With more Fed tightening still a very real possibility for the second half of 2023, capital raising for cash-strapped companies is going to remain expensive. That would put profits high on the agenda of any corporate executive. And yet, the pursuit of profit alone is no longer enough to be successful. Purpose promotes performance. The mission drives business success. Those together lead to better profits.
Given that a company certainly needs profits to stay in business, they have to “focus on the basics,” according to Jim Olson, Head of Communications for Avelo Airlines, who shared his thoughts with us during Pursuit Perspectives, the Pursuit PR thought leadership speaker series. Through executive and founder interviews, Pursuit PR taps into the experiences of successful executives and uncovers their viewpoints on market trends and professional development.
For Avelo (which became America’s first new airline in nearly 15 years when it took flight in 2021), that means making sure all of their Crewmembers (how they refer to their employees) are well taken care of and focused on the mission of inspiring travel. “If they are excited and passionate they’ll take great care of our customers,” he said.
The guiding philosophy is that happy customers will want to fly with Avelo again in the future and even pay a premium for safe, reliable, and convenient air travel. That, in turn, will generate more profits for investors.
Profitability is the net result of choosing the right business focus from the start. A positive feedback loop generates better revenue and in turn rewards employees, executives, and investors.
The same was true at Starbucks where Olson was VP of Global Corporate Communications. The company took profits and reinvested in their employees, giving them access to a free college degree program through Arizona State University. Investing in the community, in the issues they care about, and in employees, were all driven by company earnings. And they were generated by mission-driven employees focused on serving their customers.
This contrasts with a company’s longer term vision, which is more lofty. It may include business planning and sustainable models that are helpful to attract investment and employees, however, the mission is more concrete. It can be used to orient on the now.
A fact all industry leaders understand is that meeting expectations is good for business. Even more, it’s rewarding for all members of an organization to fulfill the mission. Keeping the mission alive is an essential motivating factor for employee retention, especially when it might be taking longer to realize the vision for growth.
But it’s not enough to talk about the mission. As Olson points out, thought leadership needs to transform into actual leadership. Actions matter. We preach to clients that you cannot message yourself out of a business problem. All ideas and information sharing needs to be based on actual facts - and even better, actions.
This also relates to a concept we are quite fond of - “verbal shmerbal” as we like to call it. Companies need to create written content that articulates their stance on the company’s purpose, values, ethics, and codes of conduct. This is the same for evolving issues such as ESG, which is now a key metric upon which investors, consumers, and employees evaluate a company at all stages of growth for both public and private firms.
Understanding first-hand how enriching mission-driven leadership can be, Olson points out that finding “that intersection of a big problem that needs solving, doing the hard things, things that you are personally very passionate about and will ultimately lead to some good in the world, and obviously something that you’re really good at,” leads to a mission-driven career. And even though this may not run in a straight line, sometimes “those wrong turns lead you down an extraordinary path.”
Pursuit PR’s thought leadership speaker series, Pursuit Perspectives, taps into the experiences of successful executives and uncovers their viewpoints on market trends and professional development in communications, technology, financial services and media.
