Business Mantra as a Success Factor for Companies

While reading last week, I came across an interesting interview between Dr. Scott Barry Kaufmann and Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski (organizational psychologist & professor at the Yale School of Management).

They spoke on “The Psychology Podcast” in an episode about “Finding your Calling at Work.”

In the podcast, Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski identifies four sources of meaning, which is based on her research about the spectrum of human experience in the context of work:

Dr. Wrzesniewski highlights spirituality as a source of meaning. She identifies it as a key aspect of creating business-related meaning.

These types of behavioral studies are the starting point to defining a higher corporate purpose. Understanding the motives that drive us to go beyond the average and continuously want to do better is the baseline of every business mantra.

In the book “Great at Work: How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More,” Dr. Morten T. Hansen (Professor of Management at the University of California, Berkeley) discusses results from a survey of over 5,000 employees.

In one key section of the survey, Dr. Hansen analyzes purpose versus passion as key drivers of employees’ work performance.

Some of the key takeaways from the survey are that purpose clearly overtakes passion, and passion alone doesn’t motivate good work performance.

The stars were those who had both – passion and purpose.

“Purpose mobilizes us to go beyond average. We become dedicated when we feel we’re making contributions to a larger purpose beyond our ego.”

Because if there is a genuine and well-integrated business mantra – a higher purpose – it will be the daily reminder and motivator for everybody to go out there to continue delivering great work results.

The purpose is the ingredient that drives us to complete tasks beyond service or a product offer. The contribution to the bigger picture is key to nurture a healthy corporate culture.

Purpose motivates, energizes, and mobilizes beyond working hours and salaries.

So at the end of the day, that’s what drives all of us – a profession that provides a source of meaning to us.

We become dedicated when we feel we’re making contributions to a larger purpose beyond our ego.

Further results of the 2019 Global Human Capital Trends study from Deloitte Insights (which are in line with the results of other similar research studies) report on the detrimental effects of digital transformation and new work environments on employee wellbeing and health.

Companies have been concerned about this emerging issue. One dimension to their reaction has been to redefine the employee experience into a more human-centered experience.

This results in initiatives to redesign workplaces to fulfill human needs (based on human behavioral sciences).

Cultural Change Programs

The initiatives to redesign work include a cultural change to bring more meaning and purpose to work and programs that promote employee health and mobilizes talent for more productivity.

These initiatives’ ultimate goal is to increase productivity and cultivate valuable human capital in a globally competitive environment.

Here are four examples of programs to promote employee health and mobilize talent in organizations:

The definition of the term Mission Statement often includes terms like “purpose,” “philosophy,” and “values.”

In many cases, these mission statements have been developed to promote the desired image.

But have these mission statements been truly authentic and reflected in actions beyond marketing?

The Corporate Social Responsibility as a Marketing Instrument

One example is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which has been an effective marketing tool for companies:

CSR initiatives are often promoted as one pillar or an integral part of the corporate mission statement(s). Their purpose is to “promote” an image of a company that contributes to a “higher” purpose.

That’s a great effort for social contribution – but only if the engagement is based on genuine social responsibility awareness.

Unfortunately, CSR has been in the media focus in the context of corporate hypocrisy in the past years. The subject matter of investigations is often focused on genuine CSR motives vs. Corporate Hypocrisy.

This example reflects the importance of an “authentic” business mantra based on a genuine purpose and not an “image” based on a marketing strategy.

Because the authenticity of a corporation reflected by actions representing credibility and reliability are the base of long-term market positioning and invaluable currencies – today more than ever.

I mentioned Google at the beginning of the article as an example of a well-integrated business mantra.

Let´s have a look at their mission statement, reflecting business mantra:

“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

When searching for information via Google, we find universally accessible information, no doubt.

And when looking at the content standards of Google, we find that the “usefulness” of information is an important ranking factor listed in many different content requirements of Google, e.g., Google SEO starter guide.

The business mantra of Google is: democratizing information for anyone, anywhere at any time.

But some traditional companies fail to live up to their mission statements.

Here are 4 critical success factors:

The main success factor of contemporary organizations is composing the official mission statement based on the internally culturally-rooted business mantra. Members of the organization understand it, identify with it, and live by it.

One of the positive effects is that clients, prospects, and business partners perceive the organization as an authentic, reliable, and credible corporation and business partner.

Developments like Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe aim to win the hearts of customers rather than minds.

As one result in the past years, for most brand specialists and agencies, the “branding mantra” has become one important success factor for strategic branding initiatives.

From a business management perspective, I like to think that a branding mantra is the business mantra’s extension to work as a carrier, a broadcaster.

How to move from functional brand purpose to establishing a higher brand purpose

According to Philip Kotler’s article, “Branding: From Purpose to Beneficence,” (American Author, Marketing Consultant & Professor of International Marketing Kellogg School of Management), too many companies believe brand building work is done once the brand’s name and logo are established.

But setting the brand’s identity comes secondary to the brand’s purpose. But the “purpose” that Kotler refers to is positioning and differentiation.

Later in the article, he refers to David Aaker, a brand-building specialist, and underlines the importance of going beyond a functional purpose to establish a higher purpose with emotional and social benefits.

The development of a purpose-based branding is one streamline to an overall cultural business mantra initiative.

As one example of a purpose-based branding development approach, I’d like to refer to “Kotler’s 6-Step conceptual model” below:

10 Preconditions to Successfully Implement a Business Mantra: