The Benefits of a Purpose Driven Company
On The Business of Intuition Podcast
Katie Burkhart was excited to appear on The Business of Intuition podcast with Dean Newlund where she talked about purpose-driven business and adapting your mission and vision.
Listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, or on Sticher. See the show page.
read the transcript
excuse any typos as we tried to capture the conversation as it happened.
Dean: I’m Dean Newlund, and welcome to The Business of Intuition, where I coach, facilitate, train, and speak on hard science and meaningful experience of intuitive leadership in business, so you can make better decisions, forge real connections, and creatively solve problems to amplify your impact and simplify your life. Welcome to The Business of Intuition!
Probably since the days of Winslow Taylor, who is created for founding modern management over a hundred years ago, there has been a slow but steady movement away from the notion that the purpose of business is to make money to notion that the purpose of business is to create lasting, meaningful value for stakeholders, where money is a resource but not the end goal. COVID sped up the trend towards purpose while we were all forced to slow down and look in the mirror during our mandatory lockdowns. The Great Resignation is also a cry from employees everywhere to be working for purpose-centered organizations where meaningful work and connections are more important than burnout creating efforts to raise productivity and efficiency.
But how do leaders create a purpose-centered organizations? How do they balance the need for staying competitive and profitable with creating meaningful and lasting experiences and loyalty with our employees and our customers?
Well, my next guest on The Business of Intuition has some answers. Katie Burkhart is the mastermind behind mIOS, the system for running a purpose-driven business, and has quickly become one of the go-to experts in the space. She’s a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, minimalist designer, jargon slayer, and sharp communicator. She synthesizes connections and enables humans to make the most of their time they invest in work.
Katie Burkhart on The Business of Intuition!
Katie, thanks for being a guest on The Business of Intuition! I wanted to just start us off with a question because I know you’re very much into and study and help companies around purpose. But I wanted to maybe back into this. If a company is not purpose-driven, because there are some people out there who would say, “We’re purpose-driven, we’ve got a purpose statement. We’ve got a mission statement. I mean, come on. Of course I’m a purpose-driven company.” Are they? And what is a non-purpose-driven company? What does that look like?
Katie: So, non-purpose-driven companies I would say — fortunately or unfortunately — are probably the vast majority of businesses who are still looking at the old logic, the old jewels of the game, with a mechanical mindset, very much focused on the short-term, hyper efficiency, putting things in silos, and are really still saying that money is the goal. And the first big shift people have to be purpose-driven—and it’s how we define a purpose-driven business — is that money, or profit, is not the purpose of the company. It’s actually the outcoming of effectively pursuing your focused purpose. And your purpose is why you exist, why it is you’re doing what you’re doing, and why it matters. And for us, that means you provide lasting value, and that actually opens up a lot of great possibilities and a lot of ways to come at value versus kind of sticking in that very short sort of social impact space. There are a lot of ways to provide lasting value, but it’s that shift of saying, “Oh, I’m not here to make money. I’m making money as a resource. It’s not actually the goal, and I need to start aligning my business to why it is that I’m here in the first place and start to getting my actions and goals moving in that direction.”
So, fortunately or unfortunately, I think most of us are still in that old logic, that old industrial mentality versus shifting to the more human-centered mentality that’s really key in being, operating, and being effective in the purpose economy.
Dean: So, what’s been the, what’s been changing in our world that has made us want to be more purpose-driven? Why is the time now to have this conversation with you, and you with your clients...and I agree, by the way, around being purpose-driven. We have similar values, but why now? What are the factors that have created this need to make a shift in how we approach business?
Katie: I would say it’s a shift that’s been coming for a pretty long time. I don’t think that there’s any debate that the COVID and everything that’s happen around that have accelerated it because it’s caused us to look at what’s really important. And for us, it all comes down to how we want to spend our time.
The purpose economy is yes, shifting from an industrial to human-centered, but what you really get at when you look at that is number one: time is now the most valuable currency. Just paying people more money just isn’t going to do it. We as human beings are saying, “I have so many hours, so many days, so many months on this earth, how to I want to spend it, and how can I really make an impact with the time that I have?” And that’s shifting how we need to run business to prioritize time and making sure we’re using it in the best way possible.
