What is a purposeful organization?

- Peter Drucker defined an organization as a place to allow ordinary individuals achieve exceptional things. One of the key things about purpose is it provides clarity about why the organization exists. Who does it plan to impact from a customer perspective, from a society and also economic perspective. What helps to draw people in to the vision of that organization, that they can connect with the purpose of it and want to be part of it. Your purpose is also a key differentiator, when it comes to attracting talent for your organization. Why do people work in the government? Why do they work in healthcare? Why do they want to work for your organization? Your ability to clearly articulate the purpose of your organization is one of the key differentiators to attract that talent, to help them connect to its mission and deliver great outcomes for customers, society, and the economic purposes you're hoping to drive. Unfortunately for the majority of organizations, when we ask them what's the purpose of your organization, we don't get great answers. Often we actually get the answer, it's just to make money. How motivating is that for your employees? Jack Welch, the famous CEO from GE said that stakeholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. It's a result, not a strategy. Your key constituents are your customers, your people and your products. Unfortunately, most senior leaders are trapped in the myopic view of the world. Constantly thinking about the next quarter, the next little milestone to achieve. If they don't deliver those numbers to the markets, the business will be considered a failure. This leads us to in a trapped in the mind of short-termism and losing the vision, the purpose that actually the company was founded upon. We've seen many organizations forget their purpose. Lose their purpose over time. And often, this can be one of the early indicators for a company that is about to fail. Companies stop thinking big. They start to think that thinking big is just building the next mobile app. That's not big for companies. What we're trying to encourage people to think about is the clarity, the purpose, and the vision of creating great organizations that people want to be a part of that feel connected to and feel that they can understand their contribution and how it's achieving that mission and purpose at the organization. One of our favorite missions is Space X with their goal to try and make interplanetary travel and life on Mars possible. Who wouldn't want to be part of a mission like that? Yes, it's challenging. Yes, It's thinking big. It's taking us to other planets and creating life that we can live there. But who wouldn't be want to be part of that mission? Who wouldn't want to see that become a reality? Who wouldn't want to work for Space X? Leaders like Elon Musk are known to have big visions and be extremely challenging with their people. They push them really hard to achieve those visions. But what they're excellent at, is focusing on defining what is important to the business. They trust their people to figure out how to get there, but they push their teams hard. Because they understand, when you're chasing an aspirational mission or vision, there'll be many obstacles to face along the way. And their goal is to discover those obstacles as quickly as possible and find interesting and innovative ways to address them. They're aware that their role as a leader is to focus on what the company is trying to achieve and be open to working with their teams as they figure out how to achieve it. What's the purpose of your organization? Can you write it down? Does everyone in your organization understand the purpose of your organization? How do you feel you contribute to the purpose of your organization? Is it obvious? If you could write the purpose of your organization, what would it be? Get a group, a cross functional group from your team, to try and right what's the purpose of your organization? What's the purpose of the initiative that you're working on? How can you focus on clearly articulating that to others? So they understand why this is important and what it is to be achieved.