Experts urge to activate purpose in companies

Madrid, 21 May 2021.- Transcendent, the Spanish consulting firm specializing in ESG management and business impact, and APD (Association for Management Progress) have organized a meeting to analyze purposeful leadership in Spanish companies, as well as opportunities and trends in Europe.

The meeting served as a preliminary presentation to the results of the First Business Purpose Barometer in Spain, which both organizations are carrying out. This Barometer, carried out by APD and Transcendent, aims to evaluate the degree of activation of purpose in companies as a lever to improve their results.

During the meeting, experts raised the need for companies to incorporate and activate the purpose. For Judith Stroehle, senior researcher at the Saïd Business School in Oxford and director of the Rethinking Performance Initiative Program at this university, “the purpose facilitates access to investment. The money is going that way. Institutional investors are betting on purposeful companies. It's not only desirable, but something that any company has to do and do now because it's an opportunity for business improvement.”

But it doesn't just facilitate access to better funding. “Involving and sharing the purpose with employees and the community is something that generates engagement. And that is what can determine which company will succeed and which will not,” explained Daniel Truran, CEO of ebbf - ethical business building the future, ( ebbf.org ) and B Corp Ambassador at B Lab Europe.

Experts have pointed out that purposeful companies sell more than those that don't have it or don't manage it. “B Corp companies, for example, sell three times more than their competing companies in the same sector,” according to Truran.

Finally, according to Ángel Pérez Agenjo, managing partner of Transcendent, “the purpose does not make companies less ambitious or less professional, but rather it enriches them, it makes them better from the point of view of leadership and management of the management committee”.

Purpose as a lever for business

The purpose is not an innovation. It's not just a marketing claim. It's not a phrase or a slogan. It's a matter of common sense and business. As experts have said today, few companies emerged just to make money. But activating purpose and measuring it isn't that simple. Be part of each company's business impact journey.

Any company is called to activate the purpose. According to experts, although theoretically for small and medium-sized businesses and for family businesses it should be a more accessible objective a priori, the truth is that sometimes they are busy growing and believe that they don't have time for this. According to Stroehle, “large companies are feeling pressure from the market, from investors, from systemic challenges, etc., and they are moving intensely and at full speed on this issue.”

The creation of a legal figure that identifies companies with a certain type of governance, with purpose and that manages their ESG assets is something that is already happening in some countries, such as the United States. A trend that we are also going to move towards in Spain, as these experts agree.

‍