In times defined by disruption, from market volatility and AI to geopolitical flux, growth must be designed, not assumed. For this installment of Uncommon Growth Leaders, Chiaki Nishino spoke with Beth Wood, Chief Marketing Officer, and Brad Kaufman, Head of Digital Marketing and Marketing Operations at Principal Financial Group, about what it really takes to lead with purpose, clarity and resilience. 

Beth, let’s start at the top. When everything around you is changing, how do you ground leadership? What’s most important to you in those moments of uncertainty? 

Beth: It starts with clarity of strategy, purpose and values. You need a strategy that recognizes the forces outside your walls and gives people something stable to hold onto. Once you’ve got that, you repeat it, over and over. I often say, communicate, communicate, communicate. 

And you can’t drift from your core values. Those have to stay constant no matter how much the world changes. At Principal, we make our values visible, literally. They’re on walls, desktops and in conversations. We measure ourselves against them. If we’re not living up to them, we act. 

The other piece is followership. You want to build an organization full of people who would follow you anywhere, not because they have to, but because they want to. That’s how you build trust. 

Followership isn’t about hierarchy; it’s about belief. People follow leaders who are consistent, transparent, and authentic, leaders who show them the “why” behind the work, not just the “what.” When your team understands the purpose, when they see that you’ll make the hard calls and stand behind them, that’s when loyalty and engagement take root. 

I tell my leaders all the time: your goal is to earn discretionary effort; the effort people give because they believe in you, not because it’s written in their job description. When you’ve built that kind of followership, alignment becomes effortless, communication becomes more direct, and performance accelerates. It’s not about charisma or being liked, it’s about credibility and care. People will follow you through ambiguity if they trust your intent and your direction. 

Brad, how does that show up in your day-to-day leadership? 

Brad: Consistency is everything. The best leaders don’t just communicate clearly once they keep reinforcing the same message until it sticks. Words matter, and how you use them shapes trust. 

Consistency doesn’t mean being rigid; it means being reliable. When people know what to expect from you, even in uncertain times, they can move faster and make better decisions. It builds confidence. If you’re changing direction every week or framing the story differently every time you speak, people lose track of what matters most. 

I remind my team that clarity compounds. Every time you repeat the same vision with the same intent, you’re reinforcing the signal in a world full of noise. Consistency gives your people something to anchor to, and that’s when influence becomes sustainable. 

And when it comes to driving transformation, we always start with the problem. Teams love to jump into solutions, but I bring them back to the core question: what problem are we trying to solve? Once that’s clear, alignment and creativity happen naturally. 

The past few years have been incredibly disruptive. How do you balance short-term performance with long-term vision? 

Beth: You have to think with both sides of your brain. Short-term results matter, but if you only chase the urgent, you’ll never innovate. Our teams understand their role in both horizons: to solve today’s problems and to imagine tomorrow’s opportunities. 

I tell my teams constantly; you have permission to think big. But people need to hear a long-term idea 10 or 20 times before they start to believe it’s real. Repetition turns aspiration into culture. 

Brad: Exactly. I always say it takes a thousand one-on-ones. You can’t just say the vision once and assume people internalize it. I literally pull out our original project decks months later to remind everyone where we started. 

And psychological safety is huge. If people don’t understand something — or disagree — they have to feel safe to say so. That’s how you keep people aligned and engaged for the long haul. 

Beth, how do you make sure your teams stay customer-centered, especially in a large, complex organization? 

Beth: We keep our finger on the pulse. We run monthly “pulse” surveys, maintain multiple customer panels, and manage the long-standing research called the Well-Being Index that tracks optimism and financial health among small and midsize business owners. 

We also co-create with customers. We ask them directly: how would this work for you? They always bring perspectives we’d never think of on our own. That collaboration builds better solutions and a stronger brand. 

Brad: And for people who don’t directly engage with customers, we build the mindset into the culture. Everyone should think like a student of the business, curious about what the customer is doing, and how it impacts their role. That outside-in perspective needs to be automatic, not occasional. 

When budgets tighten, how do you still foster creativity and innovation? 

Brad: It’s about bending the curve. Every team is asked to do more, with more complexity, at higher quality, in less time. That equation doesn’t add up unless you change how the work gets done. 

“Bending the curve” means finding leverage, through process improvement, smarter workflows, and, increasingly, technology. You can’t outwork exponential complexity, but you can outthink it. That’s where automation, data and AI come in. 

Our job isn’t to work harder; it’s to work smarter. That means auditing what’s manual and finding opportunities to automate, investing in skill development so the basics become second nature, and then deploying new tools to multiply impact.  

Beth: Our CEO made a commitment to train all 20,000 employees on using AI to improve productivity and customer experience. And it’s working. People are realizing it’s not about replacing work; it’s about freeing up time for higher-value thinking. 

The key is embracing it. The tools are here, but you have to be willing to learn, experiment, and use them to do things differently. 

You’ve both talked about performance and development. How do you manage that “vital middle” of performers — those who aren’t low performers but haven’t yet hit their stride? 

Beth: With clarity and courage. The top performers manage themselves. The middle is where leadership happens. I have regular “Why do you stay?” conversations because I want to understand motivation. 

Once expectations and skills are clear, the question becomes: are you filling the role we need? Half the time, people rise to the occasion. The other half, we talk openly about fit. Direct, transparent conversations are how you build trust. 

Brad: There’s nothing more motivating than the truth. You don’t have to be harsh, just real. People appreciate it when they know exactly where they stand. 

Beth, you’ve been described as a sponsor of talent. How do you think about growing leaders? 

Beth: I hire people for the job I think they’ll grow into, not just the one they’re hired for. With Brad, for instance, he came to me after 20 years at Principal and said, “I want to do something different.” That’s gold to me. I just needed to open the door, provide coaching, and get out of his way. 

I ask one question constantly: how can I help? That’s it. If people need me, I’m there. If not, I move aside. 

I also host something called The Orange Room, a casual, no-agenda session every few weeks where anyone in my organization can ask anything. It builds transparency, trust, and connection. 

Leadership isn’t just about skills, it’s about mindset. How do you build resilience in your teams? 

Brad: For me, resilience starts with perspective. I encourage my team to step outside their own viewpoint, especially in moments of tension or frustration. When conflict happens, I’ll ask, “What’s the other person thinking right now?” or “What do they see that you might not?” 

It sounds simple, but that question resets everything. It slows the reaction, diffuses defensiveness, and shifts people from emotion to curiosity. When you practice that regularly, it becomes a leadership muscle. You stop seeing challenges as personal attacks and start seeing them as opportunities to understand context and improve outcomes. 

Resilience isn’t about being unshakable; it’s about being adaptable. It’s the ability to take feedback, reframe setbacks and move forward with perspective. And when leaders model that it cascades through the team, people start mirroring calm instead of chaos. 

Beth: I completely agree. A big part of resilience is choosing how you interpret what’s happening around you. You have to assume positive intent and that can be hard when you’re under pressure. But most people aren’t out to make your life difficult; they’re simply trying to solve their own set of problems. If you can start from that mindset, conversations become more productive and you stay in control of your own energy. 