Purpose is not actually a new concept. It’s been around for a pretty long time. Even when I talk to my staunchest newsletter subscriber, which is my grandfather, he can tell you that, “I remember when I was working, we talk about these things.” So, it’s not so much that it’s new, it’s that it’s transitioning from that super awesome poster in the breakroom to “I actually need to run my business in a different capacity that values different things.”
Dean: Okay, so. Alright. Let me ask you some term questions. One of them you mentioned in your website — something called the “purpose economy.” Nice sort of combination words there. Why did you want to put economy next to purpose? Who do those two words need to be together?
Katie: Because it’s really important to understand — at least for us — it’s very important to understand that we can’t separate finance out of this. It’s very easy to be like, “Making money is bad.” Like anyone who’s focused on making money is bad. As someone who’s spent a large part of her career working with nonprofits, I can tell you that there are an awful lot of problems in how those organizations are run because we’re basically starving them because we’ve made money bad. And investing into staff is bad. Investing into the infrastructure they need is bad. We don’t really want to repeat that mistake in business, so we want to make sure — first and foremost — that that’s there.
One of the most effective official definitions of purpose economy, moving us from the technology information into purpose economy, that it’s balancing financial gains with solving human problems. So that we’re now at a space where we’ve achieved enough in the economies and societies that have come before us (agrarian is another one) to say, “Hey, we’re now at a place where we have. We’ve solved a lot of problems; we have a wide amount of information available to us. There is so much we can now do.”
We as humans have moved to place where we’re like, “Okay, it’s not sufficient to just make me another t-shirt to make me another t-shirt.” Does this actually matter that we’re going about doing these things?”
So we wanted to make sure that you’re starting to wrap that into you’re not just going to make money to make money anymore. Most people aren’t motivated—we know research shows us that—most founders are more motivated to make change instead of make money at this point. But we cannot lose the fact that money is the resource, in most cases, that allows us to make impact—and especially to scale impact—and to solve big problems.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Totally agree. So you mention also on your website that one of the most important words is the word “no.” Could you tell me why, and... Actually, there is a lot I could say on my end of that because I agree there’s so much that could be draw out of that provocative statement. But why is “no” such an important word?
Katie: So, when we shift from an industrial mindset, where it’s all about efficiency — and, you know, this gets into conversations that are being had around the 4-hour work week vs. the assembly line. People who are frustrated with Amazon and taking efficient measures to a whole new place and saying, “Wait a minute, I’m not sure this working.” And it’s because you can only be so efficient. The productivity trap is a real thing. You know, if you got more done that day, guess what? People are now sending you more emails. They’re finding at Amazon that the addition of robots doesn’t mean people are doing less work. It means they’re capable of doing more stuff.
So, at a certain point, “no” becomes really critical for a couple of reasons. 1) You cannot do everything, and you certainly cannot do everything well, especially not a human being. 2) When it really comes to delivering values and pursuing your purpose, you have to make choices. Yes is an easy thing to say. If you say yes to everything, you didn’t make a choice. But when you’re really sitting down as purpose-driven business, what you’re really trying to do is keep the business aligned. And saying, “this is why we’re here, and this is why it matters. This is the vision I want to achieve and the goals that I want to hit. We’re going to have to be selective about what it is that we put our resources toward in order to achieve those ends.”
Which is, as I mentioned, part of that human factor, and shifting to a more human mindset in the process.
Dean: Yeah, you mentioned Amazon, which is a great example. One could say Amazon has a very strong purpose around the customer experience, and they build everything towards that goal. And yet you bring into a very good point that there is a huge, advanced, constantly evolving mechanism towards efficiency.
And so, on one hand, we’ve got purpose, and in the other hands, we’ve got this old model co-existing together. Is that how you see it? Or how would you... let’s just take Amazon as an example here, how do you bring that organization into a purpose-centered organization where it’s not just our external purpose regarding our client or customer base, but we bring it inside the organization as well with the human experience.
Speak to that a little bit.
