Leslie Motter, Chief Executive Officer, Make-A-Wish America
Jessica Orkin, Chief Executive Officer, SYPartners
Moderator: Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune COO Summit
Jessica Orkin, Chief Executive Officer, SYPartners
Moderator: Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune COO Summit
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00I have to say, as a journalist, I have mixed feelings about this topic because this is our bread and butter,
00:06finding the places where companies are not doing the thing that they say they're all about, right?
00:11They have a lofty purpose, but that's not what they're executing on.
00:14But I know this is a problem. We need to learn how to close it.
00:17So I just wonder if you can talk to me, Jessica, a little bit about the say-do gaps
00:22that you've seen out there in the wild with your clients and how they come about.
00:28Sure. So at the highest level, every single company in here, all of your leaders, all of you,
00:36you have a purpose, probably a purpose statement.
00:40You probably have cascaded that then into what is your strategy, what are your key priorities, et cetera.
00:47This is the work that SY Partners does with our clients all around the world.
00:52The heartbreak and the disappearance of trust happens when that does not translate into the lived experience
01:00of all of your employees, of your customers.
01:04And so it's one thing to go out and say, in big, beautiful language,
01:09the change that you're seeking to create in the world, the impact that you're seeking to deliver.
01:14But if the day-to-day realities don't express that, you lose credibility.
01:22And this is an economy that is run on trust, and the weakening and erosion of trust
01:28is affecting all of our businesses for profit and not for profit.
01:33And we work with both.
01:35The how of connecting those two things is something that we can get into through this conversation.
01:40Great. Thank you.
01:42And, Leslie, I know that you are in the nonprofit world right now,
01:45but you had for-profit experience, especially at American Express.
01:49What, in this room full of COOs, what advice do you have from a company that's all about executing on purpose?
01:57What can they take away from the nonprofit world?
02:00Yeah, absolutely.
02:01I mean, I think the purpose at where I am now, Make-A-Wish, is very clear.
02:05We are creating life-changing wishes for children with critical illness.
02:09That is a very clear purpose and one that so many rally around,
02:14whether it's our own employees, our partners, et cetera.
02:17And it is so critical.
02:18I think the beauty is, though, we have the same capability,
02:22whether we're with a for-profit or a nonprofit.
02:25As you mentioned, I spent 11 years with American Express previous to this role with Make-A-Wish,
02:30and we absolutely had just as strong of a purpose about being the world's most respected service provider
02:37or service brand.
02:38And as part of that, we've tried to make sure that resonated with our employees,
02:42and that's really the key, whether it's for-profit or nonprofit,
02:45is having that employee engagement aspect of the brand.
02:49So I ran the largest service center at American Express.
02:52At the time, we had about 3,500 employees,
02:55and it was making sure that every single employee felt that every day they came to work.
03:00It was about providing exceptional customer service, not just answering the phone.
03:05Great. Thank you.
03:06Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about how the gap actually erupts,
03:11if you have a way of pinpointing that,
03:14and if you have any examples from your own companies about gaps that you discovered
03:19and how you managed it.
03:21Sometimes strategy gets well ahead of the operational realities.
03:26So I think we've been talking about, actually in some previous sessions,
03:29about you're really working on two timescales.
03:32You're working in the far future and the transformation that you're trying to drive through your company,
03:36but then you're working the absolute day-to-day,
03:39and the day-to-day is built on legacy systems.
03:41And so no matter how fast and how agile our companies can be,
03:45there is going to be a gap between those two.
03:49A lot of times, front-line workers, baristas,
03:52we've worked with Starbucks starting with Howard in 2008 through to the present,
03:57you can have a disconnect between what the company both stands for,
04:01its values, the strategy of where it's going, its very bold vision,
04:05and then actually being able to innovate and update the operational systems,
04:11the processes, the ways of working that cascade through the whole organization
04:16and touch both your front-line employees and then your customers.
04:20Right, okay.
04:21Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned Starbucks
04:23because recently they hired a CEO who's going to commute by jet.
04:27Not every day, but people are pretty upset about that
04:29because Starbucks is also talking about part of its purpose being green, right?
04:35In the audience, please be thinking about any questions you might have for our panelists.
04:39I'll come back to you in just a few minutes.
04:42Have you found any examples at Make-A-Wish
04:45where you discovered a gap in your purpose and how you were executing?
