Here is the full transcript of Ashley M. Grice’s talk titled “The Power of Purpose in Business” at TED conference.
In this talk, strategist Ashley M. Grice highlights the profound impact of a well-defined and authentic corporate purpose. She begins by sharing a personal experience on a Delta Airlines flight, where a small act of kindness by a flight attendant exemplified Delta’s customer-focused purpose. Grice emphasizes that purpose is more enduring than a company’s mission or vision, rooted deeply in its ethos and values.
She stresses the importance of authenticity in purpose, using examples of companies where purpose is integral to their brand identity. Grice advises leaders to critically excavate purpose from within, acknowledging the discomfort that can come with aligning idealism with realism. She asserts that purpose should pervade all levels of an organization, from the C-suite to front-line employees, to truly embed it into the company’s culture.
Grice concludes by illustrating how purpose, when integrated consistently across an organization, becomes a powerful force for cultural change and business success.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
In 2019, I took a 9 a.m. flight from Atlanta to New York City. I was the first person to board that day. So as I death-gripped my phone to step over that little crack that leads to the runway, I caught a glimpse of the flight attendant. Head in her hand, like this, eyes closed.
The moment she heard me, she looked up, she put a smile on her face and she said, “Good morning.” “This is not your first flight of the day, is it?” I asked. “No,” she said, “it had been a really early one.” I made some silly sleep joke and she laughed, and I went to go sit in my seat.
She couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. During the flight, we exchanged pleasantries, and at one point she came to offer me a snack, and she asked me what I was going to New York to do. I said that I was going to deliver a speech and that honestly, I was cutting it kind of close. “No time for lunch?” she asked.
“No time for lunch,” I said, and I took a bag of almonds and I tucked it into the pocket of my backpack. After the flight landed, I was on my way out of the plane, and she stopped me for a moment, and she handed me a plastic bag. It was about this big and it was weirdly heavy. She said, “I know you didn’t have a lot of time today, so I packed you this. Good luck.”
That was nice. So as I’m walking through LaGuardia with my bag and my bag, I peer inside and there are about 30 packets of almonds inside that bag. It was a bag of bags. And when I was in the taxi on the way to the speech, I found this little note tucked inside: “Ms. Grice, thank you for coming on and putting a smile on our faces with your sweet words. You have been so kind, and we are very lucky to have you as a loyal Delta customer. Thank you. I know you are gluten-free so here are some almonds for the road! Thank you for your kindness! It goes a long way! Sarah, Delta flight attendant.”
Now reading this, my heart gave a little jolt. My day job is to help companies excavate and execute their purpose. And this little note on this little napkin was purpose in action, specifically that airline’s purpose. And I know because I had helped to articulate it over 15 years before.
The Power of Purpose
In 2003, purpose was just one element of a much larger strategic transformation that Delta Airlines undertook. It was a company still reeling from the aftereffects of 9/11 and one looking for a North Star to guide them through would eventually become Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
But in 2019, for a flight attendant who was maybe in elementary school at the time that purpose was articulated, it was some almonds for a hungry customer. It may be that Sarah never saw that purpose line we articulated, but no matter, she didn’t need to, because purpose was alive and well at Delta. It had become muscle memory. It had become cultural norm.
Now let me be clear in what I’m talking about here, I’m talking about embedding purpose. I’m not talking about your mission, which is what you do every day, or your vision, which is where you are headed. Both mission and vision are important corporate drivers, but they play a different role in purpose. And mission and vision will change with changes in leadership, corporate contacts, competitive landscape, merger and acquisition. They are important, but they are also temporal.
Embedding Corporate Purpose
In my experience, they often have a time horizon of, say, three to five years. But purpose is your “why.” It is found at the intersection of who you are at your very best and the role in the world that you are meant to play. It comes from your ethos. It is married to your aspiration, and because it is ethotic, it is also timeless.
Now, there are plenty of data out there to say that well-embedded purpose across organizations brings immense value. Studies that will link well-embedded purpose to elevated total shareholder return over 10 years, increased employee engagement, retention, even higher levels of productivity. Because of all this data, it is rare in my work that a CEO will come to me and say, “Ashley, what is purpose” or “Why do I need to do it?” Instead, what they will ask is “When I have my purpose, how do I embed it across my organization so well that it brings the most value, that it becomes muscle memory?”
As I’ve been doing this work for almost 20 years at this point, I have a ready answer. First, I tell them it needs to be authentic.