How transforming purpose into focused execution is redefining leadership
Organizations are driving purpose-based leadership at scale with the help of a new metric: Return on Leadership.
Businesses around the world are embracing stakeholder capitalism—the concept that companies can have a positive impact on society, and that this purpose is directly linked to profit—now more than ever. The pandemic, meanwhile, has spurred many companies to step back and assess the value of their work. Employees want to feel that their daily efforts directly correlate with what’s important to the business, and that they not only understand and experience the organization’s purpose but also are an integral part of achieving it.
Research links “purpose-driven work” to significantly greater employee well-being, engagement, and performance and “meaningless work” to disengagement and alienation, according to recent research from McKinsey & Company. Some employees even say that they value meaningful work over job security, working hours, and income.
But despite all of the supporting evidence and the many active discussions going on in C-suite meeting rooms, it is very challenging to translate philosophy into reality—to codify this intention and find a unified approach to measuring and driving purpose-based execution at scale.
“It’s easy to get smart people together to create your sense of purpose; it’s a lot harder to execute on it,” says Matthew Becker, CPA, national managing partner of tax at professional services firm BDO USA, who found himself in need of a new approach to realigning and refocusing his team of 3,000 after a flurry of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). “We’ve always pursued innovative ways to align behavior with our core goals. But what we needed was a concrete, action-based approach for alignment.”
BDO USA selected Indiggo, a software as a service (SaaS) solution that helps spur a focused, purpose-driven execution of business strategy by directly tying individuals’ and business units’ daily work to the company’s current priorities and to purpose. The platform unlocks, guides, and measures dozens of key leadership behaviors that drive successful execution of the organization’s goals, providing a concrete tech solution and important missing metrics that bring transparency, insight, and accountability to leadership.
“It’s about measuring how well leaders are consistently executing on the things that truly move the needle forward,” says Marc Inzelstein, cofounder and chief leadership officer at Indiggo. “It’s a win-win when people do this and at the same time connect to a deeper purpose: They have a true understanding of if they should do something and why they should do it, and the business benefits from their actions as they become much more effective.”
Why Return on Leadership is the metric you can’t afford not to track
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It’s easy to get smart people together to create your sense of purpose; it’s a lot harder to execute on it.”
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— Matthew Becker CPA, National Managing Partner of Tax, BDO USA
Indiggo has taken an area that has always been murky—leadership—and has built a concrete technology that finally turns the lights on and simplifies this complex challenge. The A.I.-driven tech solution is designed to promote a greater return from company leaders and managers in an individualized way, as the platform learns from work behavior over time and provides personalized “nudges” to help leaders take inspired, targeted action quickly—driving benefits both on an individual level and across the company.
What Becker needed was scale. BDO USA had tried various approaches—both technology-based and otherwise—to tie purpose to action, but these generally only worked for specific use cases, rather than fueling true companywide progress.
“We’re an accounting firm, so we’re numbers people,” Becker notes. “Having a KPI [key performance indicator] focused on leadership gives us visibility on how we are performing against more difficult to measure leadership expectations.” Becker also needed a numerical sense of how his division was achieving—especially as it was growing quickly given a high level of M&A activity, creating additional challenges for broad alignment. Becker could see the problem solved in a single exercise.
“Prior to our relationship with Indiggo, when I traveled to our offices, I would and ask people two questions: Do you understand what we’re trying to accomplish as an organization? And do you understand what your role is in achieving that collective aspiration?” Becker says. “I would sometimes get blank stares.”
That changed after BDO USA partnered with Indiggo. The Indiggo platform integrates seamlessly with companies’ existing processes, allowing leaders to start using the software immediately. Indiggo provides each manager with his or her own personalized guidance featuring Return on Leadership (ROL) scores on four fundamentals: Connection to Purpose, Strategic Clarity, Leadership Alignment, and Focused Action. Leaders can choose to focus on up to three individual priorities, called ROL drivers, per month to keep them on task and connected to the bigger picture and company’s core purpose. Indiggo also provides collective ROL scores as well as ongoing insight into team members’ and peers’ current priorities.