Another dimension is discernment. I always remind my leaders that not every battle is worth fighting. Every hill isn’t a hill to die on. Part of resilience is knowing when to engage deeply and when to let something go. Leaders who can focus on what truly matters, who can separate the noise from the signal, move faster and inspire confidence in others. 

I also think resilience grows from community. People are more resilient when they feel seen and supported. When leaders create space for honesty, vulnerability and reflection when they normalize saying, “This week was hard” that’s when resilience becomes collective, not just individual. 

Brad: Yes, and it’s contagious. When you model composure and curiosity under pressure, it gives everyone permission to do the same. That’s how you create a culture that bends without breaking. 

Personally, how do you both stay inspired and balanced as leaders? 

Beth: Watching my daughter play hockey grounds me, its joy, pure and simple. I also read constantly, mostly business books and blogs like Seth Godin and Simon Sinek. I pull one or two takeaways from each and apply them. If they work, I keep them; if not, I move on. 

Brad: I’ve tried to make my job about what I love: technology, data, process. When you align your work with what energizes you, you don’t burn out. 

And I protect my time. Nights and weekends are sacred. I tell my team the same; rest isn’t a luxury, it’s a performance strategy. 

Before we wrap, anything we didn’t cover that feels essential to uncommon leadership? 

Brad: We don’t talk enough about leading humans. There’s no playbook for when someone’s parent is sick or their kid’s struggling. You can’t lead effectively if your relationship is purely transactional. 

Beth: Yes, and that care has to be real. People can tell when it’s performative. Be authentic, be vulnerable and let people see who you are. That’s how you build trust. 

And remember: every person on the team has a role. As John Wooden said, everyone must know their role and trust that others will perform theirs. When you have that trust, everything else flows. 

Chiaki: Beautifully said. Thank you both for sharing so openly. What stands out to me from this conversation is how practical and human great leadership really is. It’s not about having all the answers about building trust, showing care and helping people find clarity in complexity. The way you balance both purpose, performance and empathy is exactly the kind of leadership that fuels uncommon growth. 

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Chiaki Nishino, President of Prophet, sat down with Michelle Froah, a global marketing and innovation leader, to explore the leadership traits needed to drive impact in a world that’s anything but ordinary. In a conversation packed with insight and real-world examples, Michelle opens up about challenging legacy thinking, co-creating across silos, and why slowing down can sometimes help you move faster. 

In today’s high-pressure environment, there’s constant pressure to deliver growth. How do you push boundaries when it’s often easier or expected to do things the way they’ve always been done? 

Michelle Froah: One of the most powerful skills I lean on is co-creative problem solving. It’s not about having all the answers, it’s about bringing together brilliant people from across the business, especially those who’ve been working in silos and building solutions together. When teams feel ownership and safety to challenge norms, innovation happens. 

A great example is when I was working at CoverGirl. At the time, the “eyes” category — mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner — was seen as a small piece of the business. But when we dug into the data, we found that eyes had higher velocity and margin than any other category. That insight reframed how we approached strategy and led to innovations like LashBlast, which ultimately elevated the entire brand. It was a team effort powered by data, creativity and cross-functional collaboration. 

That’s a perfect example of disruptive thinking. What leadership trait do you rely on to drive that kind of disruptive change? 

MF: Hands down: collaboration. It’s often called a “soft skill,” but in reality, it’s one of the most durable leadership capabilities. At ETS, we tackled a full transformation: business strategy, brand and innovation. But we couldn’t do it alone. ETS is a 75-year-old nonprofit with a deep research legacy, so we had to bring everyone along from researchers to business units, to functions including marketers. Only by co-creating together did we launch a new brand and strategy in under nine months.

People think rebranding is about logos and colors. It’s not. It’s about aligning everyone around a shared mission. When we unveiled the new brand, everyone walked out as a brand ambassador. That only happens when transformation is co-owned. 

Sounds like leading change requires both vision and execution. How do you balance the two? 

MF: You absolutely need both. When you set a bold vision, and then break it into tangible building blocks, you make big change feel possible and doable. Leaders need to set a future that feels bold, even a little scary, but also provide clear steps so teams see how to get there. 

I’ve seen this in practice at both Samsung and ETS. At Samsung, we rebuilt customer trust after the Note7 crisis by directly engaging our most loyal customers and partnering our marketing with customer service, something that hadn’t been done before. At ETS, we ensured that transformation wasn’t just a marketing initiative, but something embedded across business units, research and operations. 

In both cases, it was about setting a vision and then collaborating across silos to make it real. 

How do you stay inspired to lead through all this complexity and pressure? 

MF: Two things: First, I stay close to the work. I host working sessions, not just decision meetings. I want my teams to feel like we’re in it together not just presenting for my approval. It builds trust, encourages team development and gets better solutions faster.

Second, I look outside the walls of the organization. I stay active with groups like the ANA and The Marketing Society, sit on advisory boards and take the opportunity to mentor and be mentored.It keeps me curious, humble and open to ideas from completely different industries and perspectives.

Collaboration clearly plays a big role in your leadership style. How do you build a team culture that supports creativity and experimentation? 

Michelle: You’ve got to embed it in the culture. It starts with accountability and investment in talent. At P&G, where I spent 18 years, 50% of your performance rating was based on results and the other 50% on organizational capability — how you developed your teams and others across the organization. That instilled in me a responsibility to grow talent that delivers outcomes, not just deliver outcomes. 

So I always ensure that my teams have personal development objectives. Growth can mean deepening expertise or stepping into new, uncomfortable spaces to expand capabilities. Either way, it forces collaboration, mentoring and continuous learning.

What’s been one of your biggest leadership challenges to drive growth? 

MF: The biggest challenge is often inertia, the resistance to new ways of thinking. But if you can tap into people’s sense of purpose and show them the value they’re creating, you turn skeptics into lifelong partners. 

Transformation is hard and can invoke skepticism. At Samsung, during the Note 7 crisis, we had to rebuild trust. And we did this by engaging our most loyal customers and working hand-in-hand with the customer service team to create new experiences like white-glove service. It pushed us to innovate in ways we hadn’t before. 

At ETS, launching a new business unit and workforce solution was an investment that required significant buy in across the organization. But when you tap into people’s desire to make a difference, you gain an opportunity to build relationships that may turn into lifelong partnerships. 

Final question: What’s the anchor point of your leadership — something you rely on no matter where you’ve worked? 

MF: I’m naturally driven, fast-paced and not afraid of change or risk. One of my favorite poems is The Road Not Taken, because I’ve always chosen the less-traveled path.  

But I’ve learned that sometimes slowing down helps you go faster. When you give others time to catch up emotionally and strategically you get stronger buy-in, better ideas and faster momentum in the long run. 

So yes, I still love a good sprint. But I now know when to pause and bring people along. That’s how you turn a big idea into a movement. 

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Since the seemingly overnight emergence of ChatGPT, businesses everywhere have been buzzing about generative AI’s impact, particularly on process efficiency and workforce productivity. While the benefits in those areas are indeed transformational, we’ve been struck by how consumers and their perceptions and experience of AI have been largely sidelined in the conversation. Similarly, we see immense opportunities for GenAI to unlock growth, a frontier of AI transformation many businesses haven’t yet reached. 

