6

CLARIFY THE PURPOSE

“Activity without purpose is the drain of your life.”

—TONY ROBBINS

Principle 4: People Persevere Because of Purpose Not Pay

The path was not always clear. In fact, it was foggy at best. Joanne Tate had recognized her love for education, but there was more to it. When Father “Smokey” Oats offered her the position of dean of students at a brand-new private school, she naturally resisted. Open a mere six months, there were just 103 students in attendance at Trinity Episcopal School. On her first visit, Joanne passed by the school twice missing the sign. A collection of trailers that served as the physical school buildings were a far cry from what she had envisioned. Everything seemed to be working against a move to Trinity. The pay was not great, and the position was unlike any she had held before. But as she thought and prayed over the decision, she felt a great joy about taking a job that pushed her well outside her comfort zone. So, she made the call to Father Oats and accepted.

On her first day in February 2003, Joanne arrived expecting a grandiose onboarding process. She was greeted with quite the opposite. She was led to a temporary trailer on the backside of the property and given a desk so small she could touch elbows with her two brand-new colleagues.

But it was what came next that reinforced her decision to start work at Trinity. Father Oats entered the room and with a warm welcome he clearly communicated what Joanne now calls the “Trinity Way.” “Joanne, we are excited to have you as a part of the team. This school was born out of a vision from great community leaders to create an Episcopal school to serve the children of Charlotte, diverse, academically renowned, community-focused, Kingdom values–laden, and graduates who are making a positive difference in the world.” He continued, “It’s people like you and the other employees in this school who will bring this to life in conjunction with our faith in God, our board members, parents, and, most importantly, our students. We will always keep our mission of bringing the Episcopal tradition in both its unity and diversity and bringing the best experience we can to our students at the forefront of everything we do.”

As Father Oats exited, Joanne could not help but feel immediately connected to her new surroundings and colleagues. She had not even officially begun her work, yet she knew her presence would matter.

The workdays flew by as Joanne hurled herself into learning, growing, and proactively helping Trinity best exemplify its mission. The “Trinity Way” that Father Oats had so poignantly communicated on her first day was not a one-time occurrence. Faculty talked about it and reinforced it day in and day out. The mission, vision, and core values became ingrained in Joanne and her colleagues. It not only guided the staff’s hiring, firing, budgeting, and enrollment decisions, but it shaped the decision making of teachers, students, parents, and funders.

Joanne had never been a part of a group that was singing from the same hymn sheet like this. While it did not come without challenges, everyone was able to build up the success of Trinity based on their clear understanding of its purpose. Because of this, word spread quickly in town about what this faith-based school was doing to create a diverse and exceptional academic experience. Student growth accelerated quickly; by the school’s second year the student population had more than doubled in size and included 233 students. What was once a far-out vision in the eyes of a few had become a reality for the community. Father Oats, Joanne, the entirety of Trinity Episcopal staff, and students knew from the very inception what made up their mission, vision, and values. To this day, those things are still a part of the school’s very DNA.

Words like excellence, strength, community, distinction, and commitment are not just buzzwords. They are the keys to attracting talented teachers, building great curriculum, having a diverse student population, and communicating a unified message. While the “Trinity Way” is unique to Trinity Episcopal School, no one has a patent on being purpose-driven. Each leader not only has the ability to connect his or her team to being purpose-driven, but it’s also a requirement in today’s modern times. With so many options for people to choose from when it comes to where they work or what team they join, those leaders who are intensely connected to their purpose stand out from the crowd. It also fuels a team to continue to pursue their purpose when times are difficult or challenging.

Unfortunately, many leaders aren’t interested in being purpose-driven because it feels soft. The most common comment I get is, “This purpose stuff is fluffy. We are here to make money.” Others flat out say, “We just don’t need it.” While I can absolutely understand why people would say these things, they could not be more wrong.

There are many examples that show the value of being a purpose-driven leader, but none is better from a for-profit business standpoint than Chick-fil-A and its founder Truett Cathy.

For almost four decades from 1946 to the early 1980s, the company saw slow and consistent growth. So much so that Cathy finally felt comfortable to expand the corporate environment and made a big land purchase in the Atlanta area to build the company’s headquarters. It was a major personal investment that stretched him and his company thin. About the same time, the company saw its first decline in sales. There was major concern among the employee base, who anticipated a major layoff because of the combination of the losses and new land investments.

One weekend during this particularly turbulent time, Cathy invited the entire management team on a weekend retreat. It was his goal to figure out how they were going to address their current hardships, which most people linked to branding, store locations, and an overall lack of marketing. But instead of focusing on these details, Cathy brought up something entirely different: purpose. For three days the group of leaders racked their brains and came up with Chick-fil-A’s purpose statement: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that has been entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all those who come into contact with Chick-fil-A.” Following the retreat, a companywide meeting was held, and instead of pink slips, as many employees feared, Cathy shared the work the management team had done over the weekend and clearly communicated the new purpose statement. He made it clear that any decision the company would make from that point forward would be in alignment with this purpose statement. He also challenged each team member to ensure their actions and behaviors every day made a positive influence on anyone who came into contact with Chick-fil-A. Following the meeting, the purpose statement was carved into a big stone outside of their new company headquarters and remains there to this day. Not only has it stood the test of time, but Truett’s son, Dan Cathy, who currently leads the company, continues to hold the purpose statement at the forefront of everything the company does.

Here is the best part. Chick-fil-A has not seen another major decline in sales since the purpose statement was created and cemented into the fabric of the business. As impressive as the streak of growth is, the domination over the competition should tell you there is something to this purpose stuff. In 2017, Chick-fil-A earned more per store than any other fast-food restaurant. A lot more. In fact, the average revenue of a Chick-fil-A store was $4 million in 2017. That’s more than a McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Subway combined. If that wasn’t enough, their nearest competitor in the chicken vertical, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), averaged around $1.1 million of revenue per store. And, do not forget Chick-fil-A is only open six days per week while these competitors are open seven. It sounds crazy because it is.

How to Get Started

Three cornerstones are necessary to clarify a purpose, what I call the purpose trifecta. Its name comes from horse racing, where a bettor can make a wager on the outcome of a race through a trifecta bet. The bettor must have all three horses picked—who will finish first, second, and third in the correct order. If the horses do this, the bet yields a higher payout than any other form of wager in the sport.

The same is true for clarifying a purpose. The purpose trifecta is made up of values, vision, and mission (Figure 6.1). These tend to be evergreen and rarely falter. Clarifying these three parts will dramatically increase your odds building the best team and organization.

FIGURE 6.1   Purpose Trifecta

Values

Core values are the fundamental beliefs a person or team holds true. Once established, these guiding beliefs dictate behavior and help individuals decipher right from wrong.

A common denominator of all leaders who build the best is the time they dedicate to defining a set of core values. But they don’t stop at defining the values. Instead, they make those values part of the team’s guiding light. Values come alive not through words on a wall or a website but through the actions of everyone in the organization. Talented people are not attracted to empty words, but rather the exercising of them. Rewarding, recognizing, and talking about them on an ongoing basis provides a clear expression of how important they are to you and your people.

• • •

On January 11, 2014, Penn State University and its athletic department announced the hiring of football coach James Franklin. Franklin was recruited from Vanderbilt University after three of the most successful years in the football team’s history. The opportunity was comparable to being promoted from the junior varsity to varsity team. To put it into perspective, Vanderbilt’s football stadium has a 39,750 capacity while Penn State’s Beaver Stadium has a capacity of 106,572. As the community was still healing from the Jerry Sandusky child abuse case in 2011, Franklin’s new gig was not without challenge. While the storied program had two National Championships, the last one was in 1986.

Franklin wasted no time in his new leadership role. One of the first things he did was establish four core values for his team. They were simple, yet difficult to live out:

   Positive attitude

   Great work ethic

   Compete in everything you do

   Must be willing to sacrifice what the common man will not

His entire coaching staff and team members were measured against these four core values, and the values were plastered on walls, on shirts, and in team binders. Players and coaches could not go anywhere in the football facility without being reminded of them. Franklin knew it was not the words themselves that were important, but rather everyone living out the values.

To help make the success of the team a reality, Franklin knew he had to reward, recognize, and talk about these core values in a public setting. Each week during the football season, Franklin and his staff gathered the entire team and gave out an award to one player in front of the entire team. This award was not about the most valuable player from the previous week’s game, but instead, the one who had best lived out the core values on the team and in the community. In just a few short weeks, behavior on the team changed. Players, hungry for the recognition and respect of their peers, wanted to win the award. They made choices to live out the core values both in and outside of their football duties.

Imagine how much more successful a football team is going to be on the field when 120 people are choosing to have a positive attitude and great work ethic. Franklin’s players did just that, and the results multiplied tenfold. In the five seasons since Franklin took over, the team achieved a record of 45-21, attended five bowl games, won the Big Ten title, and entered back in the discussion as one of the premier football programs in the country.

