Plumbing and purpose

It’s a terrible and inappropriate metaphor, but this virus is proving an incredible petrie dish for organisational resilience.

For a long time it’s felt like there were two, quite separate routes to success in the modern economy. One was to focus on the plumbing — operations, data and availability. The ability to link up inventory, delivery and customers to work smarter. To be able to tell a customer that the thing they’re thinking about is available right now, 3.7km away, on aisle five, or can be on their doorstep by midday tomorrow, or behind the counter at their local newsagent in the morning — that’s the plumbing. It’s helped many profit-led, values-free, extractive businesses thrive in the last few years, like a series of Bali dropshippers — making money without delivering meaning.

The other was purpose. To focus on the values of the business and the value it delivered to society, not just customers. To build emotional connections, relevance and a strong internal culture. The reasoning goes that the plumbing is less relevant in such a business — because people will seek you out and spend more money and effort doing business with you.

But perhaps this artificial division is coming to an end during the crisis. It’s the combination of the two which is helping some businesses thrive, rapidly adapt their models and build relevance and trust.

From Dixons Carphone, who have suddenly switched to being an online retailer, and who are planning to open drive-through and contactless stores. To my local sustainable brewery, who have switched from supplying pubs and cafes to supplying thirsty locked-down drinkers direct.

Not to mention those like Burberry, LVMH and even BrewDog, whose immediate reaction to the crisis was to switch their plumbing — their production capacity — to making something more useful than raincoats, perfume or beer.

Compare that with brands like Primark or British Airways, who it turns out have just one business model — and one that, while wildly profitable in the old reality, has proved to have little or no resilience built in. (Nicholas Taleb will be laughing into his sleeve).

But as well as availability in the world — plumbing — brands rely on mental availability to thrive. How many brands that were prospering will go under simply because people forget about them? As others have pointed out, the brands that have changed their delivery model and succeeded have done so precisely because they were brands, and not just products. (My yoga teacher has switched to online classes and all the people she’s built strong relationships with have followed — because her teaching is about what and why, not how. How many cut-price gyms will be able to stay the same?)

I suspect Dixons Carphone, with a strong internal culture and purpose, will survive, because they are now realising that they’re not about shops, they’re about helping everyday people access technology that’s ever more vital during lockdown. During the crisis they’ve bolstered that brand purpose by giving away free DAB radios to isolated people and announcing a partnership with Age UK to make sure older people can have access to the latest technology, including tablets pre-loaded with the most important apps.

Compare that with the dreadful state of the US food market, where farmers who exist only to serve massive, now-empty processing plants, are destroying crops and slaughtering livestock, even as demand for food rises. The crisis has exposed the fragility of an industry based on monopoly, maximising profit and efficiency at the expense of serving people. It’s plumbing without purpose.

Meanwhile small farmers, who know that their job is to grow food for people to eat, are switching to direct delivery and thriving — or at least, surviving. Because they have a purpose, they can switch the plumbing.

The same truths can be applied to charities, many of whom have had to change how they operate overnight. Those with a strong purpose and culture will adapt to survive — and find partners, from volunteers to charities to coalitions, who are willing to help them do so. Those that are over-reliant on one business model — whether that’s at the service delivery or the fundraising end — will struggle. The focus on culture and internal operating models we saw before this crisis must not surely accelerate. They’re vital to survival when everything else is thrown in the air.

Purpose isn’t enough if your operating model isn’t resilient enough to be able to survive in a new reality. But plumbing alone won’t save you if people don’t care whether you exist or not.

The two working together can be a powerful force for adaptation and change, for resilience, relevance and availability. My hope is that purpose will stop being an empty copywriting exercise, and start manifesting itself in the plumbing of the organisations it serves.

When you know why you do what you do, changing the what is easier.