it, yet I’m suffering from it too. Just like the one eyed giant is king in the land of the blind!!

What questions did that raise for you?

What’s the system at work that we’re in? How do we balance opportunity, with merit, choices? How do we work with oppression? Why do some have so much and others have so little?

Tell me about your personal learning experiences

I’m not sure how much I learnt or how much was in my nature and just needed to be awoken.

But I realised that something had been shut down in me for a long time.

In 2001 I was sent on a 3 days leadership programme at Mars. It was the first time I experienced development that wasn’t about technical education or knowledge. On the third day we all received feedback from each other and that was completely new to me. The facilitator also gave me feedback on her observation of me through the week. She said: “you’re participating, noticing what the whole group is doing, and wondering what it’s like to be me.” I couldn’t believe it. How did she know that!? She seemed like a magician. I wanted to learn how to do that. I realised there were endless amounts of things to learn and explore.

I was 35 then. I started working on myself in service of something else. Was that kindled in me? Did I always have that but it had been shut down? I really don’t know.

What was the part of you that was shut down?

I was an adopted child, and complying with others around me was a survival strategy which can be common for adopted children in order to stay safe. I got good results at school and lots of approval that way. I was being the version of myself I needed to be, but a more limited, ‘good girl’ version of Jane. And then my adopted father was killed in a car crash when I was 15. It was a traumatic experience and I shut down emotionally for maybe 15-20 years. I focussed on taking care of my mother and never found the space to grieve for myself.

These new experiences of adult development gave me space to explore these damaged aspects of myself for the first time fully. A door was opened for me.

If otherkind is a door being opened, what’s it a door to?

Oh that’s a good question! People who are yearning for something different, they may not know what it is, but it’s a sense of meaning in how they spend their time, their connection to families and communities. It’s like we’re in a hamster wheel trying to find that meaning in all the wrong places. We’ve lost our way. We’re at Level 1 in bringing the meaning back to business.

It’s as if we believe that if we keep pursuing our desires, we will get our needs met. It doesn’t work like that. (It’s no different to eating a McDonalds when you’re hungry and then feeling hungry again after only 30 minutes. It will never satiate us fully.)

How does this play out in organisations?

Teams and organisations come together to do something important, to meet a need. There are people finding meaning in the products and services they provide to the world, but something catches them out. The profit and money somehow swaps places with meaning in the hierarchy of things, it takes over and we start to lose our way.

We teach win/win in negotiation training but we don’t put it into practice, we stay in the grip of our underlying assumptions. I recently took a senior group of leaders through a deep process to explore their Immunity to Change as they struggled to become more customer centric. The assumptions that surfaced were ‘the customer’s the enemy’, and ‘if we give them an inch they’ll take a mile’.  It’s no wonder we can’t truly transform customer relationships if we are holding these deeply held assumptions.

What does it take for us to develop new perspectives?

We need to create sufficient disruption for people to make this possible, so they can start to  see things differently and become more questioning. We have way too much certainty in an uncertain world.

Noticing and seeing things differently can be too disruptive to a culture and business. I wonder if sometimes we can only grow as much as the system we’re in permits us, and we either stop growing, or become trouble! People can stay and try working at the leading edge of moving the organisation forward, or they leave. I wasn’t growing much and was woken up at 35, so I believe that’s possible too. All experiences and things that happen to us are potentially developmental, but I also believe we can create experiences for people that can help us see the world in a different way, and question our levels of certainty about how things are. We can only create something new if we are willing to question our current assumptions or world view. 

What do you think it’s like for clients working with you on these challenges?

If we’re having uncomfortable conversations about the part we’re playing in the destruction around us, there needs to be safety. I aim to accompany people on this journey without judgment. I speak openly about my own conflicts; I’m no different to anyone else. I still wrestle with my own challenge to take only what I need, and reconcile my financial situation with my ethics around fairness. How can we be in this with each other?

I don’t persecute myself or others. I hold compassion for our human frailties and where we are.

What would be a dream piece of work for you?

The outcome I’d hope for is a long term mutual partnership where we explore these issues together and find more meaning and fulfilment in their work. At the same time we can enjoy the success that comes from ‘better’ business, taking care of relationships, capabilities, wellbeing, and being the healthiest, re-generative, sustainable system they can be. To feel proud in their contribution rather than concerned with what others are up to. To thrive inside and outside the organisation. To create harmony, rather than harm. I’m idealistic, unapologetically.

I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want that.

NowLead celebrates best practice through dialogue. If you would like to be interviewed about your work, get in touch.