Is finding purpose really that hard?
Purpose.
Such a short word, without much stature, easily passed over.
A few years back it barely featured; a word on the way to another word. Google’s Ngram Viewer count says the word has reduced in usage by over half between 1800 and 2019.
But today it’s something many companies obsess about it – for fear they disconnect talent before it properly lands, disengage an investor or turn off an influencer.
And data suggests our customers really do care. And our staff. And investors. And some of our suppliers might even care more about our purpose than our payment terms.
Purpose has taken on a really deep, soulful meaning. Something that needs to wrench itself from our core, is deeply authentic and philosophical and yet projects forward. Hinting at something bigger of which we are a part, our community, our planet.
“Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.”
Cripes. No wonder finding purpose has become a quest, like a corporate Lord of the Rings. The pressure to define the essence of the past, present and future is intense.
Some companies have found something that just feels right. Like Crayola, ING and the Body Shop. For most others it’s all proving too much.
The truth is purpose is the key to building both distinctive brands and cultures that offer meaning to customers and employees – and it’s the killer ingredient that links the two.
Simon Sinek famously presented the deceptively simple Golden Circles, which still left most people baffled, with an equally difficult word to explain: Why?
I prefer the Japanese approach, ikigai, meaning “a reason for being”. Hector Garcia helpfully breaks it down as the venn diagrams that describe:
What you love
What the world needs
What you are good at
What you can get paid for
with ikigai converging at the centre. Great article here with some great practical tips.
The truth is this is hard – and it gets harder as you go on, as you scale, as more people join you. Then you can quickly fall into consensus territory, bland-building and defining a culture that every organisation would say kind of described its own.
It’s much easier if you define it from the start. I did it with another of my companies Familiarize: we help people understand each other better. It’s something that drives every part of the business and always will. If the business grows as I hope and I take on staff, I will look for people motivated by that raw instinct to make one side understood by the other. It’s Familiarize’s ‘why’ and it ticks all the ikigai boxes.
Lucky me. Because most of us don’t have that luxury of defining purpose as we start up. Most of us inherit multiple people’s purposes and need to take a bit from here, a bit from there and build a patchwork purpose. But that can still work.
Understanding purpose is about distilling the stories about your business into something meaningful, subjective and enduring. It sounds a bit kumbaya, but the truth is if you want your people to joyfully jump out of bed to come to work with you and you want your customers to pledge undying allegiance to your brand, it’s going to take more than an afternoon with a flipchart and a Sharpie.
You need to listen. Deeply. Cross-legged round a campfire. With a guitar. (OK not that bit).
Here’s how we at Lexicona would approach it:
1. FORM a Purpose Squad: enlist 4-5 people who know and care deeply for the company; then begin the big “Listen In”:
a. The early days: explore the origins, when and where, the founders, the first customers, and the feelings circulating at the time.
b. Right here, right now: look at what’s going on today, who are you serving and how, why do your customers return, why does talent join and remain, why is it different here? Why does that matter?
c. The in-between years: Identify the key moments in your company’s history between its formation and today – how was it tested, how did it respond, what were the successes, who were the people that made the difference?
d. The future: how will customers be using your product/service in five years, ten years? How will it make them feel, why will people choose to invest in you?
2. LISTEN deeply to the stories and patterns will emerge, quietly at first, then increasingly loud until all you can see is the blindingly obvious ‘reason for being’ that connects past, present and future, with customers, partners, employees, investors – and you have your (draft) Company Purpose.
3. TEST your Company Purpose ideas with your people (all the above) for resonance, for pride, for distinctiveness – and for the Ikigai sweet spot between Passion, Mission, Profession and Vocation.
Purpose is the key ingredient to both your brand and your culture; it builds passion, loyalty and long-term value. Yes value. Because the evidence suggests that purpose-led companies may generate more value – see Unilever. Not only because they connect more authentically with something bigger than themselves, but also because they remove a bunch of frictions, inefficiencies and prevarications when the future looks unclear. All the more reason to start right now.
Because defining your purpose turns out to be the easy bit; living it, well that’s a whole other story.
If you want to talk purpose, drop me a line at adam@lexicona.co.uk