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Executive Teams Continue to Flounder Post-Pandemic: Here’s What CEOs Need to Do

Four actions every CEO must take to shape their top team into a cohesive, high-performing unit.

Good CEOs create top leadership teams by selecting the best executives they can find. Great CEOs differentiate themselves by shaping a high performing top team that operates cohesively. But cohesive teamwork is on the decline the past three years.

According to DDI’s CEO Leadership Report 2023, CEOs don’t believe their top team is on the same page. Since the pandemic, more than two-thirds of CEOs say their executive team is ineffective at driving strategy. This problem is seen by other senior and mid-level leaders and creates a lack of confidence in the CEO and top team. Top teams may have high performing individuals, but still not work cohesively if CEOs don’t shape positive team dynamics and create consensus on the company’s top priorities.

The DDI findings are consistent with the results reported earlier this year from the Leadership Confidence Index, which showed the confidence CEOs have in their top teams has dropped precipitously since mid-2021, falling 7.1%.

Three key messages from these findings:

  1. CEOs are concerned about their top team members abilities to drive strategy, transform and reinvent the business.
  2. Top team members are concerned how they work collectively as a team, how they lead change, and how they role model a positive culture.
  3. The next-generation leaders (those who report into top team members) have the lowest levels of confidence about top teams, creating potential retention and succession risks.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Great CEOs are obsessed with the psychology and performance of their top teams. They care about the dynamics of the team and how the team works together. They know a high performing top team can be a huge value creation lever.

The four actions smart CEOs can take to build a value creating top team are:

  1. Focus on the roles, then the team.
  2. Create clarity.
  3. Shape the team’s dynamics.
  4. Build a team to perform and transform.

Fail to focus on developing your team and you will experience mediocrity. Excellent performing top teams don’t get there by accident. Get these four actions right and you will shape a group of talented senior executives into a cohesive, capable and committed top team that creates great value.

Three Costly Mistakes CEOs Make with Their Top Teams

The confidence level CEOs have in their top executive teams dropped 7.1% the past eighteen months, as reported by the Leadership Confidence Index. This news is alarming, given the prediction of declining growth in 2023 by CEOs surveyed. In this challenging economic environment, CEOs, top teams and their companies must embrace a laser-like focus on creating and sustaining a competitive advantage.

One of the most important tasks for the CEO is to build a top team that can be relied on. Yet, few CEOs believe their top leadership team is performing as it must. The top team should be the CEO’s biggest lever for value creation. However, many CEOs make three costly mistakes that diminish team performance.  Remedy these three mistakes and you will be on your way to shaping and leading a top team that delivers.

Mistake #1 – Failure to Create Clarity

The old expression, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”, holds true in business. If you aren’t crystal clear about where you are headed, and if your team isn’t aligned and focused on that destination, the execution of your goals simply won’t happen. Reaching your desired future state is impossible without clarity.

The Harvard Business Review article, No One Knows Your Strategy – Not Even Your Top Leaders, reported that in an analysis of 124 companies, only 28% of executives responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company’s key objectives. A study by Bain showed that 60% of employees don’t have any idea what the goals of their company are. They are wandering around, investing effort in ways that don’t contribute to the company’s focus.

How about your team? Have you and your top team defined your company’s place in the world and its purpose? Is everyone clear about your company’s purpose, vision, and key objectives? It’s doubtful.

A recipe for creating clarity is constructing a value creation blueprint with your top team. The value creation blueprint is a working document that identifies your vital growth initiatives and the “who, what, where, when, and how” the company will achieve full potential in a two to three-year timeframe. Grounded in the company’s purpose, mission, vision and values, the value creation blueprint becomes the living document, broadly shared and updated frequently, to create an aligned, mobilized and results-oriented mindset across your business.

Mistake #2 – Failure to Shape Positive Team Dynamics

Team dynamics is how your team works together. Many chief executives underestimate the criticality of positive team dynamics and overestimate the current state of their team’s dynamics. The Leadership Confidence Index findings reported that both top team members and their CEOs are concerned about how they work collectively, how they lead change and how they role model a positive culture.  Confidence in leadership team behavior declined 8% in one year.

Great CEOs are obsessed with the psychology and performance of their top teams. They know the dynamics of a top team can make or break a company. Investors understand this, too, as they believe the quality of the top team is the single most important non-financial factor in evaluating a new IPO. When a top team works together with a shared vision and supportive behaviors, the company is twice as likely to have above median financial performance.

How about your team? On a scale of 1 to 10, how is your team performing today and how should it be performing?

