Deep Purpose with Ranjay Gulati
My guest today is Ranjay Gulati. Ranjay is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High Performing Companies. In this episode, we talk about how to harness a sense of purpose to create a great team, the power of good storytelling, and Randy offers some leadership lessons from the Seattle Seahawks NFL team and Howard Schultz at Starbucks and stay tuned at the end for a great story about Rand Jay's mum as well. This is Ranjay Gulati.
Grande Welcome to Beyond Busy from a very cold, Massachusetts.
Ranjay Gulati 1:27
Thank you, Graham, my pleasure to be here with you. Today,
Graham Allcott 1:29
we're gonna talk about your new book, which has deep purpose. And your background as a professor at Harvard, Harvard Business School. I guess that brings you into contact with a lot of different organisations of all different shapes and sizes. Tell Tell me just first of all, when we think about purpose, and what's been going on over the last couple of years of COVID, do you think that there's been more of a focus from people on the idea of purpose and people wanting to have a sense of purpose individually? And also, corporately? Well,
Ranjay Gulati 2:06
Graham, I think it's very clear that we're facing a meaning crisis in the world today. I mean, you look at the data on great resignations, or great reshuffle or whatever you want to call it, you look at mental health demands being placed on the mental health care system, which is flooded. You know, I think people are going through a deep period of introspection, there's a lot of kind of all of us have been touched by death, illness, and a whole range of things. And so I think rightfully people are interrogating themselves about what's my life purpose? And also what is my work purpose? How do I get more purpose out of my work? And when you ask those questions, I think it's, it forces you to think hard about, what am I doing? And why am I doing it?
Graham Allcott 2:53
I remember saying a lot in the earliest stages of COVID that it felt to me, you know, this podcast is called Beyond busy. It felt to me like what happened in COVID was people were stripped of busyness people were stripped of a lot of the content of their lives. And what was left was space. And when you're sat there sort of contemplating your own purpose, that's, it's quite uncomfortable, isn't it? I feel like people really struggle to, to ask and answer those big questions, because they're difficult questions. What do you think?
Ranjay Gulati 3:25
Absolutely. I think they're difficult questions. But once you have an answer to them, think about what purpose can do for us. Purpose is a massive unlock. If you get it right. If you understand your purpose, it makes you proactive, it allows you to understand what you are doing and why you're doing it. It allows you to prioritise things in your life versus purpose less is where it's fear laden. It's reactive, confusion and periods of angst about why am I doing what am I doing and feeling just low grade discomfort.
Graham Allcott 4:01
So what was really interesting about the book is you talk quite a lot about the idea of heart and soul. And it feels it feels almost alien to the way a lot of people talk about business, right? Like, just the idea of these huge entities with 1000s of people having heart and soul and because like sometimes that comes back to a charismatic individual, a founder, a leader, that kind of thing. But also, you know, just just the idea of what is, you know, what's the purpose of what we're trying to achieve? What are our values becomes a really sort of important component. So why do you think it's important that that companies have heart so let's think
Ranjay Gulati 4:40
about this idea for a second, you know, then I hinted this idea already from long time ago, my late colleague, Sumatra, co Charlotte from the London Business School, used to talk about the smell of a place and you can smell a place when you get there. And then I also looked at founders of companies who left and then came back So if you look at Howard Schultz leaving Starbucks retiring, I'm out of here. Good luck guys. And then coming back, and his first reaction when it comes back is Starbucks has lost its soul. Yeah, yeah. And then also started talking too fast. I really understood this in entrepreneurial settings, where, as a founder of a company will talk about the growth of the company, they would be very proud of the growth if they were successful to grow. But then they would have this kind of nostalgic look in their eyes about, but we've lost something we're no longer in formal, I don't know what I said, What have you lost? Well, is that informality, it's something and they couldn't put their finger on it? And that led me to study just that, what did you lose? And actually, I wrote an article called the soul of a startup, which is to capture that essence. And sense of purpose was one of the key dimensions that you know, we begin enterprises, usually, with a strong ideal, and an idea. It's not just a big winning idea, it's also an ideal, we're going to change the world in the following way. And that ambition, then naturally somehow withers and constraints into what's the big idea. And it's that piece, I think that you got to hold on to now the question you can ask is, how do you do that at scale? And, and what have you never had it? Then? What do you do?
Graham Allcott 6:24
Yeah, cuz you like so you talked at the beginning about Howard Schultz at Starbucks. And in the book, you call it something like, it's the personification paradox, and you're talking about, like, just that idea of, you know, that care, and that, all those those kind of small details that really make that sort of make up that sense of, of soul and the kind of smell of the place. So when you think about scale, like what, what examples would you give of companies that do that really well at scale. So where there's a real purpose, but also it's not reliant on one person, it can, it can scale massively, and radically.
