Defining Your Purpose
To be a purpose-driven organization, you obviously first need to have your purpose defined. Involving the right people, having an inclusive process and how you actually write your statement are key elements of success to ensure you are starting on the right foot to reap the numerous benefits of being purpose-driven, which I covered in my previous post.
I have worked with numerous Nike teams and offices across Europe to define their purpose in order to align, focus and inspire them to create a greater contribution beyond their functional roles or deliver on their office’s P&L. I was also fortunate to be on the team who led the work to define the purpose for Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion platform.
From these experiences, I’ll share some learnings on how to best define your purpose and call out some of the crucial elements that will be needed so it will be impactful and resonate more with your employees and consumers.
Tips to Define
In defining your organization – or team’s – purpose, it is imperative to involve the right people and be inclusive in your process.
The Who
The writers of your purpose shouldn’t be just your senior leaders or members of your HR team. Your employees need to be involved to hear their perspectives, dreams and ideas. They also have a valid perspective to this work and will bring more diversity of thought.
Involving more employees will provide you with more options to consider, which will lead to a better ultimate decision. If they feel their voice was heard and they played a role in shaping the purpose statement, they will be more inclined to buy into it and be your purpose champions, which will be crucial for success.
You’ll need an executive or senior leader to be a sponsor of the work. They will help provide access and visibility across the enterprise and can be an enabler to moving things along when things get stuck in bureaucracy or internal politics. Preferably, select a leader who isn’t leading your HR function. This will help position this work as critical to the organization’s business success and not be seen as just a soft, woo-woo initiative – which HR can sometimes can unfairly be perceived.
It’s beneficial to bring on a diverse task force to be the core members to drive this work. Members of this group should have representation from different:
Leadership levels
Tenure in the organization
Functions
Offices/geographical locations (where applicable)
Genders
Nationalities
This diversity will help ensure the different perspectives across your organizations are woven into your statement. Your purpose statement shouldn’t feel that it mostly represents just one function or office but is all-encompassing for everyone who works there. It shouldn’t be focused to serve the home office, or mother ship, or just those who work in your offices. If you have warehouses, distribution centers, factories, their perspectives should be considered as well. Having the diversity in your task force will better protect this from happening.
The How
Utilizing design sprint methodologies is a great process to define your purpose statement. Your diverse task force should use sessions to dive deeper into your heritage, clarify why you exist and who you are as an organization, while being creative and bold as they dream of the possibilities.
As drafts get created, they should be prototyped and shared with different groups across the organization to gather their input on what does and doesn’t resonate. They can also give feedback on where more clarity or boldness is needed. Each step in the iterative process should be taken back to senior leaders and employees to continue to evolve and improve the statement.
As you zone in on your final statement, a manifesto can be written to provide more context and examples so employees better understand what the purpose statement is all about, what it’s based on, what the vision is and what it hopes to achieve. This too, should be prototyped and tested out with groups to make sure it is authentic, clear and inspiring.
Make it impactful
There are various aspects to keep in mind in creating your purpose statement that will better ensure that it is impactful and resonates with your employees and consumers.
Authentic
Your purpose statement needs to be authentic. It needs to be true to your organization if people are going to believe it. It should be part aspirational, part realistic in who you are and what you do today. If it’s not grounded enough in the today, your employees will more than likely reject it because they will feel that isn’t who you are, what you are about and what you can actually contribute to society.
It should also be grounded in the type of business you are in and the actual benefits you create with your products or services. There needs to be a clear connection so it will resonate with your employees and they will believe you can actually bring that purpose to life.
Unique
Your purpose can’t be a cut and paste job or a minor tweak from another company’s statement you admire. Having a unique statement is crucial so it can stand out amongst the myriad of purpose statements out there, just like your business and brand. If it is grounded in your heritage, values, culture and your tone of voice, it will be unique to you because you don’t share all of those same elements with any other organization. If not, it will come off as being generic and will diminish how it can galvanize your people.
Inspiring
“To refresh the world and inspire moments of optimism and happiness.”
"Delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors.”
"To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time."
These are just some examples of inspiring purpose statements that are out there. Your statement should bring a smile to a face, light them up and excite them. If there is some emotion woven into it, you are bound to inspire your employees more and invite consumers to engage with your organization and brand more often and deeply. The danger in this is that your statement comes off too cutesy and people can’t grasp what it actually means.
The Next Step
Once you’ve completed this step to define your purpose, then the more crucial work needs to kick in…How to bring it to life? In my next post, I’ll explore ways to prevent it from just being a slogan that is slapped on a wall or just sits on your website. It needs to be brought to life and authentically embedded into your organization and culture and I’ll share tips in how to do so.