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

COO Summit 2024: Closing The Say-Do Gap - Executing On Purpose

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Um I have to say as a journalist, I have mixed feelings about this topic because this is our bread and butter finding the places where companies are not doing the thing that they say they're all about, right? They have a lofty purpose, but that's not what they're executing on. But I know this is a problem. We need to learn how to close it. So I just wonder if you can talk to me, Jessica a little bit about the, the say do gaps that you've seen out there in the wild when you with your clients and how they come about? Sure. Um So at the highest level, every single company in here, all of your leaders, all of you, you have a purpose, probably a purpose statement. Um You probably have cascaded that then into what is your strategy? What are your key priorities, etcetera. Um This is the work that Xy partners does uh with our clients all around the world. The heartbreak and the um disappearance of trust happens when that does not translate into the lived experience of all of your employees, of your customers. And so it's one thing to go out and say in big beautiful language. Um the change that you're seeking to create in the world, the impact that you're seeking to deliver. Um But if the day to day realities don't express that um you lose credibility and this is an economy that is run on trust and the weakening and erosion of trust is affecting all of our businesses for profit and not for profit. Uh And we work with both the how of connecting those two things is something that we can get into through this conversation. Great. Thank you. Um And Leslie, I know that you are in the nonprofit world right now, but you had for profit experience, especially at American Express. What in this room full of coo s what advice do you have from a company that's all about executing on purpose? What can they take away from the nonprofit world? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the purpose at where I am now make a wish is very clear. We are creating a life changing wishes for Children with critical illness that is very clear purpose and one that so many rally around whether it's our own employees, our partners, et cetera. And it is so critical. I think that the beauty is though we have the same capability, whether we're with a for profit or a nonprofit. As you mentioned, I spent 11 years with American Express previous to this role with make a wish and we absolutely had just as strong of a purpose about being the world's most respected service provider or service brand. And as part of that, we've tried to make sure that resonated with our employees. And that's really the key, whether it's for profit or nonprofit is having that employee engagement aspect of the brand. So I ran the largest service center at American Express at the time, we had about 3500 employees and it was making sure that every single employee felt that every day they came to work. It was about providing exceptional customer service, not just answering the phone. Great. Thank you. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about like how the gap actually erupts if you've ever if you have a way of pinpointing that and if you have any examples from your own companies about gaps that you discovered and how you managed it sometimes strategy gets well ahead of the operational realities. So I think we've been talking about actually in some previous sessions about you're really working on two time scales, you're working in the far future in the transformation that you're trying to drive through your company. But then you're working the absolute day to day and the day to day is built on legacy systems. And so no matter how fast and how agile our companies can be, there is going to be a gap between those two. Um A lot of times, front line workers, baristas we've worked with Starbucks, um starting with Howard in 2008. Um, through to the present, you can have a disconnect between what the company both stands for its values, the strategy of where it's going. It's very bold vision and then actually being able to innovate and update the operational systems, the processes, the ways of working that cascade through the whole organization and touch both your front line employees and then your customers. Right? Ok. Yeah, it's interesting, you mentioned Starbucks because recently they hired a CEO who's going to commute by jet, not every day, but people are pretty upset about that because Starbucks is also talking about part of its purpose being green, right? Um In the audience, please, um be thinking about any questions you might have for our panelists. I'll come back to you in just a few minutes. Um Have you found any examples that make a witch where you had, you discovered a gap in your purpose and what, how you were executing and what have you done to really drive home purpose for your employees? I think, um we also have a very bold vision to reach every eligible child, which we're not doing currently. So in order to do that, I think one of the things that we've been really focused on the last few years is making sure we have engaged employees because it's so important to where we're going. And one of the I guess gaps, um I would say is that our internal culture did not match the power of our brand externally. I mean, you talk to anyone about make a wish and you get the, oh my gosh. And you get the, it's, it's about community and support and lifting each other up, etcetera. And so we've been very intentional the last couple of years about making sure our internal culture is raised to really match the power of our brand externally. And if we get there, we're gonna be unstoppable, having every employee feel that way about coming to work every day. And it's important, I mean, I hire technology folks, finance folks operations. So it's not necessarily, I mean, it's, it's a competitive skill set, whether they could go somewhere else and make more money. So making sure that they have that power of being connected to the ultimate mission of the organization. And then they feel that every day is so important. Do they have an opportunity to meet some of the, the people, the Children or the parents who are? That's a great question and that, and that's one of the things that we found. So, you know, as we have people working in it behind the scenes, they could feel very disconnected from the mission. And that is um one of the things I talk about about bringing the power of the brand externally internally is exactly that. So we now have things like mission moments where we start meetings with an actual make a wish that has occurred. So regardless of where you are in the organization, wherever you're sitting, because we're also remote as well. You feel connected to ultimately what your position is and how it's so impactful in the world. Great. Um Those, yeah, that sounds lovely. Actually, I wish we could have mission moments right here. Um Is there anybody in the audience who would like to ask a question? You