I want to talk about what constitutes the soul of an organization and why it matters.

CFI has just completed 20 years of existence and we have begun thinking about our next 20 years – what 2046-47 will look like and the fact that it will call for people beyond the founder to get involved in taking the institution there.

The central question I have been asking myself in this context is this: what is the one thing that we want to retain?

the unequivocal answer is “the soul of the organization”.

So what is the soul of an organization? It is easy to distinguish it from the body of an organization. The body of an organization is its strategy, its revenue, growth, the metrics, the processes, the efficiency and the scale.

The soul on the other hand is something which is dynamic, which gets slowly identified, which evolves, which can become deeper, stronger or diluted and weaker over time.

The soul is about the founding purpose. Our identity as seen by us and others. What do we stand for, how do we take important decisions when we have a dilemma? What we place greater premium on? What is the everyday experience of the organization through the eyes of employees, through the community we are part of, our customers, our employees the larger industry. All of this together constitutes the soul, the everyday experience of what we stand for, what is important to us, the human experience.

History is full of examples of organizations which got carried away by the body and lost the soul. A telling example is Howard Schultz and Starbucks. He returned to the company twice, I think around 2008 and 2022.

On both these occasions, it was beyond financial performance and stability. It was to regain the soul of the organization – to be that third place, make the baristas the pride of the organisation for the great coffee they make and serve and the connection with the employees.

My all-time favorite is this book called Small Giants written by Bo Burlingham. He chronicled in the year 2005, 14 companies which chose to be great instead of becoming big.

And becoming big is to get private equity, to go public, to scale, to achieve large numbers and so on. But these companies chose to be great, the best in what they did. And he gives reasons why they chose this greatness and how they sustained it, how they remain private and true to their soul.

I went back and looked at this list today 20 years later and I was delighted to see that there are at least about 8 of those 14 organizations which seem to continue to remain true to their original purpose after 30, 40, 50, even 60 years. They have retained their soul.

Personally for me, it is the soul that is worth striving to retain, cherish and strengthen.

What is your encounter with organisations that have retained or lost their soul?

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