Building a Purpose-Driven Company

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This blog was written by Joe Koufman, CEO and Founder of Setup.

Armed with 20+ years of marketing, business development, and management experience, Joe Koufman founded Setup to ignite relationships between marketing agencies and client-side marketers. His unique agency perspective – having worked at a small digital firm, an independent full-service marketing agency, and a massive holding company – is what inspired Joe to help marketers find agencies that are the perfect fit.

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Over and over again, it has been proven that purpose-driven companies outperform those that are seeking only profit. According to a 2020 Deloitte report: “Purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow three times faster on average than their competitors, all while achieving higher workforce and customer satisfaction.”

Of course, the gold-standard book about corporate purpose is Start With Why by Simon Sinek. It is a great place to begin for anyone curious about the “magic” that some companies seem to have harnessed to align all of their people rowing in the same direction.

Here are a few of my favorite corporate purposes:

• Patagonia - We’re in business to save our home planet.

• LinkedIn - To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

• Squarespace - Squarespace empowers people with creative ideas to succeed.

• Uber - We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.

• Tesla - To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

I love the simplicity of each of these statements and it is easy to understand how these mission/purpose statements align with the brand. Patagonia encourages people to repair their products rather than buying new ones. LinkedIn really does connect professionals together. I love that Tesla includes the words “accelerate” and “sustainable” in their mission when they do, in fact, make cars that go really fast without harming the environment, like traditional combustion-engine automobiles.

Of course, it takes more than words on a wall for a company to become purpose-driven. Values have to be reinforced over and over again to become institutionalized. And the company’s purpose or mission is only one component of the most successful companies.

In the second chapter of my friend Jeff Hilimire’s fantastic book - The 5-Day Turnaround, he states that a company’s purpose is the change it wants to make in the world. He goes on to explain that truly great companies, in addition to Purpose, should also establish their Vision, Tenets, and Values. He explains them this way: 

• Purpose - why we exist

• Vision - what we want to become

• Tenets - how we are going to do it

• Values - guide us along the way

Knowing all of the reasons that purpose-driven companies outperform those who have no clear mission, I embarked on a journey to clearly define Setup’s PVTV, as Jeff calls them in his book. 

We began with our values. It was clear that those would be our “map” along the way as we try to live up to our purpose by achieving our vision. In order to ensure that our values do not just become “a plaque on the wall,” you must incorporate them into the daily lives of everyone at the company. My team chooses a different value to highlight each week at our whole-company Huddle with specific examples of how that value has been exhibited. Also, each person closes their individual huddle with “shoutouts and wins” described as delivering on a specific value. Values need to be so core to your organization that you have to be willing to only hire people who align with all of the values, as well as fire people who break the values. 

While living the values on a daily basis is crucial for any purpose-lead company, it is really cool when a team-member is so bought into your company values that they create a work of art to be displayed in the office.

When we were coming up with the PVTV for Setup, once our values were nailed down, we focused on our Purpose and Vision next. Because we are passionate about connecting people together, that was a clear place to begin for our Purpose exploration. One good way to hone in on your Purpose is to keep asking “why” like a three-year-old. Why do we like connecting people? Do we want to connect any people or a specific group? We landed on:

Setup exists to connect and empower marketers because we are better together.

We debated a lot about why we marketers are better together, and we decided it is because of our innate need as humans to connect with one another, but also marketers particularly often feel a sense of camaraderie due to the pressures put upon marketing from other functions within companies. 

According to a 2020 study from Korn Ferry, the average tenure for CMOs remains the lowest of any other typical role within the C-suite. According to the Korn Ferry leader, Global Marketing Officers Practice, Caren Fleit: “Short CMO tenure is a reflection of a lack of understanding of how powerful this role can really be in terms of driving business outcomes.” She went on to say: “This often leads to lack of clarity around tangible deliverables and also to hiring a CMO whose skills and experiences may not be aligned with business needs.”

The pressure is on for marketers, and Setup can play a key role in alleviating that pressure by providing them with the resources and relationships that make them better.

That leads us to who we want to become - so our Vision is:

To become the connection point for relationships and resources that distill the complex marketing landscape.

Let’s be real, marketing is VERY complex and has become more so every year. One needs to look no further than the evolution of this supergraphic published annually by ChiefMartec.com highlighting the growth of marketing technology vendors from roughly 150 in 2011 to more than 8,000 in 2020: 

If we can help distill the complexity and become a connection point for marketing relationships and resources, we will have achieved our Purpose to connect and empower marketers.

Our final step in honing our PVTV was to come up with the Tenets which would guide us along our journey: 

• We listen first.

• We grow relationships.

• We elevate each other.

• We leave things better.

• We dare mighty things.

• We build for the future.

If we act in these ways, we will surely achieve our Vision! 

We are so excited to be on this journey and know that we have put in the work to ensure that we are headed in the right direction, and will only do so with the right people and attitude to guide us along the way. I would love to learn more about your journey to uncover your company’s Purpose, Vision, Tenets, and Values. Please drop a comment below to begin the discussion.