Andrew Mitton

Proc­tor and Gamble’s new CEO, Bob McDon­ald, announced new strat­egy called purpose-inspired growth.  The plan is to focus on pur­pose, val­ues, and prin­ci­ples; then the money will nat­u­rally fol­low.  I’m intrigued, but don’t want to dis­cuss the mer­its of this strat­egy.  Instead, I want to dis­cuss the exe­cu­tion of the strategy.

Ros­a­beth Moss Kan­ter of Har­vard Busi­ness School had this to say on her blog about the rollout:

McDon­ald calls P&G’s pur­pose the most con­sis­tent fac­tor in a 171-year his­tory of growth. When he showed it on screen in South Boston, the room nod­ded rev­er­en­tially. “We will pro­vide branded prod­ucts of supe­rior qual­ity and value that improve the lives of the world’s con­sumers, now and for gen­er­a­tions to come. As a result, con­sumers will reward us with lead­er­ship sales, profit and value cre­ations, allow­ing our peo­ple, our share­hold­ers, and the com­mu­ni­ties in which we live and work to prosper.”

Sounds good so far.  But try this: turn away from your screen and recite the state­ment in your own words.  I’ll go ahead and wait .…   So, how did you do?  Take a look at the state­ment again.  It’s a com­pletely well-written state­ment that’s easy to under­stand, but entirely forgettable.

This is some­thing I don’t under­stand — a cor­po­ra­tion can cre­ate mem­o­rable com­mer­cials, but can’t cre­ate a mem­o­rable credo from the top.  Yes, every­one nod­ded rev­er­en­tially, but prob­a­bly walked out of the room for­get­ting the mes­sage.  It’s too bad that the state­ment wasn’t boiled down to some short and mem­o­rable phrase.  There’s truth in Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s method­ol­ogy in their book Made to Stick.  A sim­ple unex­pected cred­i­ble con­crete emo­tional story will stick.  It’s too bad that Proc­tor and Gam­ble doesn’t have that here.