Why knowledge work requires belief.

Profit is not at the center of your business. People are not at the center of your business. Not even the client is at the center of your business. Your purpose is – or should be – at the center of your business.

As management genius Peter Drucker taught, profit is not the reason for a business to exist, but rather a test of its validity.

Your purpose is the agency’s reason for being. Don’t confuse purpose with the typical weak, soggy “mission statements” that hang unnoticed in the lobbies of countless companies across America. Most mission statements are a mélange of hyperbole that is neither unique nor motivating. How motivated would you be by “mission statements” like these?

“To be an integrated marketing communications firm that provides brands with strategic marketing insights, strategic marketing planning and strategic creative solutions.”

“To be the agency of choice, recognized as a leader in marketing, driven by creativity, measurable results and community service.”

“To help make clients successful by generating results through effective advertising, public relations and related marketing communications.”

Is it any wonder why nobody reads or cares about the company mission statement? As adman Joey Reiman says, “Like a tombstone in a cemetery, the mission statement is unveiled, and then we visit it once a year.”¹

Any guesses as to the most commonly used words in mission statements? One analysis puts the words “service, customers, quality, and value,” at the top of the list.² When words like these get overused in business, they completely lose their meaning. They also fail to provide a point of distinction for the agency.

What’s really needed in place of the tired mission statement is an articulation of your firm’s purpose. What is that thing that makes you and your associates get out of bed in the morning. The notable firms in our business have an ambitious reason for being. They have a purpose that makes them reach for the stars. Some compare a purpose to a guiding star on the horizon – forever pursued but never reached.³

A strong sense of purpose gives people a feeling that they are contributing to something greater. Unless we focus our work on making a meaningful contribution, he says, we are not only likely to aim too low, we are likely to aim at the wrong things. All people and all efforts should be focused on contribution – a meaningful end result that will make an important difference for the organization.⁴

Consider what your purpose would be if you were leading a movement rather than a business. Movements are about meaning, not commercialism. Movements are about making a difference in the world. They intrinsically motivate people to action. They are filled with a sense of purpose.

“What we need,” says the respected management thinker Gary Hamel, “is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues.”⁵

A strong purpose makes the firm feel as if it’s engaged in something that’s honorable, almost a holy crusade. This creates not just a company of workers, but a company of believers.

“The psychology of these high-minded missions is clear,” writes Warren Bennis. “People know going in that they will be expected to make sacrifices, but they also know they are doing something monumental, something worthy of their best selves.”⁶

The authors of the insightful Primal Leadership agree. They observe that knowing your purpose gives leaders the ammunition they need to fight complacency in the organization.

“Given the primal task of leadership, the ability to inspire and move people with a compelling vision looms large. Inspirational leaders get people excited about a common mission. They offer a sense of purpose beyond the day-to-day tasks or quarterly goals that so often take the place of a meaningful vision. Such leaders know that what people value most deeply will move them most powerfully in their work.”⁷

Peters and Waterman, in their early work in the field of excellence, went this far: “We will surrender a great deal to institutions that give us a sense of meaning, and through it, a sense of security.”⁸

Henry Ford gave us one of the best and earliest examples of corporate purpose when he said:

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men and women to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. Any person making a good salary will be able to own one, and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

What drives us from inside

Rather than being driven solely by the market, the competition, or the numbers, we have to pay attention to what drives us from inside. Our purpose has to be at the center of who we really are as a company.

Defining your sense of purpose is a liberating activity. But it takes some dedication. It’s a process that requires the full attention and best intentions of your senior management team. Get a good outside facilitator to help you plumb the depths of your culture to begin to answer questions like:

1. Why does this agency exist?
2. Besides making money, why are we in business?
3. What inspires us to come to work each day?
4. What is the meaning in what we do?
5. What significant contribution does the agency make to the industry, the profession, or the world?
6. What would we want to achieve if we knew we could not fail?
7. What kind of difference do we want to make?
8. What kind of legacy do we want to create?

Defining your purpose is a search for the heart and soul of your business. The father of the quality movement in America, W. Edwards Deming, realized the power of a strong purpose when he listed it number one in his legendary “14 Points of Total Quality.” He says that in order to achieve dramatic improvements in quality, you must start by creating and publishing a “statement of purpose” of the aims and purposes of the company, and that management must demonstrate their commitment to this statement.⁹ That’s the most important ingredient in producing a quality product.

