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In this period of crisis, employees, clients and customers are looking to leaders for reassurance, inspiration and courage to guide them through the storm. The challenge for these leaders is now to steer colleagues and associates from business panic to brand purpose. A four step pragmatic approach for organizations:

STEP 1 – a meaningful pause: a chance to reflect about your business, its future, about your employees, staff. Are you following your mission?

STEP 2 – overcome purpose inertia: the importance of purpose for businesses has emerged and its strong correlation with profit. Just 27% of consumers can name a purpose-driven brand. One of the most important causes is that the sheer inertia of business as usual makes it hard to activate purpose where it has not been active before.

STEP 3 – bring purpose into the future: roots are always important, but brand purpose today should light the way forward in this changed landscape. Ask yourself: What does your purpose lead in this needs-driven moment?

STEP 4 – how and where to act: your purpose-driven reset must go beyond words and messaging to action. We have three core spheres of action:
1. Reframing capabilities: most dramatic and direct approach. The goal is to contribute in a meaningful way in the near term.
2. Reframing operations: immediate concern for many businesses whose staff have had to accomplish remotely what they had customarily done in person. Operational disruptions provide opportunities to gauge whether your adaptions actually further your purpose.
3. Reframing relationships: treating your employees as essential partners in this crisis is likely to forever transform the relationship those companies have with their staff.

It may be weeks or months, but one day, a version of business as usual will re-emerge. By turning business panic into brand purpose now, we might re-join a world which has paused to rediscover itself, and reframed its mission to press on holder and richer agendas.

[Complete article, “Shift Your Organization from Panic to Purpose”, available at https://hbr.org/2020/04/shift-your-organization-from-panic-to-purpose]