Long before corporate purpose became a buzzword, BCG’s BrightHouse, a global creative consultancy, pioneered business purpose consulting. We unleash the power of purpose—the why driving what you do—to transform your productivity and profitability.
Defining your business purpose is not a creative-writing exercise. And senior leaders cannot craft your organizational purpose at a meeting or purchase it from an agency. We know this because, for a quarter of a century, companies have been turning to us when such efforts fail to deliver better performance.
At BrightHouse, which was founded in 1995 and acquired by BCG in 2015, we work with companies like yours to excavate true business purpose. And then we help to fully activate and embed that purpose throughout your organization.
Embracing corporate purpose isn’t about virtue signaling or following the latest business trends. It’s about enhancing the performance of your top and bottom lines by unlocking growth and profits; attracting, retaining, and energizing employees; achieving social impact; and inspiring customers. Consider the profound impact of purpose:
Outperformance. Over the past 15 years, purpose-driven organizations have grown 10% faster than the market. They also reduced turnover, generating savings of $5.5 million a year, on average.
Many of our clients seek to define their business purpose to gain organizational clarity, alignment, and meaning at a critical moment in their development. Some are navigating large-scale transformation. Others are facing, or are in the midst of, changes in leadership. Still others are at an inflection point in their organization’s trajectory, seeking to turn around or accelerate their business.
To help you find your organizational purpose, we look beyond what you make or sell. We unearth human insights that get to the core of what you bring to the world. And we open the aperture so that you view your business and opportunities through a much wider lens.
Purpose must then be activated and embedded across the organization—in people and culture, strategy and operations, and branding and communications. Only after implementing purpose throughout your entire organization will your company realize the full impact on its performance.
We bring business purpose to life in four stages.
Discover
We start by excavating and uncovering the truth about your organization. We interview your people, rigorously research your existing messaging, and conduct surveys to better define and articulate the authentic strengths of your company. We then take an external view, bringing in luminaries to help us uncover the need in the world that your organization is uniquely positioned to fulfill.
Articulate
Drawing on the insights from our luminary network, as well as the organizational insights gathered through our rigorous fact-finding and analysis, we help derive your timeless purpose. We craft a memorable, authentic, and inspiring purpose statement and story.
Activate
Next, we look to your leadership team to begin seeding your purpose throughout the organization. We partner with your leaders to help them find ways to live your organizational purpose more fully.
Embed
As soon as leaders start embodying and championing purpose, it’s time to transform the entire organization’s culture, strategy, and branding through the lens of organizational purpose. Purpose is implemented by fully integrating it into ways of working, enabling employees to become more emotionally connected and to feel a deeper sense of meaning in their work.
Given that BrightHouse is known in the field as the home of purpose, we of course view purpose as an integral element in all our client collaborations. But we bring the same level of creativity, inspiration, and rigor to a broad range of related capabilities, helping companies formulate and implement:
BCG’s BrightHouse works with global companies across all industries as well as with local organizations and nonprofits, helping companies define purpose—and boost performance. Examples of our work include the following; more are highlighted on our site.
We helped the automaker define its purpose and its bold commitments to reduce carbon emissions in a plan called Ambition 2039.
BCG’s BrightHouse helped this 200-year-old bank achieve a real and immediate impact in the world.
The largest tool company in the world needed a purpose to unify the organization’s many sectors and brands and help it grow.
Purpose can be powerful—but only if it’s authentic. A four-step approach helps organizations move beyond superficial statements to activate and embed lasting purpose.
Purpose has the power to transform organizations, inspiring employees and boosting productivity and performance. Find out how you can help bring your company's purpose to life.
If your discussion of purpose focuses on describing, rather than disrupting, what your company does, it’s probably not adding much value.
Rather than dedicate a small slice of investments to social responsibility, some firms build purpose into their entire strategy, generating greater societal good—and higher financial returns—in the process.