“If you don’t have focus, it can feel like there are 200 things on your plate to get done. And if you try to do them all, you’ll get nowhere,” Inzelstein says. “But when you have a clear shared framework for the things you need to focus on for success, everything falls into place—not just for you as an individual, but for getting everyone moving in the same direction to execute your strategy.”
Making the intangible concrete
— Marc Inzelstein Cofounder and Chief Leadership Officer, Indiggo
When you have a clear shared framework for the things you need to focus on for success, everything falls into place.”
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Only 10 months after adopting Indiggo, Becker’s division realized a 51% increase in profitability over the same period a year earlier. ROL transformed BDO USA’s culture so much so that it became part of the organization’s lexicon.
“I’ve observed countless instances where someone would say, ‘If we give her one more responsibility, her ROL is going to blow up,’” Becker says. “People are asking: ‘Does someone have too many areas of focus? Do they have enough?’ ROL is frequently mentioned in those kinds of conversations.”
With that shift in thinking comes freedom for employees to make choices based on what’s truly best for the business. As Becker says, when meetings can be executed with four people rather than the eight people invited, the four who don’t truly need to attend now feel comfortable declining so they can spend that time on their ROL drivers. Leaders are also far more likely to delegate tasks.
News of the positive results Indiggo had driven for the U.S. team traveled north to BDO Canada, where the company’s executives deployed Indiggo among a few top levels of senior leadership before rolling it out to the broader group of partners. The company had just completed a new multiyear strategic plan, but managing partner Bruno Suppa and other leaders recognized they needed a pathway to manage, and drive, aligned enterprise-wide execution. While existing enterprise resource planning and human capital management platforms had their place, Suppa says they did not provide a way to manage execution. Like his stateside counterparts, he needed a solution to power the success of this critical new plan across the firm.
“What Indiggo created was a balance of modernization and professionalization,” Suppa says. “We went from static platforms to a dynamic system.”
Despite some initial hesitation to adopt a new technology due to some change fatigue, leaders recognized the need to help their partners successfully execute the new plan. Suppa’s team quickly reached 75% monthly usage on Indiggo as they recognized its ease of use and value. Indiggo bubbled up new insights, including that the company wasn’t spending enough time on talent acquisition. This allowed leaders to correct course and not only seek external talent but also nurture existing team members with mentorship and coaching. Company goals that once seemed far off became more immediate and tangible.
From static to dynamic
— Bruno Suppa Managing Partner, BDO Canada
We have to stay on top of a forward-looking view to create a culture of innovation. With Indiggo, I now have a critical real-time eye on how much capacity we’re investing into digital and that horizon thinking.”
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“One of our core strategic pillars is digital transformation—we seek to find business models that will sustain us for the next 100 years. But many of our partners aren’t digital natives,” Suppa says. “We have to stay on top of that forward-looking view to create a culture of innovation. With Indiggo, I now have a critical real-time eye on how much capacity we’re investing into digital and that horizon thinking.”
Like Becker in the U.S., Suppa also noticed a significant change in the language employees were using related to their work and their direct link to the company’s goals. People felt proud. They became inspired. And they were aligned.
“Where we once had to rely on periodic meetings and webinars, we now have an environment where we can easily pivot and cascade key messages about strategic priorities—and, crucially, make sure people are committing to it,” Suppa says. “Where before you may have seen the strategic plan and firm goals flashed on a slide presentation someplace, with Indiggo now they see it daily and it becomes part of their personal mission. That is brilliant.”
And Becker no longer gets blank stares when he asks employees about their role in executing the company’s priorities. In fact, he doesn’t need to ask at all.
“Indiggo helped people embrace the connection between their behavior and our strategy, and you hear people say, literally, ‘This is my role in achieving our core purpose,’” Becker says. “When you hear that kind of clarity, unsolicited, that’s how you know you’re achieving.”
Measuring Return on Leadership
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