04:51And what have you done to really drive home purpose for your employees?
04:55I think we also have a very bold vision to reach every eligible child,
05:00which we're not doing currently.
05:02So in order to do that,
05:04I think one of the things that we've been really focused on the last few years
05:08is making sure we have engaged employees
05:10because it's so important to where we're going.
05:13And one of the, I guess, gaps, I would say,
05:17is that our internal culture did not match the power of our brand externally.
05:22I mean, you talk to anyone about Make-A-Wish and you get the,
05:25oh, my gosh, and you get the, it's about community and support
05:29and lifting each other up, et cetera.
05:31And so we've been very intentional the last couple of years
05:34about making sure our internal culture is raised
05:38to really match the power of our brand externally.
05:41And if we get there, we're going to be unstoppable,
05:44having every employee feel that way about coming to work every day.
05:48And it's important.
05:50I mean, I hire technology folks, finance folks, operations.
05:54So it's not necessarily, I mean, it's a competitive skill set,
05:58whether they could go somewhere else and make more money.
06:01So making sure that they have that power
06:04of being connected to the ultimate mission of the organization
06:07and then they feel that every day is so important.
06:10Do they have an opportunity to meet some of the people,
06:13the children or the parents?
06:15Such a great question.
06:17And that's one of the things that we found.
06:19Once we have people working in IT behind the scenes,
06:22they could feel very disconnected from the mission.
06:25And that is one of the things I talk about,
06:27about bringing the power of the brand externally.
06:30Internally is exactly that.
06:32So we now have things like mission moments
06:35where we start meetings with an actual make-a-wish that has occurred.
06:39So regardless of where you are in the organization,
06:42wherever you're sitting, because we're also remote as well,
06:45you feel connected to ultimately what your position is
06:49and how it's so impactful in the world.
06:52Great.
06:54That sounds lovely, actually.
06:56I wish we could have mission moments right here.
06:59Is there anybody in the audience who would like to ask a question?
07:03You can raise your hand.
07:05Yes, in the back.
07:08Good morning.
07:10My name is Martin Van Eschman.
07:12I'm joining you from New York City.
07:14I have a question to three of you and everybody.
07:19How are you on TikTok?
07:21Sorry?
07:22How are you on TikTok?
07:24What are your thoughts on TikTok?
07:26Interesting.
07:27Now, do you use TikTok as part of your strategy,
07:30either with your employees or with your customers?
07:32Not with our employees.
07:34And really for us, the TikTok is much more organic.
07:37As children are having wishes or waiting for wishes, et cetera,
07:41we really utilize both Insta and other channels much more
07:46from that perspective.
07:48But we're out there.
07:50We're pretty much everywhere with the reach that we have,
07:53and especially with our demographic.
07:55We serve children ages 2 1⁄2 to 18, and they are all over it.
07:59And then you think about the 20,000 volunteers we have
08:02across the U.S. and all of the employees, et cetera.
08:05It's happening organically.
08:07But Insta is really where we're targeting more
08:09with our corporate partners, like at Disney, Fanatics, et cetera.
08:13We don't.
08:14We're a very quiet brand, a very quiet company.
08:18We work with many people and companies in this room,
08:21but you might not know it,
08:23because what we do is so kind of precious
08:26and needs to be quiet in terms of the transformation that we're doing.
08:30If what you're talking about is sometimes,
08:32if what's under that question is sometimes a disconnect
08:36between what a company stands for and how it's showing up in the world,
08:42there also needs to be some communication with your employees
08:46about where and why there might be disconnects.
08:49So it's actually something to lean into
08:51versus to pretend it's not going on.
08:55Reyna Moskowitz, who is the COO and CMO of Etsy,
08:59and she speaks a lot about this,
09:02she was telling me that the combination of those two things,
09:06both being the chief operating officer
09:08but then really being responsible for the communications
09:11and the marketing of the organization,
09:13is a shift she's seeing generally with the COO role.
09:16You're becoming, in many ways,
09:18one of the primary ambassadors, champions, and communicators,
09:22which is maybe a shift from the deep, deep technical expertise
09:26that was driving the COO role in the past.
09:30That's so interesting because I know there was a study out of Paris
09:33that found executives have no problem
09:37describing what a company's purpose is,
09:40but as you went lower and down into the ranks of the company,
09:43it was much harder.