Ranjay Gulati 7:02
So I did look at a number of small companies. But I also looked at the large companies. So I looked at, for instance, Lego, and what Lego did and what yarn we're not strop did over there at Lego, I looked at Microsoft, and what such an Adela did at Microsoft. And so these are large enterprises. I look at Beulah, which is a privately held Swiss company, but also a global enterprise. And you discover that, you know, it's much harder, of course, because when you're operating at scale, you got to figure out craft the message, you got to communicate and cascade the message, you got to bake it into your system structures and processes in the organisation kind of almost like baking it into the DNA. And then the company is already large, or it's lost its purpose then takes a little longer. Whereas in a smaller enterprise, if the founder is bought into having a purpose, it naturally permeates but then the downside is what happens when the founder leaves, which is what that personification paradoxes?
Graham Allcott 8:04
Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose the other so there's like, it feels like with purpose, there's a sort of direct correlation between size and sort of being small is easier to have purpose. And then the other one that it was an interesting thing that you raised in the book is the idea of sort of community purpose and societal purpose, you know, and you mentioned Mars in the book. And I'd love you to talk about Mars, actually, because I've actually done some work with Mars before. And it really surprised me when I got the briefing, to work with them, how strong that sense of sort of community and mutuality was within their brand. So do you want to talk about Mars? And then I also want to then ask you a follow up question, which you also asked in the book of Mars.
Ranjay Gulati 8:49
So the first thing I learned from from companies like Mars is, purpose is not a purpose statement. Write purpose is what you do. It's action, not just That's why if you say, Oh, you're studying mission statements, Ron J. Wonderful, I would have told no, absolutely not. Now, if you look at Mars, and their whole discussion of mutuality, which I described in the book, I think it's an admirable company. I mean, in terms of the kinds of things their own sense of belief around how the role of business in society is more than shareholder value. It's really understanding the community and the environment. So they're really on the frontier of that idea and what they call mutuality, which is it's mutually beneficial. When I take issue with them on a saying that, okay, Mars, I buy this idea, and I'm really admire you for all the things you're doing. But you kind of then work harder on the products you sell. Yeah, you got to think about your selling candy and chewing gum still. So think about what else you might want to do. Do you want to even if you're a I'm not going to equate them to oil and gas company because it's not Fair. But you know, everyone is on a transitional path. If you look at Pepsi, you know, they articulated a transitional path saying, we're gonna make our snacks less salty and less fatty. We're gonna diversify beyond cola and have some healthier products like oatmeal. So I would love to hear from an enlightened company like Mars, how are you transitioning your mix, to have a broad, I'm not saying the word doesn't need candy and chewing gum, the world does need candy and chewing gum, but what the world also needs other healthier products as well. And they're uniquely positioned to do
Graham Allcott 10:35
that. And also like mas do a lot of other stuff, which I hadn't realised when I before I worked for them. So there is it whiskers, they do a lot of pet food, don't they? And lots of other. So they're in lots of other product ranges. And then you think, so if, if their whole thing is about mutuality, do they need to just like sort of retreat away from sugar and just remove sugar from the equation? So and so then you get into this question, which I think you asked me nicely in the book, and I'd love to just ask you for the podcast is like, what do you do when you have this very strong sense of company purpose, but then, at the core of your products is something that might be destructive for society. And I think you're right to say like, sugar isn't quite oil and gas, is it because you can, you know, you can have sugar as part of a balanced diet, and so on. But people do get addicted to it, and there becomes a problem. So what do you do when you're in a company that has a strong sense of purpose, but actually, like they're a bit evil,
Ranjay Gulati 11:32
you know, until now, we kind of let it go and saying, as long as you're living within the legal guidelines of society, I mean, Mars is not breaking any laws, you're okay. I think increasingly now employees and customers expect more of business. We raised our expectations, and, and so my, you know, inquiry to a company like Mars would be, what are the other products? A? How can you reduce sugar content? Are you how actively are you working towards the idea, not just having warning labels on your packaging? Only saying, Look, I'm doing my best as a warning label on the packaging or whatever? What are you doing? And also to change your product mix? And given that you're such a prominent branded organisation? What other healthier products? Are you considering launching? Are you imagining that possibility? You see my frustration Graham in this is what I call doing purpose on the periphery, we make money with our core products, and leave us alone to do that. And then I do kind of good stuff here on the side. Yeah. And of course, I'll reduce my carbon footprint, I'll reduce my water footprint, but don't tell me how to run my business. Because I need to make money doing that. That's what allows me to do all this charity work afterwards. And I'm saying that's purpose on the periphery, or what I might even if I'm a little harsh, I would say is superficial purpose, not deeper. The purpose is why you're willing to let that ideal permeate into your core products and services.
