Having purpose at the heart of your business is essential for meaningful brand impact. It’s also essential that your purpose is understood by all areas of your organisation. 

But with growth, unpredictable change and societal shifts, can your purpose become irrelevant? Was it clear enough to begin with? And how do you know when it’s time to change your purpose? 

Today, Becky is joined with Chris Jackson, Group Head of Colleague Experience at Centrica, Leading energy services and solutions provider focused on energising a greener, fairer future. In this conversation, they’ll be discussing when it’s time to change your purpose and how to implement a new one that is clear and understood across your organisation.

Do you want to learn how to build a purpose-driven business from Given, the consultancy that’s helped some of the world's largest organisations become purposeful? Download the Insiders’ Guide to Purpose HERE.

Chris Jackson Final Episode

Today, I'm joined by Chris Jackson, Group Head of Colleague Experience at Centrica, the international energy and services company, which includes businesses like British Gas, BordGosh, and others. Centrica Business Solutions and Hive. In this conversation, we'll be exploring when it's time to change your purpose and what to do about it.

You'll be hearing about the process of evaluating whether your organization has got the right purpose, what the most important thing is to ensure the long term success of a new purpose, and what the biggest challenges are to overcome in terms of implementation. Before I speak with Chris, I'd Let's find out about the key moments in his life that have led him to build a career focused on helping people achieve their full potential.

In his early years, it was evident that Chris was a people person. After leaving university, he worked for Turning Point, a charity that focused on substance misuse and people with disabilities. But like many people starting out in their career, His priorities were really three things.

[00:01:40] Becky: But later on, his goal of making money was turned on its head with the arrival of his baby daughter.

[00:02:00] Becky: It was then that Chris knew that progression wasn't enough. He needed more. He needed purpose.

I don't want my kids growing up having to make choices that I haven't had to make because of the actions I've taken or not being able to experience things that I've been able to experience because of the actions that I've taken.

It

[00:02:57] Becky: This spurred Chris on to becoming a trustee for the Stephen Lawrence Trust, now Blueprint for All. This helped him find a real sense of purpose, to empower more people to thrive in their careers.

There is definitely something in there about helping and nurturing and developing people to reach their potential and that's probably the thing I enjoy most about my current job.

[00:03:29] Chris: Thank you, Becky. Great to be here.

[00:03:42] Chris: Yeah, of course. So our senior leadership team, so the SLT, I'll probably mention that as we go through, we're talking about the state of the business.

Results were looking very positive. But what we're starting to think about is how do we move from operationally stabilizing the company to starting to think about growth. and driving the organization into the future. And we, we started to have a bit of a discussion about strategy and how, as an organization, we start to think about creating value in the future.

You may not know Centrica that well, but you probably do know British Gas. So we have a British Gas business, which sells supplies, energy, and services to customers across the UK. as well in Ireland, that does something very similar. So, uh, We have a trading business, which helps to kind of optimize use of energy for companies and also buys the energy for our customers.

And we have an infrastructure business that we have 20 percent nuclear fleets. We have some oil and gas facilities. And so we've got a range of different businesses across the energy system, but our strategy and the value that we create is only really realized when you start to bring those things And as a group, we were starting to talk about how do we stop focusing in silo on the bits that we do day to day, and how do we start to think across the company.

And the thing that seemed to be missing was a common thread, a common sense of what we were all trying to achieve. We had very strong individual purposes and strategies and areas of focus, but across Centrica, it was perhaps a lot weaker. We sat down as part of one of our top 100 events and started to talk about, okay, What about purpose?

What are we all trying to achieve as a company? And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that that wasn't consistent. And that wasn't something that people were kind of either inspired by collectively or felt was particularly actionable. In fact, we had a sort of survey as part of the event, which asked people, did they feel inspired by the purpose and more than half said not particularly.

We also asked the question about whether they felt Centric was a particularly purpose led organization. And again, nearly half said not particularly. And so that was the kind of starting point or the kickoff for us thinking about purpose. We needed something to galvanize the organization behind and the one that we had just wasn't quite doing the trick.

[00:06:49] Chris: Yeah, I'll hold that for a moment though, because I think since Chris O'Shea has taken the role as chief executive, I think he's been really, really clear. That's for the organization to be successful and to perform the people that work for it Need to feel a real connection and feel super engaged about what they're doing on a day to day basis.

