This guide explores what it means to become a truly purpose-led organization and how to achieve it. We have developed a "purpose-led capability scorecard" diagnostic tool to assess your organization’s standing in the five areas that make up a purpose-led organization. The guide also explores examples of successful purpose-led organizations and provides resources to help you shape your approach in this space.
Click the links below to navigate to different sections of this guide.
Becoming or being a purpose-led organization is a relatively abstract and subjective concept. One framing we use to describe it is through our purpose-led capabilities model. This enables those who have an ambition to be driven by positive impact to assess how they get there. Through doing so, they have the opportunity to access the positive environmental, social, customer, colleague and commercial outcomes that come through being purpose-driven.
Building an organization that is purpose-led and centred around positive impact is about aligning:
To make that hypothetical alignment a reality, we need to develop the necessary organizational capabilities.
Organizational capabilities simply describe things we need to do.
For example, if you are a sweet shop, you will need to:
Therefore, the question we are asking is what do we need to do to build and run a purpose-led organization?
In the purpose-led capability model below, we have defined at a high level the things that a purpose-led organization needs to do.
This model is based on the PAS:808 model of purpose-led business that states that organizations should:
Any links that are underlined link out to thought leadership that will help shape your thinking in these areas.
| Impact | Define purpose: Provide clarity on the problem of people or planet we exist to solve. |
Identify areas of impact: Provide clarity on the specific change we will contribute to across systems. |
Develop impact experiments: Ability to create and run experiments that test ways to create impact. |
Manage impact performance: Assess the impact we are currently having and how we think we will achieve in the future. |
| Analyse related systems: Understand the systems related to our purpose and points of leverage to achieve our purpose. |
Define impact pathways: Define logical routes between our organizational capital and the impact we want to achieve. |
Define approach to minimising externalities: Assess the material negative impact we will have as an organization and set our approach to minimize it. |
Measure impact performance: Modify our impact pathway approach based on our measurement. |
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Corporate governance |
Define ownership model: Ensuring that those who have a stake in the organization are prepared to act as stewards focused on impact. | Define impact-aligned articles of association: Ensuring that the binding governance of the organization is centred around the delivery of impact. | Define impact-aligned director duties: Ensuring that those charged with stewarding the organization will do so with a focus on maximising impact. | Define impact-aligned performance approach: Ensuring that the way the organization assesses success is a holistic impact approach. |
| Capital | Access impact-aligned financial capital: Ensuring that investors into, and financiers of, the organization are aligned to the impact-focused approach. | Develop system relationships: Build social capital in the form of the collaborative relationships required to deliver impact. | Build cultural awareness: Develop the brand identity of the organization, building the ability to influence stakeholders. | Develop enabling facilities and assets: Ensure the organization has the required facilities to drive impact. |
| Attract and grow purpose-led people: Ensure that those working within the organization have the mindset and capability to drive impact. | ||||
| Business model | Create impact-focused value propositions: Defining the customer problems we will solve in order to deliver impact. | Define and deliver impact-focused products and services: Based on the value proposition, create the products or services that will enable customers to solve their problems. | Deliver excellent customer experiences: Build the overarching customer experience that enables us to continue to create impact. | |
| Operating model | Define impact-aligned capabilities: Define the specific things that your particular organization needs to do to drive impact. | Articulate and develop purpose- centric culture: Define the mindsets and behaviours that will enable your people to drive impact. |
Build delivery partnerships: Establish the partnerships required to run the organization. | Design and run enabling technology: Ensure we have the digital capability required to create impact and run the organization. |
| Define impact-focused teams: Establish teams that will own particular areas of driving impact or running the organization. | Create impact-focused ways of working: Define how teams will work together to drive impact. | Ensure financial viability: Ensure we manage our budgets in a way that will ensure we can have a continuous long-term impact. | ||
| Create purpose- centric decision-making approach: Establish the principles and forums required to ensure that individuals and teams make decisions that drive impact. |
We have developed a diagnostic tool, the "purpose-led capability scorecard", based on the purpose-led capability model above. It asks you a series of questions about your organization to assess where your purpose-led capabilities currently sit. It allows you to determine where your organization could strengthen its ability to be purpose-led and sends you a full profile of your results via email when complete, which you can use as a guideline for improvements.
If you are looking for inspiration about how to improve your capabilities, click through the slider below to learn about organizations that are doing well in each area. Below the slider, we have linked our existing thought leadership that will help your thinking in certain areas.