That’s why we’re launching a study to explore: 

• What are consumers doing with GenAI today, and why?  
• How will GenAI affect them?     
• What are their plans for the future? 

The “tl;dr” on Our Initial Findings  

While the quantitative research is still underway, we wanted to share initial findings from our qualitative sessions because we think the implications are potentially profound. Specifically, we see clear evidence of the rise of AI-powered consumers who are moving faster, doing more and expecting more in terms of fast, frictionless and individualized offerings. They seem increasingly ready to turn over more of their lives to AI, are watching brands’ commitments to ethical AI, and are deeply invested in finding even more ways to benefit from it.  

Thus, firms looking to spark sustainable and transformative growth with GenAI will likely need to accelerate their plans to get ahead of – or even keep up with – the most creative-minded early adopters and power-users. That’s especially true for firms in retail, CPG, hospitality, financial services and healthcare, which are in the vanguard of GenAI adoption. We hope the insights in this article help you connect the dots between your AI strategies and the emergence of the AI-powered consumer.  

What Consumers Are Telling Us 

As is always the case with new technology, consumers have diverse views about GenAI. There are power users actively adopting GenAI across many facets of their personal and professional lives and more passive and cautious adopters. Tinkering is the norm for many in the middle. Each of these groups exhibits different uptake and usage patterns. There is also considerable nuance in their attitudes toward AI ethics and responsible adoption by businesses.  

Despite these distinctions, the initial phases of our research yielded evidence of five meaningful patterns in consumer adoption of AI.  

1. All Types of Consumers Are Moving Surprisingly Fast  

Conventional wisdom says that businesses are leading the way on AI, but our research shows that consumers are moving faster than many companies realize. When talking to us about AI, consumers used their own terms and definitions. They clearly see the value of the apps and tools they use and do not feel overwhelmed by AI’s complexity. That’s true of even the slower and more cautious adopters. Natural language processing – and voice integration – are of great interest to all types of users, because they make GenAI tools feel more accessible than the digital tools and platforms of the past.   

• What consumers say: “With AI, I don’t have to go down the rabbit hole of Googling my ailments but can have a conversation. It says, ‘it could be this’ and I say, ‘no, it’s not that.’ That’s better than having to read and read. AI scans for me and has a conversation,” said a somewhat frequent 60-year-old user.  
• So what: Because consumers are moving fast, there is urgency to identify new ways to engage with AI-enabled experiences that map to consumer needs and preferences. 
• Who’s doing it right: Colgate-Palmolive is leveraging AI to improve consumer experiences across the journey – from enhancing search with AI, to personalizing creative, to rapidly prototyping and testing product innovations.   

Consumers are using generative AI tools before, during and after purchases.

(Enlarge image)

2. Beyond Personal Productivity, Consumers Prioritize Creativity, Fun and Inspiration

Productivity is a big part of AI’s attraction. But our research shows that inspiration, shopping and fun are other major motivations to use GenAI. One consumer told us about how he enjoys creating AI images on his phone and sharing them with friends.  

• What consumers say: “When I’m on the bus, I will click over to [an AI image generator] and put in some words and just play around for 15-30 minutes,” said an occasional 30-year-old user.  
• So what: For businesses, creative AI-driven marketing activations and experiences can boost engagement by creating joy and delight.  
• Who’s doing it right: Warner Bros.’ Barbie AI Selfie Generator allowed users to design their own unique Barbie. Reaching 13 million users in just a few months, the generator was a hallmark of Barbie’s world-class marketing campaign.  

3. Consumers Have Strikingly Specific AI Aspirations

That old paradigm “if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” may be less applicable as modern consumers become more tech savvy and have easy access to powerful tools. Consumers don’t necessarily grasp the technical fine points or legal guardrails about AI; but they are pretty clear about the experience they want.   

• What consumers say: “If I could enter what I want to eat and if my fridge could use AI to analyze the ingredients I have, what I need from the shop, and then build a shopping cart I can review and order, that would be great,” said a somewhat frequent 65-year-old user.  
• So what: Because consumers are imagining new ways to use AI, they can help imagine and co-create breakthrough applications as part of clearly defined innovation processes.  
• Who’s doing it well: Coca-Cola’s Creations platform provides a space to engage consumers and capture their input for new product innovations. The Y3000 Flavor of the Future was created by leveraging consumer insight and the power of AI to drive engagement with Gen Z, the brand’s growth target.  

4. In the Eyes of Consumers, ChatGPT is Only the Beginning

The first killer app of the GenAI age, ChatGPT is incredibly powerful for consumers and among the most popular and frequently used apps. But consumers hope to use many other applications in the future, largely because they see the limits of ChatGPT; as one consumer told us, “It only takes me so far.” In fact, they are looking for more nuanced, bespoke answers to the questions they need. 

• What consumers say: “I’ve tried things like ChatGPT for trip itinerary planning. It’s helpful but doesn’t get that detailed. If I want to know details like the safest place to walk around as a woman, it can’t give me that yet,” said a high-frequency, 23-year-old user. 
• So what: Consumers want more precision, meaning businesses can develop bespoke solutions based on proprietary data and look to deliver on unique brand promises. Build, buy and partner – depending on the use case, each of those approaches can be viable.  
• Who’s doing it well: Via a partnership with OpenAI, KAYAK used its historical travel database to train GPT-4, the large language model. The goal is to help users find travel experiences meeting their precise needs.  

5. Consumers Are Paying Attention to How Businesses Talk About AI 

Consumers told us they want to hear about AI, but within preferred contexts and applications. If an experience is piloting or experimenting with AI, consumers appreciate a call out that it’s AI, and that it’s “still learning.”  

Some consumers are annoyed by “overly promotional” language about AI; they are looking for authenticity and transparency instead. We also heard about the importance of brands communicating their commitments to use AI in ways that align to the organizational purpose and values – clear evidence of consumer interest in AI ethics.  

• What consumers say: “I’m thinking about what brand do I want to support with AI? Who is investing and being thoughtful in terms of protection and checks? And which firms are brazenly advancing and not so worried about protection?” said a high-frequency 23-year-old user. 
• So what: Because consumers are paying attention, brands should be deliberate in crafting intentional, authentic messaging around AI, presenting it in the moments that matter. The focus should be on explaining brand intentions and providing helpful and transparent guidance. For more ways Marketers can use AI, see our Four Ways to Maximize Value  
• Who’s doing it well: S&P Global is taking a holistic approach in positioning its brand for the age of AI. It’s developing an AI brand narrative linked to its company purpose, designed to resonate across its wide array of audiences. From there, it’s integrating clear, consistent messaging across all of its brand communications and experiences that stem from that positioning. 

Ethics Matter on the Road Ahead 

Discussions of AI are incomplete without mentioning ethics. And, according to our research, all types of users – from cautious adopters to more pragmatic users – have AI ethics on their mind. The common theme is that ethics and brand intentions matter, though they will influence decisions differently in different contexts and for different users. Consumers aren’t just blindly adopting every GenAI app; rather, they are thoughtfully considering and – in the case of power users – calculating where they want to spend their time and engagement. 

Imagine a world where multiple AIs work in the background to find bargains, negotiate better prices for consumers, and make smart purchase decisions. Or where personal assistants connect accounts and act on consumers’ behalf across financial services, healthcare and other sectors, particularly with those companies that have cultivated trust with their AI deployments.  

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Chiaki Nishino: Given the disruption of the last few years, marketers are often asked to take on greater accountability to demonstrate immediate impact and ROI of marketing investment while creating tighter alignment with the business outcomes. Has that been your experience? If so, how have you shifted your strategy to show impact?  

Theresa McLaughlin: It is a very interesting time to be the global head of marketing especially when considering the evolution of digital transformation. When I was at TD Bank Group, the organization’s investment in third-party digital increased from 5% to 50%. Now it’s shifted to first-party digital investments.  

When the digital transformation first began, it wasn’t about brand storytelling but performance marketing. It quickly became a competition of performance marketing versus brand marketing. And that probably needed to swing in this direction to ensure there was a return with performance marketing investments.  

But when COVID hit, the proliferation of content in the media became intense, and organizations needed to shift to build more authenticity.  

Given all I have seen, I’m a big believer in brand and demand. I want to ensure that my budget in brand, individual business unit marketing and incremental campaign budgets are all looked at through an integrated model of brand and demand. Ultimately, I want to drive the brand into the product experience and the performance marketing strategy.  

CN: How have conversations with your C-suite and board changed as you take on new accountability in driving and proving business value?   

TM: There absolutely is pressure to demonstrate ROI, but as the global head of marketing, my job is to lean into storytelling. For example, we pull together the story and data in the right way, to show how we are influencing the full-funnel experience for our target audience and clients.   

When communicating the brand investment, I lean into classic upper and lower funnel brand metrics, but brand is about what clients say it is, not what we tell them. Therefore, metrics like NPS really matter when talking about the brand experience. I expect tough questions from across the executive team, so I lean into data to tell the story that proves marketing’s ROI. What got us here is not going to get us there, which is why we are making the case for brand investment. 

CN. How do you partner with other internal business units and teams to unlock new opportunities for driving growth, and how has this evolved in recent years?   

TM: T. Rowe Price is a global organization, so sitting within that global distribution organization is essential.   

When partnering with my sales organization, I’ll start by standing up with the sales management team and collaborating on initiatives such as lead management, product marketing and positioning, and RFP management as just a few examples. Cross-functional leadership is crucial not just for marketing but to deliver better business outcomes that truly meet the needs of our customers.  

CN: In our research, we found that effective marketers work to build modern marketing organizations and experiment to win. Do you have any examples you can share where you’ve been able to implement these two principles effectively?   

TM: At T. Rowe Price, every part of marketing is in a constant state of transformation, which is why the principle “experiment to win” resonates with me. We have many opportunities and playgrounds where we can test and learn new strategies and techniques, and our team’s new talent has upgraded our approach to experimentation.   

In terms of building a modern marketing organization, getting your operating model is critical. It is vital to take an integrated approach to the operating model. This is why it’s crucial to be a “T-shaped marketer” who can play a more fluid and integrated role within your organization. To build an integrated marketing org, about two-thirds of our team sit in the center, but a third sits in the business, so we avoid operating in silos and get greater connection points to move our marketing agenda forward with the buy-in from other functional leads.  

In my role, I often see myself as more than just the global head of marketing.  In addition to being responsible for marketing, I need to think about CX, talent, digital, sales, and lead generation – it’s true capital marketing. My role is often that of an integrator, and to do that successfully, I need to convince other functional leads – who aren’t marketers — to find points of collaboration. I often approach this like I would a marketing campaign. It’s all about creating seamless experiences that put the customer at the center of everything we do. 

About Chiaki Nishino  

Chiaki Nishino is Prophet’s president and a member of the organization’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors. In addition to leading Prophet’s North American business strategy, she oversees the organization’s global Women in Leadership and Diversity efforts. She brings extensive experience in growth strategy, customer experience, brand strategy and marketing. She’s led clients in financial services, communication and healthcare to new avenues of expansion. And she’s an industry leader in customer engagement and marketing accountability, having spoken at the Conference Board and the Association of National Advertisers. Before joining Prophet, Chiaki was a Partner at Lippincott Mercer, and worked at Mercer Management Consulting and Dell Computers. Are you interested in talking to Chiaki? You can contact her here.

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“Never let a good crisis go to waste” may be old advice, but it feels timelier than ever. While businesses are still struggling to distill the ongoing lessons of the pandemic, they now see inflation, interest rate hikes and an ongoing war pushing the economy closer to recession. If that wasn’t enough, supply chain issues continue to disrupt and consumer confidence is fading. 

Companies are also challenged as they try to figure out if we are in the great resignation or the great retirement, and what that all might mean for the great hybrid experiment.  

A new norm has emerged: The only true business constant is continuous business disruption. 

Predictably, many businesses are already fearful, cutting budgets, freezing new hires and even laying off staff.  We are seeing this in our clients. Governments are getting involved in companies’ marketing spend. And chief sustainability officers wonder how best to pay for the commitments they’ve made over the past two years. 

All these issues are real and complex, and in some ways, it’s good to be on high alert. But businesses have a choice in how they respond, as they did in the economic crises of 2001, 2008 or 2020.   

Each downturn has produced new economies that did not exist before, from e-commerce to the sharing economy to the experience economy to the world of subscriptions and crypto. There’s a long list of companies that have been created by these downturns including Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, AbbVie, Spotify, Instagram, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Others, such as Samsung, GM, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Bank of America have been reimagined in ways that would be hard “to imagine” before these downturns. 

So, instead of talking about crises, cutbacks and retrenching, we are choosing to use words like resiliency, durability, agility and radical innovation, as we guide clients through this latest challenge. We know growth can’t happen amidst panicky cost-cutting or short-sighted pivots. 

No one enjoys downturns. But we can see how our clients in the past have channeled anxiety into strength and resiliency. They evolve. They make intelligent choices and emerge stronger than the competition. This is a moment to leapfrog and discover ways to accelerate, creating an opportunity to differentiate companies from competitors and create net-new businesses and categories, customer experiences and offerings. 

To this end, here are five ways we are advising clients as they strive to build their own versions of relentless resiliency. 

Accelerate Purposeful Leadership 

In the last two years, purpose-driven companies have become the norm. COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented number of companies to go out, find their North Star and align to a higher-order purpose. These past few years have shown leaders that doing good in the world, doing right by employees and customers and making money can all work in concert. Now is not the time to throw all of that goodwill and equity away.    

Purpose-driven companies are forcing leaders to become more agile, transparent and even a little vulnerable. The radical communications door that opened during COVID-19 needs to stay that way. The entrepreneurial spirit that allowed companies to reinvent how they did business has to continue to thrive. The agile strategies that respond to a changing environment must become the norm.  And, importantly, with a strong purpose in place, they can make hard decisions through a values-based filter. Steps to take now: 

1. Invest in purpose-driven growth moves. Remind teams that downturns always open white space opportunities for those that are looking “between the cracks.” Encourage teams to continuously search for the next big thing. What will be the crypto or sharing economy of 2023? How might it align with your purpose? How will it move you forward? And, importantly, how does it pay off your purpose? Assume your competition is doing the exact opposite. 
2. Be ruthlessly transparent. Agility is important, but moving too fast can cause whiplash, confusing employees rather than inspiring them. A change in direction and purpose alignment can’t just be clear to leadership–it must be evident to all teams and employees, as well as customers, shareholders and other stakeholders.  Be vigilant, strong and consistent in your communication approach. 
3. Accelerate brand, demand and innovation efforts. Discretionary spending is generally first to go, yet, we have seen in the last three recessions that companies that kept their foot on all of these pedals have come out stronger on the other side. On the innovation side, widen the acquisition aperture. Start-ups and small companies might currently be more open to acquisition discussion, and can immediately fill in offering and experience gaps at a lower price point. On the brand and demand side, it’s easy to fall into the false dichotomy that companies must tradeoff between brand or demand marketing. However, you need both. And there must be a real partnership between the two disciplines often most at odds—sales and marketing–to figure out the right mix today and tomorrow. 

Leverage Employees as Your Greatest Competitive Advantage  

There are many reasons the employee base is so fragile right now. The great resignation, the great retirement and many of the experiments coming out of COVID-19 are still in motion. Many companies will use recession nerves to back off employee engagement efforts. If they haven’t yet focused on their employee value proposition (EVP), they may think they can let it slide.  

This is a big mistake. Like many other companies, Prophet just went through a talent war like few others we have seen. There is no reason to think that will change on the other side of this downturn. 

The current economy is making employees increasingly uncertain about the company-employee contract, despite all the employee engagement skills businesses have built through COVID-19. The EVPs just re-launched at many companies will be thrown into disarray. Pragmatically, if personnel cuts need to be made, it must be done through a strategic lens, tying back to the company purpose. Steps to take now: 

1. Choose programmatic and initiative cuts over personnel reduction. We are still in the early days. And just as the pandemic sparked supply chain issues and are still causing mayhem (just peek in a Target or Walmart warehouse), so too will the labor shortages many are experiencing on a daily basis. 
2. Encourage cross-functional teams. New research from Prophet finds that 63% of companies with higher cross-functional collaboration skills say it increases employee satisfaction scores, and 54% say it boosts retention. People want to work with one another. 
3. Poke at pain points. Hybrid workforces are in their infancy, and there is much to be done to make the experience more fulfilling. Is commuting grinding people down? Are they stressed by after-hours e-mail? Do they have Slack or Zoom fatigue, and are there other tech solutions that might help? 

Make Budget Decisions Through the Experience Lens, not Just Organizational Constructions and Functions 

As mentioned, it’s natural for companies to consider cuts across the organization– in each function and business unit. In tough times, this often feels “fair”. Instead, decisions should be made using the experience point of view: What allows for the best customer and employee experience? 

Companies should take this opportunity to understand what is required across the functions to create differentiated experiences for customers and employees. This may require more granular cuts. And in every company, there are pockets within the budget that will always be spent, often in procedural and programmatic ways. That money may well be redirected to experience investments. Paused programs can always be restarted. Steps to take now: 

1. Create agility through experience pods. Many companies have already put smaller pods into place to boost agility. Put these newer teams to work differently, across functions and in ways that build customer or employee experiences. Create assignments that build connective tissue. 
2. Enhance collaboration. Break down silos and optimize spending by developing a more collaborative working model. Our recent research shows that while 80% of leaders believe collaboration leads to better outcomes, only 28% of hybrid workplaces effectively support it. And only 50% of respondents believe their teams collaborate effectively, even when they’re all in the same room. What are new ways to rewire traditional methods of working including budgeting, resourcing and product development? 

Harness the Investments Made in Technology  

Digital thinking continues to be the lifeblood of business. It drives everything from manufacturing to delivery to remote work. And technology accounts for trillions in business spending, including ongoing investments that can’t be reduced. The problem is that in most companies, this tech exists in ponds and lakes, with little ability to pull it all together.  

And in many, that single view of a customer–the dashboard we’ve all dreamed of–still doesn’t exist.  

If possible, it’s a good time to pause or slow new tech investments, reevaluating digital priorities. Any spending that improves customer experience should move to the top of the list. Steps to take now: 

1. Clarify customer journeys. Use the point of view of each customer segment to ensure existing technology adds value, eliminates friction and provides the right data for future decision-making. This includes mapping the tech to each existing critical process. Encourage teams to find greater optimization. 
2. Reconsider the employee experience. The right digital tools increase employee productivity and satisfaction, enabling the kind of collaboration that drives growth. 

Knowledge of Customers, Competitors and the Market Is the Only Superpower 

Stop guessing. When no one knows what lies ahead (and no one does), it’s critical to understand how customers think, behave and buy in real-time. And it’s just as essential to know exactly what the competition is doing. Amid so many economic changes, the rules of many categories are being rewritten as people and businesses alter their spending patterns. 

What’s required is a set of processes and mechanisms to gather as many insights as possible. This needs to be combined with a mindset that accepts the insights readily, with the willingness to adapt accordingly. No one knows exactly what is going to happen six months from now, but we need the skillset to collect and discern as much about the changing environment as possible. Steps to take now: 

1. Pulse the market. Invest in pulsing capabilities, then embed findings into practices and processes. This constantly feeds into new products, services, experiences and go-to-market approaches. 
2. Use insights to prioritize new investments. These insights may tell you that you do not have what it takes to be successful in an ever-changing world. Don’t be afraid to test and learn as a result, shifting investments as needed. 
3. Challenge team behavior. The hardest part of integrating insights into your business may be changing the behavior of team members to act on the insights. This kind of cultural shift isn’t easy, especially when people are frightened. While you may be cost-cutting, invest in the change required in your culture to drive agility in the organization. 

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We have been continuing to work on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts here at Prophet and have have made steady progress since our last update. We know that achieving representation reflecting the communities where we live and work will take time. And we are also learning a lot when it comes to the importance of understanding the complexity of inclusivity. 

While some organizational practices need to be changed to be more inclusive, we are learning that it is at the micro, one-on-one level where change and impact are being felt most. When everyone at our firm understands and makes a habit of small acts of inclusion each day, we believe that change can happen at scale. 

Propheteers are very proud of our culture, and we should be. But as our inclusivity efforts have strengthened, we sometimes bump up against defensiveness. Even among those who are the most vocal about adding diverse representation, there’s a resistance, or perhaps better put, lack of understanding, to becoming more inclusive in our work.  

We are trying to reinforce that bias does exist here and everywhere. There is no organization where bias does not exist. And so creating a truly inclusive culture means looking at the day-to-day interactions that happen throughout the firm. These connections are the foundations of the employee experience. In each moment, they give people a sense of belonging, letting them know they are valuable members of the team.  

In other words, inclusivity has to be addressed at every level of interaction – macro, corporate level, team level and individual level. The quality of those interactions and the relationships that develop determine how well and for whom the systems are working. 

So far, we’ve found three focus areas that are especially helpful. 

Learning New Language

The ability to have DEI-related conversations throughout an organization requires a common language, and the evolving list of terms initially feels unfamiliar. A first step has been starting small group leadership discussions and introducing inclusion concepts through unconscious bias and allyship training. We’re proud that all of our 600-plus employees have completed this work. 

That’s only a start, though. It’s important to keep talking to translate ideas into individual and collective action. 

