Illustration by Nhung Lê

Illustration by Nhung Lê

When Jenny Cohen (MBA 1997), a longtime Disney exec, made the leap to executive VP of corporate social responsibility in early 2021, her first task was an especially existential one: “I spent a lot of time early on thinking: Why do we exist? What’s our purpose?” Cohen had spent 23 years at the happiest place on earth, most recently as a senior VP of brand, franchise, and customer relationship management, a role that gave her a bird’s eye view across the company’s vast commercial acreage of theme parks, streaming services, and media brands like ABC News, FX, and National Geographic. Cohen’s priority from her new perch was “to get really clear about how we do good in the world,” she says.

Cohen took a deep dive into the company’s mission, its 100-year history, and future ambitions with the goal of refreshing its corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. From interviewing scores of employees and executives, it was clear that storytelling was somewhere at the core of it all, she says. Take, for example, Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster Black Panther. The film was groundbreaking for the breadth and depth of Black talent behind the camera and in front of it, and as a rare representation in Hollywood—backed by an even rarer megabudget—of Black culture. Like Disney’s Encanto and Pixar’s Coco, animated hits that featured Latin American culture in a way that audiences also appreciated for their authenticity, “these films are enormously entertaining,” Cohen says. “And importantly, when people come out at the end inspired and empowered in a way that they didn’t feel before, these films can do so much good in the world.” These films also demonstrate the financial superpowers that are generated when DEI is central to your strategy: Black Panther made more than $1.3 billion globally. (A sequel is due out this fall.)

With the data points that Cohen collected, her team put words to their purpose: “To inspire a better world through the power of stories.” That forms the foundation of the company’s CSR strategy, which represents a refresh and outlines three priorities: DEI, environmental stewardship, and community. Cohen then set out to help infuse these goals into Disney films, TV, theme parks, and products. “When these priorities are embedded in your business practices and in everything you put into the marketplace, that’s how you get impact to scale. It can’t be a bolted-on thing somewhere over on the side,” she says. For starters, Disney’s fans and 190,000 employees wouldn’t stand for it. More and more staff, particularly the younger generation, expect their day-to-day work to contribute to a better world, Cohen says. They aren’t motivated by pay alone.

The same is true for investors. HBS professor Ranjay Gulati says that today’s stakeholders expect companies to reflect their values “to the degree that pursuing profits without concern for purpose is no longer a sustainable business model.” It’s the cornerstone of his latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, where he explores this idea of next-level purpose: a company’s reason for being that permeates every decision around strategy and culture and practice. This kind of thinking comes naturally to many startups, Gulati says, but it can fade as an enterprise expands and will, on occasion, require a refresh—to remind an enterprise where it’s come from and where it’s headed.

Sometimes, in the process of opening doors to look into its past, leaders will have to confront the skeletons that may be hiding in their corporate closet. Disney experienced this in 2020: As part of its commitment to diversity and inclusion, the company acknowledged the fact that some of the classics in its library include problematic stereotypes. Instead of shelving the titles, Cohen says Disney decided to address the harm done, look into how it happened, and make it a part of their conversations around DEI and the role of stories in our culture. A handful of films, including Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Aristocats, now come with an advisory that the negative representations of people or culture “were wrong then and are wrong now.” One of the most important outcomes of the exercise, Cohen says, was that it created an opening for the company to talk about how they make sure to get depictions right in the future.

For leaders, this deeper understanding of purpose can serve as a trusted compass to help point the way through the increasingly tangled landscape of issues on which leaders are being asked to take a stand—such as social inequality or the war in Ukraine. Staying silent is increasingly untenable, Gulati says, but “having a purpose can give you clarity and help guide your choices.” It’s a useful tool, he says, in finding a position that will ring true to your stakeholders.

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