Graham Allcott 13:05
Yeah. And you talk about the idea of sort of companies at crossroads, right. And it's like, at the moments where you've got a difficult decision to make, that's when you really articulate what your values are and what your purpose is. And I suppose the other the other thing that feels like it's, like harder when it comes to purpose is the idea of long term versus short term. Right. And so, all of those examples that we were just talking about, it's like, Well, right now, and this year, and next year, these are the cash cows, these are the things that are going to make us money. So being able to, you know, move into different verticals into different sectors, all that sort of stuff is all very well, but that's long term. And that takes that takes time. So like, Do you think there's there's some kind of re gearing that we need to be doing given that, like you mentioned the beginning there is this kind of meaning crisis, people are starting to demand more from companies? Do we need to start gearing how we do capitalism to be a bit more focused on the long term versus the short term?
Ranjay Gulati 14:10
What do you think? Great question Graham, and I think is but you know, here's the question, I will ask you of your question. Implicit in that question, is that you have to inherently now make trade offs between short and long term. So you're saying a, you know, don't worry about short term less we'll give you a break on short term just will think think about long term. And I think this was a confusing piece for me does can purpose go with profit is another question people like short term profit is what they mean really, and or is it one or the other? That is what trading off and I think is, I think what I've learned is purpose is not an extractive force to tax business and say, You know what, short term pain long term gain. Purpose can be an animating energising force if the employees who show up to work experience a more purposeful work environment. We know from research that they are much more productive, twice as productive as satisfied workers. Right? They absenteeism and low their own health outcomes are better. So you have a more productive workforce and happier workforce, your customers this customer loyalty data showing that customers are more loyal. So I'm not saying it's the best the next Holy Grail of sliced bread or whatever that you know, you can suddenly have everything it isn't. But first thing to note is Purpose allows you to animate and Energise your business to achieve more, with less. That's the first piece of it. But that then says, Oh, that means purposes, when when I don't have to make any choices. No purpose requires very hard trade offs. But when you are purposeful, as an individual, you operate from a place of freedom. You understand, these are not hard, you, they may be hard to others, but they're not hard for you. And just the way that applies to us individually, it applies to organisations too, when the purpose is clarified, decision making becomes easier. choice making becomes easier. Your communication with your employees is more for any customers is more transparent. And you have a better understanding of your place in the world.
Graham Allcott 16:23
Let's bring this down to like the practical level of somebody who's who's working in a business. And it feels like obviously, there's two, there's almost like two things that we can take from conversation about purpose, isn't there? One is, how do I ask the right questions in order to really understand my own purpose. And then the second part is the is almost like the tactical stuff that I can do to make sure that I'm really articulating that purpose really well. If both my individual purpose and the company purpose of making sure that they're aligned. So just like on that first point, like, You've obviously done a lot of thinking about purpose. And I'd love to know, for you personally, like what are the questions that you've most resonated with in terms of defining your own purpose, or that you've seen other people do that? So, you know, just in terms of that, the questions that you can ask to help really understand your own purpose and define your purpose.
Ranjay Gulati 17:22
So you know, I find it interesting. I always I first was confused, because I got confused between individual purpose and company purpose, are they two different things, and I discovered purpose in our lives is a layered construct. There's a purpose of our life, there's a purpose from our career, and then there's purpose from our job. And a lot of us live compartmentalised lives, I have my day job, and then I live my purpose. After I come back from work, increasingly, people want more coherence connection across these different constructs, right? So we're looking for that. And actually, I discovered the answer in the world of sports. So I wrote a case, and on the coach of one of the successful American football teams, the Seattle Seahawks and coach Pete Carroll. And he seems to have this kind of cult following of players who really want to play for him. And he and his model of coaching is very different from the other many, most about many other coaches, where it's a very demanding transactional model you perform, and you're and if you don't perform, you're out, he also wants performance. But he has this kind of purpose laden leadership style. And what he's point learned is that in order to get anyone to buy into the team purpose, which is winning and commitment to each other, and all that, you need to have them understand what is their own purpose in life, that people are more receptive to learning about an organization's purpose and buying into it, if you also first activate in them, they're thinking about their own purpose. And then I saw this at scale at Microsoft, where the CHRO of Microsoft, Kathleen Hogan said, you don't really work for Microsoft until Microsoft works for you. Yeah, I
Graham Allcott 19:14
thought that was fascinating. And like it like Satya had this whole thing about he wanted to kind of refresh the culture in a way that then people could start to, to sort of like see Microsoft as a vehicle for their own their own passions and the things that they wanted to do. Can you just talk to us a bit more about because that's, it feels like a really risky, chaotic idea on the one hand, but like, what what does that look like in practice Microsoft,
Ranjay Gulati 19:47
first of all, grant I was also like you I felt it was risky as hell are you telling Microsoft can now allow people to go and climb Mount Everest and go on a biking holiday and do whatever they want it? Isn't that right? You're looking for an interest between Microsoft and its technologies that empower others to do good things. And if you bring an idea to them, that helps you feel that you're empowering your customers, then they will it but they also want to celebrate what you're doing in your life, then, and if they can support you, if they can support you, they will. Right. So there's hashtag Microsoft lives they have gonna talk about your own life. Who are you? Why are you here? What do you do. And by the way, if you have an idea that intersects with what Microsoft does, then bring it to us. And we'll try to see if we can do it. And so it's that intersection set you're looking for, but it's also allowing you to celebrate and acknowledging as a whole human being part of grant, what we do is we all come to work with a mask on, right? I have my work mask on. And these companies are asking us to take part of that mask, not all of it off. So this whole idea of bringing your whole self to work is not what they're saying. And saying, you can take some of that mask off. KPMG did a fascinating exercise in their company, where they asked every partner and member of the staff to on an index card write down, why do I come to work? And it could be to make money. Yeah. And then they put all those cards on the wall as you walked into the entrance of the offices, and it allows you to understand other people's purpose also, why do they come to work? So this idea that we are human beings, we understand each other better? We also are connected to our own personal purpose. Why do I haven't thought about this before? Why do I work? Right? Is it money or prestige, or status or esteem or colleague ship? Why do I Why do I work? And being able to connect that, and I think back to what you began with people today expect more out of their jobs. They want to live more whole connected lives. This idea of compartmentalising compartmentalising, our life is something we are kind of beyond.
