In 2019,
I took a 9am flight
from Atlanta to New York City.
I was the first person to board that day.
So as I death-gripped my phone
to step over that little crack
that leads to the runway,
I caught a glimpse
of the flight attendant.
Head in her hand, like this, eyes closed.
The moment she heard me, she looked up,
she put a smile on her face
and she said, "Good morning."
"This is not your first flight
of the day, is it?" I asked.
"No," she said,
"it had been a really early one."
I made some silly sleep joke
and she laughed,
and I went to go sit in my seat.
She couldn't have been
more than 25 years old.
During the flight,
we exchanged pleasantries,
and at one point she came
to offer me a snack,
and she asked me what
I was going to New York to do.
I said that I was going
to deliver a speech
and that honestly,
I was cutting it kind of close.
"No time for lunch?" she asked.
“No time for lunch,” I said,
and I took a bag of almonds
and I tucked it into the pocket
of my backpack.
After the flight landed,
I was on my way out of the plane,
and she stopped me for a moment,
and she handed me a plastic bag.
It was about this big
and it was weirdly heavy.
She said, "I know you didn't have a lot
of time today, so I packed you this.
Good luck."
That was nice.
So as I'm walking through LaGuardia
with my bag and my bag,
I peer inside
and there are about 30 packets
of almonds inside that bag.
It was a bag of bags.
And when I was in the taxi
on the way to the speech,
I found this little note tucked inside:
“Ms. Grice, thank you for coming on
and putting a smile on our faces
with your sweet words.
You have been so kind,
and we are very lucky to have you
as a loyal Delta customer.
Thank you.
I know you are gluten-free
so here are some almonds for the road!
Thank you for your kindness!
It goes a long way!
Sarah, Delta flight attendant."
Now reading this,
my heart gave a little jolt.
My day job is to help companies excavate
and execute their purpose.
And this little note on this little napkin
was purpose in action,
specifically that airline’s purpose.
And I know because I had helped
to articulate it over 15 years before.
In 2003, purpose was just one element
of a much larger strategic transformation
that Delta Airlines undertook.
It was a company still reeling
from the aftereffects of 9/11
and one looking for a North Star
to guide them through
would eventually become
Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
But in 2019,
for a flight attendant who was maybe
in elementary school
at the time that purpose was articulated,
it was some almonds for a hungry customer.
It may be that Sarah never saw
that purpose line we articulated,
but no matter, she didn't need to,
because purpose was alive
and well at Delta.
It had become muscle memory.
It had become cultural norm.
Now let me be clear
in what I'm talking about here,
I'm talking about embedding purpose.
I'm not talking about your mission,
which is what you do every day,
or your vision,
which is where you are headed.
Both mission and vision
are important corporate drivers,
but they play a different role in purpose.
And mission and vision will change
with changes in leadership,
corporate contacts, competitive landscape,
merger and acquisition.
They are important,
but they are also temporal.
In my experience,
they often have a time horizon
of, say, three to five years.
But purpose is your "why."
It is found at the intersection
of who you are at your very best
and the role in the world
that you are meant to play.
It comes from your ethos.
It is married to your aspiration,
and because it is ethotic,
it is also timeless.
Now, there are plenty
of data out there to say
that well-embedded purpose
across organizations brings immense value.
Studies that will link
well-embedded purpose
to elevated total shareholder
return over 10 years,
increased employee engagement, retention,
even higher levels of productivity.
Because of all this data,
it is rare in my work
that a CEO will come to me and say,
"Ashley, what is purpose"
or "Why do I need to do it?"
Instead, what they will ask is
"When I have my purpose,
how do I embed it
across my organization so well
that it brings the most value,
that it becomes muscle memory?"
As I've been doing this work
for almost 20 years at this point,
I have a ready answer.
First, I tell them
it needs to be authentic.
Purpose that is rooted in your ethos,
distinctive to your brand,
meaningful to all of your stakeholders
and consistent with your values
is authentic.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, the CEO of Optus,
a Sydney, Australia-based
telecommunications company,
can speak to her company’s purpose --
powering optimism with options --
with conviction,
because it is authentic.
Optus is, by its very nature,
a challenger brand,
and it is a brand synonymous
with a brand platform of positivity
since options breed action
and optimism breeds hope.
How they pull their internal
relations together
with their external reach-out to customers
is very consistent
and incredibly authentic.
Now on the other end
of the authenticity scale,
I once worked with a CEO
who really wanted purpose
to be about environmental sustainability.
"That is great," I said,
"except for your company struggles
to even recycle in your offices.
I know, I've been there."
While they admire the aspiration,
if we had come up with a purpose line
that was solely about
environmental sustainability,
it would have been dead on arrival.
Specifically with employees.
Secondly, I tell CEOs
that they must be critical
in excavating purpose from the inside out.
Purpose is uncomfortable.
It should be,
because you are introducing a tension
between idealism and realism:
who you really want to be
and who you are capable of being,
today and in the future,
based on competencies and ethos.
And purpose can be
particularly discomforting
because even once you have it,
it takes a while to implement it.
In fact, you may set your purpose once
and spend your entire career
living up to it.
Now, purpose is particularly
uncomfortable for companies
who are on a forced evolution of change,
companies in industries
like oil and gas, for example,
or for companies who maybe have
bad behaviors they need to leave behind.
Finally, I tell CEOs
that purpose must apply
to the whole of the organization.
Purpose is not a CEO vanity project.
Sure, it may help cement
the legacy of the CEO
who is in charge
at the time it's articulated,
but it's not about them,
it’s not about him or her.
It’s about the value the company brings.
It is about the role in the world
that it’s meant to play.
Now purpose at the C-suite level
should be a unifying construct
that brings together mission and vision
and influences your strategic agenda.
It should help CEOs think about how
they redefine metrics for success,
what types of topics they may want
to speak with analysts about,
or maybe most importantly,
how the board ought to hold them
accountable as managers.
Purpose at the middle-management level
is about much needed
clarity and authority.
The middle-management layer
of any organization
is often the most difficult to motivate
because they have so many
different stakeholders to please.
But by bringing clarity
with purpose-driven
expectations and guardrails,
it allows middle managers to understand
which battles to pick
and that the micro decisions
they make on a daily basis
affect the company [as] a whole.
Finally, front-line employee purpose
helps employees at that level ensure
that they are seen.
When purpose is excavated and executed
top floor to shop floor,
those on the shop floor
understand that their work matters
and how it adds up to the overall
value for the company.
Well-embedded front-line purpose
is the tenet behind that legendary story
of John F. Kennedy
and the NASA janitor
back in 1962.
You know, the one where JFK
supposedly asked the janitor,
"What do you do for NASA?"
And the janitor said,
"I'm putting a man on the moon."
In this story, the janitor understood
that his role was to prepare the building
for the engineers who were going
to come in and crank on the math.
But he also understood
the importance of that role
to the overall vision
and objectives of NASA.
That janitor understood
his role in the universe,
so to speak.
So many iconic business stories
begin on the back of a cocktail napkin.
But it wasn't just this napkin
or even the nuts
that caused me pause that day.
It was the sentiment behind it.
It was the idea if you execute
purpose across culture
and strategy and brand
consistently for years,
it does become muscle memory.
It becomes a cultural norm.
And it is that norm that encourages
an employee to make a gift,
which becomes a story
which then a very loyal customer
tells to the world.
So since I am here, Sarah,
thank you for your kind words that day,
and for the almonds.
You helped make it a great day
because you were right,
I was hungry.
Thank you.
(Applause)