Katie: Absolutely. So, it doesn’t mean efficiency goes away. Like obviously if you can take advantage of technological efficiencies, information efficiencies, communication efficiencies, you should absolutely do so. But choosing to pursue efficiency only, into infinity, will not work for human beings. And you’re already seeing that with people who are frustrated at Amazon and other companies. They’re saying, “Wait a minute. How many more hours can I working, leading work into 24 hours a day is not working very effectively, and you’re not getting the best out of your people.
So to get at your question, the shift is that the customer and delivering value to the customer is what your purpose is about. Right? Like that’s the primary value. We’re delivering value to someone. But one of the shifts we talk about in purpose-driven businesses is typically when we rank a company’s stakeholders, the team actually sits first. Because you can’t drive value to your customer successfully if you don’t have a team to do it. And increasingly what we’re seeing in labor shortages and the Great Resignation right now is that what they’re looking for is very different from what they once looked for.
So this gets back to that purpose economy where time is more valuable. Being able to make impact is more valuable. Understanding as a leader not just what am I asking you to do but why are you asking me to do it? What impact is actually going to make before I spend all my time investing in it. And starting to look at that a little differently.
And I think that’s where, looking very specifically at — it was from an article I read — how efficient can we make people in fulfillment plans. To get things out so the customer doesn’t have to wait more than 2 days with it, which as someone who appreciates when that thing I ordered arrives in 2 days — I understand it. But how do you balance that out with measures that say, okay, we can’t — we’re going to start putting caps on what people can do. It’s one off the cuff example to make sure that we don’t burn out our people or are constantly turning over our people like Amazon because that also will start to erode our ability to be effective for our customer, if that makes sense.
<interruption>
I was going to say, one of the other ways you’re seeing this — which may be a completely different way to look at it—is no, we don’t ever want to not be there when our customer needs us, but you’ve seen increasingly companies taking weeks off or days off where they’re just closing. And they’re saying, “Our people need a break, and we’ll be back to you in a week.” And that means you’ve chosen to say, “I’m prioritizing my team over my customer for this time period, and we’re going to figure out how to deal with that.”
And I think that’s something that you’re going to start to see continue. That you can’t make everybody happy all the time. How do you start to make those tradeoffs and understand what those affects have. And I think starting to trade in favor of the team is a trend that will continue to happen.
Dean: Yeah, it seems like you mentioned the Great Resignation, that is adding more fuel to this fire around thinking more conscientiously about their choice. Where do I want to work? Do I want to continue to work at the place I am now? Do I want to work from home? Do I want to work from a different city? You know, there seems to be a constant — not a constant but a lot — of discussion right now with people regarding/around purpose.
So, you mentioned the team. It starts with the team, and I really like that idea. So, let’s just say I’m listening in on this and I am a member — let’s say I have a team and organization — and I would love to have my senior members be on board with this, but we don’t have that right now. I want to do something to move in this direction. What would they do? What could a team leader do to start building that sort of team that is more purpose-centered?
Katie: Here’s where we typically see this happening because it’s not a could — here’s what we see happening is that typically it’s either, it’s someone one level under the C-suite, maybe two levels under that’s saying, “Hey, I think we need to start doing this differently, and here’s why.” And sometimes it’s coming because there is a groundswell within the employee base that’s saying we need to start doing things differently. Sometimes it’s because top-down we’ve noticed that there is a problem. Just to give you a sense of how people are starting to approach this and how they ultimately call us and say, “We need some help.”
But where we usually start is with listening, and this is where intuition starts to come in. We need to sit down and start listening to what’s going on. We need to listen to our team. We need to listen to leadership. We also need to listen to our customers and eventually other partners that go into doing what it is that we do every day. And making sure that we understand what’s happening so we can engage them with this process. This is not something that CEOs can dictate and wave and say, “We’ve got it. We’re done. No problem.” This something where you got to skill build everybody at the organization to understand these shifts.
The next that we work with people to do and that we need to get out there is: What is your purpose? And then beyond that, what is the rest of your core strategy—which is your vision, mission, values, and story. And you need have all of them to be effective.
Your vision tells you where you’re going. Your mission is what you’re going to do to get there. Your values are how you go about doing those things. The story is what brings them all together in a human, accessible, and meaningful narrative. Once you have that, there’s a lot you can do from there. But getting that, getting your leadership on board, having your team embrace it, being able to communicate it really clearly is always Step One for any organization looking to make this shift.