Well, that's a Senior leader or a person talking to colleagues on The phones or, uh, the great colleagues that we've got that go out and go to people's houses and fix their boilers as a boiler or install new central heating systems. That sort of common sense of purpose and how much that's important in engaging people has always been, I think, really central to a lot of what Chris has brought to the company.

So I wouldn't underestimate as we embark on a growth strategy, trying to drive the business forward, how important it is that we do connect our colleagues to it. Kind of interestingly, as we've. We've worked through it, the other business benefits start to become much clearer. So as a leadership group, being able to articulate strategy in a consistent way to the market, to colleagues, to customers is really important, um, using it to make decisions about where we do invest our money.

Um, for those people that sort of watch Centrico potentially as a FTSE 100 company, you'll know we're investing a few billion pounds over the next, um, year. four to five years, we've made that commitment to the market in, to grow the organization in renewable sources of energy and so on. So making those decisions and making sound decisions that are consistently understood and aligned to the value that we create, which is the, I suppose, the point of having a purpose is really beneficial and will be really beneficial to keep us straight on the choices that we make.

So that there are some really big commercial business benefits, but I really wouldn't underestimate, you know, Talking to colleagues and customers about the value we create and how important that is for a company like Centrica.

So, what was the approach that you took to that work? You know, who was involved? What did that look like? And I think crucially, how is it different from the previous exercise, which perhaps might have had lots of the right ingredients, but clearly hadn't landed in the organization in the right way?

We

[00:09:20] Chris: you're experts in certain things. Related to energy and the production or sale or trading of energy was certainly expert in those things in terms of setting out and creating a clear sense of purpose and how do we think about that and hold that we were pretty clear that we weren't super expert in that and that that's obviously how we came to know each other Becky because we engaged in You and your team to support with that.

And I think that was a really important point because when we look back to how we went about it a couple of years prior, we did treat it a bit as a sort of business exercise. There's a problem here. We don't have a clear statement of purpose. What's the kind of quickest and easiest route to identifying collection of Words and sentiments that we can best describe what we do as a company and then how do we talk to people about it and get it done.

And I think what we recognized was that that wasn't going to be effective or appropriate because we can't change our purpose every two years. I mean, that was pretty obvious. So getting some external input was really, really important. So that was number one. I think then number two and three would sort of relate to the kind of leadership buy in.

So getting the chief executive and that leadership team in the mindset that we need to take this seriously. It needs investment, it needs both financial investment, because we need support to think this through, but also time and effort from a leadership group. And I sort of go back to the point about Centrica being a point of significant transition.

We stabilize the company, we need to grow. It's not a kind of straightforward decision to dedicate a load of senior time. And when I say a load of time, we have quarterly senior leadership team, a couple of days off site, which is a top hundred leaders come together. So we dedicate a huge amount of time of that.

We've got the central leadership team that comes together and we probably spent three, four, five hours talking to them about it. So significant amounts of leadership time on this topic. So there's a big arse there and we had to get that group around us and then there was an effort to make sure that as we thought about building out what this purpose could look like with external help that we brought the senior leadership team, so a good cross section from that top hundred, together into a group of individuals who could help steer the conversation, provide input and create a sort of sense of collective ownership of the work rather than farm it out to corporate affairs or farm it out to the kind of HR function.

So that was really important. And then I think the third area I would say is making sure that once we start to get kind of leadership, sponsorship and engagement in the topic, once we've got external input to think, help us think about how we Design it, develop it, evolve it, implement it. We then make sure that we're involving colleagues, customers, and shareholders in the discussion to shape it.

So it doesn't just. fit our needs as a leadership group and make sure all of the stakeholders are going to be impacted have some kind of input. And so that was the kind of framing of it. We need external input, we need senior leaders to buy into it, particularly the most senior levels, because it's a big commitment.

And then we need to make sure that we're touching each of the key stakeholder groups that we need the purpose to have an impact with. And so that was the big area of

And then we can get onto, I guess, the important question about how you're making sure that that's more than just words on a page.

So, you know, really talking to our teams, our stakeholders, our customers about the fact that we see it as our role to really energize this transition and to play a massive part, you know, a part that's appropriate for one of the UK's largest energy companies. So that was really important, a really active word, really clearly articulated and connected to what we do.

