The case for putting your mission at the heart of your strategy

In HBR article, “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy,” the authors describe an intensive study they conducted to understand the strategies high-growth companies use to drive growth. The authors were surprised to discover one strategy that kept coming up: putting purpose at the core of your company’s strategy.

The authors write, “We began to recognize that many of them [high-growth companies] they had moved the purpose from the periphery of their strategy to its core – where, with dedicated leadership and financial investment, they had used it to create sustainable profitable growth, stay relevant in a rapidly changing world and deepen bonds with their shareholders ».

Through my thirty plus interviews with Chief People Officers (CPOs), Waymo serves as one of the best examples of how a strong sense of purpose can drive culture and ultimately growth strategy. In this interview with the CPO Becky Bucich, does a great job breaking down Waymo’s culture and the work their team does to promote it.

Waymo is a self-driving technology company with a mission to make roads safer. It started as the Google Self-Driving Car Project and is the first company to enable autonomous travel for members of the public. The company has just over 2,000 employees, or “Waymonauts,” and its cars operate in Phoenix and San Francisco.

Mission-Driven Culture at Waymo

Asked to describe Waymo’s culture in a nutshell, Bucich offered three phrases:

1. Mission-driven: The company’s bold mission to make roads safer is fundamental to its culture. “We’re really driven by Why. We’re really intentional about understanding why people chose Waymo from day one during the interview process,” Bucich said.
2. Security and accessibility: “This is what we do every day,” Butcich emphasized. “I still remember my first day at Waymo over four years ago. During my orientation, we each shared why we joined Waymo and the stories were so moving. People talked about family members who couldn’t get behind the wheel and the tragic loss of loved ones.”
3. Stronger together: Waymo’s culture is based on working together to bring its technology to the world. “We are solving our biggest challenges together,” Bucich said. “This partnership is about psychological safety and knowing you’re never alone, even when you’re working on some of the most demanding jobs. Waymonauts know they have extremely talented peers standing by and ready to help.”

Waymo maintains its culture through three unique initiatives

Bucich shared three critical ways Waymo promotes its culture:

• The Waymo Way: During monthly all-employee meetings, Bucich and her team take time to tell the story of a Waymonaut who excelled at demonstrating the company’s value. “Lifting the stories of the bearers of our culture highlights values ​​and teaches others,” he said. “We highlight these stories through an email publication that we send across the company. Writing includes background on the person, what makes them special, and the specific story we want to share.”
• WaymoServe: Employees across the country are encouraged to volunteer as a team and support local nonprofits. “We set aside time for employees to volunteer in the community,” Bucich explained. “This past fall, some of our volunteer efforts included nonprofits such as Compass Family Services in San Francisco, the South LA Teen Tech Center, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Arizona. This spirit of volunteerism and commitment to the communities in which we operate is critical and something we do day in and day out.”
• Accessibility: “I think about accessibility in the context of a community, specifically,” Bucich said. “For example, when we launched in San Francisco, Co-Chief Executive Officer (Co-CEO) Tekedra Mawakana reached out via all of local publications in San Francisco. It wasn’t just about reaching a wider audience. It was about approaching micro-communities such as e.g Chant Tao, a Chinese language version. We know we’re building for the world, so we want feedback from across our user base in different cities.”

Early learning helps develop front-line managers

Bucich pointed out how important frontline leaders are to the employee experience, saying, “People go home every night and talk at the dinner table about their experience at work. Often, their manager is the most pivotal person who either makes or breaks their experience.”

The first point of contact that all front-line managers at Waymo receive is training new managers after three weeks on the job. Regardless of your previous experience as a manager, you must attend. “We don’t assume anything and make sure we have a good foundation for all our managers. We cover our manager’s philosophy and expectations, which are developed specifically within Waymo,” he explained.

Once the foundations are in place, Bucich takes a “startup” approach to developing front-line leaders: “We provide enough training ahead of time. For example, after conducting our employee engagement survey, we train based on the results.” Bucich and her team also hold manager circles, where younger managers can learn from another manager who has more wisdom or experience in a related skill.

What worries Bucich most about Waymo’s future?

As Waymo scales and prepares to open markets in Los Angeles and Austin, Bucich shared that what gets her out of bed every day is the impact Waymo has on thousands of people in their daily lives. “I think of my aging parents or a friend of my son’s who is visually impaired. Waymo enables them to maintain their independence and feel safe doing so.”

Kevin Kruse is its Founder + CEO LEADx, scaling and sustaining leadership behaviors with behavioral nudges, micro-learning and cohort-based live workshops. Kevin is also a New York Times bestselling author of Great leaders have no rules, 15 time management secrets that successful people know, and Employee Engagement 2.0.