How do purpose driven brands find a way to stay in business?

I was watching The Last Hour on Prime video. One of the dialogues there was - Focus. Focus is everything. The series was quite captivating to delve deeper into it then, but it stayed on my mind.?

When you focus on something, it develops, grows, evolves and transforms you with it.?

The Tata Group focuses on improving the lives of communities. That’s their purpose. I’m picking this right off the website -?

“Tata companies are involved in a wide variety of community development projects, which relate to skills training and entrepreneurship, livelihoods and women empowerment. Tata companies work towards empowering people by helping them develop the skills they need to succeed in a global economy. The group equips communities with information, technology and the capacity to achieve improved health, education and livelihood outcomes.”

We are aware of Tatas and their trust quotient globally, so I have no qualms about quoting directly from the website.?

Ratan Tata said long ago that -

Business, as I have seen it, places one great demand on you: it needs you to self-impose a framework of ethics, values, fairness and objectivity on yourself at all times.

Every business worth its salt today, with any level of sustainability is driven by a larger goal. A goal beyond the number of users, the revenue, the top line, the cost savings - not to say that those are not worthy goals. They are; but speaking in terms of human growth, those can be outcomes, not purpose.?

My purpose of writing newsletters and posts on LinkedIn is to talk about things that have happened to me or others throughout my career. And I leverage my position to bring up issues that I find relevant and life defining. To do what I set out to do, I put in place?

• A system of ethics - what I talk about, and won’t
• A framework - frequency/ periodicity?
• A system of adding value - engaging with comments?
• A system to ensure objectivity - usually I send my posts to a close circle and ask them how they read?

And many more off hand systems to ensure value. I prep my posts in advance, giving me time to consider and ruminate. It would be wrong to say that I am not excited by the traction that my content gets, but I am even more encouraged with people reaching out and telling me that they find this is relatable. They have been through what I spoke about and to keep writing.?

So how do purpose driven brands stay in business? What do they do that the average business doesn’t or can’t do??

To my mind, purpose is a differentiator.?

They care about what they are doing?

For example, Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. That's why Search makes it easy to discover a broad range of information from a wide variety of sources. To write this newsletter I must have referred to Google almost 4-5 times. I get quality results. Sometimes when I don’t, I understand that probably I’m not asking the right question.?

Also the times that Gmail is down. Every single time I have first rebooted my internet router, before checking if Gmail was down. The trust in a particular company/ product that will make you question your own set up at home.?

That’s what I am talking about.?

They treat their employees well and fairly?

Usually it’s about paying employees well. But now the world is changing to paying employees equitably and at par with what the market is giving at that point for that skillset.?

Dan Price of Gravity Payments is famous for this right? He decided to pay a minimum wage of $70,000 to all his employees.Nobody at Gravity makes less than that. Year or year he doles out a 20% increment and he sees productivity level spikes of almost 30-40%.?

Beyond what they are paid, employees also look at how they are treated. For the most part of it, many companies now have mental health counselors on call or on an app. But the ones who are truly setting themselves apart practice honesty and difficult conversations. Candid conversations can do so much for the mental health of the employee and it nullifies the need for politics/ gossip/ venting out to somebody who’s not directly involved in the situation.?

They are okay being uncomfortable?

When a company decides to focus on something, there are other things that will lose focus too. Suppose my content works very well for professionals across the board. But if I want to start focusing only on the managerial cadre, and specifically those people who lead large engineering teams - my content might alienate most of my current base. That’s the cost of focus. And that makes a lot of companies uncomfortable. Segmenting audiences, establishing product market fit means you are making yourself narrow, and competitive in that one space where you think you have an advantage. And that is a narrow space to be - all the more competitive; and so much more visibility to the value that you create.?

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While these principles apply to companies, they also apply to personal brands and just about any institution that is looking to carve their own niche. Tell me your thoughts around this. How do you stay true to your purpose??