Building a sense of Purpose

Introduction

This article aims to help people think through the scope of the conversation they may want to have to define Purpose for their organisation, or part of it. It provides a guideline for helping to think about the most appropriate way to frame the inquiry. It also provides links to other resources, articles and books that may be helpful.

This follows an earlier post that addressed why being clear about organisational Purpose is important: the Importance of Connecting People to Purpose.

Individual vs. Organisational Purpose

This is about organizational as opposed to personal purpose. For an exploration of the latter, the article in Harvard Business Review by Nick Craig and Scott Snook is a good place to start. They provide a process for helping individuals, working with trusted colleagues or friends, to ask themselves some fundamental questions from which to draw insights. For a perspective on how individual and organizational purpose can be combined Dan Pontefract provides some good stories and approaches in his work on the Purpose Effect.

Creating your process

In order to generate a relevant, inspiring and sustainable Purpose it is critical that the design and ownership of the process sits with the group who’s Purpose is the focus of the work. Hence the first phase in the generic process below involves contracting with this team, before the discovery and engagement work.

The team will want to focus on questions like what data to collect, who to involve, what questions to ask people, how to bring data together, how to communicate outcomes and so on. They also need to think about and shape the subsequent stages to ensure high levels of ownership for this and the eventual outcome.

Step1: Contracting

Step 2: Discovery

Step 3: Engagement

The process iterates backwards and forwards, and the players in different stages need to interact if not overlap. Put more simply, key influencers need to play a role in all phases.

 

Contracting

The first phase involves contracting with leadership at an appropriate level for the Purpose Inquiry. This might be the Board of a Corporation, the executive leadership of a transformation project, the functional team in a support role, the lead team of a project bid, etc. Key outcomes include clarity about the reasons why this will help the business – the business and benefits case looking at hard results such as financial gains and soft benefits such as improved reputation with customers. This is also an opportunity to brainstorm the North Star that works for this team and to outline who and how to involve others in this work.

What is important during Contracting

It is critical to get the right group of people together which essentially means the leadership. Contracting is not just between this group and an internal or external facilitator, but also between these team members as they agree what they want, and between this team and the rest of the organisation and the “system” within which it operates. Effective delivery will be defined and shaped by the leadership group working together and providing a consistent narrative.

Key outcomes from Contracting

At least three important outcomes from this step are:

  1. “North Star” – draft summary of Purpose
  2. Business and benefit case explaining why this is important
  3. Scope and approach to this work; who else to involve and how to keep focused on intentions

Activities and issues to consider during Contracting

  • Explore readiness for change so that the team is confident that it is up for a significant shift in direction if the need emerges
  • Establish transparency of process so that the leadership team have complete ownership, including the option to stop the work
  • Insist on self-analysis of data so that internal or external consultants manage the process not the content emerging
  • Ask questions that encourage self-disclosure and learning to give leaders insights into what gives their work meaning, for themselves and for their clients
  • Identify and tackle dilemmas and political agendas that always surface: such as the relative merits of top down and bottom up approaches, the merits of an outside in and an inside out perspective to data collection, whether to explore the whole or just part of the system
  • Agree clear outcomes and measures so that the team knows how to expect this work to deliver value, so that it can measure progress and so the team can learn from the work’s successes and shortcomings

Discovery

What is important during Discovery

Discovery is an exploration of what stakeholders value – from employees and their managers to customers, partners and regulators. The essence of defining Purpose is to synthesise this feedback, drawing out themes that resonate across stakeholders and using processes (visuals, stories) to build on words to articulate Purpose.

Discovery implies both an exploration and a journey. The Purpose is “out there” and the work is to identify, enrich, focus, describe and communicate that Purpose.

