Almost every company has a purpose today, but not all purposes are fit for purpose.
They can be too lofty, and thus hard to turn into action, or too commercial, and thus not inspiring.
And even if a purpose is fit for purpose, too often it isn’t applied across the business or embedded into the business model. Instead, it is relegated to ancillary efforts or CSR rather than impacting the core.
Purpose is about -
- Doing not saying.
- Application not good intentions.
- A lens for innovation not just your PR or advertising.
So we’ve challenged ourselves to push the conversation forward – by thinking afresh about how to do purpose in today’s moment.
Here’s where we’ve gotten to:
We believe that when defined and applied in the right way, a purpose can propel both commercial success and progress. Invention and reinvention. We call businesses that do this StoryDoers.
StoryDoers define a core story that communicates their sense of mission, worldview and ambition and build it into everything they do.
Their products and services, capabilities, organisation design and culture, and their business model. Not just their marketing and communications.
In doing so, they generate more love from customers, they create more innovation, they build more loyal bonds with their talent, and they become more resilient – by enriching, rather than exhausting, the human and material resources they depend on.
And they do this by balancing the needs of all of their stakeholders – customers, investors, employees, communities and crucially, the planet.
Far from being a constraint, such organizations find that living their purpose is actually liberating.
Yet, the business hat-trick—people, planet and profit – can’t be won through purpose alone.
It takes a generative organization – translating purpose into value for every stakeholder group – to generate more value, for more people, more sustainably.
It’s not easy. It involves questioning entrenched assumptions, patterns of thinking and ways of working.
We know the only way to make change happen is to smart small, get some wins on the board and then work from there.
That’s why we choose to work with progressive clients in sprints and accelerators - not just to find answers and alignment faster -- but to decide and execute faster.
The benefits of this approach are many:
- more focus and relevance
- more aligned teams
- more motivated stakeholders and broader impact
- more changed minds and biases challenged
- more transformed businesses
- And more profitable growth.
Take the quiz to find out whether your purpose is fit for purpose.
Explore our offering. And join us, as we build more #Storydoing brands and businesses.
