【英语财经】什么样的企业更赚钱？ Companies with a purpose beyond profit tend to make more money

One of the paradoxes of business is that the most profitable companies are not those that are most profit-focused.

In a survey titled “The Business Case for Purpose”, a team from Harvard Business Review Analytics and professional services firm EY’s Beacon institute declares “a new leading edge: those companies able to harness the power of purpose to drive performance and profitability enjoy a distinct competitive advantage”. This is a reprise of the findings of Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, who in 1994’s Built to Last found that between 1926 and 1990 a group of “visionary” companies — those guided by a purpose beyond making money — returned six times more to shareholders than explicitly profit-driven rivals.

While 90 per cent of respondents in the new study said their company understood the importance of purpose, less than half thought it ran in a purpose-driven way. Why the discrepancy? One reason may be that to many, “purpose” looks like a “black box”, its workings hidden from view. While noting the impact on the bottom line, commentators tend to assume the performance jolt comes from hard-to-pin-down qualities such as inspiration, leadership or the motivational effect of working for a good cause.

Thus, the new survey defines purpose as “an aspirational reason for being which inspires and provides a call to action for an organisation and its partners and stakeholders and provides benefit to local and global society” — hardly something to put into practice on Monday morning. Porras and Collins called their outperformers “visionaries”.

Yet there is an eminently down-to-earth reason why purpose matters to every organisation — if it does not have a definable purpose, it cannot measure progress towards it. In the abstract, measures are arbitrary and unhelpful. Purpose dictates appropriate measures and measures give manageability, the capacity to learn and improve.

The truth is simple and profound, but not that obvious. As John Seddon, a visiting professor at Hull University and managing director of Vanguard Consulting, observes, in every organisation, whether its people realise it or not, “there is a systemic relationship between purpose (what we are here to do), measures (how we know how we are doing) and method (how we do it)”.

Because satisfied customers are the only source of long-term success, measures need to be related to purpose as defined from a customer point of view. When they are, employees can see how well they are doing and how they might do better. The Toyota Production System (TPS), whose purpose is to deliver an individually specified car to a customer in the shortest possible time, may be the best-known example of such a well-honed, feedback-driven system.

What happens in most organisations that have no overriding purpose other than profit? In a subtle alchemical shift, the metrics fill the vacuum, muscling out any wider purpose with the imperative of hitting the numbers. This transposition of ends and means is often disastrous because methods, now geared to meeting the metric, are detached from customer purpose — so banks sell payment protection insurance to people who do not need it, or VW managers manipulate emissions readings to meet targets. Look no further for the reason why companies lose their customer focus.

Because of the umbilical link with the way the organisation operates, purpose can be even more powerful than this suggests. Purpose should not be complicated or airy-fairy — but nor is it always as straightforward as the TPS.

When some UK local authorities considered the purpose of local services, they concluded that they were there to help citizens live well, in charge of their own lives. After all, people leading good lives make for happier, more functional communities that make less call on stretched public services.

That required new measures, which quickly established, for example, that most resources were consumed by a few chaotic families using multiple services. This led to a new way of working, in which multidisciplinary teams visit problem families to understand their lives in context. The result was greater welfare at lower overall cost. This has become known as “locality working”.

On its own, purpose is nothing more than an aspiration. It is its sidekicks — measures and methods — that make purpose tangible and keep managers on the straight and narrow. But it cuts two ways. Last decade, Toyota subordinated its customer purpose to a growth push in an attempt to overtake GM in size. Overexpansion led to quality problems and some spectacular vehicle recalls. Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder, claims the lesson has been learned, but the jury is still out. Purpose is an unforgiving taskmaster: forget it at your peril.

This article has been amended to reflect that John Seddon is a visiting professor at Hull University and managing director of Vanguard Consulting.

