INTRODUCTION
On a cool November morning in 2002, I was sitting in my office at 6:00 A.M. preparing for an all-client Idea Summit at the GSD&M headquarters in Austin, Texas. I hear a tap on my door. I look up and there is Jim Collins, a good friend and best-selling author of Built to Last and Good to Great, leaning in and smiling like someone about to give you a gift that he knows you’re going to love.
Jim was the keynote speaker we brought in for the summit. Before I could say good morning, Jim looked at me in that pensive way that he does, hand on chin and head cocked slightly, and said, “I’ve got it!”
I said, “Got what?”
He said, “What you guys can be the best in the world at!”
While this might seem an odd opener for a conversation, on many occasions GSD&M had been used as a test site for the principles Jim espoused in his first book. Recently, we’d been struggling with the answer to a very difficult question—what can you be the best in the world at?
“It’s right in front of you. Look at the clients you’ve assembled here today. GSD&M has somehow managed to attract extraordinary companies with a purpose beyond making money. They’re companies that want to make a difference. I think you can be the best in the world at delivering visionary ideas for companies that actually have a purpose.”
After this declaration, Jim left just as abruptly as he had shown up. I was frozen—like when you catch a glimpse of your reflection and it takes a moment before you realize that what you’re seeing is you. I realized he had put his finger on the unarticulated secret that has shaped the most successful client relationships we had developed in our thirty-five years of running the agency. While we often talk about the difference that our clients are making in the lives of their customers, we hadn’t given ourselves enough credit for taking notice of that difference and using it as the cornerstone for building some of America’s most successful brands.
We work with a vast array of clients and have always done whatever it takes to build their businesses. Some relationships have been a disaster from day one, while others have unfolded into lifelong friendships and true partnerships that have built both the esteem and the profits of everyone involved. Jim’s comment made me realize that our most successful relationships are with clients who are genuinely passionate about making a difference in the marketplace. And our gift is being able to identify, simplify, and articulate that difference to the world.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. From day one, my partners and I shared the same lifelong goals—to stay in Austin, to stay together, and to make a difference. Whether we did it consciously or not, over time we’ve gravitated toward industry mavericks, visionaries, and leaders committed to making a difference like Herb Kelleher, Sam Walton, Jim Collins, Norm Brinker, Colleen Barrett, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Paul Higham, former president (41) George H. W. Bush, former president (42) Bill Clinton, Tim Finchem, Red McCombs, Bernard Rapoport, Retired Air Force General Rand, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, former secretary of defense Bob Gates, Bob Utley, Charles Schwab, Gary Kelly, Betty Sue Flowers, Jim Stengel, Bill Novelli, and Jim Clifton, just to name a few. These are all people with a great sense of purpose leading companies or organizations with a culture of purpose—cultures geared up to make a difference.
Just like we needed Jim Collins to point out our own obvious strengths, we help organizations identify and articulate the core purpose that’s right under their nose. It started early, when we let Herb Kelleher, CEO and founder of Southwest Airlines, in on the fact that he wasn’t just offering low fares and frequent flights, he was democratizing the skies. Later, we picked up on Sam Walton’s real vision of saving people money so that they could live better lives. Today, we’re attracting purpose-driven brands like BMW and John Deere and marquee philanthropic organizations like the American Red Cross and the Clinton Global Initiative. Great universities like The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M have called us in to help them articulate the difference they make in the lives of the students passing through their institutions. These are just some of the organizations that are winning in the marketplace because of their commitment to a higher purpose—a purpose that we have had the privilege of helping to discover and bring to life through the power of media and marketing.
The road we’ve taken comes from our values and our outlook on life in general—namely, that life is short, so live it out doing something that you care about. Try to make a difference the best way you can. We’ve had fun; we’ve cultivated the success of others and enjoyed a lot of it ourselves. At the end of the day, it’s been much more rewarding to work with clients that are trying to make a difference than it is to work with clients that are just trying to sell more stuff. And there’s always a sublime vindication in seeing our clients ultimately sell more stuff and make more money while making more of a difference than their competitors. There’s also an enormous satisfaction in seeing the cultural transformation that happens when an organization is turned on to purpose.
We’ve all experienced corporate cultures in one form or another. While this language may be new to you, the experience is one you know instinctively. Think about all the organizations you’ve dealt with in your professional and personal life. You can probably readily identify organizations that have a strong sense of purpose, as well as those that don’t.
In a company without a purpose, people have no idea what they’re really there to do. There may be a flurry of activity and an abundance of “busy-ness,” but it all seems frenetic, disorganized, and leading in no particular direction. They often look to the competition to decide what to do rather than navigate by their own sense of what’s right. And your sense of who they are is probably quite muddled due to the fact that their ad campaigns change dramatically every year or so. This is what it feels like in an organization without a purpose. Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-common feeling in corporate America.
Contrast this with a company that has a great purpose. You can usually feel it when you walk in the door. You can sense it in the confidence and clarity with which employees go about doing their work. You can see it in the remarkable ways they do business.
You witness leaders who have a knack for endearing themselves to the troops and harnessing the passion and talents of their employees to great ends. And you usually know what they’re all about because their stories have been well told and consistent in the marketplace. This is what it feels like to step into an organization driven by purpose.
This book’s primary goal is to get you to the same level as these purpose-driven companies. It will provide an actionable road map to discover your purpose, bring it to life, and then actively market and practice that purpose in all you do. The net result is that when a company is driven by purpose, everyone in the organization wins—both professionally and personally.
It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For is driven by three interdependent components:
1. Building an organization that truly makes a difference in the marketplace;
2. Becoming a leader of great purpose; and
3. Bringing your purpose to life so that your constituents know exactly what you stand for.
You need to be firing on all three cylinders to truly experience the power of purpose in the marketplace.
The journey starts with an understanding of the difference that you want to make in the world. What does this organization believe in? What does it believe it’s here to do? What difference does it ultimately make in the lives of the people it is trying to serve? At the intersection of the passions and strengths of the organization and the needs of the world stands a great purpose. Every company is capable of having one. No organization is too big or too small, too niche or too mundane, too high or low interest to have a purpose.
We’ve worked with every kind of enterprise imaginable: from soap to social causes (antilitter, smoking cessation, colon cancer), from airlines to AARP, retailers to restaurants, health care to hotels, country clubs to country music, and telecom to tortilla chips. It’s not the category you work in, but the business model, the leadership, and the positioning that ultimately determine whether or not you will discover and live out your purpose.
My hope is that reading and practicing the principles of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For will inspire you to make a choice—a choice to go out there and either create or find work in an organization of great purpose. And in the process, you will make money, make a difference, and make history.
A pretty cool way to live your life at work.