Tokenism is one example. Building an inclusive team means gender diversity should be represented. But if a partner asks a woman to work on a pitch just because she’s female, that’s not inclusion. Tokenism is just for show–it’s performative. On the other hand, representative teams are intentionally built because if the goal is cognitive diversity, we know that identity diversity is critical to adding a valuable perspective that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Who we are in the world shows up in how we think and navigate the world differently.   

As a practice, leaders should question “Am I building a team that is as representative as possible?”  Slowing down to process and talk about decisions that impact the way we work can open up healthy dialogues and lead to better outcomes.  

The right language takes these daily conversations from defensive to pragmatic, hopefully making them more productive.  

Reconfiguring Networks

Internal networks–often invisible and informal–are places of exclusion in many workplaces. Remote work has made this even more challenging. Do the people who choose to go into the office, for example, have more access to certain leaders and the chance to develop relationships, while those working remotely may not? Or do certain groups have an easier time interacting and building relationships in a virtual group environment than others?

Making Intentional Connections

We are creating strong employee resource groups, which make space for people to build community and find support. These include Black@Prophet, Pride atProphet, Latino@Prophet and Women In Leadership. And we’re constantly looking for new ways to bring people with shared interests together. We need to do more, though. So we’ve begun opening up opportunities to learn about our leaders and different parts of the company. 

How Inclusivity Needs to Change Our Work

We are focused on moving inclusion beyond awareness through group training and individual coaching. We’re seeking more actionable strategies that impact the way we work, including business development and other go-to-market practices. By setting expectations, mitigating structural bias, and role modeling small acts of inclusion, we know that we can create a firm with imperfect people and their biases that nevertheless contribute to maintaining a healthy and inclusive environment.  

We know that more inclusive teams lead to more innovative and varied approaches to our work for clients, from broader digital transformation strategies to more accessible user experiences. We are trying hard to make this a consistent way of doing business. 

There’s growing urgency to these efforts. Like so many other companies, our work accelerated with the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020. It continues to speed up, fueled not just by the increasing awareness of racial and gender disparities but also by the Great Resignation’s tailwinds. An inclusive culture is key to recruiting and retaining the best people–that’s true for Prophet and every one of the clients we work so hard for. 

So we’re not slowing down. We’ve intensified our planning, becoming more intentional. We’re leveraging strategic approaches within campus, lateral and executive hiring efforts to increase the diversity of the candidate pipeline and, ultimately, incoming hires. And we’re systematizing our process, creating a scalable program based on business rules, such as an Inclusion Rule for diversity on interview slates. We’re completing contract-bound pipeline requirements for external search partners. 

We’re looking to our data to understand employee experience across all diversity dimensions. And we’re using that lens across the board to help ensure that we support diverse teams to lead clients to the best solutions.  

The end goal? A Prophet where one cannot predict a person’s success based on how they look, whom they love or whom they pray to.  To get us there we’re working to clarify and communicate each employee’s role in DEI. We’ll know we’ve arrived when DEI is no longer seen as the responsibility of a handful of people but as a new kind of thinking and behavior each of us brings to work every day. 

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In today’s disrupted markets, incremental sales gains aren’t enough. Companies need to find paths to uncommon growth, moving them ahead of competitors and potential disruptors. That can only happen when businesses answer two daunting questions: Where can we play to win? And how can we win there in a differentiated and relevant way?

We help companies identify those growth paths, even as new entrants surge into already crowded categories and core products continue to get commoditized. Deciding where to play requires a clear sense of which market a company is best equipped to play in, and then uncovering gaps of opportunity and developing a razor-sharp definition of the customers it believes are its best targets. Figuring out how to win calls for finding the best products, services, experiences and business models to reach them.

“Companies need to find paths to uncommon growth, moving them ahead of competitors and potential disruptors.”

Once these areas are fully developed, we can start to apply both in-category expertise as well as out-of-category thinking, finding innovative and unexpected avenues to more revenue.

It’s tempting to take shortcuts. Many companies do, and some even stumble into growth that way. But for growth to be uncommon, which we define as purposeful, profitable, transformative and sustainable, every future move needs to start from the customer’s perspective. That means focusing on humans first, with a detailed and holistic understanding of what they want, need and expect.

From that point of view, it’s possible to design and activate new offers with the best potential to increase sales and build relevance. Our experience shows these four steps–answering the who, what, how and why of any new approach–is essential.

Step One: Who is the Target?

Companies often start their growth strategy thinking about what products they can make or services they can offer. Insurance companies want to dream up new policies. Restaurants want to launch a new sandwich. But the key to sustainable success is to understand who makes up the market landscape and which groups are the best match for its capabilities.

Intelligent segmentation and targeting may reveal certain insights that change your strategy. Maybe the most potential segment for your insurance company wants fewer policy choices but better service. Or maybe restaurant customers want more bowls and less bread.

We drive our segmentation and targeting strategies by balancing two key things:

• We make sure target audiences can be identified using demographics, media behavior and other transactional data
• We guarantee that the audience can be understood by uncovering behavioral insights

Often, companies already have much of this information. To define the most attractive and winnable target segments, we combine client data with third-party insights and our own quantitative and qualitative research.

These can’t just be numbers and ideas on a page, though. A vital part of this work is moving beyond rough sketches and bringing these people to life through powerful personas. Everyone in the organization needs to understand who these new customers are and what makes them tick. That way, they can get excited about the prospect of winning with them and finding new ways to meet their needs.

Step Two: What’s the Unique Value Proposition?

It’s not enough to crystalize an innovative growth strategy. Unless

There’s a compelling value proposition – a thing that makes an offer different from its competitors – it’s difficult to persuade people to try a new brand (let alone give up on one they’ve been loyal to in the past).

Too many companies gloss over this step, moving straight from strategy to messaging without deliberately defining the core benefits they offer. Until they take the time to painstakingly codify its virtues, the product, service or experience, is unlikely to break through the clutter.

This step is crucial in crowded categories. In a world with hundreds of financial products, seltzer brands and car insurance companies, the value proposition serves as a filter. It clarifies a company’s promise to customers and becomes an internal rallying cry.

Step Three: How Should it Go to Market?

The pivot from product innovation to in-market thinking is almost always challenging. If these new ideas are to lead to uncommon growth, it’s pretty likely that they are different from previous launches. That calls for a departure from the company’s usual way of doing business. Maybe they’re reaching different customers, like a newly defined target. Or perhaps they’re serving existing customers in different ways via new channels. That often means that the right go-to-market strategy will require operational shifts. And it may even require changes in the company’s culture.

For example, how will the new offers be distributed and sold? How will they be marketed? What is the best channel to leverage for go-to-market? What’s the messaging? It takes careful alignment of all these elements to maximize success.

Step Four: What’s the Best Way to Define the “Why” (With Purpose and ESG)?

Environmental, social and governance strategy is still a relatively new discipline, and many companies continue to view it simply as a risk-mitigation tactic. We believe that’s a missed opportunity. When intertwined with a company’s purpose –its reason for existing in the world – ESG is a powerful way to create value. And it can lead to meaningful and sustainable engagement with multiple stakeholders.