The best CEOs invest time, energy and money in building the capability and shaping the dynamics of their teams. That means getting to know one another and learning personal histories. Understanding what makes others tick. Strengthening connections. Discovering how to seek, give and receive feedback continuously, in a supportive way. Encouraging candor and rich debates of differing views before making enterprise-wide decisions. Appreciating that diversity in terms of backgrounds, ethnicity, sex, and ways of thinking leads to better solutions. Take these actions and build a top team that moves faster, innovates more readily and collaborates more effectively to get things done. You will likely need outside assistance to optimize the dynamics of your top team.

Mistake #3: Failure to Perform and Transform

It’s not good enough for the team to focus only on today’s business performance.  The team also needs to be focused on transforming the business for tomorrow. You must win today’s race while running tomorrow’s race, too.

The clear message for CEOs and their teams is they must reimagine and reinvent their businesses. To reinvent their business while navigating current operating challenges, CEOs need the help of their C-suite leaders, middle managers and other team members alike. They need to reimagine a company with a bolder value proposition that achieves a more ambitious purpose in the future.

But how can leaders transform the business, reinvent their company, when they haven’t yet reinvented how they lead?  To reinvent as a leader is to consciously transform how you operate, connect and lead, so you stay relevant, energized and create maximum value.

The CEO of Moderna, the biotech firm that pioneered the messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccination, Stephane Bancel, says the reinvention of Moderna must start with him. Every quarter, he takes the time to reinvent how he approaches his job – to recraft his role as CEO. What he needs to start and stop doing. The vital functions and key responsibilities that only he, as CEO, must perform.

Bancel reflects on how to bring an even greater sense of purpose to his work. On the relationships he must develop and nurture. And on what he must learn and how he must grow to stay current and thrive.

Are you, and your top team members, reinventing how you lead, like Bancel? Are you recrafting your roles to create maximum value, while you elevate the contribution of the next generation of leaders?

Forty percent of global CEOs think their company will no longer be viable in ten years’ time, if it continues on its current course, reported the PwC’s 26th Annual CEO Survey. With 75% of respondents believing growth will decline in 2023, most CEOs feel it is critically important for them to reinvent their businesses for the future.

CEOs and their top teams need to perform while simultaneously focusing on how to transform. PwC’s CEO study revealed chief executives spend 53% of their time driving current operating performance and only 47% thinking about the future today. The respondents believed 43% of their time should be focused on the current state while 57% should be invested on evolving the business and its strategy to meet future demands.

To transform, C-suite leaders must engage and empower others. They must use more of the visionary and coaching styles of leadership to lift others to execute today’s business, so they can place a greater emphasis on the transformation of the business.  They will need to continuously recraft their roles and reinvent their impact so they stay relevant and thrive.

Summary

It’s time for CEOs to double down on optimizing their top teams. Overcome these three costly mistakes and invest the energy, time and resources towards building a top team that creates a valuable enterprise. That’s a competitive advantage that can’t be duplicated. Failing to do so will put the company, and you, in a perilous position.

Creating clarity, shaping positive dynamics, and reinventing top team members’ contributions and roles, while reimagining the business for the future, are the steps towards high performance and value creation.

How Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel Stays Relevant and Thrives in a Hyper-Growth Environment

Can you name a company that has grown in revenue from $0 to $19 billion in one year? Here’s a hint: the biotechnology company that pioneered the messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccination – Moderna.

Founded in 2010, and led by CEO Stephane Bancel since 2011, Moderna is credited with one of the greatest discoveries of the past century, the Spikevax vaccine, which has found its way into the arms of hundreds of millions beginning in 2021. More than a one-product biotech firm, Bancel describes the company as having a “platform”, whose new way of making drugs can allow it to quickly pivot to deploy mRNA technology vaccinations and therapeutics to combat the most threatening viruses and diseases. Now with forty-eight different programs and with thirty-eight in active clinical trials, the company’s future is bright, with a market capitalization that surpasses many large pharmaceutical companies.

With the impact Moderna has experienced, over eight hundred million Moderna vaccine doses delivered in 2021 alone, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find the CEO enjoying the spoils of success. That’s not the case with CEO Stephane Bancel.

At the recent Wall Street Journal Health Forum in Boston, WSJ reporter and author of The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World, Peter Loftus interviewed Bancel. My ears perked up when Bancel answered Loftus’ question about his unique challenges in the face of Moderna’s rapid transformation.

Loftus: “The company has changed so much in the last three years. It used to be a smaller biotech development stage. No products, a lot of people had never heard of Moderna. And now you’re a household name much bigger. What has it been like to go through that transformation? And what are some of the unique challenges you think that you’ve experienced there?”