Key outcomes from the Discovery step

  • Perspectives from all significant stakeholders on the role of the group
  • Synthesis of these perspectives
  • Creative articulation of Purpose
  • Engagement plan for invoving people in translating Purpose

Activities to consider during the Discovery step

  • Ensure all influential stakeholders feature in both the data gathering and the engagement planning
  • Agree what data is required – for a discovery process around purpose the essence of the inquiry is about what the organization exists to do in the eyes of different stakeholders and to explore what the organization means to different stakeholder groups
  • Embrace diversity so that many different perspectives are heard
  • Think rationally and emotionally – Purposes provide direction and inspire so it is important not to overlook the emotional value that can be delivered by a well researched Purpose appropriate to key stakeholders
  • Agree what data collection methods will best uncover insights for different groups – approaches can include interviews, focus groups, story boards, free form drawing, observation, document review, etc.

 

Engagement

What is important during Engagement

Engagement emphasises that the effective delivery of Purpose is the responsibility of all people in the organisation and some outside it. However well defined the Purpose, if these people do not get it and how they relate to the Purpose, then it will remain words and aspirations on a page.

Line managers are pivotal in engaging people providing the face to face link between the organisation and the customer facing teams. Their involvement in the process begins in the discovery stage and is major during engagement. Ultimately it is the line managers who help others bring purpose and strategy to life making it relevant to different teams and helping people to connect their roles to the bigger picture.

Key outputs and outcomes from the Engagement phase

 

  • Communication materials (e.g video, social media platforms)
  • Face to face conversations to translate Purpose at local levels (e.g. conferences, workshops, team meetings)
  • Alignment between teams and throughout organisation on common goals
  • Inspiration – making greater meaning for people on the nature of their work

 

Activities and issues to consider during Engagement

  • Help people connect everyday work to higher Purpose
  • Who is going to lead conversations – will this be led by local managers, by a special team of facilitators, by leadership – or by a combination of these
  • Maintain an external focus on what people do for others
  • Involvement of all groups internally and clear communication through multiple channels to external stakeholders
  • Clear outcomes and measures against each group of stakeholders
  • Measurement processes to start early (establishing baselines) and to continue to learn what is and is not working and to help sustain the engagement

 

 

Final thoughts

Rather than looking for rules or experts to answer questions about how to build a sustainable process, the approach above represents a more sustainable approach that views developing purpose as a discovery process with a number of different steps and ongoing feedback loops to collect and interpret data.

For more information on the importance of connecting people to Purpose go to:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-connecting-people-purpose-mike-pounsford?trk=prof-post

For more information about recent clients’ experiences of sustaining Purpose go to:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/focussing-purpose-mike-pounsford?trk=prof-post

For more information about how to use the Big Conversation as an approach to communicating Purpose and Strategy go to:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/using-big-pictures-engage-people-strategy-mike-pounsford?trk=prof-post

 

 

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The Importance of Connecting People with Purpose

Creating a strong sense of Purpose provides a major competitive advantage for an organisation. This is about why Purpose is so important for engagement with employees and other stakeholders, and it illustrates the growing evidence base supporting this argument.

What is organisational purpose?

Strategy is concerned with what an organisation wants to achieve, Purpose is longer-lasting and is about why the organisation exists in the first place and what matters in its work. Purpose defines why a business exists, informs investment decisions, aids prioritization and provides meaning for what an organization does for its employees, customers and other stakeholders.

Why is it important?

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

People recognise how important a sense of Purpose is in their everyday lives. It quite literally helps people get out of bed in the morning, maintain focus on a goal and carries us through setbacks and tough times.

Purpose is important for organisations. Increasingly people look for deeper meaning as to why they should work for their employer, and customers and shareholders are increasingly concerned to engage with companies and brands that appeal beyond a transactional reward.

The pace of change and disruption is increasing, and the expectations of stakeholders and customers are become more demanding. Employees need to be aligned and engaged in a way that educates and motivates them so that they can take the initiative to respond as needed without waiting for directions.

