Igniting Purpose-Driven Leadership: Shifting Your Team to Abundance By Unleashing Creativity

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PREFACE

IGNITING YOUR PURPOSE

Our world is changing at such a frenetic pace that even some of the most well-managed organizations simply can’t keep up. To make matters worse, it’s become increasingly problematic for leaders to capture and retain the attention of their people in an environment that is highly digital and interconnected. Consider the fact that only 13 percent of the world’s workforce are engaged in their jobs.

Yet some organizations are experiencing unprecedented financial success, consistently high employee-engagement levels, and innovations in the marketplace that have changed the economic landscape forever.

Why do these businesses seem to have the secret sauce for success? Are their leaders born with an inherent trait that makes them more successful than others?

You may be asking yourself: Why can’t my team be more engaged, excited, and creative at work? How can I turn the energy of my people into a competitive advantage? And how can I become the type of leader who inspires others to achieve greatness?

These are all questions plaguing some of the most prominent executives in the world’s largest corporations. However, it doesn’t matter whether you work for a multinational conglomerate, a small, local business, or a not-for-profit organization. Leaders in businesses of all shapes and sizes are experiencing the same challenges.

With more than two decades of executive experience in large, global corporations and mid-sized firms, as well as helping firms of all sizes in my consulting and coaching practice, I have witnessed the difficulties leaders face daily in their quests to achieve sustainable success. I know what it’s like to experience the challenges of growing a business, improving its financial performance, and attracting and retaining talented people.

Let’s be honest; there is no magic formula to achieve these results. If there were, everyone would be drinking the elixir and experiencing similar success. It takes a lot of demanding work and determination along the way. That’s the price of admission to become a purpose-driven leader and in building an enduring business.

Igniting Purpose-Driven Leadership is designed to help you get there. It enables leaders to appreciate the economic rationale for a people-first approach. It provides a simple, but practical, framework that can be applied across organizations of all types.

This book explores what leading organizations are doing to engage their people and deliver exceptional results. Their leaders focus on the potential genius in everyone and build cultures that support creative output across the entirety of their organizations.

After many years of executive experience and research on some of the most enduring companies in this new era, I am able to provide a practical approach for leaders to focus on the two fundamentals for success in the twenty-first century: authenticity and creativity.

Authenticity is at the cornerstone of success for leaders in this new world order. As people’s needs continue to shift, the most successful leaders are embracing a world in which purpose and values have become a priority. They’re also experiencing a welcome benefit to a purpose-driven life: sustained business success that consistently outperforms their competitors. This book will guide you through the process of discovering your organization’s purpose, identifying its values, and aligning leadership with common goals and objectives.

To capture their people’s attention and increase their creative output, leaders must be willing to live out their purpose in their words and actions. When leaders are purpose-driven, they energize their people to work toward common goals and objectives and to use their creative genius to improve the business. As you will discover throughout this book, people are attracted to purpose-driven leaders, and that attraction makes it astoundingly easier to achieve your business’ goals.

Smart leaders are also spending time in the business to pave the way for their people to realize their potential. They recognize that in our 24/7, highly-connected world, they must find ways to create the time and space for their people to be more focused. Two of the most effective approaches that leading organizations have adopted are focusing on individual strengths and simplifying business operations. As you will read throughout this book, these disciplines have provided more time and space for employees to step into greater levels of creativity, resulting in improved business performance.

Creativity is also accelerated by building greater levels of trust throughout the organization. This starts with purpose-driven leadership because people trust leaders, and work harder for them, when they display trust. Nothing speaks of trust more than leaders who stay true to what they believe. As I’ll explore in the last two chapters of this book, trust is also built when leaders empower their people and recognize them for their efforts.

By following the disciplines outlined in this book, you too can experience higher levels of employee engagement, greater levels of creativity, and sustained business performance. These disciplines show up time and time again in some of the most successful organizations because they are guided by purpose-driven leaders.

I’ve been fortunate to be in executive roles for more than two decades in industry-leading organizations and have helped other leaders to realize their full potential, improve their business performance, and inspire others to do the same.

I secured my first senior role when I was twenty-eight years old. The CFO I worked for at the time was leaving the business. While the company searched to find a suitable replacement, I walked into the CEO’s office and said, Give me three months to prove myself. If I don’t work out, you can let me go. Although a tremendous amount of fear and trepidation accompanied my decision to approach the CEO, it proved to be a turning point in my life.

But here’s the thing: No one knows what the future looks like. The CEO could have easily dismissed my proposal. I couldn’t have predicted the outcome, but what I could do was determine my choice. The choices we make are what define our future, not the decisions of others. What I know from my many years of experience is that purpose-driven leadership is all about choices.

You make the choice to focus on long-term value versus short-term results, on people versus processes, and on leading versus managing. Today’s most successful leaders are those who have made the choice to place purpose and people at the foundation of their businesses.