I think the greener and the fairer bits are clearly very, very important for us. The greener element hopefully speaks for itself. I mean, as a business, we can't hope to survive unless we are supporting and part of the energy transition. And clearly, you know, as a company that sells gas, that's got British gas as one of its main brands.

thinking about how we transition to that greener future is really key. And it's really important clearly that customers, colleagues feel like that is our ambition. And we're, we're talking about what that looks like in the future. And I think the fairer bit within that becomes really key because we know, we can see that If we are not careful as a country, as a company supporting this on a global basis, if we're not careful, the transition to a greener future will potentially leave thousands and thousands of people behind.

You know, fitting a heat pump is not inexpensive. Changing, you know, Uh, our habits is not an easy thing to do and can be quite costly. And we are worried about that. And we are concerned that this idea of a just transition needs to be something other than just good words on a page, but simply the skills and industries that we've had in the past may or may not be there in the future.

So how do we make sure that we don't end up in a situation where we're closing down industries in certain parts of the UK and not reskilling people because we've seen that in pretty recent past. So the fairer bit was really, really key. We want to go green. We want to support that transition, but we've got to do it in a fair way.

And then the third area was the future piece. As I said at the start, really, we as an organization have to be aspiring towards something that is greener and fairer continuously into the future, because whilst we can make changes now, this is going to be a long, hard road to net zero. And the idea that we've got to focus continually on what that looks like into the future becomes really key and we hope it's quite inspiring and quite engaging for our colleagues, you know, this idea that there is something different that we're going to create in the future, something different for our children and So, yeah, we're really pleased with it, and I think really happy with the reaction it's got from colleagues and leaders, because I think it ticks off the role we want to play, how we want to play it, and the kind of long term aspiration that we have for the company.

[00:16:23] Chris: Yeah, I can. Hopefully it's sort of appropriate on these sort of things. I guess there's learnings for us, actually, as we've tried to land it, because my initial reflection is we probably have launched it.

And we've spent a lot of time communicating it. We've spent a lot of time communicating the process. the kind of detail of the information to get to the answer, which is really important. The leadership group. We spent a lot of time engaging people, which is part of that journey so that when you launch it, people feel some ownership for the thing that they're talking about.

So we spent a huge amount of time on that. We spent a huge amount of time thinking about how we talk to colleagues about it and landed in the organization. I think You know, if you were to say, do, are people aware and are they conscious that there's been a shift and a change to our purpose, we'll have achieved that objective, essentially, which I think is really, really good, and we're really happy with that.

We also pulled together a sort of group of senior leadership team colleagues. To identify five or six kind of symbolic actions. And some of those things have followed through. So things like setting up customer facing teams from across all the different business units and bringing them together to look at the products and look at our customer service and understand whether it is energizing greener, fairer future or not.

I think that started to happen. If we think about the investment decisions that we make and the presentations that go into the CEO and the finance team, when people are asking for money to invest in. particular growth projects. Again, it's present and it's part of the decision making process. So we have made some progress, but I'd say we launched it and we communicated effectively.

We made a few tweaks, but we perhaps haven't been quite as successful actioning things off the back of it. And that just, I think, shows how hard change management is, right? So now we are starting to look at that again and start to think, you know, how do we embed this in a broader culture change program?

Because I think we perhaps overemphasized initially the idea that purpose was a thing in its own right, we wanted to launch it and talk about it and we wanted to try and land it in the business. I think what we've established is that we need to connect that much more clearly To the strategy, obviously, so, you know, the purpose being our why the strategies are kind of what are we doing and then the cultural elements, the change that we need to see for the purpose to be realized in how we work and behave is the other elements.

So we sort of launched it, but it wasn't landed quite in the right way because we were talking about it maybe as a slightly. separate thing, when in fact we need to talk about it much more coherently alongside the culture we want to create and the strategy that we need to deliver. And that's where we are now.

So we're trying to bring those, those component parts together so that it starts to land in the way we work, as much as, you know, land in the kind of, you know, the consciousness of people. Yeah. And so that's really hard actually. Um, and I don't think we've succeeded at all yet, you know, for people who are thinking about doing this, the sort of business readiness and the change management elements off the back of it are really, really important because, you know, otherwise it's just a set of.

How is purpose useful if you're trying to create a cultural transformation in a business like Centrica? Yeah.

