Photo courtesy DHL
John Pearson has been CEO of DHL Express and on the DHL Group board of management since 2019. He joined the global logistics and courier company in 1986 and has held senior management positions in its divisions in the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S., and Europe. MIT Sloan Management Review spoke with Pearson about DHL’s commitment to a corporate culture rooted in its purpose: “Connecting people, improving lives.” This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What do you see as the role of corporate purpose in supporting alignment and performance at DHL Express?
John Pearson: It starts with our traditional four pillars: hiring motivated people, driving service quality, creating customer loyalty, and delivering a profitable network. I simplified that to three letters: P plus Q equals G — people plus quality equals growth. In both cases, we start with people — getting people engaged and being a great place to work.
People are at the center of everything we do, and what people relate to most is purpose: knowing what we turn up to work for, what we do every day.
There are two sides to purpose at DHL. One side is what we do every day: connecting people and connecting businesses. We know that society and countries are better off when they are more open and connected. The other side amplifies that through our Go programs that support employee volunteering and social impact: GoTeach, GoHelp, GoTrade, DHL’s Got Heart. The more I speak with young people coming into our organization, the more I realize that while they’re proud to say they connect countries and businesses, they get particularly motivated by that second side, and they ask for more volunteering time. Being a global company in 219 countries, which is the most global company of any, there is a lot of opportunity to volunteer in small and rather remote communities all around the world.
Does support for corporate purpose factor into managerial evaluations?
Pearson: We ask our leaders to take self-assessments where they rank themselves low, medium, or high on six leadership attributes. One is how much they manifest and develop the purpose of the company. Leaders have to give themselves one low mark and one high mark. It used to be that purpose was the default option for the low mark among about 60% of our executives; they might think, “Maybe I’ll put that as the low [attribute] because we haven’t talked about it much.” I raised this and talked about purpose with members of my team. The following year, that 60% dropped to 40%, and then it became around 20%.
Do you have advice for leaders who are considering how their organizations can express their purpose through action?
Pearson: You should use the assets that you have to define how your purpose is implemented. Our assets are aircraft, trucks, vans, and having people in just about every locale in the world. We are located on just about every runway on the planet. In partnership with the U.N., we’ve developed the GARD program — Get Airports Ready for Disaster. The program helps airports around the world be better prepared to manage incoming humanitarian aid and personnel when disaster response situations arise. This is a great example of using what you have in your toolkit to live your purpose.