Diana O'Brien is the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte, where she leads the brand, communications, marketing and insights organizations toward using data, creativity and technology to solve their customer's most pressing issues. In addition to being included in the Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs, she is also the chairman and founder of IMPACT Autism, a forward-thinking organization that creates and delivers life management solutions to combat the educational, emotional and social challenges of living with autism. In an ongoing series of conversations with innovative purpose-driven leaders in the corporate world, I caught up with her to find out more about how purpose comes to life at Deloitte and how the company wants to positively impact 50 million people by 2030.
Afdhel Aziz: Hi Diana and welcome to the series. Could you please articulate the purpose of Deloitte and how it is manifesting itself in your company?
Diana O'Brien: Our purpose is to “make an impact that matters.” I don’t believe you could find a professional in our organization who can’t articulate that. It goes beyond our campaigns, it is embedded in who we are. When we think about business practices and purpose, it is about embedding a sense of purpose within our employees. This happens by guiding and training our people as to how they should approach their work so that our purpose helps them make decisions. For example, I don’t believe you can make an impact that matters if you don’t understand your client if you don’t walk in your client’s shoes or have empathy for the circumstances that they face.
In terms of innovation and employee engagement, we ask our people to get involved in communities and help build new and innovative programs. For example, in the U.S. we have a social impact program called RightStep where we mentor underprivileged, disadvantaged youth so that they are positioned to go to college. There is a program called Vi-Ability in the U.K. that focuses on helping people with disabilities find employment opportunities. In the Netherlands, we have a project that’s associated with the Ocean Cleanup foundation where our employees are working alongside the foundation to help design and deliver on systems that would capture plastic in the ocean.
Aziz: So I'm curious...Deloitte works with world-class companies across the board. Are you seeing these companies adopt purpose as a core operating system, or as a way to reframe what they do in a more aspirational way? Where are the companies that you work with on that adoption curve?
O'Brien: We are absolutely seeing companies clarify their purpose more directly, and that enables their employees to live out that purpose. There are still some companies who, I think, see it more as just for social good, versus truly embedding an enduring purpose that lives beyond a single generation.
Aziz: Do you think the complexity of this new business world with AI and robotics etc has made purpose into a clarifying principle for companies?
O'Brien: It’s incredibly helpful as a clarifying principle, but it’s not necessarily new. You can find many books written about purpose and profits—how the two go together to make organizations more profitable. What is happening today is that we are seeing greater sophistication in how purpose is activated in an organization. When we first articulated purpose in our organization, many of us didn’t really appreciate what was needed to happen next to activate it, but our global CEO Punit Renjen did, he knew what was needed, that we needed to embed it into everything we did and expect everyone to live it.
Aziz: And how else is Deloitte manifesting this purpose into social impact?
O'Brien: About a year ago we launched a program called WorldClass, an initiative to impact 50 million people. It’s a global effort, with every one of our country practices engaged to impact 50 million people by 2030 by giving them the education and skills needed to be employable for the future and be part of this fourth industrial revolution. For me, that’s an example of us embedding purpose more deeply than just doing a one-off project. We are infusing it into the core of who we are.
So, it could be someone who got the right training and we ultimately hired them, that could be the outcome. For veterans finishing their service, we are helping them translate the skills they learned in the military and on the battlefield to the corporate world. So, I think it’s at the individual level, and it’s any of those things that help and position individuals to be prepared for what lies ahead.
Aziz: Thank you that's helpful. And finally, what advice do you have for other CMOs who may be on this journey of adopting purpose?
O'Brien: It’s important to recognize the value of helping your people understand what it looks like when we live our purpose. You have to be willing to ask questions; you have to have empathy; you have to know how to tell a story. We created training for our people to help them build these skills because we think they are so important to our purpose. Understand the value of your internal stakeholders, the brand ambassadors of your organization. You need a strong relationship with the talent and learning & development organizations so you can work together to clarify what it looks like when you deliver on your purpose. That to me is an under-developed focus area for some leaders when they think about purpose because they just think about what it looks like externally.
I also think that you have to be relevant. Make sure that your purpose matters to your customers. It has to be something that brings value so that it’s not just about the economics, but also about issues that mean something to your customers, whether that’s in the area of sustainability, or social impact, or creating the best product or service. It needs to resonate with your customers and employees. I think CMOs are responsible for the customer, they are responsible for that dialogue in the C-suite, and so they need to be able to marry those two together. What does it mean to our customers, and what does it mean to our people?
Finally, I think it is important to remember that when it comes to purpose, people don’t care if there is a new technology or a new process; they care about whether things get better for them. People are looking for a better future. They are looking for hope and the promise of something better than the way it is today. So, whether it’s shoes made of recycled plastic or access to learning about new technology, customers and employees are looking for that deeper meaning. That meaning is what gets you out of bed and makes things worth doing.