Graham Allcott 22:01
Yeah. And you mentioned, I just can't let the Seattle Seahawks story go without talking about Pete Carroll's mantra is be yourself, be candid and be kind, which I thought was great. And, and obviously, as regular listeners, this podcast will now I'm thinking a lot about kindness, and what it means for leadership at the moment myself. What does that mean to you? So be yourself. Be candid, be kind, obviously had a real resonance with you as you're writing the book. And I'd love to know more about what does that that mantra mean to you?
Ranjay Gulati 22:41
I think kindness means starting from a place of empathy and non judgement. And trying to look at the other person from where they are coming from. You can't really walk in somebody else's shoes, they always say, you know, try to walk in somebody else's moccasins. You can't really walk in somebody else's shoes or moccasins. But you know, you can try to come from a place of non judgement and understanding and then carrying on, I just wrote an article a month ago with a colleague of my a friend of mine, Frank Cooper, on what do your black executives really want. And it was really amazing to see, first of all the kind of the negative experience they have in the workplace, but also what they really want. And I think what they want is what all of us want, which is acceptance, understanding, consideration, caring. And when we get that, we create one word, which is trust. And when there's trust, it changes the dynamic of interaction among everybody. And if I go back to purpose organisations, I think one of the two common themes I found in the culture of all these organisations, so I went back and I said, you asked about culture, I said, Okay, let me look at these 18 companies I've studied over three years. And each of them had their own culture. And they had three, four things that were important to the culture of each company, I put them on index cards, and I said, let me just look and see other patterns. There were two themes that stood out. First, responsibility, deep sense of responsibility. Second, trust. Now, if you operate that way, it changes the chemistry in the organisation. Right? economists like to describe organisations as nexus of contracts. We're all in a contract with each other to do work and transact for money. And yes, we are in some ways transacting for money because everyone wants to get paid. But I think workplaces need to be more than that. They are more than that in some contexts, and when they are magical things
Graham Allcott 24:51
happen. Yeah, absolutely. And it feels like you know, when we start to think About that, that sense of higher purpose, like immediately you, you start to see other connections, right and start to, to start to have more of an emotional connection with the people around you, rather than it feel transactional or feel like, you know, like, we're just here for the money or whatever. And I suppose that maybe leads us on to, I want to talk about storytelling. And there's a lovely thing you talk about in the book, martial dances, self, us now model, you're sat there and you're trying to ask yourself questions about what is my purpose does that relate to the company purpose, but then you've got this company purpose, and you might be the leader of it, or you might not be. But your job as a leader is always going to be about telling the right kind of stories that really connect everybody together to this, this purpose as a company. So you want to just talk us through the self us now model.
Ranjay Gulati 25:52
So one of the things I was puzzled by, as I said to you earlier, purpose is not a purpose statement, which means you can have a purpose statement or a mission statement and put it out there and repeat it till you turn blue doesn't mean anything purpose, mission statements or wallpaper. The idea was how do you animate? Bring it alive? Get people to buy into it? That's not easy. How do you get that kind of identification? Believe with it. And that's where I discovered that some of these leaders are master storytellers. They tell it not as inert words, but in an animated storytelling where they want to bring it alive. Coincidentally, I found this work by Marshall Ganz, who's a former political activist, Professor now at the Kennedy School of Government, and he teaches how political activists mobilise large numbers of people around a story. And he talks about three parts of a story self. Why does this mean something personally to me? Us? Why does it affect us as a collective? And now why do we need to do something with this now? And it's fascinating, because when I looked at the master storytellers, who were doing this really well in New York, because you got to get the you're trying to tap into human emotion. Right? You're trying to build an emotional connect with an ideal? How do you build an emotional connect with an idea is not something that's trivial?