It’s not easy to define precisely how the world has changed over the last few years. An endless news cycle perpetuates negative outlooks on health, climate and communities. And people increasingly expect the companies they do business with to play a role in helping solve these problems. Businesses that accept that responsibility, making sure everything they do fits credibly into their ESG strategy, will win their respect.

At Prophet, we believe building a purpose-led organization is the key to achieving uncommon growth. But we also know simply articulating and communicating purpose is not enough. To create value, purpose and ESG must act together, providing a golden thread across the organization. In this position, at the center of all activity, it can drive transformation.

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It’s been a tough year for many women. The pandemic exposed how much support working women can use–and how shockingly little most receive. COVID-19 has sparked a “she-cession,” driving nearly three million women out of the labor force. And roughly one in four are considering quitting or downshifting. Even those dedicated to staying at work are paying the price. A new Stanford University study found that endless Zoom calls amplify longstanding gender dynamics and drive fatigue and exhaustion for women.

This situation has led to Prophet renewing its commitment to elevating women’s voices and finding new ways to build allyship with our colleagues, clients and communities. And we have reexamined what it means to support women at the firm.

Prophet Initiatives to Better Support Women

Over the past year, we’ve made several moves to provide better support to the women of Prophet. From fueling open discussions about the pandemic and social unrest to welcoming honesty and vulnerability – we’re creating a workplace where women can feel supported while reckoning with the emotional intensity of these events. Ways we’ve advanced our cause in the past year include:

Finding Flexible Forums

For decades, women have struggled to elevate their voices in large meetings. Video calls can make being heard even more difficult as it is hard to read body language and easy for users to get lost in the sea of squares. We’ve acknowledged this reality and have encouraged teams to take “pauses,” moments for women to speak, weigh-in, and have their voices heard.

We’ve established new virtual forums. Our weekly firm-wide “Pulse calls” bring our global community together, while smaller breakouts allow the space for everyone to share and contribute their thoughts. We’ve introduced one-on-one meetings through our Women in Leadership Mentorship network and small-group sessions to discuss and share around specific events, such as the recent targeted murders of Asian women in Atlanta.

Building Better Boundaries

Workplace disruption related to COVID-19 has created a burnout problem. A CNBC survey found that 65% of women believe work stress has worsened and more than half feel burned out. Lean In’s research shows women feel this exhaustion at up to twice the level as men.

As remote work blurs the lines between our professional and personal worlds, Prophet’s leadership team has tried to help build boundaries between the two. These are some of the ways we’ve offered support:

• For the last several months, Prophet’s offices have closed on the last Friday of the month to provide employees with a dedicated time to rest, recharge and take a break – without having to return to a full inbox of items to respond to.
• We’ve offered benefits that provide meaningful relief to parents, including a dependent care assistance program for households with children ages 0-13.
• We’re improving parenting-specific policies, including offering more paid leave for parents.
• And we’ve invited health and wellness experts to speak to our people on topics from setting boundaries to managing the challenges of remote education.

Unleashing Shared Passions

Despite spending the year physically apart, we’ve seen a surge in community building. Propheteers have demonstrated their care for listening, learning, and taking action through their participation as a member or ally to the firm’s employee resource groups like Women in Leadership, Pride at Prophet, Black@Prophet and Latinos at Prophet.

These groups have allowed our people to speak up and share what’s on their minds (both personally and professionally), educate peers on topics of passion, and reflect on recent events in the news. And these communities have created opportunities for associates at all levels to take on leadership roles and elevate their voices.

“We’re creating a workplace that women can feel supported while reckoning with the emotional intensity of these events.”

Some of these topics and discussions can be heavy, so we’ve looked for ways to brighten our days too. We started our first-ever Music League, which connects Propheteers through a shared passion for music, specifically the tracks that celebrate the different identities that make up our firm. For example, over Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March, Propheteers around the world submitted their favorite songs to playlists like “All the Singing Ladies,” “Motown Classics,” “Songs from Women (Or About Women) Who Shaped Our World,” which highlighted female artists who’ve made a substantial impact on the music industry.

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In the last year, between a renewed focus on racial injustice and the reality of a global pandemic, we have been challenged on our perspectives of ‘business as usual’ – including what we consider great leadership. We believe this is an opportunity to embrace – and prove – that a different way of leading is here to stay and we’re better off for it.

It is well-documented that we perceive leadership traits to be either more masculine-coded or more feminine-coded. For example, we associate being collaborative, cooperative or nurturing as feminine-coded, while being analytic, authoritative or ambitious is more masculine-coded. This “coding” has led to bias that has not historically supported women advancing in leadership. Amongst other things, this is because traits that are more traditionally feminine-coded, while seen as advantageous, are viewed to be “bonus” or “plus-ups” for leaders, versus being the core attributes required for success.

“In times of crisis, we look to our leaders for trust, compassion and collaboration— leadership dimensions that are all feminine coded.”

Enter the era of COVID, where we suddenly saw traditional models of leadership upended. The pandemic environment is highlighting the tremendous, and even mission-critical, benefit that more feminine-coded traits bring to the table. In times of crisis, we look to our leaders for trust, compassion and collaboration— leadership dimensions that are all feminine coded. (For more on this, there are many research studies to be found, but here and here are a couple of notable ones).

This might be why we have seen so many articles with titles like “Why Do Women Make Such Good Leaders During COVID-19?” But closer inspection shows us that it’s not just female leaders, it’s all leaders—regardless of gender—that are finding success in the current pandemic by exhibiting these historically feminine-coded traits.

No matter our gender identification, we can, and should, all lean into these more historically feminine-coded traits to have a critical impact. We see examples of this all around us right now, and they offer blueprints for better, more effective leadership:

Trust

Driving trust through transparency and focusing on facts have already been critical to strong leadership. However, a demonstrated comfort with uncertainty is one dimension of trust that has revealed itself at this moment. Gone are the days of defining leaders by their total certainty in what’s to come—vulnerability might, in fact, be the new marker of confidence.  From German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s science-led explanations (that still acknowledge what’s unknown) to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s plainspoken Facebook briefings to San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s calm, early response, we find enormous comfort in a focus on known facts with a transparent acknowledgment of what we don’t know.

Compassion

During an election season filled with pain and uncertainty, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden showed compassion and empathy at each turning point. They found ways to connect with voters over a shared sense of loss rather than just focusing on what the Biden administration would do if elected. And by speaking so candidly about their tragedies, Biden was able to impact compassion, empathy and resilience as a human first,  and as a leader second.  Regardless of what political affiliation, he created a level of connection through this in a way perhaps historically “strong” leaders may not have and gave a sense of hope from the top-down.

Collaboration

Our historical views of a strong leader probably more often emphasized being a lone warrior, but it’s a willingness to listen to many different voices and to bring teams into decision-making that is providing comfort and calm in this environment of unknowns. Synchrony CEO Margaret Keene (long known for her inclusiveness) has explicitly noted how leaders must solicit and listen to many voices to successfully navigate the crisis. You can see her doing this, looking to external expertise to inspire and support her bold decision making, bringing in outside mental health support for employees and holding weekly company-wide calls with an infectious disease expert. She’s both leading the way and working with others to do so.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has been commended on the company’s handling of their recent layoffs. And in it, we can see elements of all of the above. He provides the facts about what went into the decision-making, and also, the unknowns remaining. He demonstrates empathy for his team and the pain this situation brings. And he builds and strengthens his community, calling on everyone to work together to support the exiting employees. He is leaning into all of these more feminine-coded traits to be a strong leader.

