purpose

It all starts with CEO commitment.

Customer experience professionals got an early Christmas present last week in the form of a revised statement on the “purpose of a corporation.” Well, it was a revision for the CEOs at the Business Roundtable, but many of us already know what the purpose of a business is.

Building brands in the mad men era was a relatively straight forward endeavor... 

A brand needed to effectively communicate its value to the consumer, plainly stating its functional benefits and for the more enduring brands—connecting with consumers at the emotional level typically through a story told via television led advertising campaigns. 

Corporate leaders love to talk about values. They put them on web sites, frame them, place them prominently in boardrooms and proudly espouse them in media interviews. The notion of values has become so pervasive that it’s hard to find any CEO who doesn’t tout their importance.

In a column in The New York Times as well as in a popular, David Brooks has pointed out the conflict between resume virtues and eulogy virtues. Resume virtues, he says, are the ones that are prized by the marketplace, while eulogy virtues are those which fortify inner being, that of ourselves and others.

Jeremy England, a rising star in the world of physics, has made quite a stir with his ideas about the meaning of life. In a nutshell, England argues that while disorder in the universe tends to increase over time, living things harness energy around them to create order from randomness.

In 1904, the great sociologist Max Weber visited the United States. As Moises Naim describes in The End of Power, travelling around the vast country for three months, he believed that it represented “the last time in the long-lasting history of mankind that so favourable conditions for a free and grand development will exist.”

The idea of disruption excites some people and terrifies others. Consider the recent case of The New Republic, in which a new, disruptive CEO came in and vowed to “break shit.” The company’s top journalists balked, the brand was sullied and the business still struggles. And all for what?

Does "imitate the competition" describe your approach to customer experience design? 

Are you more focused on what your competitors or other companies are doing than on your own business, customers, and customer experience strategy?

On September 17, 2011, Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park, in the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan. Declaring, “We are the 99%,” they captured the attention of the nation. Within a few months, however, the park was cleared and the protesters went home, achieving little, if anything.

The recent “Race Together” initiative from Starbucks — and the criticism it generated — requires us to reflect on the purpose of business.