Graham Allcott 27:25
Yeah. When you think about, it's interesting that that comes that his origins is political as well. Because if you think about, you know, like a JFK, or a Barack Obama, or there's so many political speakers who just seem to have this way of start, and they like, that is almost like a formula that you see people follow isn't like you start with self, you know, I grew up at the age of X number years, and I was doing this and I had this struggling, and then it's like, the US, we all have these similar things. And then it's like, and here's why this is a really important thing. Now, you can almost like you like, as you sort of explained that model self as now you can almost it you're going to see in your head certain political speeches of certain different times. And they all seem to sort of follow that same pattern, right? Like, is this is this the script, the secret script that they've had all along? And we didn't know?
Ranjay Gulati 28:15
It's, you know, it's fascinating. I hadn't made that connection. But that's what kind of emerged as you we talked about Satya Nadella earlier, you know, if you and if you I'll make a shout out for his book called reset. Yeah. Where he talks about, you know, you see him talking about first himself, where he grew up his child with special needs, how that had a huge impact on who he is as a person, how he imagined himself as a leader. He then talked about the collective that being part of Microsoft, which is an iconic organisation where he saw many people coming with dreams. And then he said, we are sick. He said, he used the word sick, we are sick. And we need to do something about it now. So you can see almost like, I'm sure he didn't script it with this in mind, but it can happen intuitively, you can see that if you read Indra Nooyi, his Harvard Business Review article, and her speeches that she's given, where she launched performance with purpose, it started with her growing up in a middle class household in Chennai with no water, which is a human right, and how that shaped how she thinks of herself as a leader. So how do you make it personal? Why this is so important to me. Another way to make it personal, which some people try to do is in the Lego case, the Lego CEO went back to the roots of Lego, where did it come from? Where did we start this company was begun by an iconic individual who had a vision. We forgotten that. So you're trying to create almost like a sacred space in some way because you're trying to get people feel the connection. This is something that is not just a slogan is not our new marketing or HR campaign. It's something more fundamental and profound.
Graham Allcott 30:04
My friend, Tom Nix, and he's written a book called Source has this really interesting idea at the heart of that book, which is that with every business, there's, there's like, a moment where it's formed. And, you know, and you sort of worked with people who were in, you know, sort of business partners, equal 5050 partners, and they are both there. And he's, and he would sit with people and say, Yes, but who was the one who said to the other, shall we make a business or who was the one who had the spark and, you know, sort of recognising sometimes that it like in the storytelling, these things almost become mystical, don't they, but it's almost like this, like magical little moment, or magical little thing and sort of revisiting the very, sort of essence of Lego, or the very essence of Starbucks, as Howard Schultz did, as he came back in, you know, like, you kind of have to reconnect sometimes to those, this slightly ethereal, you know, kind of mystical things,
Ranjay Gulati 31:01
but RAM, just that comment just said, makes me also think that, you know, as you as all of us think about this, it's changing the job of the leader in organisations. And, and I think we need to ask them, What do leaders really do? What do leaders really do? And I think, you know, as the late James March, professor from Stanford once said, Are you just a plumber? Or are you a poet? And I think leaders need to be both plumber, take care of the plumbing, you know, the hard wiring, the alarm, the strategy, the organisational structure, the compensation that rewards all that stuff. But how do you also do the poetry? Which is animating everybody around an idea? How do you walk what Somerset mom called the razor's edge when making really hard trade offs? Right? How do you think about this idea? And making sure it doesn't decay over time, which are normally well? And how do you then when you're ready to leave the organisation? Make sure it doesn't walk out the door with you.
Graham Allcott 32:04
Tell us what else you've learned about poetry then? So when we think about storytelling? What are some of the tips and tricks? What are some of the the things that you notice being most effective in, in how people tell those stories as leaders, and firstly,
Ranjay Gulati 32:20
that poetry is very important, but the plumbing is also very Yeah, of course, I don't want to in any way, disavow the plumbing piece of it, because I think we need both. But let's start with poetry. I think the first piece of poetry that I found fascinating was how leaders invoke the past while looking into the future. And there's a delicate fine line here. Because when you just start invoking the past, it's really easy to get nostalgic about the past. The good old days and you start revelling in the past, you want to recreate the past, you start reenacting the past, you start to glorify everything we did in the past, and then we're gonna keep doing it that way.
Graham Allcott 32:57
He has a thing in the book where he talks about Walt Disney and then how the Board of Disney for years after he'd gone would always asked like, what what would Walt do here? And it's like, that's not the right question, is it?
