I worked for the big blue purpose company, Unilever for three years. For two of those years I felt at the epicentre of a revolution to demonstrate that superior (market) performance came from purpose-led activity.

Unilever had a strong sense of purpose (to make sustainable living commonplace) and lots of the tools and culture to sustain it. The purpose was board led but socialised across the business with 60,000 or so employees having voluntarily attended a workshop designed to enable them to identify and to engage with their purpose.

Then in 2021 things started to go wrong, profit warnings and a dip in share price (after a decade of market leading performance) led markets and observers first to question and then to ridicule the notion of superior performance form purpose-led activity. By the start of 2022 the word purpose was used less and was replaced with growth and fundamentals.

I have spoken to a lot of people about this period. For many it was painful because it felt like something personal a set of beliefs were being sacrificed. The CEO left, lots of good people were let go and leaders were encouraged to downgrade the focus on purpose.

Of course these are my observations and insights from people that were involved. Unilever is not a company that has turned it’s back on purpose, it’s too much a part of the culture and as we know, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It has however some lesson to learn and maybe requires a change in vocabulary that is relatable to anyone in the fields of people development, authenticity, humanity, meaning or purpose.

Firstly, whenever I spoke with leaders at Unilever, in the early 2020’s they would always state that purpose had to come hand in hand with performance; it had to be an enabler. Having purpose leadership and purposefully aware employees was a facilitator to performance or perhaps a privilege that was sustained by performance. So there always was a hookup with performance but the idea that superior market performance could be derived from having purpose at the heart of the operation only works with further explanation.

Within the big blue machine there was a sense that if all the employees were enabled to live and activate their authentic purpose that we would be successful, almost as if it were manifest. While there was this hookup with performance, I don’t believe it was enough and in fact in the short-term competitors will always be able to post better results if their purpose is to enable market beating results. Can you read the difference? It’s subtle but important, purpose and authenticity, which translates as humanity (I think) are only part of the equation of sustainable financial results.

It’s important also to note that if a business focusses on humanity (which to be fair Unilever did pretty well) then it has to recognise that there will be moments of compromise, do I invest in my people (long-term) or the market (short-term) When the hard times come and there are bumps in the road, that is not the right time (for a human centred business) to drop the investment in culture and purpose but to double down or risk losing credibility and the long-term benefits of a grateful workforce.

I believe there are important lessons to learn as individuals and as organisations. They are not new lessons, we have known and forgotten or shelved these concepts many times in recent history as the market ebbs and flows.
Investing in people, giving them a sense of belonging and the freedom to express their authenticity will result in loyalty and sustainability.
Honesty with ourselves and our people that understanding and activating purpose is not enough in isolation, it must be to the service of a higher goal and that should be the sustainability of the workplace (amongst other wider personal commitments).
Understanding and being purposeful is one waypoint on personal and corporate journeys (the destination being sustainable performance and never ends …) there are human elements, professional development, belonging, the respect to challenge and be challenged, humility and commitment; connections to community, meaningful work and futures and the belief that contributions are equitable and valuable.

Understanding personal-soul purpose, team purpose, organisational purpose is super-important. It is a valuable building block, a waypoint on the journey but it is not enough and as the world moves on post-covid the word “purpose” is starting to lose it’s shine so perhaps time to move back to a more traditional one, humanity and the human centric business.