Then you can start to look at what are the next steps. And usually that next step is how do we set outcomes that we actually want to achieve, which are top level, longer term goals that are, generally speaking, which are actually more reflective of what you’re helping your people do or achieve. Not what you’re doing.
You know, the old mentality is “we’re going to become the biggest company in our industry.” Old mentality. Outcomes are things like “we’re going to see continuous improvement in our subscribers’ businesses.” Or “we’ll to be able to reach every available applicant.” Or things where you are actually helping them do or achieve something that’s what’s going to make your impact. That’s the next level. And then we can work out how do we start aligning our actions towards that and then assess if we’re actually generating results.
Dean: So, I know that you’re big into definitions. How do you define purpose? I mean, if you were to say, a company wants to do what you’ve just described – start with that. What is your purpose? How do you – what would you define a purpose to be? I’ve heard a lot of different definitions. You know, some people would mix it up with maybe a mission statement. Sometimes a purpose is a rallying cry that is unachievable in any one particular lifetime. But it’s an overall direction. How would you define that?
Katie: So, we define it as your fundamental reason for being. So, it should center on your “why”— why you exist, why your company does what it does, and why what you do matters. And as I mentioned, to matter, you need to provide lasting value. And that lasting value can come in different shapes and sizes. So, it’s not just solving world hunger. You can also do other things to help move – put value out into the world and help people move forward. For example, my company’s purpose is to make work matter for humans. You know, I don’t know that we’re saving the whales, but it’s still valuable.
And then what you’re looking to do is say how do we make sure that it’s focused. And that’s usually the next conversation we have with organizations looking to set one. People who put out purposes like “We’re here to save the world,” we immediately look at that say it’s not really giving enough specificity to actually align the organization, put together a vision, and actually moves those forward as tangible business.
I think what’s more important — beyond how you say it — is how you use it. So there’s some flexibility in there as to what you put together, but we really look at it as a lens. And you should be able to take any decision, filter it through the lens of your purpose, and arrive at something that aligns with it. The results should make some logical, thoughtful sense. And I think that’s a really important piece to understand versus your vision, mission, and values—which serve different functions as far as far as setting your corporate structure.
I hope that answers your question.
Dean: No, yeah, it does. And so I’m assuming then that the purpose statement — as it becomes really clear — then the how of our ability to implement and to execute against that becomes our mission statement, our goals, values that would fall in cascade under that.
Katie: Yes.
Dean: What’s your thought on – because we do a lot of strategic planning in our company and I was just talking to a client about it yesterday, and I said, “Now the hard part is here.” Because you’ve now developed a vision, you’ve got your key mission statement, and your strategies, and your values. You’ve got it all nice, and it makes a lot of sense. And it’s aligned. Now the hard part is living it. Now it’s the execution on that. Now it’s like, can we — what are the resources we have, the mindset we have, that will allow us or not allow us to fulfill that. But do you have any sort of stories or any particular examples of like companies being able to get to that part where now it’s the implementation. Now we’ve got the direction; let’s head there. You know? Let’s make it happen. Let’s transition.
Katie: So, I’m actually working with a couple of organizations right now who are in the process of either starting or finishing what we call the three-year plan part of their strategic planning process. And one of them has been really effective in their last couple of cycles – they didn’t work with us; we’re new this time around – in saying, “Hey, we have it together. We know what are key results are. We understand our actions we’re going to take.” And by Joe, they regularly review where their progress is. They check off what’s going on, and they’ve actually fulfilled most of what they’ve set out to accomplish, which has been really exciting.
This year, part of the reason we came in was to say, “Okay, we’ve gotten through some of the things that were quite straight forward. Now we’re starting to look at having to make choices.” What does get our time? What doesn’t get our time? How do we determine what’s really effective? And in this organization, we’re far enough along, I know one of their biggest shifts is saying we are going to align our objectives to our outcomes and actually start to measure what’s working and what isn’t so that when we get here in 3 years, we have more information to say, “Okay, here’s how we continue to make shifts and improve.”