Bancel: “I think it’s managing a company in a hyper-growth mode. You know, I worked at Eli Lilly, and I ran BioMerieux, two great companies, but neither was growing 50% a year. If you look at Moderna, as you say, actually, since the early years, we’ve grown 50% in headcount every year. This year, we started the year with around four thousand team members. We’re planning to hire two thousand people this year. So, it’s another 50%. Again, I know it’s not going to last forever, which is a good thing. But the thing that I have never done, and I think it’s, it’s the same for all of my colleagues, is ‘How do you keep reinventing your job all the time?’ Because as you can appreciate the job of a CEO at Moderna 12 years ago, when, you know, we literally had a couple of scientists and two million in the bank and only research is quite different than the job of CEO four years ago before COVID with 20 drugs in development and a public company, and running a manufacturing plant in Norwood to what it is today.”

“And so, I think it requires a lot of humility to, to really work with your boss, to work with your team. And to regularly kind of reinvent your job in terms of ‘What is the job of Moderna’s CEO today?’”

“What I do once a quarter is actually to kind of literally fire myself on a Sunday, where I try to think about where the company’s going. And I will literally write the job description of what I think the Moderna CEO must be today. And when I spent a couple hours comparing what the CEO must do today with what I’ve done in the last month or two. And I realized that some things I need to stop doing. Sometimes, it’s things I love to do that I just need to stop doing, because it’s not what the CEO of Moderna what needs to do. There are things I have not done yet that I need to start doing. Some things I must start, I don’t really like. It’s what the Moderna CEO needs to do. And so, it’s this constant reinvention that is really new. It took me quite some time to really get this as a muscle. Because again, I’ve never worked in a hyper-growth company before. That’s how to stay relevant.”

In my experience as a CEO coach, it isn’t uncommon to hear CEOs speak about the need for reinvention. Usually, it’s about how the company must reinvent to stay competitive. This perceived need has been highlighted with the findings of the recent PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey where 40% of the CEO respondents think their company will no longer be economically viable a decade from now, if it continues on its current path.  Increasingly, reinventing the company is on the CEO’s agenda.

What is uncommon is to hear a CEO like Bancel acknowledge that reinvention must start with him. Reinvention is a must for all who work to stay relevant and thrive. If you are not CEO of your company, see yourself as CEO of your function, or of your role and your life. The purpose of reinventing your role is for you to not only feel more purpose and passion from your work, but to design your job in a way that creates massive value and impact for your stakeholders.

  • Given your current business state and your desired future state, what tasks must you stop and start doing as CEO?
  • How will you bring a greater sense of purpose to your work?
  • How will you make the time necessary to focus on your few vital functions that drive the greatest value?
  • Over the next twenty-four months, what relationships are most important for you to develop and nurture?
  • And what must you learn and how must you grow, so you stay relevant and thrive today and tomorrow?

These are questions every CEO – whether or not they are in a hyper-growth environment – should reflect on quarterly, as part of their on-going reinvention. How about you? If you are a CEO, are you reinventing every quarter? What are you doing to stay relevant and thrive?

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Alvin Toffler

For more on reinventing your role as a leader, check out Reinvent Your Impact: Unleashing Purpose, Passion and Productivity to Thrive

Reinvent Your Impact - Bestselling Book by Executive Coach Chuck Bolton

The CEO’s List of “Must Have” Tools for 2023

The Best New Studies, Books, Articles, Apps and Resources for CEOs who Seek to Create Value in an Uncertain World

In today’s turbulent business world, CEOs need all the help they can get to navigate the treacherous waters. Despite the supply chain, inflation and great resignation challenges, the job of every CEO remains to create great value sustainably. To create value, every CEO (and aspiring CEO) needs to learn, grow and get better. This year’s list of the best new tools for CEOs is sure to provide any leader with many insights and ideas for how to elevate their game in their value creation quest.

Here’s the 2023 list.

What Matters Most? Six Priorities for CEOs in Turbulent Times by Homayoun Hatami and Liz Hilton Segel. This McKinsey & Company article and report shares six priorities that are featured prominently on CEO agendas worldwide in late 2022, and the moves leaders are taking to shore up defenses and gain ground on rivals.  https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/what-matters-most-six-priorities-for-ceos-in-turbulent-times

Leading Through Inflation: A Playbook by Ram Charan. This well-known advisor to boards and CEOs created an exclusive primer with Chief Executive to help leaders plan for this new inflationary environment. In this uncertain time, this article is relevant to every CEO and board member who seeks to help their company survive – and possibly thrive – in this new era of rising inflation.  https://chiefexecutive.net/inflationplaybook/

Your CEO Check Up This free, confidential, self-assessment measures your current performance on the six key CEO responsibilities and the mindsets and practices that underpin them. Whether you are an aspiring CEO, a new CEO or have been a CEO for many years, Your CEO Check Up will give you insights that will help you create greater value in your role. https://yourceocheckup.com

