How purpose travels through your organisation

17 Jul How purpose travels through your organisation

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My Linkedin comment said:

“How to use purpose is hugely unexplored territory. As you note the warm fuzzy aspect is well-covered. Less well understood and discussed is the work of bringing purpose into the messy and unheroic day-to-day work of organisations. Without that work, purpose has little chance of becoming a distinctive and enduring aspect of identity.”

Rewind a couple of weeks when my pick for the role of ‘chief purpose officer’  is the chief operating officer (or equivalent).

Increasingly I see organisational purpose as a question of ‘how’, as much as ‘why’. So let’s look at how it travels through an organisation.

Think of an inverted pyramid with leadership at the bottom and the bulk of the organisation in the middle and the external environment at the top.

Organisational purpose starts with leadership and is pushed up through the organisation through their actions and decisions. But the purpose is not solely the job of leadership or even the suggested purpose officer. It can only be considered a recognised part of identity when it reaches the top of the pyramid.

The most apparent way leaders drive and support the purpose is to talk about it, and keep talking about it, until it gets stuck in people’s minds like one of those annoying ads you remember from childhood.

Yet leaders can’t stop with talk. They also set an example through what they do and how they do it, which in turn shapes how other people across the organisation do things, pulling purpose to the middle layer where the bulk of actions and decisions sit.

Here’s a question to ask yourself: beyond the usual suspects where the purpose shows up, for example when talking to people you want to hire or pitching investors, when do people in your organisation actively bring it into how they do things?

Right here is where purpose often comes to a screaming halt. Even as it tries to leap to the middle layer, the process for getting ‘why’ past warm words and sentiments is missing. Just saying it will not make it so.

While there is a process discipline for nearly every aspect of the way an organisation operates, I’ve yet to see one for using purpose — and no, I don’t count culture change. How does purpose show up in the processes, policies and practices of your finance, technology, sales and marketing, manufacturing and distribution?

Yes, purpose inspires action, but if it isn’t also part of shaping what those actions are and how they are carried out, it won’t ever travel beyond the middle layer and reach your customers at the top of the pyramid.

Thanks for reading.

First published on SmartCompany.com.au