Daniel Truran talks about how to be the best companies for the world

After the keynote I offered during the ESADE Alumni annual gathering I was asked to express a few ideas on who is and how are companies transitioning to new impact driven business models:

QUESTION: For you, shared purposes are the answer for better business for the world. How can we put purpose at the center of the business model?

A recent article by McKinsey, “Purpose: shifting from Why to How” highlights the profound shift that now sees purpose as an obvious driver of intent, to what I am being asked most often in these last 12 months: ok but how do I best find and implement purpose to my organization’s strategy?

This is where most sincere purpose-driving strategies fail: they believe that the individual purpose of the CEO or the organization’s purpose is what will create success. Wrong. It is only when we spend time, indeed time we don’t seem to ever have enough of, to invest in the most powerful driver of motivation, productivity, drive, and success: understanding the purposes and aspirations of your people and then creating a shared purpose where everyone feels identified, united and then you become unstoppable.

QUESTION: What are the benefits of being a good company? What opportunities appear from the point of view of sustainability?

Let’s go back to the essence of a company. Why does a company exist? Fundamentally a company exists to address the needs and problems of people.

As it is a for profit organization, it is only healthy that it creates profits, but it should also ideally identify the (real and not perceived or created through deceiving marketing) problems and needs of people, of society, of the world. Within the seemingly never-ending list of needs and problems that society faces, unfortunately an increasing market, sustainability and environmental needs stand out.

QUESTION: You are director general at ebbf.org , B corp ambassador, co-founder of the Impact Hub Madrid, partner of NOW.partners … What is the philosophy that unites these organizations?

In common to each of those organizations is a collaborative mindset that aims to enhance the understanding and use of values in individuals. With that powerful values-based drive and energy it is then easier to identify and unite with other like-minded but very diverse individuals to create the most amazing solutions, companies, interdependent outcomes.

The most powerful driver of those organizations is the balance between stopping to think about what is important to each of us, and then finding ways to increase exponentially positive outcomes by working collaboratively to reach common goals. So, the balance of reflection, deepening and action for good which creates the best possible outcomes.

QUESTION: What about EBBF, Ethical Business Building the Future, specifically. Can you tell us a little about this group and what are its aims to achieve?

Organizations like ebbf offer that life-changing opportunity to join some of the over 300 events we create every year, safe and regenerative spaces where deep spiritually-driven questions about the why of what we do are commonplace. Where we break the assumptions of how things are and then going into creative, mind-opening experiences of the future we — WANT — to create.

I purposefully did not mention the future we — SHOULD — be creating as I feel the driver of meaningful long-lasting innovation and change is to focus on a very special word: volition.

Just focusing on what we should be doing will create sub- par outcomes.

What will create outstanding results is to focus on our aspirations, our deep desire to make something happen: our volition.

QUESTION: You explain that there are people in organizations who make a difference, but what exactly do these leaders have different from the rest?

Whilst serving others might not sound like the highest aspiration for anyone who has reached the top of the organization, after many years of hard work getting to lead and drive from the very top, it is exactly what will create the highest possible results for your people and organization.

Don’t forget how your team members feel right now. The best possible leader is one who can address both sides of that coin, both acknowledging the fears, stress and uncertainty but also driving forward those passions and aspirations. Empathy, warmth, clarity, support, vulnerability in a sincere spirit of service is some of the traits of an outstanding leader for this specific era we are operating in.

QUESTION: What does Regenerative Value Creation mean?

Regenerative Value Creation is a new logic that companies urgently need to focus on. We mentioned earlier the importance of sustainability, Regenerative Value Creation is the mutually reinforcing integration of business & economic success with the regeneration of people and planet. It is an integral approach that generates synergetic opportunities. It enables mutually enhancing results by building on the interdependence of specialized but naturally interactive business functions. Companies, like all other systems of life are complex.

QUESTION: How is the Regenerative Leader?

Someone who can both evolve the organization, create the best most adaptive structures, tools, and processes but at the same time evolve the people in that organization, doing so by working on their mindset on the attitude with which they address inevitable complex situations and engaging their full selves. That kind of regenerative leader achieves this through that overarching new collaborative service mindset, that underlying desire to serve humanity, your customers, your colleagues in a collaborative open-minded way able to capture, understand and act on the all the inputs and new trends we perceive.

QUESTION: Any message for Esade Alumni Members?

Become a super collaborator and harness the most powerful tool of these times: feminine leadership.

Forget about leading through control, instead shift your leadership to a collaborative one, where you are present, very present, to listen, build trust, create unity, and install a collaborative mindset.

Men also have and should develop their feminine traits but overall, the best teams are always those that balance the feminine with the masculine, able to harness and give equal opportunities to both to be and become:
the best companies for the world.

You can watch here more ideas I shared during the keynote offered during the event.