Women in the Workplace 2022: The State of Women in Corporate America by McKinsey & Company. Women are demanding more from work and they’re leaving companies in unprecedented numbers to get it.  If companies don’t act, they won’t just lose their female leaders; they risk losing the next generation of women leaders.  https://womenintheworkplace.com 

The Last Mile to the Top: Future CEOs Who Beat the Odds and What Research Reveals About the Four Most Common CEO Steppingstones by SpencerStuart. An aspiring CEO’s “last mile” role is the final opportunity to address areas that could handicap performance as CEOs. What are the areas to unlock performance for each of the four primary steppingstones to CEO? This article identifies specific opportunities to unleash potential by building new skills and mindsets for aspiring CEOs. https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/future-ceos-who-beat-the-odds

How CEOs Can Make Diversity and Inclusion a Priority by Dan Hawkins. This Forbes article builds the case for a more diverse team, the bottom-line impact of diversity, equity and inclusion practices, and provides guidance for CEOs who need to accelerate their DEI efforts.  There is a link to the insightful report Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters, for those CEOs who seek to dive deeper.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/07/13/how-ceos-can-make-diversity-and-inclusion-a-priority/?sh=d9e2119279a6

CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets that Distinguish the Best Leaders from The Rest by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra. Today’s CEOs must navigate far more than the traditional running of the business. What a CEO does matters – a lot. Why is CEO excellence so elusive? Based on the findings from a massive research project of publicly traded companies, this book identifies what the most successful leaders really do in their role as CEOs. A must read for any CEO who seeks to stay ahead of the competition.  https://books.google.com/books/about/CEO_EXCELLENCE.html?id=Ssq2zgEACAAJ

Be The CEO Who Gives Gifts and Thanks CEOs and leaders who give gifts of admiration and recognition to their colleagues lift the commitment, trust levels and performance of their top team members.  A straight-forward process is described that can be applied by any CEO to elevate the contribution and commitment of top team members.  Investing in building bonds and tighter relationships creates a strong foundation for top team and company performance.  https://theboltongroup.com/be-the-ceo-who-gives-gifts-and-thanks/

Your CEO Resource Guide What specific actions can you take to elevate your performance as CEO? Your CEO Resource Guide shares the insights to make you and your company better. The CEO Cheat Sheet for Creating Massive Value shares fifty-seven value-creating practices that can be deployed across the six unique CEO responsibilities. A useful tool, also, for aspiring CEOs, who are preparing for the top job. https://yourceoresourceguide.com

The Unicorn Within: How Companies Can Create Game-Changing Ventures at Startup Speed by Linda K. Yates. This excellent “how to” book shows large company executives how to beat startups at their own game – to build a pipeline and portfolio of new ventures to drive meaningful growth. Newly released, discover the teachable, repeatable and scalable method to venture creation.  https://www.theunicornwithin.com

Re-Culturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success by Melissa Daimler. Whether you’re launching a startup, running a global firm, or shifting to a hybrid work setting, it’s up to you and your senior leaders to craft the culture you need that drives long-term business success. “Re-Culturing” is the continuous act of redesigning and reconnecting behaviors, processes, and practices to each other and to the organizational system. Just as a company’s strategy evolves, so too should a company’s culture evolve. You will discover how to “disintegrate” what no longer serves the company and “remake” your culture – the key to navigating this next evolution of work. https://www.melissadaimler.com/reculturing-book/

Calm Renewing one’s physical, mental, spiritual and emotional energy is a must for any busy CEO. Calm is a user-friendly app for sleep and meditation, designed to lower stress and anxiety. There are free courses on the topics of sleep, anxiety and focus that provide a good sense of all the meditations offered. It is widely recognized as the #1 app in the meditation space. https://www.calm.com

When the CEO gets better, everyone around them gets better. Check out each of these “must have” CEO tools, try them on and become a better CEO in 2023. So you can become the exceptional, value-creating leader you are meant to be.  All your stakeholders will be grateful.

Be the CEO Who Gives Gifts and Thanks

During the past two weeks, the business news has been dominated by tech companies that are laying off staff. Meta laid off 11,000 employees or 13% of their workforce. Twitter terminated the employment of 3,700, nearly 50% of its staff.  A long list of other companies followed. Intel, Snap, Robinhood, Stripe, Salesforce, Lyft, Microsoft, Shopify, Netflix, HP and Coinbase rounded out the list of companies laying off 10% or more of their team members.