09:4560% of employees can't explain what a company's purpose is,
09:48which is way too low.
09:51I imagine also that during a time of crisis,
09:54it would be very easy for a COO to drop purpose
09:58or to not keep their eye on that aspect of the job.
10:03How do you maintain it when there's a lot of financial pressure?
10:08I actually was the COO of Make-A-Wish
10:11prior to moving into the CEO position,
10:14and I held that role during quite a few,
10:17the pandemic being one of them,
10:19quite a few of those crises, if you will.
10:23I think it's actually more important than ever
10:26to make sure that you're making that link for all of your employees.
10:30We had to actually have some pretty major transformation
10:34during that time.
10:36Previously, we had a couple of volunteers
10:38that went into the home of each child
10:40and helped discover their wish, et cetera.
10:42We really had to transform overnight
10:44because we were not able to do that anymore,
10:46and we still wanted to find creative ways
10:49to deliver these life-changing wishes to children
10:52when they needed it most.
10:54That really took the engagement of all of our stakeholders
10:57to think creatively about what we could do.
11:00If we weren't really tying into the overall purpose,
11:04it would have been a completely different, I think, experience.
11:07But we were able to transform
11:09both the way that we delivered wishes virtually,
11:12wish discovery, et cetera,
11:14as well as the way many of our stars interacted with children.
11:18Since they weren't having concerts,
11:20they could do video wishes, et cetera.
11:22That transformation during that time of crisis
11:25only came because we were tying back to the purpose
11:29in how do we still maintain what we're doing
11:32and what's so important to do during this time.
11:35That's great.
11:36One of those silver lining stories from the pandemic.
11:39How do you track whether or not a gap is opening
11:43or whether or not you've maintained that closure
11:46between the say-do gap?
11:48Jessica?
11:49Sure.
11:50One of the things we do a lot of
11:52is actually looking at the incentive systems
11:55of your organizations.
11:57Again, how do you tie the big-picture purpose
12:00into strategy, bold moves, focus areas,
12:04and then the KPIs or metrics that ladder out from that?
12:09But there's a step deeper,
12:11which is looking at how are your people actually incentivized?
12:16Are you valuing through actual performance reviews,
12:19career progression, mentorship, compensation?
12:22Are you valuing in actuality
12:24the things that you say you value up top?
12:27Again, legacy systems.
12:29Sometimes you crash into legacy performance systems,
12:32operational models, et cetera,
12:34that were wired for a different time.
12:36You have to do the work of actually bringing those
12:39into alignment.
12:41Then, to your point about communicating your purpose,
12:43understanding your purpose,
12:45identifying some of those really operational changes
12:48as an expression of purpose
12:50and then how it ties back up.
12:52That might include compensation for the company.
12:55Yes.
12:56We've done our own work on this at SYP.
12:59Our purpose is to unlock collective potential
13:03to build more vital futures.
13:05The collective potential is really important.
13:07In your organizations,
13:09there's so much potential held by teams and larger groups,
13:13but it's stuck because of many, many issues, many reasons.
13:17We all know it, and we crash into them.
13:20Within SYP, we do all of our work
13:23by bringing different people together
13:25with different disciplines.
13:26We have strategists and analysts and tech people,
13:28but we have designers.
13:30We have filmmakers.
13:31We have people from anthropologists.
13:34What we were realizing was because the market values
13:37different skills and different roles differently,
13:40so somebody with an MBA,
13:42somebody who has a deep strategy background
13:44often gets paid more than, let's say, a designer.
13:47We had that gap in our organization as well
13:50because we were looking out at what the market was telling us.
13:52That did not align with our own values,
13:55and so we did a full compensation philosophy overhaul.
13:58We changed how we pay people
14:00and how we communicate our values
14:03to everybody in the organization.
14:05How did people react just quickly?
14:09It took a lot of communication
14:11because on the one hand,
14:13some people really felt seen for the first time,
14:17and it was a very practical example
14:20of putting your purpose into action,
14:23but for other people, because they're so used to
14:26how the market rewards you,
14:28it took a little bit of time to get their head around it.
14:31Again, consistent communications,
14:33the drumbeat of why we do what we do is so critical.
14:37Thank you so much.
14:39These are some great practical tips.
14:41It's really lovely to have you both.
14:43Thank you, and thank you for the questions.