79% of global executives say purpose is central to an organization’s existence and business success, but only 34% say that it guides executive decision-making¹. But if purpose isn’t guiding decision-making at the top, what exactly is it for?
The cynic might suggest the reason is simply that purpose is just virtue signaling and corporate puffery, a set of vague. positive-sounding words that leaders may consider, as long as there’s nothing else that is higher priority (unlikely). The evidence indicates this is not the case²: there is genuine intent to deliver social and environmental value in service of organizational purpose.
So how do leaders bridge the gap between what they say and what they do? Below, we have set out five interventions that we have used successfully with our clients to make their purpose real and deliver more impact.
If it’s vague, it’s hard to action and definitely hard to measure.
The first step is to turn that intent around your purpose into something meaningful. Many organizations' purpose statements are incredibly broad, often evoking an image of some idyllic better world we want to live in.
There is nothing wrong with this, but it requires breaking down to be more specific so that individuals and teams can understand both how to deliver it and how much they are delivering it. You need to create a golden thread, a line of sight between the activities your teams deliver, and the impact this has for your purpose. We call this an impact ambition.
The best way to do this is to approach it from two angles.
By considering the intersection of these two lenses, you should be able to identify between one and three impact areas that align with your purpose and under which you can measure your impact.
Stop thinking in 2D and start thinking at a system level.
Most organizations see themselves as the center of the world and see the world through the lens of their business. Every person, organization, or element of the natural world they interact with is a potential customer, competitor, barrier or cost center. Even employees might be seen as resources, or sometimes liabilities! This narrows our minds and blinds us to the value we could create.
Instead, see the world differently, as it really is, without your organization’s lens filtering it. When Copernicus saw the solar system differently, without the Earth at the centre, a new realm of scientific possibility and meaning opened up. Similarly, when you view the world around your organization as a system, an intricate jigsaw of which you are one piece, a whole new world of possibility opens up. You might consider new stakeholders you hadn’t before with unmet needs that you could help meet. You might identify problems that you can’t solve on your own, but the system working together could. You might see opportunities to collaborate and create mutual value in the most unlikely of places, maybe even with those you consider competitors.
Embed your purpose into strategy and business model creation. Don’t rely on it as a sweetener to your business.
For many organizations, delivering against their purpose is something they do in addition to their core business. It is a nice value-add on the side to give your employees a chance to feel they are giving back, it is a story to put in the annual report, it is a program to build relations with the local community. It’s the exciting garnish on top of the same old dish. Purpose done this way will never unlock transformational change, drive innovation, reach new markets or achieve real societal change. What’s more, it will be seen as another thing to do on top of everything else that your people need to do in their day jobs.
But if you make your purpose core to your operations, if all of your ingredients are purpose rather than just the seasoning, and if you can align your core business model(s) around your purpose, then you will unlock new opportunities. You will find new routes to value that you hadn’t noticed before, launch new products that solve very different problems, and serve customers you never thought accessible. You will create value for your systems and they will bring value back to you.
It sounds simple. It isn’t. However finding opportunities to create shared value and making them central to your business model will be fundamental to maintaining relevance in a changing world.
Exclusively top-down approaches to purpose will fail, because colleagues won’t feel invested in it. Create a line of sight between your purpose and impact ambition, and how each team is contributing now and could in the future.
It is understandable why meaningful conversations about purpose, for most organizations, are primarily held at leadership levels. It is a deeply strategic concept that goes to the core of what you do and don’t do as an organization. Keeping it at leadership levels, however, will be the difference between having a nice thing to talk about, and actually delivering on your purpose.
We know purpose can be a superpower when it comes to colleague engagement and retention. In order to realize these benefits, however, everyone in the organization needs to feel that they are delivering for the purpose in their day-to-day work. It needs to be real for them and not just something that they hear the execs talking about in town hall meetings.
Ultimately, incentives and performance matter. Individuals and teams will focus on what determines good performance.
Purpose and impact leaders around the world think about organizational performance and sustainability differently. For truly purpose-led organizations, performance is the value you deliver for your purpose. Profit must be a necessary outcome of this and is vital to build scale and endurance, but is not the end, or the one performance metric that you focus on.
You cannot expect your organization to shift into a new paradigm and deliver your purpose, if performance is still in the old paradigm, and focussed purely on top and bottom lines. Build a performance framework that incentivizes both the right behaviors and the ideal outcomes. Ensure that the interests of the executives are aligned with the long-term interests of the organization.
What’s stopping your organization from delivering on its purpose statement? What challenges or tensions might arise when deciding to take a purpose focus and how might you navigate them?
The exploration of purpose is unique to every organization - no one comes up with the same answers to these questions. That is what makes it uniquely exciting and challenging for organizations and leaders to work on.
There is no cookie cutter answer that will work for everyone, but the outcomes will be more successful if you throw yourself into the process and challenge yourselves to change. To quote Sarah Gillard, from our friends at A Blueprint for Better Business, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”.
Purpose-led strategy: What is it, and how do you deliver on it?
How impact management can turn your purpose into a reality
Purpose-driven organisations: Moving beyond profit-driven strategy