The need of the 2010’s was “digital transformation”. A decade later, the need of our time is “purpose transformation”.

Ten years ago, the most important investment for companies was to go digital, or die trying. The defining demand of our time is to act with purpose, or face the consequences.

I remember walking through office halls in corporate America in the mid 2010’s, while working as an innovation consultant. Our charter would take us to different office parks and corporate headquarters across the country. Back then, if you wanted to hold an innovation workshop, it had to involve sticky notes, sharpies, and people standing in a room together - waiting for the lunch break to begin.

Most of the time, office buildings would strike me as variations of the same. Rows of desks, interspersed with small break areas, and bookended with glass-sealed meeting rooms. Sometimes, however, the offices would look and feel radically different. Clients would walk us through their newly built spaces, pointing out freshly inaugurated collaboration nooks and espresso counters. Some would display colorful architecture, open floor seating, funky furniture and lots of whiteboard space.?

But why these changes?

In the 2010’s, less than a decade after the release of disruptions like the iPhone or Dropbox, the question of the time for most companies was how to engage with digital transformation. The accelerated adoption of smartphones along with the new process possibilities of cloud technology shook all industries like a tidal wave. Believe it or not, there was a time where most companies didn’t need to be web-optimized, cloud-based, and e-commerce enabled in order to exist and survive in the market. Suddenly, the landscape had changed and organizations needed to adapt to the digital age, or risk losing everything.?

Consequently, a lot of organizations prioritized their budgets and, among other things, reskinned their office spaces to look like Google. Knowing well that having these amenities were competitive for new talent in the tech industry, they made the decisions they had to make. At the end of the day, digital transformation was the priority of the time and leaders went all in on it, from creating hiring waves to building entirely new office parks. These investments were made to provide the right context for digital transformation to take place, in so doing protecting and positioning the company for a new era.

In today’s post-pandemic world, as companies continue laboring their race with technology, a new prevalent and defining need emerges: the need for purpose.?

The pandemic was a public health crisis that shook people psychologically in various ways. Collectively and individually, we were forced to reflect on our positions around self-care, care for others, care for institutions, and even our political affiliations. This phenomena, exacerbated by events of injustice and violence such as the George Floyd protests in the US, the two global wars, and the proliferation of mental-health awareness, got humanity closer to asking itself questions of purpose:?

Who are we? What do we believe in? Are we being fair?

The collective questioning of purpose triggered by the pandemic is a social disruption that compares in magnitude with the technological disruption caused by the digital age. With remote work, workers are experiencing what it is like to work from their home environment. With increased activism, the pay gap between white males and minorities is being addressed. With mainstream awareness about climate change, customers are demanding companies to show concrete actions in environmental repair. With social media backlash one tweet away, marketing promises that don’t hold up to reality are being called out, leaving companies to work through the backlash. Transforming companies so that they deliver clarity and integrity of purpose not only is a shared priority, it is becoming the most salient organizational need of our time.?

To meet this need, winning companies need to commit themselves fully to this transformation. A decade ago, the companies that invested in colorful collaboration rooms and popcorn machines, but didn’t do the heavy lifting of reinventing their products, their operations, their hiring and talent structure, and their marketing to meet the needs and demands of the digital transformation, failed.?

Similarly, the companies today that express their purpose only on their social media or marketing, but that don’t integrate it such that it influences all areas of their organization, will be left behind. The next generation of winning companies will be those trail ahead with a full and real commitment to transforming their organization in the direction of living their purpose and doing the right thing. This will entail cultural changes, significant investment, and company-wide operational overhauls.?

The innovation firm inplural, which I recently founded in New York was set up to address the need for purpose centered transformation across organizations in all industries. In addition to supporting clients with their digital transformation journey, we are set up to guide them through a process of purpose transformation. Investing in these two engines of change with sincerity and commitment will position leaders and their organizations to confidently tackle and lead through the most important changes of our time.