Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal:
a new purpose for a more challenging world
Repositioning
Leaders at Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, had discovered something worrying in the organisation’s annual employee survey: teams were desperately craving greater clarity on the company’s direction.
The CEO and his team decided what was needed was a new purpose statement — one that reflected the organisation’s status as a provider of reliable information in a world of fake news and social media echo chambers.
To uncover their purpose statement, the exec team spent two days brainstorming at an offsite, with a member of the Broom & Moon team listening in.
A theme that consistently cropped up was the urgent need to take Dow Jones’s journalism and business data services to wider audiences — to help people make decisions based on facts.
Based on everything we heard, we articulated Dow Jones’s purpose in a simple, powerful statement:
The solution:
a company-wide conversation around a simple, powerful purpose statement
To give people the facts they need in an age of misinformation.
The exec team launched the new purpose at a series of high-energy roadshows at locations in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
To embed the purpose into people’s working lives, each part of the business was encouraged to continue the conversation about it after the roadshows. Teams were encouraged to create their own “plan on a page”: a summary of what they would do to ensure Dow Jones continued to fulfil its purpose.
The outcome:
renewed energy in the fight against fake news
Employees were inspired by what they’d heard at the roadshows. In a post-event survey, with 840 responses:
87% said they felt certain they could accurately describe Dow Jones’s purpose
86% said they felt excited about Dow Jones’s future
This response from one attendee captures the excitement employees felt:
“This was the first time hearing from/seeing the ExCo in one room with a unified vision and purpose…was incredibly impactful and motivating.”
“The Broom & Moon team were quickly able to understand our company and the industry challenges that required us to be clear about our purpose. They helped us uncover our “why”, distil it into simple, compelling words that everyone was able to get behind, and then gave us strategies for bringing that purpose to life.”
William Lewis
Publisher & CEO
The Washington Post