The news of layoffs in the tech sector strikes fear in the markets and in those outside of the industry, too.  Meanwhile, unemployment remains at or near an all-time low. Most businesses are not laying people off but doing their best to meet the needs of employees and customers. Many CEOs are projecting an economic bounce back and predict 2023 will return to a more normal year. Outside of the tech sector, where most Americans work, is where the good stuff in our economy is happening, although it is rarely mentioned in the news.

One of my CEO clients in the medical device sector brought his top leadership team together last week to discuss their 2023 plans. Since he was hired just over a year ago, four of his eight direct reports are new to the company. Aware his team of leaders have been working hard learning the business, managing their responsibilities and building their credibility, he took them off-site for a few days to plan for the upcoming year and to recognize their contributions. It is a lonely journey most leaders walk, saddled with multiple demands and high expectations, yet rarely do they receive positive support and affirmation. He decided to change that.

His desire for his new team is not just to develop and execute the strategy, but to get to know one another better and build trust as they work together to create a great company.

During the last working session of the day, everyone wrote on a sheet of paper the name of each team member. Then they wrote three gifts each person brought to their work. These were not technical skills or work competencies; they were personal qualities demonstrated by the individual. At the bottom of the sheet, they wrote what they would miss if that person was no longer on the team.

Ten minutes later, each person received seven pages of their gifts as perceived by their teammates. They took a few minutes to each read their gifts silently, then they shared what they heard with the full team.

After each individual shared “What I heard”, their colleagues elaborated on the gifts and unique qualities that person brought to their work, sharing examples and a story or two.  Many smiles were shared. After everyone took their turn, to take it a step further, they reflected on what they heard, what they saw as their own special gifts and wrote and shared their unique gift statement.

Here is a sample of the gift statements shared:

  • I use my gift of enthusiasm, joy and a positive attitude, to lift people up, encourage and support others, to see the bright side and find a silver lining.
  • I use my passion and ability to connect with others, to create an environment that creates an opportunity for people to achieve excellence and enjoy the experience that leads to results.
  • My gift is passion and care for people. I use my gift to serve others, to increase confidence, so they can achieve increased fulfillment and impact in their lives.
  • I use my gift of a deep caring for people – to engage, support, serve and impact others – helping them elevate.

As they exited, the CEO thanked each team member for their willingness to lean in and work together. He said, “You’ve now landed on your unique gift statement, the uniqueness that no one else in the world brings. What makes you special. Let’s now bring our gifts to all the opportunities and situations that come our way.”

What do you think the collective mood of the team was walking out of the room that afternoon?

One team member stated, “I’ve never been through a process like this, giving and getting gifts from your colleagues and leader. I’ve worked with some companies for many years and never heard what others thought my gifts were. I feel tighter with this team already than the other teams I have been part of.”

Another said, “While it was at first a little uncomfortable to be recognized by my peers and boss in such a way, I am grateful you appreciate me for who I am. I am so happy to be part of this team and company. You make it safe and motivating. Thank you for your encouragement and letting me be me.”

As they wrapped up, high fives, smiles, thank yous and hugs were abundant. An uplifting and affirming afternoon. The team was tighter, more supportive and trusting at the close of their meeting.  Each person felt accepted, encouraged and inspired.

Is the collective emotional state of your top team, CEO, like this team’s? Do you invest in building relationships, trust and commitment?  If not, why not? What’s the price you’ll pay if you aren’t the CEO who gives your team gifts and thanks?

Intentionally building relationships, trust and commitment secures the foundation from which you build and grow your company. The bonds and tight relationships serve as the cement that holds the blocks of the foundation – the people, strategies, goals, products, execution and results – together. A small investment in time and effort can yield a tremendous return on investment.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving and the holiday season, won’t you be the CEO who is grateful for your team and gives gifts and thanks?

Bringing Your Company’s Purpose To Life: 4 Steps to a Purpose-Driven Client Experience

In our recent post, you discovered that purpose is the secret ingredient of extraordinary companies. If you’ve done the work, you reflected on the questions to unlock that noble purpose statement for your company. You’ve committed to a higher purpose and you and your team members are genuinely passionate about making a difference in the marketplace. You believe in the good work your firm does. Your company’s products and services make people’s lives and the planet better.

With this noble and honorable purpose statement now in place, here’s the big question for you:

How do you bring your purpose to life?

With great care and on-going commitment, you design both a purpose-driven client experience and a purpose-driven team member (employee) experience.

Let’s focus today on the purpose-driven client experience. Why? As iconic leadership expert Peter Drucker stated, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”  When you operate with purpose when serving your clients, something remarkable can happen.

Here are the four keys for creating a purpose-driven client experience.

