For mission-driven organisations, purpose is often a powerful North Star. Unfortunately, noble intent doesn’t always translate into meaningful performance, and many organisations we work with are grappling with an uncomfortable truth: having a compelling purpose is not the same as knowing how to deliver on it.
Without clarity on the change you want to create and the role you play in the system around you, it becomes almost impossible to focus, measure performance, or scale impact.
This first article in our Purpose to Performance series explores how purpose-led organisations, including charities, arm’s-length bodies, social enterprises, and B Corps, can define their desired impact more clearly, unlocking the strategic focus and innovation they need to thrive.
We frequently see purpose statements that sound great but offer little strategy:
“We exist to improve lives” and “we’re working towards a fairer society” are powerful sentiments, but they’re not strategic choices. In truth, they’re just inspiring stories. To make those stories real, you need to answer three core questions:
Without this clarity, performance suffers. Organisations often fall into common traps, which include:
To move from story to strategy, you need to break your purpose down into specific, measurable areas of impact. This means moving beyond generalities and identifying what success really looks like for your organisation and where you’re best placed to achieve it.
A helpful way to define your impact ambition is to map the intersection between:
Your unique role (and your most strategic contribution) sits where these two areas overlap.
One of the biggest shifts that unlocks performance is realising you’re not the only actor in the system.
Many organisations try to cover every angle of the problem, or they suffer from Lone Hero Syndrome and assume they can “own” the entire solution. In reality, impactful organisations define their contribution in relation to others, not in isolation.
A great example of this is in the food poverty space. This is a huge challenge within the UK with many players including local and national charities, community organisations, local government, and private companies operating to meet the same goals of alleviating food poverty and reducing food waste.
Fare Share is a great example of an organisation which identified and evolved its impact ambition over time. It recognised the challenge that while supermarkets were disposing of edible surplus food, charities were struggling to meet demand and positioned itself as the logistics backbone, taking surplus food from retailers and redistributing it to thousands of community groups and charities.
They also recognised that poverty is often greater than just food and so decided to focus not on food banks and instead on providing food to organisations that address the root causes of poverty such as domestic violence charities, local schools, homelessness shelters.
Their comparative advantage is national logistics and corporate partnerships. They don’t try to run local food programmes, but instead, enable thousands of smaller actors to scale their impact by ensuring that they have enough food.
This is a classic example of identifying a leverage point in the system, focusing energy there, and not trying to solve every problem.
Translate purpose into measurable impact areas
If your purpose feels vague, start by translating it into defined impact areas, which include specific themes or outcomes you’re aiming to influence. For each one, ask yourself: Is it measurable? Is it clear who it’s for? Is this a focus, or just a hope?
Engage with stakeholders and use tools like system mapping and stakeholder analysis to clarify where your organisation can have the greatest effect and where others are better placed.
Not all impact areas are equal. Focus on where the need is greatest, your influence is strongest, and you can shift key levers in the system.
Use tools like heat maps, systems maps, and comparative analysis to guide decisions. This is where our consultants have added significant value for our clients by offering objectivity, insight, and facilitation.
Conclusion: The path to meaningful organisational impact
Organisations with real clarity of impact tend to frame ambition at the intersection of need and capability and define their role in relation to others. For these organisations, system maps are living tools. They build coalitions and adapt as their roles shift and systems evolve. Performance comes from knowing where you can move the needle and who you need to work with to make it happen.
In Part 2 of our Purpose to Performance series, we’ll explore how to translate this clarity of impact into a practical strategy using tools like Theory of Change, not just as compliance documents, but as live roadmaps to guide decisions, delivery, and learning.
If you’d like to talk about how your organisation can define its role in the system and set clearer impact ambitions, get in touch, we’d love to help.