Purpose has been around for generations, even if it wasn’t explicitly called that. Nor is the purpose anything anyone outside the organisation should get to judge. (The problems created when purpose gets used as a kind of meta-marketing tool is a whole other article.) But judge it they do, leading to...
No one cares what your name is. Well, perhaps your family and close friends might have a thought or two — but out in the world at large, nope. Some 25 years ago I decided to work for myself, and immediately became fixated on what the name of my business should be....
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...
In today’s overhyped purpose climate, where the question ‘why?’ reverberates through the hallways of company offices everywhere, the question of who should carry the mantle of ‘chief purpose officer’ is an open one. Scant agreement exists on the best approach; there’s the knee-jerk default of the chief executive officer, a newly...
It’s 9am on a Tuesday and gathered around the table is a smattering of people from executive and management ranks with one task: come up with the purpose statement. The scene plays out thousands of times a day across all kinds of organisations with varying degrees of success. And for...
The New York Times provided some excellent grist for this week’s mill with a story about the company I often feature as an exemplar of how you achieve a robust, resilient brand result – Patagonia. The article is well worth reading in total, but the aspect I want to highlight is the way...
The biggest struggle organisation’s face around purpose is how to translate the grand intention into a sense of purpose in people’s everyday work. Finding what you care about has the potential to bring unity and energy to your endeavour. But without connecting purpose with every person’s every day, it may as...
So you’ve found your purpose. Finished with the workshops, hand-wringing and arguments over words, you can now take a breath. Right? Wrong. Now the actual work begins. Absent in the never-ending clarion call to purpose is the reality of what it takes to use it. Sure there is the occasional plea to...
When you have a question, don’t settle for the first answer, even if it feels like it’s the right one. When you accept the first answer in a rush to move something forward or get to the next step, a whole world of detail that can launch understanding and clarity...
The idea for this blog took shape during a catch up chat with my friend last week in Perth. We were talking about a recent discussion of his where he’d asked “what are you best in the world at?”. The question has become somewhat of a business standard thanks to the...