Ranjay Gulati 33:09
Exactly, but, but you want to engage the past while looking into the future? There's a Ghanaian folktale about the sankofa bird, where the bird the imagery of this bird is a bird that flies forward with its neck looking backwards. So how do you stay rooted? While also imagining the future? How do you what One scholar has called be nostalgic while being pasta logic? Yeah, like, look, you know, and that tension is one thing that I found very important that I think they understood how to connect to people. I think once you go from poetry, you can't ignore the plumbing. You got to think about the reward measurement and reward systems. You got to think about how you're going to hire and promote and develop people. You got to think about the org structure. Right? How are you going to empower people more? If you trust them? Then you got to learn to empower more. Yeah. How are you going to build collaborative systems that connect people in the organisation? I mean, you can't ignore the what I call the rewiring in the organisation. And then how do you keep it alive? I mean, this is this is an ongoing project, not like a, okay, got it. Purpose Statement. Done.
Graham Allcott 34:23
Yeah. And, and so that rewiring, sort of rereading, reinvigorating, because it also like it strikes me that often what happens is, when a new leader comes in, it's it's like the easy way to put your stamp on things isn't it is to go back to the value statement and go back to the strategy and the mission and the vision, the values and just like reword stuff, but how do you do but what's much harder is keeping people motivated and keeping people on purpose and keep keeping people invigorated to the same thing. Rather than trying to get people to embrace a new thing, like, what, what do you think are some of the most important ways that people can can think about that? That question?
Ranjay Gulati 35:08
So Graham, two paths to that question I think is first is I think we got to understand that purpose needs to be part of the daily discourse, what you're looking for is the daily discourse, right? Yeah. How much do we use it in our daily discourse in terms of our strategy making, in our customer engagement, our sales organisation? To what degree do we even refer to it? To what degree do we even pull it up saying, Hey, we're making these difficult choices today. But let's remind ourselves about purpose. And hopefully, it'll help us make our decision making easier. If it's not in the daily discourse, you're not really living your purpose, right? That's key. So you're looking for mechanisms to put it into the daily discourse, but I think it's important to also understand what is purpose, people think purpose is something airy fairy, right purposes. And I must say to you, the word purpose has been hijacked. On one extreme, you have people who say purpose of a business is shareholder value, make money for the people who have given you capital and risked their capital for you. Others say other purposes, anything but profit. And let's be very clear, the purpose of a business enterprise is both commercial and social. Right? For the longest time we've had, we've drifted towards commercial, it used to be both this is once upon a time, we had a very clear understanding of the role of business and society. I think we were drifted towards commercial only. Now the other extreme has always social only. And I think, of course, we all know the answers both. Now when you do multiple goals, you create confusion, because you're like, Okay, who's the first among equals, and I think purpose is a way to at least create a somewhat structured way to imagine those choices you're going to have to make as you grow the enterprise,
Graham Allcott 36:53
we've got a few more minutes, I'd love to just dig into your work and how you work a little bit more. So you're a professor at Harvard Business School. What is what is the average day look like in in your job,
Ranjay Gulati 37:07
so let me tell you about the purpose of Harvard Business School. So maybe that's a good place to start, we I love the purpose of how the school it deeply is meaningful to me, which makes my work, not feel like work even. We educate leaders who make a difference in the world. So what do how do we do that? Right. So there are several parts to what a professor does here is the first thing I do is research. Right? advancing our knowledge. You know, this book is part of my research stream, in which I am trying to hopefully put out an ideal of how businesses and leaders and individuals, all of us should be thinking about our lives, our jobs, our careers, in all dimensions. Right, so advancing the field of knowledge. But at Harvard Business School, we also talked about how it advances the world of practice, not just other academics, so many academics only write for other academics. And I do some of that, too. But we also write for the world of practice. So how do we bridge theory to practice another component of that story, then I want to say we educate leaders. So you know, my day is, you know, when I'm teaching, which is right now, you know, my focus is on making sure that I create the best educational experience for my students that I can. And then we also work with companies. So you know, we try to come we have executive education on campus off campus, we want to educate leaders who make a difference in the world, our students who will be leaders one day, but also leaders who are leaders today. And so, my day is broken up around those things around research, teaching, and engaging with the world of practice. So that's the if you imagine the ivory tower, we're not an ivory tower sitting in the clouds here. We try to keep one foot in the real world.
Graham Allcott 39:08
Yeah. I'm curious to know, obviously, you do that through the research, you do that through the conversations you have through teaching. Do you ever just Are you ever just walking down the street and and thinking, I just want to knock the door of that business and just go in? And, you know, kind of get the smell of the place? And like do you ever sort of extends your your research to just really kind of random bits of curiosity or just walking into organisations or doing visits and that kind of thing?