And because we believe it's inspiring purpose and there's a really, really compelling story around a greener, fairer future, we believe that creates the sort of platform or the reason to be open to change. And so as we think about landing this and launching it with colleagues and really working into the kind of day to day conversation, we believe the power of that story creates.

the moment and the opportunity to introduce the behavior change that we would like to see. So, you know, we want to energize a greener, fairer future because, you know, A, B and C. Oh, good, great. I want to get behind that. To achieve that, we need to, we need to see the following changes in the way that we work.

We need to have a growth mindset. We need to be open to new, different ways of working, new technologies. We need to Test stuff that we've not done before because the old solutions won't necessarily get us to this greener fairer future We need to take ownership. You know, we're energizing this transition.

We're one of the largest energy companies in the UK We have to play a part if we don't play a part if British gas is not the forefront of some of this then Who else is going to do it? So we have to take ownership for this activity And when we think about the way that we're set up we have a retail arm that sells supplies energy And services solutions, we have a trading arm that helps optimize the grid, optimize the use of energy, get energy from suppliers to the point of need.

We have infrastructure, part of our business that helps to generate energy that's required for our customers. We have to work as one team. You can't have one part of that going off in one direction, pumping out loads of pollution, and the other half talking to customers about how they're helping people transition to net zero.

You have to work as one team. So again, to get to this point of energizing green and fairer future, we've got to take ownership. We've got to be open to new ways of working, different ways of working. And as a team that works across the energy system, we have to work as one team. It all stems from this drive to energize green and fairer future.

And that's how we're using it at this stage. And from there, it's again, the same sorts of things as we talked about the purpose, senior leadership buy in at the highest levels. Very clear plans about how you're going to engage colleagues in that journey. And then just a lot of really hard work as you set out the way you're going to behave and then try and role model it and reward the behaviours that you see.

And that takes a lot of effort and that will take a number of years we expect.

Or do you have any hunches about sort of how it might be different? Or do you think actually it will look like a really well done culture transformation program? won't be that different.

I've worked in financial services and seen some of these, particularly when it's come down to culture change to try and meet regulatory expectations. There's quite often a bit of a lack of, emotional connection to that. Yeah. You

[00:24:25] Chris: exactly. Like we have to do this. We have to show that we're changing our culture and then you hardwire it into your processes and your reward mechanisms.

And people sort of know it becomes almost code of conduct type conversation. And I suppose that what I'd hope is because people, we spend a lot of time at the leadership level, getting people emotionally engaged. in this topic. And it is something that really matters to people, like, you know, everyone, whether they've got their own family or family and friends or whatever, like this idea of a greener, fairer future is something that I think is front of mind for a lot of people.

It feels like maybe there'll be less of a sense of it being a kind of programmatic change, maybe something that can be, you know, Felt a little bit more, a bit more of an emotional connection to it. I think the other thing that I suppose is different, we hope, about the way that we're going to do this is that again, if I use the sort of regulatory examples, kind of where we made a change to this rule or this mechanism, we expect we're going to report on it.

And then if no one, you know, follows this new rule or We see that people aren't doing what we expect them to do and there'll be some sort of report and some sort of action taken off the back of that report. I think what we're hoping here is we get a bit more of a movement. So again, we sort of connect the emotion and we start to try and drive the cultural change through sort of role modeling and rewarding the people that take the first steps and, you know, do something that is, you know, Demonstrates that they're energizing green and fairer future and that they're taking ownership or they've demonstrated great mindset.

So, you know, it won't be without certain element of stick. I'm sure at certain points, you know, if you completely refuse to start to change the behavior or behave in a way that we need you to behave to drive the business forward, then there will be has to be consequence of some sort. But I think what we're trying to drive is a bit more of a movement attached to this kind of emotional connection.

I want to change. I want to go towards this cultural shift because. I believe it's the right thing to do because our purpose is so strong. Now, I sound probably like a kind of HR person painting a beautiful picture, and I appreciate it when it's as simple as that. But I, conceptually and in practical terms, that's how we're trying to create a movement rather than a program.

And

[00:26:32] Chris: you know, big stick and make sure everyone follows it.

But I'm really interested to get your perspective on sort of what this HR teams. And whether you think there are any particular. Skills or capabilities that are therefore really important for senior HR people, leaders to be thinking about for themselves and for the people within their teams.