TBWA’s Jean-Marie Dru believes that a company’s purpose should be both inspirational and aspirational – something that is not easily within reach. Something made not so much of goals, but of dreams. “Nothing is more powerful and motivating for companies than identifying with something they stand for and aspire to,” says Dru, who has helped countless clients discover their sense of purpose.¹⁰

Or, as George Bernard Shaw would say, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not?”

What’s the purpose of an advertising agency?

Successful agencies have a purpose that transcends making a profit. They realize that the best people in our business don’t work for money. Calvin Coolege had it right when he said, “Advertising is the spiritual side of business.” The people in this business who are devoted to their craft are extremely passionate about it. If they just wanted to make a lot of money, they’d take up a career on Wall Street.

The purpose of Austin-based GSD&M is to become what they call the MVP – Most Valuable Partner – for every one of their clients. They want to be the most important relationship a client has – more valuable than the client’s law firm that keeps them out of court, the accounting firm that helps them balance their books, the banks that lend them the money, or even the suppliers who provide them with the essential materials they need. That’s quite a statement considering GSD&M’s impressive client list that includes companies like Southwest Airlines and BMW.

Having a meaningful purpose puts you and your entire organization on a track that’s difficult to derail. On the other hand, observe Hendricks and Ludeman, authors of the engaging The Corporate Mystic, “Without a clear sense of your purpose there are a thousand and one sidetracks to seduce you.”¹¹

How do you know you’ve reached deep enough to find your purpose?

1. It’s inspiring.
2. It’s about meaning, not money.
3. It comes from the inside; what you really believe, not what others think you should believe.
4. In some small way, it contributes to something greater than earning a living.
5. It’s difficult – maybe impossible – to fully achieve.

Setting ambitious goals

While a goal isn’t the same as a central purpose, setting ambitious goals can produce the same kind of motivation for your staff. The agencies that make their mark in this business are the ones that, as Leo Burnett used to say “Reach for the stars.” Challenging goals and challenging assignments are the fuel that burns in the engines of agency superstars.

It’s obviously important to be realistic about the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and your staff, the bigger danger lies in aiming too low. Management educators James Collins and Jerry Porras have preached the gospel of “big, hairy, audacious goals.” They talk about setting personal and organizational goals that are so ambitious that they will only have a 50/50 chance of success, will require extraordinary effort, and may take a decade to fulfill. Truly motivating goals should have a ‘gulp factor,” such as NASA’s goal in the 1960s: put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.¹²

Extremely ambitious goals can be a driving force that helps give your firm a sense of purpose. A modest, commonplace goal like “Achieve 20 percent profitability this year” is fine, but this is a perennial goal for every agency on the planet. To say “To be the most respected agency in the country” paints a completely different picture. Any agency associate that’s exposed to a goal like this clearly gets the message that this agency intends to accomplish big things.

• What are some other motivating goals for agencies?
• Get a story in Advertising Age with the headline, “Who Are These Guys?”
• Have the agency featured in Communications Arts.
• Bring home three Gold Pencils in The One Show.
• Be named Adweek’s “Agency of the Year.”
• Get a cover story in Fast Company.
• Be ranked in the top 100 best companies to work for.
• Make an unknown brand into a household name.
• Accomplish something so incredible it gets talked about on Letterman.

People work best and hardest when they are challenged. The risk lies not in making their jobs too big, but too small. The people who are most enthusiastic and contribute the most to the agency are the ones who are given big goals and big jobs. Give your team something to reach for, something to aspire to, and you’ll light a fire that will burn in everybody.

Remember, the truly outstanding agencies are not just trying to create advertising, but in some small way change the world.

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¹ Joey Reiman, Thinking for a Living, Longstreet, 1998.

² Jeremy Bullmore, “Was There Life before Mission Statements?” Marketing Magazine, July 10, 1997.

³ James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, “Building Your Company’s Vision,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996.

⁴Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, HarperBusiness, 1996.

⁵Gary Hamel, Leading the Revolution, Harvard Business School Press, 2000.

⁶Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Beiderman, Organizing Genius, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1997.

⁷Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, Primal Leadership, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

⁸Thomas J. Peters, Robert H. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence, Harper & Row, 1982.

⁹W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, MIT Press, 2000.

¹⁰Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption, John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

¹¹Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludeman, The Corporate Mystic, Bantam Books, 1996.

¹²James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, “Building Your Company’s Vision,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996.

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