Making purpose count

What can prolong your life, make you happier and considerably healthier¹? It’s not an exercise regime, new diet or even relationship. The answer? A sense of purpose. But not only is purpose good for individuals, it’s also a major plus for businesses and their performance. A study by EY and Harvard Business Review found that companies which made purpose an integral element of their organisations and operations grew at a higher rate than others.

According to leading performance coach and psychologist, Jamil Qureshi, truly purposeful organisations are both rare and very different from most others. As he puts it: “There are so many companies with mission statements, but so very few on a mission truly galvanising their people behind a worthy cause.” It’s a critical distinction. Purposeful organisations feel and act differently.

Purpose explains why a person, a team or an organization does what it does. More important than the ‘what’, or the ‘how’, understanding the ‘why’ is essential for an individual or organisation to grow and succeed. It sounds simple enough. But unpacking how an organisation acquires real and sustainable purpose that drives its growth and success in a world characterised by constant and disruptive change is far more complex.

Real diversity of thought – and the space to exercise it

Purposeful organisations are open and willing to learn. They have leadership teams that can argue, debate and share perspectives to actively try to see the world as others see it. That requires high levels of diversity of opinion and views as well as the psychological safety that allows those views to be shared, argued over and challenged.  As Qureshi explains: “People support what they help to create. The best way to get someone to execute and commit to an idea is for them to believe it was their own.” A purposeful organisation, therefore, is motivated by what people are seeking to achieve and create together. That results in a community that will always outperform bureaucracies and hierarchies.

Building that community relies on attracting and retaining the right talent. And purpose is also increasingly important to do that effectively. Research by Deloitte² reveals that an organisation’s purpose is a decisive factor for people selecting whether to join or leave an employer. For younger generations, it can make or break a deal. Deloitte found that nearly 80% of those aged 25-35 said purpose was a factor when they decided to join a company, and 66% said they left a job for purpose-related reasons. That’s more than double the proportion of 45–54-year-olds who said the same. So, it’s clear that as younger generations enter the workforce, their understanding of an organisation’s purpose will play a central role.

Commitment, not compliance

Creating a community that embodies a deep sense of purpose also depends on people being able to feel, act and think differently. Of course it's not possible to mandate people to do that. A command to change won't work. That’s because stopping one behaviour and taking up another is really very difficult, hence why so many of our resolutions to, say, get fitter or eat healthier food are often abandoned. Yet it’s often precisely the expectation that leaders bring to demands that their teams should be, for example, more collaborative or innovative.

Instead, rather than telling people to act or think differently, a more fundamental change is required so that people arrive at a new a way of thinking themselves. Deloitte’s study, for example, found that eight out of ten people both wanted to be involved in defining their organisation’s purpose and to be supported to demonstrate that purpose in their everyday activities. Of course, as people join an organisation and the outside forces such as economic and social factors in which it operates evolve, that purpose will also develop and adapt. Rather than seeing purpose as a fixed entity, it’s important to be flexible and open-minded so that an organisation’s purpose responds dynamically to the changing world around it.  

Not what you sell, but what your customers value

Purpose is also why truly innovative organisations have a distinct view of their fundamental activities, defining themselves by what their customers value rather than what they make or sell.  And identifying what customers value often requires the outsider perspective that comes from the diversity of thinking that’s common to successful businesses. That helps to explain, for instance, why PayPal was not invented by a bank, Skype by a telecoms business nor Spotify by an incumbent from the music industry. As Qureshi puts it, “You don't solve new problems with old thinking. So, what we need to do is to create new perspectives and move away from the prejudice and bias that holds us in place to allow us the opportunity to see what we can achieve with a new lens.”

Thinking through disruption

Taking a similar approach matters now more than ever. The degree of disruption confronting businesses makes feeling, thinking and acting differently an imperative to grow and succeed. Qureshi's prescription? "Define yourself by the value you create for others and then work backwards in an open and agile-minded way. The question that we need to ask ourselves all the time is are we changing as fast as the world around us?"