The Story of Purpose

The Path to Creating a Brighter Brand, a Greater Company, and a Lasting Legacy

Joey Reiman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118443699
• eBook ISBN: 9781118463994
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A proven methodology for building a purpose-powered organization

Some ideas are bigger than others, and the Master Idea—your company's purpose—is the biggest. Whether addressing communication between leadership and associates, suppliers to manufacturers, sales force to customers, or brand to consumers, The Story of Purpose details a proven methodology for businesses, small to large, how to build a purpose-inspired organization to positively impact employees, customers, and the bottom line. It reveals the process for uncovering what makes a company distinctive and guides you to discover the fundamental force behind the organization that no competitor can replicate or replace.

• The Story of Purpose incorporates stories of purpose from Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, Newell Rubbermaid and many more purpose-driven companies. These stories come to life in a comprehensive book that promises to guide, inspire, and transform your organization
• Offers a blueprint for creating powerful internal and external messages for current and future customers, employees, and shareholders

The Story of Purpose will leave you asking yourself "what gets me up in the morning?" instead of "what keeps me up at night?"

I

The Purpose

Put Humanity Back in Business

Focus on the next quarter century and the next quarter will be just fine.

—Joey Reiman, on his economic outlook

Aristotle called it the whatness. Nietzsche called it the why. Disney called it magic. Kennedy called it the moon. Since the dawn of human thought, purpose has guided us, inspired us, and given us reason to believe in something greater.

Until now, purpose was associated with religious belief, membership in groups, dedication to a cause, and life values. But if we accept the fact that purpose is a universal force, then we must acknowledge its positive presence everywhere. Purpose is no longer confined to private reflection; it’s what liberates public life.

Part I of The Story of Purpose sets the scene for a new transformation of business. It’s an adventure story where purpose is the hero, society is at stake, and business saves the world. Purpose is the force that has the ability to tip the scales and shift from a business model that is self-serving to one that serves others.

We will witness how companies, brands, and leaders who wield purpose win on Main Street, Wall Street, and their own street, garnering the devotion of their associates.

Commerce will move from transactions to transformations, from competing to cooperating, from holding its hand out to becoming a helping hand. In this way, the twenty-first-century organization will put humanity back in business.

1

The Purpose of Work Is to Work on Purpose

Meaning makes money.

—Joey Reiman, contemplating The Story of Purpose

From the Ten Commandments to David Letterman’s Top 10 list, human beings have always enjoyed making lists. Guest lists, to-do lists, best-dressed lists, and best-seller lists are just a few entries on the laundry list of lists. But only one list keeps score of the capitalism race: the Fortune 500, the annual list that ranks the top 500 US companies by revenue.

Created in 1955 by Fortune magazine’s editors as an internal resource for writers and columnists so that they’d know which companies to focus on, the Fortune 500 has been the list to get on and stay on. This list is supposed to highlight the changes and trends that are reshaping corporate America.

And that is precisely why the list is defunct.

The Fortune 500 was created in 1955, a time of prosperity and optimism in America. Business was in business for business and was putting shareholder value first. Revenue and profit at any expense helped build companies like GM, Exxon Mobil, and Walmart—the only three companies to make the number 1 spot on the list.1 The American dream promised that if you focused your business on the bottom line, you too could make the list.

Unfortunately, when you focus only on the bottom line, everyone races to the bottom. And apparently we are there. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling more than 1,000 adults every day since 2008, shows that Americans feel worse about their jobs today than ever before. Gallup also reports that 71 percent of our workforce is disengaged and 25 percent of this group is what they call CAVE-dwellers,2 an acronym for consistently against virtually everything. Add 10 percent unemployment, and we have the Greater Depression—a time where the majority of businesspeople have jobs too small for their spirits.

It’s time for a new list, a new definition of success—and a new way to measure it. We need the Purpose 500, a catalog of companies that are doing well by doing good—because it will be these companies that bring back business for good.

Author Jim Collins was famous for his 1990s business manual and manifesto for greatness. If his book is Good to Great, this book could be called Great to Goodness, a story of companies that prosper for the goodness they bring to the world.

How Packaged Goods Led to Packaging Good

A famous quote by philosopher Aristotle tells us that where one’s distinctive talents intersect the needs of the world, there lies your vocation (from the Latin word vocare, which means “to call”3). The story of William Procter and James Gamble proves the Greek was right. Born in Herefordshire, England, in 1801, William Procter worked as an apprentice learning to dip candles. At heart an entrepreneur, he began selling dry goods and eventually opened a store in London—only to be robbed shortly after. With a huge amount of debt but a larger amount of determination, he and his wife immigrated to the United States to rebuild. However, Procter’s wife became sick and died shortly after their arrival in Cincinnati.

