Where Corporate Values Meet Our Own – Reflections on the Business Roundtable

The Business Roundtable’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation has sparked wide and heartening discussion in the business world. I’m inspired by the Roundtable’s public signal that “hard work and creativity” are keys to success, coupled with its commitment to “training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world.” These sentiments are precisely what drove me to launch Spring Street!

But a Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation (or, in my view, of any organization) should also invite a statement on the purpose of the people who work there. Long-term value creation matters, of course, but creating value must mean valuing creators. After all, the very individuals these CEOs lead and represent have more agency than ever before. Employees are now treated as customers. And these customers’ purpose has evolved, too.

My parents instilled a strong work ethic in me from a young age. Both spent most of their careers in a single field, education or public service, and for only a few employers. In their generation, working hard and performing well often translated to lifelong employment. Having only a few jobs was the norm; having multiple careers was practically unthinkable.

Those days are gone, likely forever. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average stint at a company is 4.6 years (make that 3.2 years for those 25-34 years old), and research suggests planning on 5-7 different careers across one’s lifetime. Stability and predictability have given way to uncertainty, but also to growth and self-determination. In a swirling environment, we crave centeredness and a clear personal narrative to anchor us as we bob and weave in and out of companies and careers.

Who am I? What do I value? Why should I choose to work here rather than down the street? People lucky enough to have employment choices are beginning to make these decisions more deliberately than prior generations.  As the nature of work evolves, more of us are thinking deeply about how our jobs further our purpose and values as human beings and global citizens. Companies, therefore, have an increasingly important mission to identify their own corporate values, communicate those values clearly to all constituents and actively find ways to embody them. This is not a nice-to-have luxury; with intention, corporate values can be the megaphone to attract talent and instill guiding principles for culture creation. Genuinely held values are powerful – they permeate office walls and help shape how we relate to our fellow human beings.

And this leads me to my lasting takeaway from the Business Roundtable. “Each of our stakeholders is essential.” This is public acknowledgment of what I have long believed: to create true long-term value, corporations must honor the power, contributions and needs of employees, consumers, suppliers, workers and communities, not just shareholders. The new statement signals how interdependent and, perhaps, delicate our ecosystem of work truly is. We rely on our broader community to achieve equilibrium. We’re a long way from realizing that stability, of course, but this feels like a healthy and significant first step.  Let’s see who we can become when we put our values front and center.