Purpose and Passion: Finding the “North Star” in Business- and Beyond — in conversation with Angela Mangiapane
Now more than ever, people are looking at the purpose of organizations, including their ethics and values. Organizations that have earned consumer trust — and loyalty — have a clear and abiding purpose.
We’re in conversation with Angela Mangiapane, a collaborative, transformative leader who is currently the president of Mars Global Services. She also serves as the chair of Economics of Mutuality, a purpose-driven foundation empowering businesses to thrive by meeting the needs of the world.
Angela, you’ve had tremendous success as a leader in finding the North Star — and helping others find it, too. What is your leadership philosophy?
As a leader, I do my best to be clear about what I stand for, what the company stands for, and what our purpose is as a unified team. That includes defining the why and the how. Why are we doing what we’re doing? And how is that positively impacting our customers, our supply chain partners, and our collective society?
Overall, I follow a situational leadership model, developed by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey. Often called “S4,” it maintains that the most effective leaders are those who can adapt their style to the situation: (S1), Telling: telling people what to do and how to do it; (S2) Selling: selling ideas to the group to get their buy-in; (S3) Participating: enabling group members to take a more active role in decision-making; and (S4) Delegating: letting group members make most of the decisions and take most of the responsibility for what happens.
The S4 approach is particularly useful on boards, where being a board leader is often akin to walking a tightrope. You can’t get too much into the operations of how the company is being run; your role is to provide direction and ensure the company is on course. But we do have moments where, as board members, we need to intervene more directly, depending on the maturity level of the organization.
You currently serve as chair of the Economics of Mutuality (EoM) initiative. What led you to take a leadership role in this program?
EoM resonates with my personal purpose to create a world based on mutual benefit. We’ve maximized the economic side of capital; I believe it’s time we challenged orthodox business thinking that financial capital is the only measure of value.
EoM considers not only financial capital but also three other critical forms of capital to create long-term value: human capital, well-being in the workplace; social capital, the capacity to work collectively toward a common good; and natural capital, efficient use of environmental resources. Ultimately, purpose and profit are aligned, and companies become outcome focused as opposed to output driven. EoM is working to quantify these three additional capitals to ensure they can become part of the business metrics system to manage and improve company performance.
The seeds of EoM originated in Mars when one of the owners asked the question, ‘what is the right level of profit?’ Over a decade of research was done here. It culminated not only in the publication of Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World, by Jay Jakub and Bruno Roche, formerly of Mars, but also in the formation of EoM Solutions, which I chair. Mars is currently our largest customer, but we serve many other large organizations across consumer goods, retail banking, health care, and technology.
Thank you, Angela, for sharing with us your unique point of view .
A values-driven and human-centric leader, Angela Mangiapane brings to business and board service a creative transformation perspective — at the intersection of financial progress, social good, and human capital investment. She has served in a variety of leadership roles throughout her career and is currently channeling her expertise into board service. Angela is chair of Economics of Mutuality, a public interest foundation devoted to transforming the economic system through creating a mutuality of benefits among all stakeholders. She also serves as co-chair of the Conference Board, a global nonprofit “think tank,” as well as on the advisory board of SSON, a professional networking group for high-level professionals.
Connect with Angela Mangiapane on LinkedIn