I mean, at the top line, my role in this was as part of the senior leadership team. Part of my job does include leadership and culture and performance, and therefore it was interesting to me. But I, I feel like the initial work was more because. I'm a member of that senior leadership group rather than necessarily the people, people function now as it happens because internal communication sits in my team and the people function so we had a few of the leavers so it made sense for there to be a sort of home kind of working with your team Becky that sat in the people function but we've tried really hard to make it clear that this was not a people led Activity.

This was an activity that was sponsored by the centric leadership team and sponsored by 12 to 14 senior leadership team members. So, you know, 14, 15 of the top 100. That's really important because I think what we're fighting against actually, as we start to roll this out is that it doesn't become purely a people based thing.

Now there's a bunch of people, professionals who should be involved because they've got expertise. It's like, you know, if you're trying to get the best out of People by driving a clear sense of purpose and connecting it into the mechanisms that get people to behave in a certain way. You would ask the people function to support with that.

[00:28:40] Chris: Exactly. So you definitely ask them, but they can't be led out of there because each of the leadership. That's the first thing I would say. I think the second thing when we ask specifically about people, and I use the word people rather than HR, because we make quite a deliberate transition from human resources to a people function, because what we're trying to drive is a clearer sense of our role being about the things that help drive change.

individual and collective performance of our teams. And I suppose the kind of this sort of sense of how do we support leadership teams to make the organization or create an organization that's super effective and creates the conditions for people to be able to perform their best, be that good leadership.

be that the right skills and capability, be that the right processes, the right org design and operating model, be that a clear sense of purpose and culture, what will it take to get the best out of people? Now we still have to do the kind of human resources type thing, we have to pay people and we need to do employee relations, but increasingly, Yeah, increasingly, how do we make, how do we kind of look at that and automate that activity and support line managers to own that activity and then focus our time on the things that will make the big difference around performance and purpose is a good example.

And so that would be the big shift that I would start to describe, the value that we can add. Is to be the partner around the table that says, you know, if you do this or you do that in the organizational, the environment you're creating, it will get a better or worse outcome than colleagues. The purpose element is, you know, a really good example of that.

We might not have held that two or three years ago as an area of expertise that we could advise on.

[00:30:18] Chris: Now I 100 percent expect every member of our people leadership team to be able to talk coherently about the role of purpose and how it has an impact on the performance of. People and therefore the organization.

So big shift, I think, from maybe more traditional HR to a people function that drives performance.

You know, where would you like to see things in, I don't know, five years time, for example? What would success for this culture, strategy, purpose transformation work look like?

So I suppose I mentioned just a moment ago about it being business led. And so what we've done is taken maybe half of the Centrica leadership team as a sort of subgroup. So these are the direct reports of Chris, the chief executive, they are sponsoring and working up what the next two to three years will look like in terms of the cultural shift.

We expect to see now again, as I described earlier, we're using the purpose as the platform for driving that change. And our intent is that by the end of the first quarter, we expected everyone to know about it. By the end of the year, we expect everyone to know about it and to be really conscious of managers and leaders starting to live and role model the purpose in the day to day.

settings. That's a kind of immediate requirement. We have to see that. Otherwise we can't make all the other changes, but to define what's going to happen over the next two or three years, that centric leadership team group are working on that as we speak. And we'll start to work up proposals around reward and performance and development and leadership that will start to action.

So we haven't got a sort of formal answer of what it looks like in five years time because That's going to be the almost senior leaders in the organization are helping to shape that as we speak.

It's being enabled or facilitated by the people team so that the most senior So leaders within the organization get super clear about what that looks like. And then we'll sort of drive that change through the organization over time. So yes. Yeah. Well, Chris, thank you for being such a brilliant guest on Purposing.

It'd

[00:33:11] Becky: Thanks again to Chris. Lots of brilliant insight there about the relationship between purpose and culture. So here are a few things that I've taken from the conversation. Put purpose on the agenda for your next SLT offsite.

Make time to ask whether your purpose is working for your business. If it is, how will you go further? And if it's not, what are you going to do about it? Is it a problem of understanding or inspiring action, or is it that the purpose you've got no longer serves the ambition of the business? Don't underestimate the role of a powerful purpose in driving culture change.

It can provide a real motivator to improve ownership and accountability, break down silos, inspire agility, and a growth mindset. Design a movement, not a conventional change program. Think about who your influential early adopters are and make it about role modeling, recognition, and reward.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like more practical advice on building a purpose driven business with brilliant insights from people like Chris, download the Insider's Guide to Purpose at givenagency. com forward slash thinking.