Through meeting Charlotte Dewar, co-founder of employee engagement & experience agency Fathom XP, at the past two World Experience Summits, I learned of the great work her agency does in, among other things, helping clients discover their meaningful purpose, and then using that to enhance (naturally) employee engagement & experience.
One particular example intrigued me, that of Crown Worldwide Group, a privately-held $600m company with a number of brands in logistics, records management, relocations, and other industries involving moving things around the world. I had a conversation with Charlotte’s colleague Belinda Gannaway and Norah Franchetti, Group Vice President of Marketing at Crown, that with additional information they supplied yielded the very telling case study below. I hope to use it in the book as a great exemplar of how having a meaningful purpose enables organizational transformation.
I truly believe discovering your meaningful purpose a crucial endeavor for any company, as discussed in Being Intentional. For organizational and business transformations it also fits directly into the Purpose & Meaning sphere of transformation.
Joe
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Right before the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, Crown Worldwide Group embarked on a journey to define its meaningful purpose as an organization. A privately-held $600m company with around 4,000 employees across a number of logistics brands, covering records & information management, private and corporate relocations, fine art, workspace, and other industries involving moving things around the world, Crown didn’t try to pull a purpose out of the air, but sought to uncover what its purpose already was. Led by Norah Franchetti, Group Vice President of Marketing, in concert with Crown’s HR group as well as employee engagement & experience agency Fathom XP and corporate and brand storytellers Insight Agents, the effort engaged around 150 employees across its brands and geographic areas, from executives to frontline personnel.
Crown sought to uncover what its purpose already was
The approach “focused on sourcing and articulating the purpose from within, planting the seeds of purpose-focused conversation across the organization and supporting those conversations to enable them to grow and translate into purpose-led work”, as co-founder Charlotte Dewar put it to me. The process involved reviewing Crown’s 60-year history, conducting linguistic analysis of company materials, gathering information and feedback from staff, and conducting a series of workshops. Taking into account its long-held values of being caring, there, determined, open minded, and sharing, this deep dive revealed a meaningful purpose that likewise was long-held but newly articulated: We make it simpler for people to live, work, and do business anywhere in the world.
Once articulated, Crown’s leadership team and Executive Board enthusiastically embraced this statement as the company’s meaningful purpose and began to promulgate it throughout the organization. Norah told me that the simplicity and straightforwardness of the purpose was easy to understand, as Crown’s actual business of moving things around the world is quite complex, and the quest to make it simpler for both external and internal customers really resonated. Aligning the organization around this purpose of simplicity became a unifying force, transforming the organization from focusing on its own complexity to centering around customer simplicity.
Aligning the organization around this purpose of simplicity became a unifying force, with tangible results from living it
Over the past five years, Crown has seen tangible results from understanding and living this purpose. Norah credits the purpose with enhancing collaboration and innovation, with many new ideas for making its services simpler for customers. For example, during the pandemic, Crown began to scan and digitally deliver documents rather than physically shipping client boxes, and further started to scan the documents in the first place rather than storing boxes, both reducing complexity and environmental impact. The company has also expanded into new services such as office design and relocation consulting.
Crown also introduced its own “Net Simpler Score” (NSS) to measure its impact on customers, which has steadily improved as the organization has become more purpose driven. Employee engagement has similarly gone up, with a high correlation between greater engagement and better NSS.
Overall, Crown’s focus on meaningful purpose has transformed the organization, making it more aligned, customer-centric, and innovative. Its well-articulated and thoroughly understood purpose has taken root deeply within Crown’s culture and decision-making. As Norah related, “Crown has never been through such a period of transformation. Purpose has been at the heart of that – enabling us to connect better with our teams, opening up new conversations, and reducing complexity to help decision making. Purpose will continue to be pivotal to how we learn and adapt as a business.”
Joe Pine
© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II