商界的一个悖论是大多数最具盈利能力的企业并不是那些最关注利润的企业。

来自“《哈佛商业评论》分析服务”(Harvard Business Review Analytic Services)和专业服务机构安永(EY)旗下Beacon Institute的团队进行了一项名为“目的的商业理由”的调查，宣布了一项“新领先优势：那些能够利用目的的力量驱动业绩和盈利能力的企业享有独特的竞争优势”。这与吉姆?柯林斯(Jim Collins)和杰里?波拉斯(Jerry Porras)的发现一致，两人在1994年出版的著作《基业长青》(Built to Last)中发现，从1926年至1990年，一些“富有远见”、也就是受到盈利以外目的召唤的公司，股东回报率是那些明确以利润为导向的竞争对手的6倍。

在上述新研究中，90%的受调查者表示他们的公司理解目的的重要性，但不到一半受调查者认为，他们的公司在经营中受到目的驱动。为什么会有这样的差异？一个原因可能是，对很多公司而言，“目的”看上去就像一个“黑匣子”，其作用机理是看不见摸不着的。在注意到其对利润的影响的同时，评论者们往往认为，目的感对业绩的提振往往源于某些难以确定的特质，例如鼓舞、领导力或者为崇高事业工作的励志效果。

因此这项新调查将目的定义为“一种渴望成功的存在理由，它鼓舞着人们，并向一个组织及其合作伙伴和利益攸关方发出行动号召，同时给当地乃至全球社会带来效益”——这不是什么周一早上就能付诸实践的事情。柯林斯和波拉斯把他们介绍的表现出众的企业称为“远见者”。

然而，还有一个极为现实的理由说明为何目的对每个组织都很重要——如果组织没有一个可以界定的目的，就无法衡量为达到目的所取得的进展。抽象地看，衡量标准是随意和无益的。目的决定了适当的衡量标准，而衡量标准进而带来了可管理性以及学习和提高的能力。

这个道理简单而又深刻，但不是那么明显。英国赫尔大学(Hull University)客座教授、Vanguard Consulting董事总经理约翰?塞登(John Seddon)提出，在每个组织中，不管人们是否意识到，“都存在着目的（我们要做什么）、衡量标准（我们如何知道自己做得怎么样了）和方法（我们如何去做）之间的某种系统性的关系”。

因为满意的客户是长期成功的唯一来源，衡量标准需要关联的目的需要从客户视角来界定。若做到这一点，员工就能得知他们表现如何以及该如何改进。旨在于在尽可能短的时间内向客户交付定制车辆的丰田生产系统(Toyota Production System)，可能是精心打磨的反馈驱动系统的最知名例子。

大多数企业除了盈利以外没有至高无上的目的，在这些企业内部会发生什么？它们会发生一种微妙的诡异转变，指标填补了真空，达到量化指标的急迫性，排挤了任何更为宽广的目的。这种目的和手段的换位往往是灾难性的，因为方法（现在专注于达到指标）和以客户为上的目的脱节了——因此银行向不需要的人销售支付保护险，大众汽车(Volkswagen)管理者操纵尾气排放读数以达到目标。这就是企业不再以客户为中心的原因。

由于目的和组织运营方式有着天然的联系，目的可能比上文所说的更为强大。目的不应该是复杂或者虚无缥缈的——但也不总是像丰田生产系统那样直截了当。

英国的一些地方当局思考了本地服务的目的，得出的结论是他们要帮助市民生活得好，能够掌控自己的生活。毕竟，过着美好生活的人们会形成更快乐、功能更加正常的社区，从而减少求助于疲于应付的公共服务。

这要求有新的衡量标准，这些标准迅速发现，大多数资源被几个使用多种服务的混乱的家庭消耗了。这带来了一种新的工作方式，由跨部门联合小组走访问题家庭，全面了解他们的生活。结果是通过更低的总体成本提供了更大的福利。这种做法现在被称为“本地工作”。

就其本身而言，目的不过是一种抱负。是目的的副手——衡量标准和方法——让目的变得明确，让管理人员始终走正路。但目的有两面性。上一个十年，丰田以客户为上的目的让位于推动增长的目标，试图在规模上超过通用汽车(General Motors)。过度扩张带来了质量问题和一些大规模车辆召回。丰田创始人的孙子丰田章男(Akio Toyoda)宣称，该公司已经吸取了教训，但结果还不得而知。目的是无情的监督人：忘记它可得后果自负。

译者/许雯佳