I want to help you make the choices that bring you lasting success. I’ll admit I don’t have all the answers. But who does? What I can give you is proven disciplines that have made ordinary people into extraordinary leaders.

I know the decision to make transformational change in your life is not an easy one. I’ve been on that journey for a long time, and there are always challenges along the way. But I believe there is an extraordinary leader in each of us and, sometimes, we just need a guide to help us on the journey.

You have that extraordinary leader in you! I want to be the guide who empowers you to fulfill your potential. I will be here to coach you through the process, to help you expand your capabilities, and to enable you to achieve long-term success.

Are you looking to leave a mark on the world? To inspire others to achieve greater levels of success? To realize your purpose? If so, let me join you on that journey right now!

INTRODUCTION

In 1995 two Stanford University students took their passion for information technology and created an internet juggernaut called BackRub. It would become the premier search engine on the World Wide Web and turn these aspiring students into instant millionaires.

The search engine was introduced to the marketplace in 1996, at a time when Alta Vista, Lycos, and AOL’s WebCrawler were the dominant players. Back then, there were a mere 36 million online users in the world, accounting for less than 1 percent of the global population. Fast forward twenty years and the number of internet users now stands at nearly 4 billion—more than 50 percent of the world’s population.¹

The makers of BackRub understood the massive potential of the burgeoning internet and set out to design the perfect portal for users to access information quickly. Fortunately for the billions of web surfers who use their search engine daily, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to change the name of their innovative product.

Google has been the dominant player in internet searches since 2000 and, as of this writing, has 80 percent of the market, handles more than 2 trillion searches per year, and is worth over $700 billion.²

Why did the Google name matter? Page and Brin couldn’t have imagined that their company name would become a common verb in the English language. Perhaps they had the foresight to realize the absurdity of saying I back-rubbed it when searching the internet of the future, but not likely.

The name mattered because its founders had a purpose and they sought to align their business—and their product’s name—with their aspirations. Google was a play on the mathematical term googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. It reflected Larry and Sergey’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.³

It wasn’t the product’s name that ignited their company’s success. It was the intelligent design of their program and, as some will argue, the simplicity of their website. The name Google, however, did matter to its founders.

They believed how they presented their product to the world needed to be in concert with their purpose to be successful. They understood that to be truly authentic, their actions needed to be in sync with their words.

Authentic organizations are led by those who have a clear vision for the future. They live out their purpose in everything they do. When leaders are authentic, they spark the energy needed not only to achieve their purpose, but potentially to change a community, an industry, or even the world.

What’s made Google so special, and why does it attract the best talent in the world? The company receives around 2 million applications each year and hires only 1 in about 130 of those aspirants.⁴ Despite what some believe are the most rigorous pre-screening and interview processes in business today, the desire to work for Google has not waned over time.

Many of Google’s competitors offer similar fringe benefits, including free meals, matching charitable contributions, and gaming areas inside their office facilities. In fact, high-tech firms everywhere have looked to Google’s recruitment processes and benefit programs as a template to improve their talent pool. Yet few, if any, companies can stack up to the unprecedented levels of interest in employment that Google receives.

It isn’t about the money, the perks, or the notoriety of working for one of the most recognized brands in the world. The inherent trait we all share as humans is our desire to achieve a purpose. When we see that attribute in leaders’ words and actions, we gravitate toward those individuals and the organizations they serve.

Page and Brin have operated their business with their purpose in mind, and the people in their organization are naturally attracted to that type of authentic leadership.

Authenticity isn’t about some altruistic quest to benefit all of mankind, although that can be an outcome of a leader’s efforts. It’s about staying true to who you are, what you do, and who you serve. Authentic leaders follow the inner voice that tells them there’s a bigger picture out there, well beyond shareholder return.

The advantage that authentic leaders share is that, in pursuit of their purpose, they achieve extraordinary results and repeatedly exceed the expectations of stakeholders. They also share another common trait. They inspire others to achieve remarkable results and, in the process, create authentic and enduring organizations.

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As one of the top innovators and designers of the twenty-first century, he was an authentic leader in one of the most successful companies of all time. The company’s one-time motto Think Different wasn’t just a catchy phrase; it was in the collective DNA of his entire design team.

This philosophy led to some of the most iconic industrial designs of the modern era. From the MacBook personal computer to its line of i products, Apple set the standard in electronics for the sleek and sophisticated design of simplicity and user-friendliness. Their products are so elegantly simple that its users don’t need a lengthy set of directions to understand how they work.

Take the first iPod as an example. A small white box with a wheel and text-only screen allowed us to place 1,000 or more songs in our pockets for the first time. That simplicity and sleek styling is still copied by businesses the world over, from iPhone clones to razors to automobiles. The talent behind those designs set the yardstick for others to follow and changed the world.