  1. Define your brand position

Step one is to create a concise statement that details how your firm differs from and is better in meeting your client’s needs than your competitors. The following are reflection questions to create your brand position statement:

  • What do we do better than anyone else in the world?
  • What difference has our product or service made in the lives of our clients?
  • When would and wouldn’t they use our brand vs the competition?
  • What is the emotional benefit we provide our clients?
  • How do we make them feel?
  • What would they lose if we ceased to exist?
  • As we serve our clients, what makes our hearts sing?

Example: The Bolton Group LLC is the #1 resource to guide medical technology, life sciences and healthcare CEOs in creating massive value so their stakeholders thrive.

Make sure all team members know, understand and can articulate your brand position statement with clients, so clients know your firm is unique.

  1. Create a one-liner making your client the hero

Step two is to make your client the hero of the story. Your role, and that of your brand is not to be the hero, but the guide.  Your client doesn’t want another hero. They want to be the hero of their story.

What is success to your client? How do your clients wish to feel and what do they want? Your job is to help your client solve their biggest problem and/or capitalize on their biggest opportunity. What role will you play in your client’s journey? Create a one-liner of how you and your brand will make the client a hero.

Example: I’m Chuck Bolton, the guide who helps medtech, life sciences and healthcare CEOs thrive. Making you the hero of your magnificent story.

  1. Use the clock model to strengthen client touch points

Now is the time to do a brand audit  – an assessment of the positive and negatives – of every point where your firm connects with the client. Each component influences your client’s perception of your firm and each component must be supportive of your company purpose.  This is where you adjust and clean up any problems.

A useful model to conduct this exercise is to think of a clock.  To what extent is each component reflective of your company’s purpose? Which needs to be adjusted in order to be consistent with purpose? Which component is doing well and is consistent with purpose?

Pre-purchase. A client enters your brand world at the pre-purchase stage, think 12 to 4.  Pre-purchase components include advertising, tradeshows, social media, public relations, events and sponsorships.

Purchase is 4 to 8 on the clock. The components include distribution, packaging, store design, user reviews, financing, user generated reviews.

Post-purchase is 8 to 12. The components include customer service, loyalty programs and warranty programs.

How to strengthen your client touch points?

First, put your client in the center. What is most important to them?

Secondly, look at the client experience holistically around the brand. Does your purpose get reflected like you intend?

Thirdly, look at your competitors. What can you learn from them?

Fourth, Where is your firm’s opportunity to stand out? Where is the world headed? Where’s the greatest variance? With your limited capital, where can you be world-class in your sector? Where can you gain the greatest return on investment with shifts you make to your client touch points?

When Apple launched Apple Stores in 2001, many were skeptical of these expensive and airy retail stores that just displayed a few products. Experienced consumer electronic chains like Gateway, CompUSA and others were in decline.  But the customer experience Steve Jobs and team wanted was not to have metal boxes thrust at their customers. They believed there was power in focusing on the pre-purchase touch points, allowing customers to try out and learn about the products. When customers experimented and learned, they could see the potential the products had in empowering their lives in the future. They would develop an emotional connection, and sales would follow. Apple took a decidedly different approach than their competitors. As they prepared for the launch of Apple Stores, they asked a more empowering question: How do we enrich lives?

As they visualized the experience of their clients, they developed the following statements to guide their efforts in the creation of the stores:

  • A store that enriches lives has a non-commission sales floor. Instead of clerks or sales people, it would hire geniuses and concierges.
  • A store that enriches lives hires for empathy and passion.
  • A store that enriches lives greets you as you step foot inside.
  • A store that enriches lives let you play with the products.
  • A store that enriches lives is located where people live their lives.

Better questions led to better innovations. The vision to enrich lives served as the Apple Stores’ True North. Enriching lives still remains at the heart of the company’s mission.  The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the more we need to go back to the basic fundamentals of human connection. Empathy is one of the greatest creators of positive energy.

Once you’ve completed your clock model to identify and strengthen client touch points, defining your brand identity, you can create an explicit purpose-driven client story to serve as a narrative for how you’ll treat your clients moving forward. Just like Apple did with their stores. Now it’s your turn to create that purpose-driven client story.

  1. Construct your purpose-driven client story

Create a story of how you and your brand make your client a hero.