I cannot stress enough that core values by themselves do absolutely nothing. If Coach Franklin defined those four core values, put them on walls and on shirts, but never rewarded, recognized, or talked about them, they would not have changed anyone’s behavior. Worse, if he personally didn’t live them out himself, his words would be meaningless and easy to disregard. The power in core values is the exercising of them on an everyday basis—by everyone.

You have the ability to do the same thing Franklin did for your organization, team, or even your family. If you have never sat down and defined the core values of your team or organization, don’t wait another day. If you don’t know where to start, take this list of common core values and narrow it down to four or five that best align to the group you lead:

   Hard work

   Work ethic

   Loyalty

   Honesty

   Consistency

   Serving

   Creativity

   Courage

   Perseverance

   Ownership

   Humor

   Open-mindedness

   Reliability

   Compassion

   Competitiveness

   Will

   Passion

   Empower

When you come up with a final list, design a phrase that brings it to life. Skookum Digital Design, a software development and design company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, provides an incredible example of this. The business began growing rapidly as the need for custom software solutions grew in enterprise organizations all over the country. The management team needed a way to make sure that as the team grew and they weren’t able to be involved in all of the hiring decisions and day-to-day activities, the organization knew what values it cared deeply about. Instead of creating core values from scratch, they codified them for future employees from things that were already being lived out. The team defined four core values and later added one more:

   Simplify and Go

   Embrace Change

   Own It

   Choose to Be Happy

   Give More Than You Take

To ensure the values became ingrained in the organization for the long haul as part of the company’s interview process, all potential employee complete a Skookum Core Values interview. During the interview, each prospective employee is introduced to the core values and the meaning behind each one, and it’s clearly described to them that Skookum hires and fires based on these values. Finally, interviewees are asked questions to demonstrate their alignment to the values and asked to withdraw from consideration if they believe they aren’t aligned with them.

As effective as this process is, the business has experienced employees who didn’t end up agreeing with the values or slipped through the cracks during the interview process. The leaders in the organization have not hesitated to part ways with these people. While terminating employees is never a fun thing to do, the colleagues of the employees who had to be let go end up appreciating the business for taking action because it strengthens their belief and understanding of the five core values.

It doesn’t stop there. Skookum employees live out these values by giving their time and energy to make the people around them better, especially their clients. Every client is given an overview of the values. Part of the company living out those values means they work themselves out of a job by preparing their clients to take over the efforts and products completed by the team over time.

As the values have become more ingrained, the management team has created a “People Team” that is tasked with looking for creative ways to reward and recognize the team members who best live out these values every day, month, quarter, and year.

The Skookum core values, much like James Franklin’s values at Penn State, have had a lot of thought and work put into them. Put in the work for your company or team to ensure you have defined values that go beyond words and best exemplify the fundamental beliefs you hold true.

Vision

Think back to the definition of leadership: inspiring, empowering, and serving in order to elevate others over an extended period of time. What I want to emphasize is “over an extended period of time.” It is extremely difficult to create an improved state for a long time without first delivering a vision of a vastly better future.

The best leaders are visionaries. They have in view what is possible in the future. The late great Dr. Myles Munroe used to say, “Vision is the capacity to see beyond what your eyes can see.” This may sound funny, but your eyes are actually the enemy in regard to you becoming a better visionary leader. This is because they are limited to what you can physically take in.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy was visiting NASA headquarters for the first time. While touring the facility, he introduced himself to a janitor who was mopping the floor and asked him what he did at NASA. The janitor replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon!”

The janitor got it. He understood NASA’s vision and his part in it even though most others would say he was just mopping the floors.

Christopher Wren, the great English architect, is another great example. He was surveying St. Paul’s Cathedral in London while it was under construction. When he came upon a workman, he asked a simple question, “What are you doing?” The man replied, “I am cutting a piece of stone.” As he continued walking around the huge building, he posed the same question to another worker, and the man replied, “I am earning five shillings, two pence a day.” He continued walking and asked a third worker the same question and the man answered, “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a beautiful cathedral.” That man understood the vision. He could see beyond the cutting of the stone, beyond the earning of his daily wage, to the creation of a work of art—the great cathedral.