can raise your hand and yes in the back, sir. Good morning. My name is Martin Vanneman. I'm joining you from New York City. Question to three of you and everybody. How are you on tiktok? Sorry, on Tik Tok. How are your thoughts on Tik Tok? Uh Interesting. Now, do you use Tik Tok as part of your strategy, either with your employees or with your customers? Not with our employees? And really for us, uh the Tik Tok is much more organic as Children are having wishes or waiting for wishes, etcetera where uh we really utilize both Insta and um and other channels much more from that perspective. But we're out there, we're pretty much everywhere with the reach that we have and especially with our demo demographic. We serve Children ages 2.5 to 18 and they are all over it. And then you think about the 20,000 volunteers we have across the US and all of the employees, et cetera. It's happening organically, but Insta is really where we're targeting more with our corporate partners like a Disney fanatics, et cetera. We don't, we're a very quiet brand, uh very quiet company. We work with many people and companies in this room, but you might not know it. Um because what we do is so kind of precious and needs to be quiet in terms of the transformation that we're doing. If what you're talking about is sometimes what's under that question is sometimes a disconnect um between what a company stands for and how it's showing up in the world. Um There also needs to be some communication with your employees about where and why there might be disconnect. So it's actually something to lean into versus to pretend it's not going on. Um Rena Moskowitz, who is the coo and CMO of Etsy and she speaks a lot about this. Um She was telling me that the combination of those two things, both being the chief operating officer, but then really being responsible for the communications. Um And the marketing of the organization is a shift she's seeing uh generally with the CEO role you're becoming in many ways, one of the primary ambassadors champions and communicators, um which is maybe a shift from the deep, deep technical expertise uh that was driving the coo role in the past. So, so interesting because I know there was a study out of Paris that found executives are, you know, have no problem sort of describing what a company's purpose is, but as you went lower and, you know, down into the ranks of the company, it was much harder, like 60% of employees can't explain what a company's purpose is, which is way too low. So, um I imagine also that during a time of crisis, it would be very easy for a coo to drop purpose or to not keep their eye on that aspect of a job of the job. How do you maintain it? Um when there's a lot of financial pressure. So I actually was the coo of make a wish prior to moving into the CEO position. And I held that role during quite a few um the pandemic being one of them, uh quite a few of, of um those crisis if you will. And I think it's actually more important than, than ever to make sure that you're making that link for all of your employees. Um We had to actually have some pretty major transformation during that time. Uh Previously, we had a couple of volunteers that went into the home of each child and helped discover their wish, et cetera. We really had to transform overnight because we were not able to do that anymore. And we still wanted to find creative ways to deliver these life changing wishes to Children when they it most. And so that really took the engagement of all of our stakeholders to think creatively about what we could do. So if we weren't really tying into the overall purpose, it would have been, it would have been a completely different, I think, experience. But we were able to transform both the way that we delivered wishes, virtually, wish discovery et cetera as well as the way. Um you know, many of our stars interacted with Children since they weren't having concerts, they could do video wishes, et cetera. So that transformation during that time and of crisis only beca came because we were tying back to the purpose and how do we still maintain what we're doing and what's so important to do during this time? That's great. One of those silver lining stories in the pandemic. Um And how do you track whether or not a gap is opening or whether or not you've maintained that closure between the say do gap. Um Jessica. Sure. So one of the things we do a lot of is um actually looking at the incentive systems of your organizations. Um So again, how do you tie the big picture purpose into strategy? Bold moves focus areas and then Kpis or metrics that ladder out from that. But there's a step deeper which is looking at how are your people actually incentivized? Are you valuing through actual performance reviews, career progression, mentorship compensation. Are you valuing in actuality, the things that you say you value up top? Um And again, legacy systems, sometimes you crash into legacy performance systems, operational models, et cetera? That were wired for a different time. And so you have to do the work of actually bringing those into alignment. And then to your point about communicating your purpose, understanding your purpose, identifying some of those really operational changes as an expression of purpose and then how it ties back up. So that might include compensation. Yeah, the company. Yeah. Yeah, we've done our own work on this at Syp. So um our purpose is to unlock collective potential to build more vital futures. The collective potential is really important. Um in your organizations, there's so much potential uh held by teams and larger groups, but it's stuck because of many, many issues, many reasons. We all know it and we crash into them. Um within SYP, we do all of our work by bringing different people together with different disciplines. So we have strategists and analysts and tech people, but we have designers, we have filmmakers, we have people from real anthropologists, right? And so what we were realizing was because the market values different skills and different roles differently. So somebody with an MB A, somebody who has a deep strategy background often gets paid more than, let's say a designer, we had that gap in our organization as well because we were looking out at what the market was telling us that did not align with our own values. And so we did a full compensation philosophy overhaul. We changed how we pay people and how we um communicate our values uh to everybody in the organization, how did people react just quickly? You know, it took a lot of communication because on the one hand, um some people really felt seen for the first time. Um and it was a very practical example um of putting your purpose into action. Um But for other people, because they're so used to how the market rewards you, right? It took a little bit of time to get their head around it. And so again, consistent communications, the drumbeat of why we do what we do is so critical. Thank you so much. This is some great practical tips. It's really lovely to have you both. Thank you and thank you for the question.