So let me back up a couple of things that I skipped over. One, one of our other principles is that if you’re not learning, you stop. And that you have to constantly be willing to look at what’s working well, what you need to improve, and being to improve it. And having a good sense of intuition is part of that. And being willing to say, “We feel really strongly about this. We’re going to go out and test it.” It helps you to learn faster and hopefully figure out whether you should pursue it or not, what’s working or not. So that’s a piece of that being willing to embrace that learning process is huge.
The other piece is what we call — in our team and our system — calibration. What’s the cadence at which you listen to our stakeholders, look at and review what it is that you’re doing, look at review the measurement that you’ve put into place, communicate those things, and make adjustments. And we have that set at different cadences or things you look at every week to every month to every quarter to every year to every three years that fall into all of those buckets so that constantly calibrating and recalibrating what’s going on. I would be the first to say — and I don’t know what your experience has been — but this is probably the hardest part for organization. And our experience...
Dean: The calibration part?
Katie: Absolutely.
Dean: Yeah.
Katie: And even if they get a really great core strategy in place and everyone is on board and excited, the day to day comes and we lose sight. And then all of a sudden, it’s been a year or three years, and we’ve drifted. So really working to make sure that system is in place — whatever system you choose — to make sure to keep yourself, like going into a chiropractor constantly readjusting to keep yourself aligned.
Dean: Right, right. With the changes that are going on these days, it seems to be almost daily, there’s something that happens and our world shifts. Does one have a purpose that is overarching and timeless? Or does our purpose need to be modified based on the external environment?
Katie: Great question. If you’ve set a really strong purpose, it will likely last you – the benchmark we like to use is — will it last you a hundred years? Could you be pursuing this for a hundred years? Not a goal. You’re pursuing it. Could you pursue it for a hundred years? Because a lot of people look at purpose and say no, that’s really limiting. And we’re like, try it for a while. I think what you’ll find is that it’s not limiting at all. It’s just focusing you.
And there’s a lot of things you could do to advance the way we communicate complex information, for example, which is the purpose of one of clients. There’s so many ways you could approach that. And so many ways that will evolve as technology and other factors evolve.
But what will change is reviewing your vision and reviewing your mission. We really strongly suggest that you look at your vision at least every three years. Definitely your mission every single year. Because you’re absolutely correct. External forces are going to rise up. You know, hey, we had a pandemic and our customers are now facing these challenges they weren’t facing before. Perhaps we need to shift what actual mission we’re one, exactly how it is we’re doing what we’re doing to support them or to take advantage of a new opportunity or to deal with a new reality that’s come about.
For example, one of the – I mentioned earlier we’re doing their strategic plan – somebody pointed out the threat—which sounds awful because it’s potentially good on one hand — but for them, it’s like well, they provide scholarships. And they said, “what if college becomes free?” What happens to us? You know, and starting to think about how they look at, well, that purpose doesn’t really change — they have a very good one — but our mission may. And how to do we start to look at that in our strategic planning? And build in listening and assessment to make sure we’re thinking long term about how we can still fulfill that purpose and make real impact and achieve our outcomings. But that may mean adjusting exactly how we go about doing it.
Dean: Right. Katie, I want to come back to something you said. What’s the difference between a vision and a purpose?
Katie: So you’re vision is really what – exactly like what the word sounds like. What do you see? You know, what does the world look like if you were successful in advancing your purpose and achieving your outcomes? What is that? And it should paint a picture. It should make people excited. It is probably the most aspirational of the components of your core strategy. And that’s what you’re trying to get to.
So, some people put out a vision that you know that no child will be left behind, as an example. One of the vision statements I really like is, “We will have a food system without waste or want,” which is really motivating vision statement. That’s not necessarily your purpose. That’s not necessarily why you exist. That’s what you’re hoping to get to.
Dean: So, can you do a comparison between here’s – because the one you just said that was around the food system – if that’s their vision, what’s that company’s purpose? So we can see the difference.
Katie: Well, I don’t actually know that company’s purpose. So let me pick a different one. No, no. It’s okay. No, you’re good.