His dream now in the distance, William took a job at a bank. He quickly recognized a unique opportunity after learning that many of Cincinnati’s candles were being shipped in from Philadelphia at great expense. With this insight and his earlier candle apprenticeship experience, he decided to start a candle business to pay off his debt. Cincinnati was a great place to make candles because of the fat and oil by-products from the city’s huge meatpacking industry. After starting his business, William would soon marry a Cincinnati woman named Olivia Norris.

James Gamble was born in Graan, Ireland, in 1803, and his family immigrated to America in 1819 because of the widespread depression in the British Isles following the Napoleonic Wars. They were aiming for Shawneetown, Illinois, but 16-year-old James became very ill while sailing down the same river, so they took him ashore in Cincinnati and decided to settle there.

At 18 years of age, James began an apprenticeship with a soap maker and in 1828 opened his own shop. He then married none other than Elizabeth Ann Norris, sister of Olivia.

The girls’ father, Alexander Norris, encouraged Gamble to form a joint venture with Procter. Both men were competing for the same meatpacking by-products to make their soap and candles, so they founded Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1837.

Now comes the good part.

Working tirelessly, “burning the candle at both ends” (an expression that was coined much earlier, in the 1600s), the Englishman and Irishman built a pretty sweet business, and by 1859, they had reached $1 million in sales.

During the Civil War, P&G won some Union Army contracts for candles and soap, which helped light the way for a growing business and exposed more people to the quality of P&G products. In a disparate world cloaked in darkness and disease, two men offered candles and soap. Whether this act was manufactured by money or meaning is irrelevant. The fact was, for James and William, taking care of business meant taking care of others. What’s more is that in the crucible of war, they found the alchemy of good—something that could create the presence of the positive.

“Touching lives and improving life” is P&G’s purpose today. The primary way P&G fulfills this purpose is through brands of superior quality and value. P&G brands are a part of people’s lives. They make everyday chores such as cleaning houses and bathrooms easier and even, on some occasions, enjoyable. They make literally billions of people look and feel better every day. As you will discover, the fruits are in the roots of every great brand and Purpose 500 company.

Fortune 500 companies are where money is made. Purpose 500 companies are where money goes—because people like doing business with people who care about them.

Giving Care to the Caregiver

Graco, part of Newell Rubbermaid and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world’s largest single brand of juvenile products. Their story of purpose actually defines what purpose is: an intention that creates a contribution. As we will learn, businesses without purpose might make a big profit, but brands with purpose make a big difference.

Graco’s story begins on a summer night in 1955, when Mr. C. Rex Thomas watched his wife reading a book while their baby was in a swing on the front porch. His wife, who was seated in a chair, had ingeniously tied a string to the swing that rocked the baby back and forth, calming him while she read.

Mr. Thomas instantly recognized that his wife had developed a way to find a simultaneous moment of peace for herself and enjoyment for their child—and he set out to help her even more. He described his wife’s innovation to his fellow tinkerer, Nate Saint, a mechanically gifted individual who figured out how to create a product that would do for Mrs. Thomas what she was trying to do for herself.

At the same time, a church friend named Robert Cone was looking for a proprietary product to build his company upon. He hired two men who he knew as tinkerers: Thomas and Saint. The three men met and created the mechanical version of Mrs. Thomas’s handmade invention before the year was out. They called it the Swyngomatic.

Mothers called it a gift, since it gave them the time to read a book, eat a meal, or take a bath—that is, it gave them the opportunity indeed to take care of themselves so that they could take better care of their babies. The creation of the Swyngomatic gave birth to a new era of parenting, as it was the first product to give moms and dads some time back for themselves.

Graco was born on this simple idea—“cradle those who cradle them”—an idea that came from their origins, was conceived with intention, and made a contribution to the world. In addition, their purpose changed their customer base from babies to parents, a significantly larger market size, and refocused their acquisition strategy to parenting companies. Business increased almost 50 percent in 18 months. Today, the Graco brand is still rocking.

Purpose Brings Joy to the World

The arch is an ancient symbol for a grand human achievement, a tall order for any organization, even for McDonald’s Golden Arches. Add to that the challenge McDonald’s, the world’s most advertised brand, faced in 2008, when it was spending marketing dollars and losing share in the United States. Customers not only had other choices, but fast food was fast becoming a no-go for parents seeking be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Cover
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: The Purpose: Put Humanity Back in Business
• Part II: The Black Box of Strategy
• Part III: Purpose, Inc.: How to Incorporate Purpose into Your Business
• Part IV: Creating a Lasting Legacy
• Epilogue: Collective Purpose Is Our Saving Grace
• Resources
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Index