Ranjay Gulati 39:39
Absolutely. I mean, I mean, I'm just I a few months ago, I had this conversation with the through a friend of mine with the CEO of a company called one mighty mill that is transforming the way baked goods are made and sold from the sourcing responsible sourcing to the end product, and it begins I'm with them sharing with me some of their products and saying try it out. And I was on this low carb diet. And they said, God, it was really good. I'm like, What is this? I've never had bread and bagel chips like this before. And they're like, Well, let me tell you what we do. It starts with the kind of wheat you use. It starts with how you millet, it sauce with them, how you produce it, and what you put in there. And so it isn't just we have a great chef who's got a magical recipe. So I learned a lot about responsible sourcing and farming. So I've always, you know, we're always, some of these are many of them, I should tell you, many of them. For me, I've been interacting with my former students.
Graham Allcott 40:41
So then you got the roots in to just a whole range of interesting organisations, and then all over the world I haven't seen and I suppose the ones where you don't have the roots in the name Harvard doesn't, doesn't have right to halfway open the door where
Ranjay Gulati 40:55
we're lucky, I think we're very fortunate to be able to interact. And you know, we, I will tell you, a lot of them come on campus. Also for executive education. One thing that is, I think wonderful in the world at large is, we have finally recognised that learning is a lifelong journey. And so you have very accomplished people from around the world who still feel that, you know, I can do better. And so when you get to interact with people like that, you're very fortunate to be able to then share with them somebody and learn from them. Remember our teaching also, and Harvard is case based teaching. So I'm teaching them usually cases, it's a dialogue, yes, their own commentary, and you learn a lot. Our classroom is a very unique place where we learn why and they learn and we all advanced our thinking together. So should we call it a Petri dish for knowledge creation? Yeah,
Graham Allcott 41:46
it sounds like a fascinating place to be. And we've got a couple of minutes left, and I couldn't let you go without asking you to tell the story of your mum that you tell at the beginning of the book, because it sort of sounds a bit like a fairy tale. Your story I mean, right? Yes, yes. So tell us about that. So this is like, you know, you're saying about the multi generational thing before like, this feels like a really important sort of part of your own backstory in history, too.
Ranjay Gulati 42:15
So one of the things I you know, when you write a book, I wrote a book, but I never asked myself why I was writing this book. And it was only when I finished the book that I was being asked, like, why did you write this book? And I'm like, God, why did I write this book? I felt compelled to write it. But I didn't know what was compelling me. And I had to really reflect on it first, when my students I taught this programme called the advancement programme for 10 years. My students were demanding that we need to think differently about business. And I was dodging and ducking them, and I finally had to do it. I have two of my friends who nudged me, Matt, Brian Felder, and Frank Cooper, who are executives, senior executives, who were like, What are you doing? And Larry Fink at BlackRock? So I was kind of they were asking me questions, really, and I didn't have answers to. And I thought, maybe that's why I wrote this book. Now. But if I asked myself why, you know, it really goes back to my own childhood and past. When I was a kid, my mother, who was an anthropologist, by training, started a business, a risky venture, because she was kind of like, took all her savings and put it into this. And as an anthropologist, she was very fascinated by rural women living in small communities and villages in India. And she found everyone thinks of, even in India, the city, people think of people in villages as kind of primitive, not sophisticated. She found that a very sophisticated aesthetic palette, they were beautiful clothes, they had these beautiful handprints. And so she decided she was going to start a business, taking these handprints putting them on clothing, that western woman would like to wear dresses and skirts and things like that, and try to bring it to the West. This is before handprinted Indian things ever had even happened in in in the West. And
Graham Allcott 43:52
she started the business because she, she was it she lost her job, first of all, and then yeah, she lost basically had, she had a bit of money. And what I loved was the bit where she, with all the money, she had basically got a ticket to Paris, and I'm just kind of walking around all the fashion houses of Paris with all these materials, saying, Hey, can I work with you?
