It is a sign of things to come when news of a conference about purpose in business and work arrives in your inbox.
Evidently this “exploration, celebration and amplification of the growing momentum around ethical, regenerative and social impact business” has been running since 2015 — who knew? And it is no fringe event for transcendentalists — this year’s speakers include Simon Holmes á Court from Climate 200, the Chief Purpose Officer of KPMG, Richard Boele and Chief Impact Officer at Bank Australia, Dr Sasha Courville as well as a host of purpose driven start-ups.
Where economist Milton Friedman once said the social responsibility of every business was to increase profits, in the last 15 years, purpose has become intertwined with profit as corporates “rethink value and how it is created”.
Cynical CEOs and Boards take note — your employees and your customers are happy for your company to make money, but they also want you to address issues such as sustainability, inequality, diversity and digitisation, according to EY Global.
For a contemporary case study, look no further than Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who last week gave away his US $4.4 Billion company divesting 2% of all stock and decision-making authority to a trust, and the other 98% to a non-profit called the Holdfast Collective, which “will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities, as quickly as possible”, according to the statement.
It would be easy to say that the rise and rise of business with purpose is a new post-COVID back-to-basics fad. But we have just been reminded that a large part of Queen Elizabeth II’s public appeal was her apparent lack of personal self-indulgence (other than a Dubonnet and gin before dinner and a bang-on funeral).
Former PM Paul Keating’s statement on her death summed it up well:
“In the 20th century, the self became privatised, while the public realm, the realm of the public good, was broadly neglected. Queen Elizabeth II understood this and instinctively attached herself to the public good against what she recognised as a tidal wave of private interest and private reward.”
The Queen stood as a conservative alternative to the acquisitive capitalism of the Post War 60s, the narcissism of the 1970s ‘Me’ generation, the vulgar overspending of the 1980s — and the obsession with self that has transpired ever since with the proliferation of social media such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Now we are seeing a new generation of Zs (born 1997 to 2012) who are rebelling similarly against excess with their powerful commitment to purpose. These digital natives are the School Strike for Climate tribe, or as Forbes magazine says, “the sustainability generation”.
“The pandemic didn’t start the sustainability revolution, but it has put it into hyperdrive, and Gen Z is in the driver’s seat.”
For the last eight months, Fuller has been working closely with the Department of Premier and Cabinet to develop a new immigration recruitment strategy for South Australia, and together we were proud to launch A New State of Mind several weeks ago. The creative was developed completely in SA with local producers, videographers, artists and musicians.
The exciting difference about this campaign is that it is not just trying to make Adelaide look like Melbourne or Sydney — we will never be them. It is not trumpeting our ‘20 minutes from the beach’ lifestyle which doesn’t, at the end of the day, guarantee a fulfilling career. Nor is it trying to get just any bum on any Qantas seat — we are flush with over 55s.
It is a hyper-targeted campaign designed to address the important shortfall of 20-40 year olds in South Australia and attract those who will go on to build our state with their innovative thinking and technical skills — these are the socially aware Gen Zs.
Extensive research by the Department of Premier and Cabinet undertaken with young people who had already moved to SA in the last few years found that this is “the place you live if you want to live with purpose, where your actions can have lasting results.”
The essential premise of the campaign strategy is that if you want to attract global talent away from big, impersonalised cold cities you have to play to our advantages — small, connected….and purposeful. As the campaign says:
“A New State of Mind isn’t about status. It’s an identity of power to make change; make your mark. It’s for people like you, wanting to renew. It’s about rediscovering South Australia as a diverse, progressive, sustainable and innovative state world-changers choose to call home.
“Recalibrate, reset, rejuvenate, reignite … whatever way you look at it, a New State of Mind is calling you to make a move. To surround yourself with game changers, world leaders, innovators and eco warriors. The ripple effect is in motion. Are you ready to be part of it?”
This isn’t simple advertising hyperbole — it’s truth.
If you were born here it’s ingrained in your DNA that we were one of the first free settlements in the world. There were no convicts, there was no martial law. The pioneers that arrived from grey London, squinting at the southern sun, could practice religious and political freedom unheard of in the old country.
It’s of course jarring that, to achieve this freedom, the indigenous landowners had to give up theirs. But at least we were the first Australian colony to ensure evidence from Aboriginals could be accepted in courts of law (1844), the first to offer the vote to Aboriginal men alongside white men (1856) and the first colony in Australia (and the fourth place in the world) to grant adult women the right to vote…and this included Aboriginal women (1894).
We are proud of many other social achievements: South Australia was the first part of the British Empire to legalise trade unions (1876); the first to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, colour or country of origin (1966); the first to decriminalise homsexuality (1975) and the first to return freehold title to Aboriginal communities (The Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act 1976).
Today we take these things for granted, but it took courage and a sense of destiny to achieve these reforms in the 19th and 20th century — all because we were settled with a purpose.
At the launch of A New State of Mind, Premier Peter Malinauskas said “this is South Australia’s time”.
He spoke eloquently without notes but the gist of his speech was, that despite our ethical leadership, other states have been more materially successful than us.
Victoria’s gold rush of the 1850s and 1860s pumped billions of pounds into the state’s economy and set it up as Australia’s economic capital. New South Wales and Queensland benefited from the coal boom of the last century, and they became economic powerhouses through steel, electricity generation and heavy industry. Western Australia captured much of the new wealth in Australia from the late 20th century through the fortunes of iron ore and other metals.
The Premier said our leadership in climate-friendly technology (we now rival Denmark as number one in wind and solar power generation in the world, and we expect to be the largest global generator of green hydrogen by 2025) and our optimistic outlook in defence, space, high value metals mining, health, medical and creative industries as well as wine, food and agribusiness positions us as an exciting 21st century global hub.
This is the place and this is the time.
It is up to us to take up the challenge, tell the story and drive a new purposeful generation of South Australians.
The US anti-slavery campaigner Ralph Waldo Emerson may well have written the mantra for our New State of Mind 150 years ago:
“The purpose of life…is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”