One of the groups we worked with — and I won’t get this verbatim because it’s been a while — their purpose is to advance the way we communicate complex information. But their current vision statement looks at making visual communication a universal skill. Because they really feel we’re going to have to hit that as a vision in order to keep up with the level of complexity of information we need to communicate. It is possible they will achieve that vision, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t need to continue advancing the way we communicate complex information.
One of the first things that comes to mind is using voice to be able to access and exchange information, which is a completely different angle. Or interfaces outside of visuals. But that’s how they chose to shift it and said, “This is the benchmark we want to put out there. We can then set outcomes that make that more tangible as to what we’re actually helping our customers do to hit this.”
I hope that helps to provide some clarity, but I’m happy to dig in further. I am a word nerd, so...
Dean: And I love it. Actually I love it. You mention intuition. And I guess that show that we’re on right now has that in its title, so let me go back to it. What role does intuition play in a purpose-centric organization?
Katie: I think it plays a pretty big role. And a couple of ways that came to mind specifically for me, even in how I run my own business. 1) Getting back to that conversation about efficiency and making choices, some of it also comes with giving yourself enough space to think. And this is less me putting my hat on as a practitioner and more me putting the hat on as the CEO of myself and saying, “No, I don’t want to fall behind the trend. And yes, the world is moving rapidly fast. But I need enough time to actually think. To feel how things are settling. To determine if this is where I need to be going. That’s as human as anything else. And I’ve spent a lot of time in our work with leaders, as well as sharing my own story with other people, saying I’ve worked harder to create that space for myself. To make sure that I can do that.
So that’s one way that I look at it. The listening piece is another big area where intuition comes in. You’re not going to capture a lot of impact, and a lot of people’s experience is purely on data alone. It’s a fundamentally imperfect measurement system, which we tell people often because it’s a hard thing to accept.
But that listening piece, you have to engage that intuition to be like what am I hearing? What themes are coming up? Yes, I suppose if you have enough data, you can chunk it through machine learning. But it misses a lot and leaves a lot un-understood. And what is not said, what is said between the lines, and how you can really learn from the people you’re trying to help. How do you turn that into a conversation versus a one-way radio. So that’s another big piece.
And then that decision-making piece of how do you get to know? We work with organizations to actually build a decision case. How do you say – not what we’re going to order for break today – but like major decisions. Is this actually aligned with our purpose or isn’t it? And in those cases, it is possible they could pull some data in to support it? Yes! Do we even think that’s a good thing? Probably, but in a lot of cases, it’s intuition-based. You know, this is something we’re experiencing, we’re hearing it from our customers, we’ve heard it enough times that we can make the case that this would be a good thing for us to pursue. You know, how do we build a, you know, test case, pursue it, assess if it worked. And being willing to do that. And then keeping that learning mindset on of saying, sometimes we’re going to nail it. Sometimes we’re going to miss. But we’re always going to learn something. And that’s okay.
Dean: Excellent.
Katie: In fact, it’s not just okay. It’s great. We want to learn things as much as possible.
how to get connected
Dean: Right, right. Katie, I think you’re just doing some really work. I really — I like what you’re saying, and I love your website. Like I guess my last question is how can people connect to you and sort of follow what you’re about or even work with you in the future?
Katie: Wonderful question, and thank you so much for having me! It was great getting reacquainted with you. I had actually watched your podcast a couple of years ago.
But the best way to get ahold of me is two-fold: 1) If you really like what I’m talking about and you’re interested in learning more about being purpose-driven — what does that actually mean and, more importantly, outside of some really cool principles, how do I actually go about doing it, I would suggest that you subscribe to our Weekly Logic. It’s a weekly email brief focused on one actionable point at a time to help you make the shift to running a purpose-driven business or running one more effectively. And you can find that at matterLogic.co/weekly.
The other way to get ahold of me is to actually find me on LinkedIn. I am one of those old school cats who will accept every connection I’m given. And if you reach and say, “I’d like to have a conversation with you, I’ll make the time to talk to you and figure out if there is something we can do help.” Whether that’s a conversation, getting you some resources, or actually coming in and helping to support your business.
Dean: Okay, great. Thank you so much for being a guest. It’s really been wonderful!
Katie: I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for having me.