THE NEW CCO PODCAST: THE INTERSECTION OF LIFE AND LIVING

LIXIL is a company you’ve probably never heard of, but whose products are all around you. The Tokyo-based company manufactures building and housing products: everything from toilets to buildings. LIXIL was born in 2011 through a merger of five leading companies. How does one unite five distinct, specialized businesses under one roof in under a decade?

That’s the question we posed to Jin Montesano, LIXIL’s Chief Public Affairs Officer, on this edition of the New CCO. Jin shares her unique insight into shows how LIXIL determined its corporate purpose – its reason for being – and how that purpose helped unify a disparate group of companies around a common sense of why it exists. She also explains her business case for purpose, and tells the story of how she led the creation of SATO – a low-cost toilet targeted at the developing world – as a purpose-driven business that is on track to become self-sustaining.

“[Purpose] is the unifying force,” Montesano says. “As a company that was born out of all of these mergers, we needed to figure out what our core was. What was our reason for existing? Why did we have to be these five companies with these other acquired companies? Was it necessary for these companies to come together?

Every merged company that came into LIXIL would say that their philosophy is to make the absolute best products and services that would improve people’s lives. But at the end of the day, we believe as one corporation we help people’s dreams come true in terms of their dream of a better home.”

Listen to the episode here: