Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of GS1 US®: The retention or the lack thereof oftentimes, as we all know, is less about compensation. I mean, clearly, we don’t work for free, and if you’re poorly compensating someone, they’re going to leave. But oftentimes, they don’t leave for the compensation. They leave because they’re not working with someone that respects them, they’re not motivated by the goal or the purpose of the organization, the environment isn’t right, and those are all the things you can control.
Voiceover: Hi, welcome to The Bailey Video Podcast, a podcast from Bailey Brand Consulting about brand creation and development. Today, we’re talking about How Leadership Can Help Drive Brand Purpose with Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of GS1 US, an information standards organization best known for the barcode, and Chris Bailey, President and CEO of Bailey Brand Consulting. Let’s take a listen.
Chris Bailey, President and CEO of Bailey Brand Consulting: Bob, welcome.
Bob: Nice to be here.
Chris: So, thinking about purpose. When we think about it, and we think about it in the idea of the ”why” of the company or “why” of an organization. I think a strong purpose is very authentic, and it becomes the foundation of why the organization exists. When you think about it, you’ve worked in a variety of organizations, how have you evolved over it, about the way you think about it, and how do you think about it today?
Bob: Well, I’ve been fortunate to work in businesses that I think are really infused with purpose, in general, specifically healthcare. When you work in healthcare, it’s not difficult to ladder up to an end benefit. We’re changing people’s lives; we’re saving lives; we’re helping mankind. So I think with GS1 US, we’ve also been able to pivot the business over a decade to be a little less technical-standards-focused and more around what’s the end benefit this is all driving towards.
”Why” is over 50 years of history when industry came together to agree on a way to uniquely identify things, have such a profound impact for the next 50 years as to how we’re going. And so, as we think about purpose, it does go back to that theme around the power of unique identification and the implications when that’s right and, more importantly, the implications when it’s not right. And so, I think those are the things that we’ve been able to draw on to really strengthen the purpose and the why, to your point, Chris, and really make it motivating for people to come into work. And I think too — the retention or the lack thereof oftentimes, as we all know, is less about compensation. I mean, clearly, we don’t work for free, and if you’re poorly compensating someone, they’re going to leave. But oftentimes, they don’t leave for the compensation. They leave because they’re not working with someone that respects them, they’re not motivated by the goal or the purpose of the organization, the environment isn’t right, and those are all the things you can control.
So, we talk about organizations going good to great and focusing on purpose and culture. I think those are things that you can really use to drive retention, and we’ve been fortunate that we have a pretty high retention rate, as you know.
Chris: So, when we work with companies about purpose and we’re usually always dealing with a leadership team, and I think our experience and our perspective is that when the leaders are engaged in the idea of developing, and really rallying behind, and helping to shape the purpose - the outcome, and they feel ownership the outcome, is usually going to be a very positive one. And then I think after that, it’s how do you roll it out and get everybody excited about it?
When we think about purpose, it drives a result, or it takes us to a result. The purpose isn’t to make a ton of money. Its purpose is to do this, and the result is financial success. How do you guys put that into practice?
Bob: A few years back, and you’ll remember this, Chris, we had a gentleman named Dutch Leonard, who’s a professor at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. One of the things that he challenged us with is how elusive mission is, particularly for not-for-profit organizations, and the notion that mission for for-profit companies is about shareholder return and income, et cetera. The mission for not-for-profits is not always easy to define.
Where I’m going with this is that we realized we had a lot of different missions. I think in retrospect, we had a lot of different purposes because the mission is kind of the what, but the purpose is the why. To your point, I really like that way to define purpose. And so that was a process we led to, as you’ll remember, Chris, to double down on identity to look very hard at sunsetting and stopping some things, which is hard to do. We’re still not good at that, but I think we did decommission some things or deprecate, as our technology folks would say.
And so, I think getting that mission, that purpose simplified and focused was an exercise we did with the board, and that really helped back in 2018. That, for me, was what helped to bring the organization together because I think defining that mission - simplifying it to one thing around unique identification. Then being clear on how everything needs to dividend back to that - a 35-million-dollar investment in technology, a renewed focus around our corporate development, now innovation and partnerships team. All those things strip away the noise and really try to focus on the signal.
Chris: So, you brought up a great piece. You’re in the neutral and not-for-profit space for your business, but a lot of companies signed on to a different effort now that they’re not just going to be shareholder-driven, and it was an interesting kind of time that they did that. How do you think that group of leaders thinks about it?
Bob: Yeah, I think it requires a leader that can see through the business and not look at three-month or 12-month increments, particularly Wall Street. It’s funny you bring this question up because I just had this conversation earlier today with a new employee because I do new employee onboarding. I was explaining that about 75 percent of our bonus calculation is based on non-financial measures and how the financials are a lagging indicator, and he said, “Well, why don’t you think all companies do it that way?” And I said, “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest with you.” I think it really requires an ability to draw a connection between the non-financial measures and a one-to-one cause-and-effect with the financial measures. When you can start to demonstrate that, then I think you have the privilege and the power to put a little less emphasis on the financial measures and put a little more emphasis on things like ESG. In the context of the for-profit space, or in our area, it’s more around adoption, and use of the standards, which is really what our board members and our industry care about. It might be a little bit easier in a not-for-profit because we’re not under the crucible of quarterly earnings and things of that nature. Still, I think what you see now is industries are starting to make that connection, and I think that certain boards are more accepting of a longer-term horizon to think through true transformational change.
Chris: Right. What do you think is a motivating factor? That’s been our experience - when you think about companies that start to think about purpose, what do you think is something that ignites that idea?
Bob: You know for us, and I’ll just speak to GS1 US when I came in 2009. When you quickly took an outside-in versus an inside-out perspective, you learned that it wasn’t clear at all what the purpose was and that it was very confusing. I don’t think you’re ever too bright on that because I could still talk to people in our constituent, and they would be confused about what we do. But I think the best way to create a case for change is to go talk to your customers and ask them if it’s clear or not, and my guess is you’re going to hear that it’s not clear, or it’s certainly not as clear as you’d like it to be. That can start with communication and marketing, and things of that nature. Those things tend to get pushed to a very tactical level if not oriented around a north star or the why - the purpose. So, for us, it was starting with an outside-in versus an inside-out mentality - which is an expression I’ve used since day one - and that direction and that feedback from our customer. We’ve tried to use that to drive just about everything we do. Understanding that we have 360,000 customers in the U.S. so, it’s a pretty broad spectrum of stakeholders. A lot of people we touch.
Chris: A lot of people. Well, Bob, thank you for stopping by the bus stop here and hanging out with us today. I think you brought some great ideas and some insightful thoughts. And so, we really appreciate you spending some time with us.
Bob: No, thank you, and we were just talking a moment ago. I think inherent in embarking on this journey is finding a partner you can trust and finding a partner, consequently, that you listen to. And so, for us, Bailey’s been a great partner in that journey, and we’re still going.
Chris: Excellent. Well, thank you again. Our pleasure.