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Prophet entered 2021 with a firm commitment to diversity and inclusion. This included growing our beloved employee resource groups, or Prophet “ERGs” for short. Making up the fabric of our culture, these groups are dedicated to education and community-building – ultimately fostering a workplace where colleagues across identity groups feel valued, heard, seen and supported. They also demonstrate what it’s like to “Enjoy the Ride” at Prophet, where everyone is encouraged to bring their whole selves to the table.

Over the past couple of months, thanks to our Black@Prophet and Women in Leadership ERGS, Propheteers across the globe got to participate in (virtual) programming to honor and celebrate Black History Month, International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.

Celebrating Black History with Prophet’s New ERG – Black@Prophet

Black@Prophet was welcomed to Prophet’s ERG community in February and kicked off their activities with a variety of Black History Month content. Given the diverse backgrounds of the group, they felt it was important to shine a light on Black history and culture from a global perspective. Black Propheteers shared how Black history has shaped our world and dove deeper into topics like the creation and evolution of historically Black colleges and universities, supporting black-owned businesses and the untold history of some important Black heroes.

Prophet’s Music League also dedicated February to spotlight Black music artists. Propheteers submitted their favorite songs for categories such as “All The Singing Ladies” and “Black Voices Around the World.” Each Friday, Propheteers started their days jamming out to songs new and old – contributed by their colleagues. Since Black History Month, Black@Prophethas been planning “Listening Sessions,” which will be dedicated time for the community to knowledge share, develop programming and resources for Black employees and their allies. Also, already in the works? A celebration of Juneteenth.

All month long, Propheteers used special Zoom backgrounds highlighting important Black leaders – including Kizzmekia Corbett, Lebron James, Stacey Abrams, John Legend and Matthew Cherry.

WiL: Choosing to Challenge with Prophet’s Women in Leadership Team

In recognition of International Women’s Day, Propheteers participated in the #ChoosetoChallenge campaign and also spotlighted incredible women who are continuing to challenge the status quo across the globe. As part of the celebration, the Women in Leadership team partnered with the Black@Prophet and Pride at Prophet resource groups to write internal blog posts that highlighted the important intersectionality between these communities.

To spotlight changemakers across the globe, the Women in Leadership team collaborated with our Direct-to-Consumer vertical to highlight women-led brands that are dominating their industries while creating change along the way. The blog series also covered topics like allyship, perceptions of the glass ceiling and young female activists.

Over the coming months, Women in Leadership will continue to empower and promote women across the organization through Prophet’s internal mentorship programs, group discussions and by supporting other employee resource groups’ programming.

All month long, Propheteers enjoyed another set of specially-designed Zoom backgrounds highlighting important women leaders – including Greta Thunberg, Ozlem Tureci, Angela Merkel, Naomi Osaka, Amanda Gorman, Kamala Harris and Rachel Levine.

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For several years, Prophet has been working hard to strengthen our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Pride at Prophet, a group celebrating and building a community around our LGBTQ employees and allies, is flourishing. While we still have a lot to do, we’ve accomplished much with our Women in Leadership effort as our junior partner team became more gender-balanced. But as Black Lives Matter protests swept the globe in May last year, we knew we had to take a new–and harder– look at our own community, culture and practices.

As we absorbed what was happening around us, we closed firmwide for a Day of Reflection in mid-June and then listened to how each of us as team members at Prophet thought about how we can better reflect inclusive and diverse voices and embed them more deeply into our processes and our culture. Since June, we’ve continued these conversations as we’ve gone deeper into our DEI work at both the local and global firmwide levels.

“It’s about challenging ourselves to make sure every solution we create for ourselves and our clients–every brand strategy, every customer experience, every organizational analysis–moves toward a more just and open world.”

We also conducted a global firmwide DEI survey to better understand our current realities and perceptions and where we most needed to focus first. With broad engagement across offices, levels and functions, the survey gave us a detailed view of how we can further become truly diverse, equitable and inclusive. While we were moving in the right direction with the work done so far, we knew we had to do more.  We asked ourselves how we can better deliver on the promise of one of our values – to allow everyone to be “fearlessly human” creating the room, structures and space to bring their best selves to work every day.

So, we got to work. We made the effort more immersive and transparent. While a committed DEI Council continued to push on efforts, we aimed to make the dialogue and actions broader and more local – to fit the needs of each of our geographies. We started to push on existing processes where we can better embed the core principles of our DEI efforts.

We know that this is hard work and it is something that must be sustained. We want change to be meaningful and it is important to make this not just about hiring more people of color or donating money to a charity.  It’s about challenging ourselves to make sure every solution we create for ourselves and our clients–every brand strategy, every customer experience, every organizational analysis–moves toward a more just and open world.

In this context, we can share that we are focused on some key areas:

Increase Expertise

No one knows better than we do that the right consultants can change everything. Even though a super passionate internal team has headed our DEI efforts, we knew we could benefit from professionals with deep experience and fresh insights. We retained Collective, specialists in DEI consulting, to help.

Together, we’re looking at new and better ways to engage our people, support their development, and recognize their achievements. We expect to have a full report on its recommendations soon, and this audit will help further refine areas in which we can make progress.

We are also in the process of identifying and hiring a Head of DEI, who will be 100 percent dedicated to this vital work – a first of its kind at Prophet.

Enhancing Our Definition of Diversity

Including more diverse voices in our team has always been a goal, but we are stepping up those efforts. First, we’re working harder on campuses, adding historically black colleges and universities to our regular recruitment outreach. We are also partnering with the Consortium, a nonprofit that promotes inclusion among MBA students.

We launched senior-level searches to diversify the executive team and at the partner level. And we are actively interviewing candidates for our Board, with additional outreach underway.

Overall, as part of our recruiting process, we’ve made sure that at every level, across every role, we have a diverse slate of candidates.

Learn More, Do Better

Awareness is an essential part of this process, and during the fall, almost 90 percent of Prophet employees have completed microaggressions training to understand better the many ways bias can affect the Prophet community members. Importantly, this training also addresses what people can do about it–either when they make a mistake themselves or witness one.

From there, we are now beginning to deploy our next employee training focused on becoming better allies to our coworkers, with the aim to have everyone go through the training in Q1.

Support Racial Justice

In addition to our internal work, we are excited to be doing more to promote justice externally. In September, we also activated Prophet Impact (formerly P4NP – Prophet for Nonpofit) with a racial justice track that identified areas where we can do more pro-bono consulting with organizations dedicated to the fight for equality. Our intent is to make this ​a regular program rather than an opportunistic one, with clear budgets, goals and active management.

Measure Progress

All of this requires us to measure our progress and we all know metrics matter. The DEI survey we conducted has not only served to inform areas of focus but also to create a starting set of metrics for us to measure ourselves against. It probed four primary DEI dimensions–respect, belonging, evaluation/progression and commitment, and captured demographic information, now on our intranet, to track progress on representation. This data is feeding and informing our plan for the new year and beyond.

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