Purpose has been likened to a North Star, providing a guiding light through troubled times when other factors threaten to divert direction. It gives an organisaation resilience to stay focused on its goals despite challenges raised by competitors, crises and other disturbances. Purpose helps provide context and rationale when numerous change programmes ask people to change ways of working and disrupt teams.

 

The evidence

Below are a list of and links to resources that highlight the importance of Purpose grouped under different headings.

Becoming more competitive:

  • “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies” (1994) by Collins and Porras had a profound impact. The authors, contrasting the performance of “great” performing companies against industry rivals, empathized the importance of core purpose and core values alongside audacious goals and vivid descriptions of the future as the hallmark of great companies.
  • The value of a strong brand, underpinned by a brand essence akin to a clear core purpose, has become accepted and measurable – half of Collins and Porras’ original list are in Interbrand’s 2015 most valuable brands (alongside what were yet to exist or nascent companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Facebook).
  • In recent years the importance of Purpose as a force for alignment and engagement was acknowledged by the Engaging for Success (MacLeod) Report, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Business in 2008. The report identified a number of positive business benefits flowing from employee engagement, and critically that improvements in engagement led to improvements in business performance. The first core enabler identified by the MacLeod Report is the existence of a strong strategic narrative:

LEADERSHIP provides a strong strategic narrative, which has widespread ownership and commitment from managers and employees at all levels. The narrative is a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of an organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has, and how an individual contributes to that purpose.

Engaging for Success; the MacLeod Report to Government 2009

Inspiring people to action:

  • Simon Sinek’s “How great leaders inspire action” (filmed in September 2009) remains amongst the top viewed Ted Talks (over 28m in 2016). His subsequent book “Start with Why” outlines the argument that purpose driven leaders and companies inspire others to action.
  • In a similar vein Dan Pink’s 2011 thesis outlined in “Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates people” identifies autonomy, mastery and purpose as keys to motivation. His Ted Talk also features in the top 20 all time playlist (15m views in 2016) and this link to his Royal Society of Arts summary provides an engaging visual illustration of his main ideas

Attracting and retaining talent:

  • Gallup, one of the organisations at the forefront of employee engagement measurement over the last 20 years, analysed the views of Milennials (20 – 36 year olds; born 1980 – 1996). Exploring what people want from work, Gallup identified six major shifts foremost of which is away from a focus on reward towards a focus on Purpose:

“Milennials don’t just work for a paycheck – they want a purpose. For milennials work must have meaning. They want to work for organizations with mission and purpose.”

Gallup, How Millenials Want to Work and Live, 2016

  • The Energy Project showed that organisations with a clear sense of Purpose are three times more likely to stay with their organisations in their 2013 Quality of Life at Work report

Engaging people to deliver results:

  • Building on the “Engaging for Success” report, Tanith Dodge the HR Director at Marks and Spencer plc. oversaw the “Nailing the Evidence” paper (2012). Drawing on academic research, consultant surveys and case studies her team established positive correlations between effective engagement and: growth and profitability; customer service; productivity; wellbeing and health and safety; employee retention; and lower turnover and absence.

Finally for a document that provides a comprehensive overview of why Purpose comes before profit, see the Big Innovation Centre’s May 2016 interim report on The Purposeful Company.

“Purpose is key to corporate and economic success. Great companies are enabled by the pursuit of clearly defined visionary corporate purposes, which set out how the company will better peoples’ lives.”

In summary:

  • A clear Purpose helps align and focus effort and provide meaning for what the business does
  • Purpose goes beyond profit and focuses on what an organisation does to better the lives of its customers and stakeholders
  • Companies with clear and well-communicated Purposes have shown significant long-term performance
  • One reason is that Purpose is a key driver of employee engagement which correlates with a range of performance benefits
  • For younger people, Purpose appears to be more important than ever, suggesting that for the long-term success of the business attracting and retaining talent will increasingly rely on the clarity and visibility of Vodafone’s Purpose
  • Establishing shared purpose remains a key challenge for leadership and management, and a potential differentiator for successful businesses.

 

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