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” Jeff Bezos, Amazon

There are eight steps to the purpose-driven client story:

  1. Who is your client and what do they want? What is their definition of success? How can you enrich their lives?
  2. What’s your client’s biggest problem? What price do they pay when they suffer from the problem? What is the benefit when that problem gets fixed? What are the stakes? How are their lives enriched?
  3. Your client meets a guide – you armed with your brand, products and/or service – who brings both empathy and the authority to fix the client’s problem.
  4. You give them a plan. As your client’s guide, you have a proven process (a product or service) that when your client implements, will fix their problem and make their life better.
  5. You call them to action. Clients are people and people are often reluctant to try new approaches. You remind them of the price they pay when the problem is prolonged. You describe the future benefit from accepting the call to action. You invite them to take action, on what will become a transformational journey for them.
  6. That ends in a success. With your client, you create a vivid picture of what success will look like when the work is completed. The desired future state.
  7. That helps them avoid failure. You remind the client they will not face the downside of their problem when they are guided by you and use your proven process.
  8. That helps them transform. When they follow you and implement their plan, change happens. They become better at their work, their company gets better, their stakeholders benefit and they transform, becoming a better person, too.

As a firm that has a noble purpose and a commitment to improving the lives of people, there is no doubt you have knowledge of compelling client stories, even if you haven’t organized it exactly in this purpose-driven client story format. As a next step, write out your “customer as hero” stories, using this eight-step framework. If you have sub-brands or different product offerings, you will want to create a hero story for each brand, division or product.

These stories should be widely shared within in your firm, so everyone understands how the company’s purpose is brought to life as you serve your clients.

As you engage your clients today and in the future, share your client stories and use the client story framework directly with them, engaging them in the questions and in creating the story of their success and transformation.  Your clients will feel your commitment to making them the hero of their stories. The effect will be a magnetic pull toward you and your company and will set you apart from your competition.  As the guide, you make the client the hero of the story – every time.

Four powerful keys for bringing your purpose to life as you serve your clients

  1. Define your brand position
  2. Create a one-liner making your client the hero
  3. Use the clock model to strengthen client touch points
  4. Construct your purpose-driven client story

Implementing these four ideas is an impactful approach in making certain your clients experience your firm’s unique, noble purpose. These ideas bring your purpose to life for your clients – the most critical external stakeholder to sustaining your company’s long-term success.

Using Your Purpose Story to Pivot

When you read her bio and then meet her, you can’t help but being impressed with Rachel.

In her early 50s, she’s Ivy-League educated, has an MBA from one of the top business schools in the world, speaks multiple languages and holds a senior level global role for a leading healthcare company. With her educational and career background, it’s no surprise that she’s smart and strategic. But a high IQ doesn’t always transfer to high emotional intelligence, or EQ. Rachel is both self-aware and socially aware. Polite, well-spoken and empathetic, she brings the right combination of heart and head, the right ingredients to one day become the CEO of her $2 billion global company.

But Rachel had a problem.

After three years, she had doubts her company was right for her.  As we got to know one another, she confided she wasn’t feeling good about the company, she’d lost her passion and wanted to get her juice back.  When she experienced the nagging feelings her company may not be the right fit, she’d stuff them away, and immerse herself deeply in her work.

She described her boss, the CEO, as “old school, low energy and fear-based, who didn’t like open debate.” His presence created, in her words, a “certain toxicity.” She rationalized that she had a big role and was expected to get results, that she was paid well, and that every company and every boss brings both positives and negatives. She wondered, “Is it me? Can I thrive in a place where I can’t communicate with my boss and the team with complete candor and openness?”

She worked hard and felt a little cheated that she could not find more joy in her work, particularly given the effort she invested. She sensed the CEO may not have had complete confidence in her and she was concerned she might fail in his eyes and be asked to leave.

I asked Rachel if she had defined her purpose. Purpose is the overarching principle that gives your life meaning. It’s the forward-pointing arrow, that gives you clarity and helps you get out of bed in the morning. She said she hadn’t given much thought to purpose of late. I provided Rachel some materials on discovering her purpose and that’s where her story begins. Rachel describes below in her own words, in her purpose story, how she uncovered her purpose and how it led her to make some important changes in her life.

“When I was 23 years old, I wanted to see the world and do something physically challenging. Many of my classmates who I had studied abroad with in China traveled to Tibet and raved about it. So a year after graduating from college, and after doing some research, I signed up with an Australian expedition company to do a thirty-day hike in the Himalayas. Traveling on my own, I signed up to join a group of ten other individuals, all strangers to me, ranging in age from twenty-somethings to couples in their thirties and forties. There was one couple in their late forties. I was the only American among this group of Aussies. We had one guide, a bunch of mules who did the heavy lifting, and a handful of sherpas.