Ranjay Gulati 44:14
Yeah, that was literally what she did. She had two suitcases, which is the baggage you're allowed to take check in with you. And then she would carry these heavy duffel bags full of her samples, and just walk in, because she had no entry point into this. She wasn't even a fashion designer. So she just walk in and say hello, I'm here. I'm from India. And I've got these ideas and design and this thing took off. But in order to then feed the demand, the demand was sky high. It was beyond her wildest imagination. She had to go to the village and say, can you make this much for me and they say I have one table I make a little bit and I sell a little bit. I don't so next thing you know is she was financing them, giving them money to expand their business, teaching their business skills at telling them how they can pack and ship and pay tax and do all these things. And next thing, you know, there was a whole community of people who were dependent on her. And she had no problem with that, because she was running a business too. So this idea, and she had a very clear purpose, which was not to make money, it was really to bring this eastern aesthetic sensibility to the Western market. Yeah. And her purpose was to develop greater appreciation for people who may live in rural confines and poor people, but who have this beautiful aesthetic sense. And connecting the two. Now, of course, she wanted to make money in that too, she was she needed to survive. So I came to realise that businesses can have a purpose, the purpose can have a social and commercial component to it. And when you do, you yourself are deeply inspired and energised. And you bring that to the people around you as well. And I had forgotten this, because I was, you know, I started working in a business when I was 10 years old, and I continued working on it through all the way through high school, all my summers were spent basically parked, doing something or the other getting fabrics or something, sometimes even go to Europe trying to sell for her. Um, but now I look back, and I realise the genesis of my idea around interest in purpose and purpose driven businesses came out of that,
Graham Allcott 46:24
which just feels like yeah, just the perfect sort of note to end the conversation, and tell us how people can connect with you and how they can get the book, deep purpose and anything else you want to share? Well,
Ranjay Gulati 46:38
the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn, too, that I put out every I would say, two or three weeks, it's only one page long. And my book comes out on the eighth of February. And I have a website where a bunch of information about the book is already there. It's called deep purpose dotnet. So LinkedIn, or deep purpose dotnet. Or you can find me on Ramji gulati.com, as well, or the Harvard Business School platform, as well. But I'm looking forward to kind of taking a three year project and now sharing it with everybody
Graham Allcott 47:10
else, Ron j. So thank you so much for being here.
Ranjay Gulati 47:13
Thank you. My pleasure, Graham, was really a pleasure talking to you.
Graham Allcott 47:17
So there you go, Ranjay Gulati. And also just want to say thank you to Emilie and Pavel for your help putting that together. And also, thanks to our sponsors for the show, Think Productive. So if you're interested in training and coaching that will help your people to rediscover their sense of purpose, and also to do their best work and make space for the stuff that really matters. Go to think productive.com That's th iMk productive.com. And think productive, have offices all around the world, and people really skilled and passionate about coming in and helping your organisation so just had to think productive, calm, and it will send you to your closest office wherever you might be in the world. And not just to say really, I have I'm just flopping this week. And so maybe I might sound a bit tired. As you're listening to this, I don't know, I handed in the first draft of my book on Tuesday. And to the rest of this week. It's a Friday as I'm recording this has just been like in this blur of just like getting my breath back and just binge watching Netflix, and you know, just trying to not do very much I'm getting out for a run. And I've been doing some sea swims as well, they found a great white shark in Worthing, like five miles down the road from me the other day, we're just bit worrying in it. But I don't swim out that far, don't worry. But yeah, just doing a little bit of exercise. But other than that, just having an easy few days just to get my breath back after a pretty intense three or four weeks of working weekends and having some family stuff going on. That meant I was working pretty hard on the family front as well. And yeah, just needing to kind of switch off and recharge. And I think maybe it's one of those moments where it's worth me reminding myself and therefore me reminding you that work life balance is not a linear thing, right? It's like sometimes you have to go hard out for three or four weeks. And then you have to just sit in the dark for a few days or whatever. Like that can be that's balanced too, right? It doesn't feel like balance in any of those moments. But actually, the overall effect is harmony, balance, blend, whatever you want to label it. So that's what I'm doing right now is, yeah, just having that little, little breather saved knowledge that the book is with my editor. And there's nothing more I can do for the next couple of weeks. It's kind of terrifying. Like it kind of eats you up all the things that you could be doing as you're writing it. And then when you when you hand it over, those things are still eating you up, even though you really can't put that stuff in the document yet because you know, someone else's is controlling it. So yeah, it's I'm still having all the ideas and Yeah, still also having the sort of thoughts and night terrors about whether it's going to be any good which just kind of goes with the territory of writing any book but I'm also just really excited to read it. I think it's it's going to be a different thing for me Like if you're at this podcast because you've read one of my books before, I think it feels like a slightly different voice, it feels a bit more like the voice that's on my Sunday emails rather than in my books. So let's see what people think is, I mean, you know, people might hate it. I don't know, speaking to my emails, if you're not signed up, it's rev up for the week. So every Sunday a positive or productive idea for the week ahead. And if you want to get on there, just go to Graham allcott.com. And on grey market.com, you'll find little boxes that you can fill in with your email address. And I'll sign you up to rev up for the week to my weekly email. And everything I'm doing, as always is at Graham allcott.com. Forward slash links if you want to just kind of check out what I'm up to and everything else that I see over and out for this week. We're back in two weeks time with another episode we're starting to get a little bit ahead with our episodes, which is good because it's been seeing the pants last minute stuff for the first couple of episodes this year. So it's nice to be getting some more episodes in the bank and then it will give us more of a nice seamless, very relaxed lead up to releasing episodes for you every two weeks. I got some really good ones already recorded to drop over the next few weeks. So stay subscribed, please like and share and all that kind of stuff. Spread the word and we'll see you in two weeks time. Until then take care bye for now.