I’m not referring to Steve Jobs, but rather Jonathan Paul Ive. Sir Jony Ive is the Chief Design Officer of Apple, Inc. and was the genius behind some of Apple’s most legendary products, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Ive has been named as one of the world’s best designers by nearly every major publication across the globe.⁵

He was considered by many to be Steve Jobs’ closest ally and shared a similar passion with his late friend for creating world-changing products that are functionally clean and aesthetically pleasing.⁶

What made Jony Ive a legend? His early years may point to signs of a future superstar in design. His father, Michael Ive, was a silversmith and a teacher in Essex, attaining the prestigious rank of Her Majesty’s Inspector by the U.K. Education Ministry. Jony spent much of his childhood taking apart everyday products in his family’s home so he could learn how to reassemble them. He would go on to study industrial design, where items from his student portfolio won various awards.⁷

From an early age, there was no doubt what Jony Ive was most passionate about and how he would expend his intellectual energy. Although his passion and talent would lead him down a path to success, it was the efforts of his spiritual partner at Apple that allowed Ive to unleash his brilliance onto the world.

Steve Jobs was considered by many to be an insensitive taskmaster, who cared more about perfecting Apple’s products than he did about the feelings of others. He could be arrogant and only tolerated what he referred to as A players.⁸ Despite his insatiable appetite for perfection, Jobs understood how to fashion an environment that allowed creativity to flourish.

When Jobs found his A players, he channeled their energies toward their core strengths to enable greater flows of creativity. He simplified their work environment so that distractions would be limited. Jobs generated an atmosphere of focus within Apple, which allowed his team to create the world-changing products that have made the company one of the most valued and admired businesses of all time.

Jobs also believed in delegating responsibility and accountability throughout the organization to enable greater levels of creativity.

In a 2010 interview at D8, one of the premier conferences in the high-tech industry, Jobs told a packed audience that if you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy.⁹

In many ways, this was true of Jobs relationship with Jony Ive. Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that Ive has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me.¹⁰ He trusted Ive implicitly and placed the responsibility of designing some of the most iconic products of our time in the hands of a humble and understated design maven.

Ive was the antithesis of Jobs, a man who grew up with the belief that he was destined to be a prince.¹¹ What brought them together was their shared vision of designing products that could change the world. What allowed them to achieve their vision was Jobs’ belief that if you hire exceptional talent, give them the freedom to experiment, and simplify the world around them, there are no limits to the astounding results they can create.

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The leaders of both Google and Apple believe in a purpose that goes beyond increasing shareholder value and have aligned their actions, behaviors, and people to be in harmony with their defined purpose. This is the essence of authenticity and is discussed in more detail in Part Three: The Sphere of Authenticity.

Purpose-driven leaders focus their energies and those of their people on the things that matter most, minimizing the distractions that sap energy and lower creativity levels. They build trust, often undying loyalty, in their relationships with all stakeholders, especially with their employees—those who create the energy to produce the results, which will be covered in Part Four: The Sphere of Creativity.

This is what leadership for the long term is all about. The leaders in these enduring companies, and countless others, understand that the most effective way to achieve their long-term potential is to tap into their greatest source of energy—their human capital.

Their attention to the long-term objectives of their organizations has also brought about a shared outcome of results well above expectations. An investment in Apple & Google in 2007 would have yielded a return, over a ten-year period, seven times that of major U.S. stock indices.¹² This is the truly amazing upside when leaders start from or shift to a perspective of long-term thinking. They achieve outstanding results that endure over the long run.

This is not to say that these enduring companies don’t experience challenges along the way. Adversity is part of any organization’s DNA. Those who remain determined, however, to achieve their respective visions for the future bounce back from these setbacks much more rapidly than others.

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, in their bestseller, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies describe these enduring companies as clock builders and their more myopic counterparts as time tellers.¹³ This is apropos given clock builders are focused on building something that lasts for generations, yet serves the function of telling time.

In other words, by fixating on long-term objectives, the leaders in these high-performing organizations have built successful businesses to outlast their respective tenures (clock building), while achieving better-than-expected short-term results (time telling).

There’s no doubt that the leaders at Google, Apple, and many other companies have worked tirelessly and assumed considerable risks to create their enduring businesses. Let’s face it; getting there is anything but easy! But there is a simple answer to the question of how to get there, and it applies to organizations of every type:

The most effective way to realize long-term value, in any organization, is to enhance the engagement and creativity levels of your most valuable asset—your people.

It sounds like common sense, right? Why then are so many organizations operating from a foundation of results rather than people? The results-first focus that many managers employ is a reaction to the escalating expectations that stakeholders have on achieving short-term goals.

This short-termism has run rampant across our global economy and has caused well-established organizations to forego long-term objectives in favor of immediate financial gains. Many executives fear that failing to achieve interim targets could jeopardize their positions and, thus, prioritize more of their organizations’ time and efforts on meeting short-term goals.

The most successful leaders of the twenty-first century will be those who overcome the stranglehold of short-termism with courage.

Through courage, leaders can recognize that the world