How to Connect Employees to Your Company’s Purpose

Emerging practices from leading organizations show that the journey is not about top-down messaging.

October 26, 2023

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We know making a noble corporate purpose — that is, one aimed at doing something good in the world — come to life is both important and hard. Emerging practices from leading companies show that the journey is not about top-down messaging. If anything, it’s about inside-out and bottom-up dialogue, as this is how we human beings can ultimately connect with a broader mission. Over the last several years, the author has studied this in several ways — first as CEO of Best Buy, and since then by studying and working with multiple companies and their leaders on their journeys to put purpose to work and unleash what he calls “human magic.” He shares several important lessons from leading companies.

When I ask CEOs in the new CEO workshop we run at Harvard Business School to rate the importance of having and living a great corporate purpose to the success of their company, their average response is 9.1 out of 10. In contrast, when I ask them how effectively their company’s purpose is coming to life today, their average rating is around 6 out of 10. This highlights that there is often a big gap between a company’s purpose and the reality for employees.

Hubert Joly is the former chairman and CEO of Best Buy, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and the author, with Caroline Lambert, of The Heart of Business. He has been recognized as one of the top 100 CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review, one of the top 30 CEOs in the world by Barron’s, and one of the top 10 CEOs in the U.S. by Glassdoor. Joly is now keen to add his voice and his energy to the necessary refoundation of business and capitalism around purpose and people.

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