In modern times, there is no better example of a visionary leader than Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX. While astronauts have ventured into space for decades, Musk and his team at SpaceX are fervently working on space travel for the citizen population. Musk set out a beautiful and bold vision for his team, “We are going to land people on Mars by 2025.” Imagine coming to work every single day working to put human beings on Mars!

You don’t have to be the president of the United States, a famous architect, or a tech titan to have a vision people can get behind. While it is true some people may have an easier time thinking in a future tense, every single person can close their eyes and see beyond what is right in front of them.

Ask yourself these questions about the future: “What does it look like? What is happening on the team or in the company? How many people are joining you on the journey? What kinds of people? What is the celebration going to look like? How are you going to feel? How is your team going to react? What is your family going to say? How will the world be different? How will the lives of the people you touch in the process be different?”

You are likely curious about how you go about creating a vision statement. While there is not an exact science to it, the trick is to find something that your team gets excited about. Something that will leave others in disbelief when your team achieves it. Whether you have proactively thought about a vision for your team, organization, or family before, it’s worth doing the following exercise. Find yourself a quiet place. Put on one of your favorite songs, close your eyes, and envision big, bold possibilities in the distance. Make it worthy of hearing people say, “No way, that is just not possible.”

Mission

In my experience, there is no exact formula to dictate how an organization or team should lay out its mission statement. My favorite organizational examples include the following:

   Chick-fil-A: To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that has been entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all those who come into contact with Chick-fil-A.

   Movement Mortgage: We exist to love and value people by creating a Movement of Change in our Industry, Corporate Cultures, and Communities.

   Trinity Episcopal School: Committed to the breadth of the Episcopal tradition in both its unity and diversity and bringing the best experience we can to our students.

   LearnLoft: We exist to turn professionals into leaders and create healthier places to work.

Many leaders struggle to determine their mission statement. What has always helped me and those I teach in our Building the Best workshops is to think about the mission in a military sense. No military operation is set in motion without a clear mission. For example, Seal Team Six, which killed Osama Bin Laden, was put in harm’s way to carry out a specific mission: to take out the world’s most dangerous man. While I don’t believe there is a perfect formula to use, my friend Roderic Yapp, a former Royal Marines officer, shared a formula that I now share with others who struggle with defining their mission:

We do X in order to achieve Y for Z.

Broken down, it is simply what you do, why you do it, and for whom it is done. The key is to define your mission in a way that everyone can identify why decisions are made and actions are taken. The mission should always take precedence over how an individual may feel about a situation. With this mentality, a business, team, or family is always moving forward regardless of outside influencers.

Defining Mission on the Front Line

Creating a mission and vision statement along with defining core values might seem like something above your current role. In many organizations, the mission, vision, and values come from the executive team. While the purpose trifecta can absolutely be created within each individual team in a larger organization, there’s a lighter version that can be just as impactful for a frontline manager of a team.

Take the example from an operations team working inside Movement Mortgage.

Casey Crawford and his management team had been working on empowering every team within the company to experiment and learn what their mission and purpose was in the context of the larger organization. One group was responsible for preparing final loan documents for the closing appointment for all parties to sign prior to the transfer of the deed. It’s tedious and stressful work without a lot of real excitement. The team’s manager saw an opportunity to create a deeper connection to the purpose behind the work her team was doing every day. She asked Movement loan officers who received the final documents from her team to send her pictures of Movement clients executing the final paperwork.

Soon after, a photograph of a single mother with her young daughter arrived. Both of them beamed with pride as the mother signed the paperwork solidifying the purchase of their very first home. Photographs like this one continued to roll in. As they did, this team within a large company like Movement Mortgage understood how instrumental they were in helping families become homeowners.

If you lead a team within a larger organization, do not go another minute without being clear on why your team does what it does and its purpose. It’s easy for people to get lost in the monotony of their everyday work without even considering not only how their work impacts the organization but also how it impacts people beyond its walls. By creating a team mission statement to magnify the team’s purpose, you immediately raise the ceiling of what’s possible, and when things get difficult, the mission will give your team a reason to continue on, even through the most trying times.

A team’s mission can follow the same formula as an organization’s: We do X in order to achieve Y for Z.

For the Movement Mortgage team responsible for preparing final loan documents, the mission could be something like this: We rapidly compile and complete closing documents for families so they can be “home” as soon as possible.

Whether you have previously defined the purpose trifecta for your team or if this is the first you have thought about it, don’t skip this important step. Leaders who are purpose-driven not only will be more successful in the long term versus those who aren’t, but it’s a requirement in today’s leadership landscape.