“The first few days I was filled with energy and excitement and we trekked an average of thirteen miles each day. As each day went by, my energy and excitement started to wane. The poor sleep, severe altitude sickness, the lack of a warm shower or bath, and eating the same food (mutton, nonetheless) slowly, but surely, chipped away my energy. Little had I appreciated the luxury of standing under a shower with hot water pouring down on me. Little had I appreciated the feeling of being clean, head-to-toe. Little had I appreciated biting into a juicy watermelon or a hot New York-style pizza. Thirty days later, after having summited five mountains ranging from ten to fifteen thousand feet, each time with altitude-induced head-bursting migraines, and only sponge-bathing in a pure, frigid glacial stream, I not only appreciated all of these life luxuries but actually couldn’t stop thinking of them. It didn’t help that at day twenty, a kerosene tank leaked on the food, resulting in much of the food being discarded. At that point, I learned to appreciate the mutton that I was so tired of as we had to settle with only dahl, rice, and potatoes for the last ten days. By the time we stumbled into the city of Leh, more than three hundred miles away, I was simultaneously thoroughly worn out and fatigued, and deeply proud of my accomplishment, having discovered a deep well of tenacity and potential.

“I dug deep into my reserve and courageously faced each day when I had no choice but to tackle the day’s trek. I found that I had resilience to keep going. Our group was out in the middle of nowhere, among nature’s majestic mountains, lush and fertile landscape, and stark and barren scenery, sometimes not seeing another soul outside of our expedition group for nearly a week. I experienced the forces and beauty of nature and was humbled and awed by its power. I learned that it’s when we are pushed to the limits of discomfort, sometimes on the brink of feeling broken, that we have the opportunity to open ourselves up and tap into our reserve to unleash our strength. These lessons from my expedition have stayed with me and carried me into day-to-day life, helping me to navigate through life’s twists and turns. It has taught me that power and strength come through vulnerability and openness to move toward the unknown. And this experience confirmed that by embracing discomfort, changes, and new experiences, I am able to surprise myself in discovering the potential that exists within me.

“This experience helped clarify my purpose statement: To courageously dig deep to unleash potential as powerful as Nature. Today I live that purpose in all aspects of my life. I have the confidence to shape my future—and whatever circumstances are thrown my way—when I reflect on my trek in the Himalayas and my purpose.

“The process of clarifying my purpose and identifying my passions caused me to reflect deeply on my career. I’ve been fortunate to have led companies in the healthcare products sector. About three years ago, I joined a new company to oversee its North American business. After a successful two year run in my first assignment, I was asked to take on even bigger role at the company. On paper, it was an impressive role. I had great responsibility with many people reporting into me, I was compensated well, and served as a valuable member of our company’s executive team.

“But I felt something was missing. I wasn’t passionate about the company or its culture. The company was very different from the company where I had thrived. It was hierarchical, traditional, and low energy, run by a CEO who verbally encouraged the opinions of others but his actions didn’t support the verbal encouragement. People operated within an environment of fear, and therefore they aspired to “fly under the radar.” The climate could be described as collegial at the surface level, but honest, open debate where the best ideas win wasn’t truly welcomed or encouraged.

“While there were many positive aspects of the company, I knew this was not the environment or culture for me to thrive long term. I had known this for some time deep inside my soul, but I ignored those feelings, and had grown numb to the situation by throwing myself into my work. My team and I delivered results and put points on the board, while I overlooked the uneasiness of not really fitting in. I was unable to fully commit myself to this company.

“As I embarked on the journey to define my purpose, and reflected on my experience in the Himalayas and how I had lived my life, I strove to operate by courageously digging deep to tap into my potential and live powerfully. That was the true me. And being honest with myself—while I had the big job and the trappings that went along with it—I wasn’t living true to my purpose and values. It was at that time that I knew I needed to find a different environment so I could flourish and then help others flourish, too.

“Being clear about my purpose and my passions allowed me to take the courageous next step of resigning. I transitioned with honesty and integrity, leaving the people and position in a good place. This departure gave me an unexpected sense of relief. As I embarked on my search, I felt a sense of great optimism about what the future held. While I was a bit uncertain as I began the journey, and I didn’t know my exact destination, I had a strong sense of where I was headed. I believed I would know the destination when I saw it. I was confident I’d find the place where I could dig deep courageously to unleash potential as powerful as nature, and where I could create impact and value for myself and others. I was confident I’d be able to help others be successful and grow in an open and transparent environment. I had great faith the best was yet to come.”

Now, six months later, after writing her purpose story, Rachel found her dream job. She accepted the chief executive officer role of a smaller, privately-held company in the women’s health industry. She’s passionate about the space, the company, and culture, and she is confident she will make a meaningful difference in growing and shaping the future of this company. She states, “Had I not clarified my purpose and my plan to create impact, there is no way I would be in this role today.”

When you’re clear about your purpose, it serves as your north star. When you write and share your purpose story, it’s healing and liberating. Sharing your purpose story is the most generous thing you can do.  Sharing your purpose statement and story will inspire others to write and share theirs, too. Live by your purpose and purpose story, that’s the recipe for living a life of great impact. Just like Rachel.