The European division of a global Bank had developed a new purpose. It now wanted to measure whether purpose was influencing team effectiveness. It chose to use the Contexis Index to provide these insights.
Shockingly weak organisational performance
Only 23% of employees believed in the Bank’s purpose
The Bank was appalled – but detailed analysis of the data showed a very clear source issue to explain the problem: only 23% of employees believed positively in the Bank’s purpose. Yet, that small group who believed the Bank to be purposeful scored dramatically more positively on all attitudinal and behavioural characteristics (32% happier, 57% more engaged, twice as clear on strategy). These differences drove significant motivation and performance differences between individuals. The problem was simply that most people didn’t believe the purpose the Bank had crafted.
Quite remarkably, those who actively engaged with the Bank’s purpose experienced levels of trust in the Bank and in colleagues 300% more strongly than those who did not.
Damaging impact of top-down purpose communication
The research team made a series of recommendations. Principally that, since the key issue was not clarity of purpose but trust, it was potentially disastrous to simply communicate purpose ‘top-down’. Everyone in the organisation needed to be engaged in the process of connecting and interpreting this purpose to their own experience, being challenged around their beliefs, and having the opportunity to articulate their fears to rebuild trust. It was recommended team leaders received urgent coaching on open and vulnerable leadership prior to this process being rolled out, But that the programme should be internally run and delivered rather than devolved to an external consultancy.
It was predicted that if the Bank did no more than shift the attitudes to its purpose of the average employee to that of the purpose-positive employee and moved the majority of the negative individual to a state of neutrality, as measured in the survey, it would see an aggregate improvement in positive beliefs and productive behaviours across the Bank of 25-30%.
Trust unlocks purpose across the Bank.
Performance measures ‘dramatically improve’
Bringing purpose to life had also led to marked improvements in happiness, personal motivation and wellbeing in the team – and a 30% reduction in turnover intention. In fact, measured attitudes and behaviours across all performance measures (personal, cultural and management) had, as predicted, improved by an average of 32.5%.
Customer-facing teams also reported an unexpected uplift in revenue performance averaging 13% amongst teams that engaged in the programme.
There is much work still to be done, with half of employees still feeling neutral and a few negative about the purpose. But the Bank can see the powerful benefit of bringing everyone on board with a genuinely activated purpose. And now has the tools and metrics to ensure this can be achieved – and tracked over time.
As the divisional Director commented “The reaction to the interventions and driving the sense of purpose has been dramatic, with our Index scores showing a significant improvement. This is reflected in how the team is interacting and the overall spirit within the team. The work we have been doing has shown fantastic results – an increase of 30% in positive behaviours across the business would see significant results within team engagement and commercial performance”.
