During 2020’s Covid pandemic, high street retail faced a catastrophe. But the high street legend John Lewis Partnership saw it as an opportunity - to take the time to refresh their purpose and galvanise their 78.000 Partners. 

Today, Nina Bhatia, Executive Director, Strategy & Commercial Development at John Lewis Partnership, sits down with Given CEO and host Becky Willan to discuss how the Partnership’s Purpose became more vital than ever. 

Find out about the co-creative strategy used to update and embed their new purpose and how it's propelled John Lewis Partnership into bold new business areas outside traditional retail. This episode will help you identify the right time to reset your purpose agenda and show you how to implement a plan to embed and activate your purpose. 

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

Apologies for the typos, this is an AI transcription

This week, I'm joined by Nina Bhatia. Nina is the executive strategy director at the Don news partnership. The largest employee-owned business in the UK. She's responsible for expanding the business into exciting new areas, such as financial services, housing, outdoor living, and the secular economy through this conversation, you'll learn to judge the right time to reset the purpose agenda in yours.

Set the right process, plan, and place and make a refreshed purpose, really stick within the culture of your organization. Before I speak with Nina, let's take a quick look back at her career to learn how she became responsible for shaping the next chapter of one of the original purpose-led businesses.

Nina is currently one of five women on the seven-member board at John Lewis's partner. A diverse group of individuals responsible for delivering a daring plan for one of our most iconic businesses, but transforming British retail. Wasn't always her goal.

But I felt that becoming a lawyer in one country was gonna be very, very narrowing. So I wanted to seek something which would give me a much broader. With landscapes to work in and I love the variety. So for me, it was how can I make a difference in as many different environments as possible and keep learning and keep solving difficult problems.

So for me, I like to solve difficult problems and work with interesting people and interesting places. That's what she likes to do. Um, so I stand the perfect venues to do that.

In an opportunity to transform and set spare on the next chapter, a strong heritage business.

So Nina, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Becky. Delighted to be here. Can you

And what I would say was a number of factors at play. One is, you know, we were in uncharted territory, we were in a new circumstance for our business. We had to over the space of a weekend, close all 50 of our John Lewis stores whilst maintaining three, 300 to 400 weight road stores feeding the nation. If you will.

Some of us had to do that within the few weeks from the business Sharon joined in February, I joined a few weeks after her. A few things came clear. One that these unprecedented circumstances were going to persist for a while in some way. Secondly, we were not dealing with a business that had no purpose.

No. Our founder had created the partnership with a very clear purpose and with a very clear mission, as an employee-owned partner own, as we say business, but he created the partnership as an ongoing experiment to find a happier, more trusted way of doing business and, uh, working together to build a more.

And then of course we were also talking to our customers. And one of the things I do in, the business is look after a lot of our customer research and what we were hearing and what many businesses are probably hearing. Is that the why of a business, the why we're here, um, is of increasing importance?

To many cohorts of customers, not just younger generations, but their parents and their grandparents. So our purpose whilst it talked about the happiness of partners did not fully, uh, resonate with either our partners or our customers. So we felt we needed to take a look again and not in the stores of a teardown, but in the stewards of sensitive restoration.

So that's what led to the modernization of our partnership purpose, which. And I'll say it here, working in partnerships for a happier. You

A sector that was facing extreme pressure. Why were you convinced that exactly, that was the right moment? And was it a challenge to convince anybody else on the exec or in the leadership team? In the context of all of that disruption that undertaking this piece of work, which might have very far-reaching implications for the business was justified.

In some ways, there's never a better time to look at purpose than when you are facing difficult times. We felt that there was never a better time to look at our purpose because when times are difficult and you're making tough choices, you need to be able to point to the reason why you're here and people have to believe it and they have to feel it.

Then they have to want to care about being there. So from our standpoint, we felt that there was no better time to start looking at our purpose, to see what it meant to us and how it would help. Um, make decisions, but, and I would say, you know, our previous type, it wasn't being effectively used to help us prioritize and to, and it rarely featured explicitly, uh, in our decision making.

So we felt this was a real opportunity to modernize and bring it into the four.

Uh, we are owned by our employees, partners as we call them. And therefore bigger decisions like modernizing our purpose are not just the preserve of the executive or the board we have, as you might know, a democratic set of institutions, which includes a council that gets to vote on something like modernizing our purpose.

So it was really important to engage. Council. It was really important to take the views of partners in the round. And the one thing I would say was that it was very important to create a legitimate process because of course, 80,000 partners are not going to agree on everything. And therefore, whilst you can hope to get full support for the outcome, you really must get this full support for the process.

And I think what got people over the line in terms of why and why now was our commitment to a process that would do that. And I think that built a lot of confidence amongst those who might have had some reservations.

We started the process a little bit more top-down than I would ever recommend it. So we did start the process as an exec working for quite a type group. And that process met with resistance because it did not carry the legitimacy of our democratic institutions and did not. It was not as inclusive as I think it needed to be.

So we had to press the reset button. And I think that again is very healthy. Part of the organization that we are one that's co-owned by partners. The first thing is this was explicitly not the piece of work that ended up being led by the executive. I would say I was the sort of sponsor and the background but in quite a recessive way.

And speaking personally, that was quite challenging for me, cause I'm not used to being recessive in a process like this, but it was intentionally set up that way. We then put front and center a group of partners, a working group partner. From across the partnership who had put themselves forward to review and, and refresh the purpose.

And this included people, partners who worked in our shops in the supply chain, in our, um, office environment. And they were, they were brilliant. I mean, they were on this alongside their day jobs for about a year. And it was the largest listening exercise the partnership had ever undertaken. So we invited all partners, all 80,000 partners.

And the fact that we gave this time meant that people had sort of elapsed time to get used to the ideas, to sort of life with them and try them on a bit and see how they felt. And, you know, whilst we wanted to be at the pace, we allowed the elapsed time to sort of work its magic. And when we eventually had a sort of candidate territory, we then put those words out.

All of our partners, again, through the mechanism of our partner forum, where partners can express their views. And we had annotated versions of the words and we played those annotations back to the partnership partners could see them. Yes, I made that comment about the word happier and they've listened to me and I can see how they've changed it, or I could see how they haven't.

So that seeking feedback and closing the loop, I think was what gave the process real legitimacy and made the difference.

I just wondered how partners respond to being allowed, to shape the agenda. What kind of feedback did you get from partners as a result of the process? For

me

First of all, the working group that I mentioned was genuinely surprised and stunned that, that we would sort of let's go over the process. And allow a group of partners just chosen and self-selected to put their name forward from thousands of other partners, to do this that was regarded as ambitious and trusting.

And I think trust was a really big part of it. I think the second is partners appreciated the notion that their views would be heard and taken into account. And I cannot, I cannot underscore the impact of people seeing. Their concerns were raised and explicitly dealt with, and that loop's being closed.

I think that's very powerful because often in large organizations, you give feedback on something, you make a point and then it sort of disappears into a black hole, never to be heard again, but we took care to close that loop. And then we also made sure that this wasn't just an internal listening exercise.

So I think partners appreciated it. Having a lot of the external stimulus that we brought them, to the table shared with them, as you know, they had to use that, not, not be in opposition to it. And I think partners again, felt trusted. And then, of course, you know, we had the courage of our convictions to put this to the council, you know, sharing our thinking, and then coming back for an indication.

View and then a final vote. You know, this was pretty momentous. I mean, there's been many, many decades since we've done this in quite this way. So yes, I think I, as a partner, felt very nervous and I think, um, partners felt that we had done the right work in the right way. I think the,

A career working in PLCs and, and outside of that sort of really very different construct. So I was wondering what advice you would share with colleagues who are in a PLC but want to learn from the approach that you took at the partnership in terms of authenticity, legitimacy, and, and sense.

This was a piece of work that was delivered by the people of the organization for the people of the organization, any sort of learnings that you think, or the most important learnings to take outside into, um, other businesses who don't have the benefit or in some cases, the complexity of that democratic model.

I did feel that I understood a little bit about what it was. To be a co-owner of a business and therefore really hold very close to my heart. The, um, the why of why any business exists, but to come back to the substance of your question, you know, what, what advice or what observations would I have for those in more conventional settings?

I think I say three things. One is you would be surprised at what people tell you. If only you would ask them. I think this is one of my big learnings. Of course, we know that when we think about customers, but if you allow. People within the organization have a voice. It's incredible what you hear because after all, these are the people who are closest to the delivery of the product or service and are very close to customers.

I would just say, have the confidence to trust people with the problem. And to get their views, but having been both partners in professional services firm where one's paid to solve difficult problems quickly, and secondly, having been in a variety of executive roles, I'm used to leading from the front.

So being recessive in this kind of process was challenging, but very satisfying once I allowed it to happen. And I think we live in a world where executives are. Feel, or are expected to leave from the front. Sometimes leading from behind can be equally if not more effective.

It

Could have the purpose of working in partnership for a happier world. So that for me is crucial. It's got to speak to the organization's history and heritage, and it's also got to be instantly recognizable and it's also got to be instantly relevant to the future. And I think you can't manufacture authenticity either is there, or it isn't.

And I think one of the reasons for is so authentic is because we didn't start with a blank sheet of paper, we started with what we had. And then we went back into the archives to look at everything that was written by our founder and his successes to look at everything that we. Experience as a partnership and some of the things we've done.

And, you know, if I look back at what our founder did, you know, he founded a business that was intentionally there to make only sufficient profit and do good. He founded a business that provided healthcare before the NHS, did he founded a business that was inclusive from the start, you know, employed women and enabled women to keep working after they had got married.

Some of those ingredients are around. Why we are here to create a happier world to create better circumstances and social mobility? We're deep in our archive. We were able to pull on these themes to sharpen them up and shine them, for today's time. You know, authenticity is one, I think the level of modernity that works, but without being gimmicky, I mean, none of us wanted a kind of clever strap line that.

You know, shine brightly for a few moments and then disappear like a fading firework. That wasn't what we wanted. What we wanted was something real that would stand the test of time. I think the third thing that makes a good purpose is relevance. I do think that the context of our founder was a bit different from the context we find ourselves in today.

And I think talking to the customer. Or being able to speak to customers and our other stakeholders and more than one generation was important. And I think that's why we needed to modernize the wording. And how

So you have the statement working in partnership for a happier world, but you haven't stopped there. You updated the constitution to reflect that idea as well. So one of the things that I see is, and I think it's one of the challenges is that there are lots of businesses that have a purpose statement.

There are fewer truly. Driven organizations. And I think there is real power, in your principles and the constitution. Could you talk a little bit more about sort of what role that plays and, and why it's so important, not to just update the strapline, but to go further than that?

It wasn't just a set of words. It wasn't just taking what we called principle one and modernizing that one line because principle one lived in a document called a constitution, which governs the entire partnership. So we knew that in attempting to modernize the purpose, we were effectively also going to have to amend our founding documents and that's quite a big deal.

And. As with anything of is such important, you have to be very delicate with it. And you have to be very portable because you have to live with the consequences and they will be enshrined in a document for the next, hopefully, 20 5,000 years. So our constitution, we knew from the start that we would have to amend this.

If we manage to get a unanimous vote on a new purpose, a modernized. We would have to amend our constitution, but we didn't just stop at that first line working in, in partnership for a happier world. We had three sorts of themes of principle wonder beneath it. So happier people. That's customers or partners, happier business.

Are we a commercially successful business doing the right thing, a happier world, which is all of the impacts we have beyond the four walls of our business? So we had a set of principles that then flowed under each of those three headings. So yes, it, it, it meant that we had to think quite deeply about who we were and how we operated under those three banners, which I think.

Was hard. That's what took a bit of time, but it also means that we feel more confident that this thing is going to be lived. Okay. And so

It is a multi-year exercise and we have to treat it that way because there'll be bumps. There'll be S there'll be things that don't work.

So not long after we had unanimously, devoted the purpose through. And why was that important? Well, one, most organizations have one of these surveys, but we wanted to. Anchor it in the purpose and ensure we have a language that people would then use, it would be anchored in purpose. I think that also gives us a baseline to measure our progress.

The second thing we're doing, and that's an ongoing thing is ensuring that we embed our purpose and some critical questions about how we make decisions, and critical points in the business. So whether that's at the partnership board, whether that's amongst the exec, whether that's at the council, whether that's in individuals and leaders, objective.

Purpose has made an appearance in all of that kind of scaffolding of the business that needs to reflect the why. The third thing that we have done with partners as a whole is we didn't stop at the engagement to create the purpose we've given ourselves the target that every partner will have had a conversation about purpose within this year.

We've made significant progress already by the middle of the. And that conversation is at two levels. One, what does our purpose mean to you in terms of the business? But secondly, what does it, and how does it connect to your purpose? Because we think if you can't locate or attach. What you are here to do with what the partnership is here to do.

That's a missed opportunity. So those are some of the things that we're focusing on in the year. And then, of course, our purpose is also making the appearance in some of our propositions and what faces customers. If I pick an example, our rental housing proposition. That was acutely anchored. In fact that we have a housing shortage, but equally lots of the players are playing in there.

But how is our proposition going to be unique? Of course, what could be more fundamental to happiness than your home? So it's enabled us to think will be different about a rental proposition that will be unique in the market. So that people will say, yes, of course, only John Lewis partnership could have come up with that rental proposition.

So it's making an appearance from everything from our engagement survey, right through to, uh, a new proposition. So it makes

So what. Some of the things that you've done in that area, there's a

Folding John low. I mean, of course, that's a sustainable proposition, but what could be better? What could be happier than a good night's sleep and sustainable products? So I think, it creates the umbrella and the narrative for us to explain many of the things that we are doing. But there are a few examples of things that I think would not have happened in the same way without the purpose being modernized in the way that we talked about.

So, first of all, you may be aware that we have been the first retailer to promote equal parental leave. So not shared parental. That equals parental leave. Why? Because we recognized that it was not making partners happy. Is that for them to take their leave, they had to take lead from another parent.

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But uptake of shared parental leave was so low for that reason. So we felt that this was the right thing to do based on the feedback from our partners, but B is completely consistent with our purpose and a great beacon for it. So that's one example. Of course, we are now paying the voluntary, real living wage nation.

And again, I think that was driven by this kind of access to purpose.

And I'm sure it will be a, a combination of those, but do you have any early sort of conclusions about where the biggest, uh, levers for change around how decisions get made are whether it's more in the sort of cultural part of the conversation, or if it's more in the sort of nuts and bolts

Well, there is a combination of the two. I, I think what I'm observing myself is, you know, when you have to write a board paper for which there is a required section, how will this advance our purpose? You have to think differently. I found that that's made a very big difference to the way I respond to some.

Normal corporate governance that I've experienced in lots of organizations, is the opposite end, of the spectrum. I think it is beginning to change my conversations with my team, and the people I work with. If I at the start of a meeting, say, how's it going? What's on your mind? I'm going to get one set of answers.

But if, instead I start the conversation with what would make you happier might get some of the same things, but I've discovered you have a slightly different entry point into the conversation and perhaps some slightly different answers and a different way of solving them. So I've found that to be.

Invigorating to both ask and answer the question differently. Yeah. I

I was wondering if any conversations happen at the partnership today where you don't think. Your purpose is relevant. Having been through that process of making sure that it's modernized, it's relevant for the context that you are in, uh, it speaks to partners and customers.

Um, I can't think of any topic for which our purpose is not. But that doesn't mean that we sort of wrote like introduced it into every conversation because that's artificial. But I do think it is in the backdrop and it's increasingly in the backdrop of partners as they do their jobs every day, as they make decisions, as they think about what the partnership is and why and why it's here.

So I can't imagine not having this purpose alongside me, written in my notebook, playing a role in decision making

There's no better time than a crisis to reset the purpose agenda. If your business is not clear on its purpose or it's not driving decisions you need to get to work, it could be the one thing that sees you through the challenges ahead. Changing an existing purpose takes longer than starting. You need to bring the right people and build in enough time to listen to what's most important, but identifying the ideas that are holding you back so you can move forward with substance and legitimacy, the right purpose changes, and virtually every conversation that happens in your business.

It's like learning a new language. You need to give everyone, especially your leaders, the time, the tools, and inspiration to make it happen and make it real. Every. If you'd like more practical advice on building a purpose-driven business with brilliant insights from people like Nina. Download the insider's guide to purpose.

Given agency.com/insiders guide.

Purposing is produced by Fascinate Productions