Purpose > Strategy > Plan

If you experience no Joy in your work, if you’re not working with a sense of Passion and Purpose then this post may point to reasons for this unhappy situation.

Everything a highly effective team does, it does with a sense of Purpose, Passion and Joy. It’s time to ask some questions.

Questions for your leader?

Let’s dial-in some parameters that will help locate your position. The first thing I’d like to know is how you’d describe your team’s velocity? Velocity is a vector, a function of speed and direction, how is your team’s direction of travel determined?

Some useful parameters for consideration:

A Purpose is different to a Strategy

A Purpose is a generalised description of a goal. A Purpose is closely aligned to brand and business aspirations.

Purpose is different Strategy which, in turn, is different to a Plan. A purpose describes the new future, one that you know you want to get to but don’t know all the steps required. You can’t put a price on a purpose for many reasons, here’s two off the top-of-my-head. One (cost): there are unknown unknowns making any budget estimate widely inaccurate. Two (value): the unquantifiable value of a collective sense of purpose. A unifying effect emanating from a shared sense of direction of travel. It creates a *sense of team* like nothing else I know.

To illustrate, imagine you’re in a yacht race. Your purpose is to win. But to start the race with a fixed plan of when to tack left and right would be nonsensical. You need to start the race and then be sure to have sufficient “Will & Skill” onboard to win.

Passion is derived from a sense of collective belief in a Purpose

Have you articulated your team’s Purpose, having created that shared vision with your team? Is it s strong, clear, simple to understand Purpose? If yes the a cohesive sense of *togetherness* will quickly follow. As will a collective sense of responsibility to deliver.

A note of caution: if your Purpose amounts to a bigger vision than the executives were expecting, you will have to either re-cast it or go play somewhere else. You cannot compete with white elephants in the room.

The board should agree on its goals and a budget, and that’s a top-down statement of: “we’re prepared to spend X to get Y.” A Purpose needs the sponsorship of the whole board or it’s nothing more than a pipe-dream.

Develop the Strategy

If your Purpose said “…we need to transform this organisation from Old Normal to Born Digital so that….” You’re strategy might be to describe the first phase of a Digital Transformation; the support infrastructure, the data-collection backbone, the operating model, the security, compliance and governance structures. At this stage, be guided by Minimum Viable Productthinking and be clear about the problems you’re trying to solve.

Developing a Digital Transformation strategy is a cross-cutting activity. You must involve all interested (and dis-interested) parties.

A Strategy will need to provide budget estimates, at this stage, these are professional guesses.

To quote Jean-Jacques Dordain:

Expertise is the only thing that reconciles Risk with Success.

Develop and join the plans

The plan to implement a data-collection backbone for example may be a waterfall plan because that’s how the IT team prefer to work and they’re leading on this. The Digital Team may prefer an agile approach, but they’re one of many stakeholders — now’s not the time to argue about project governance preferences — focus on converging plans.

The planning stage is where delivery timescales and budgets can be firmed-up. If you’re outsourcing, add extra contingencies for documentation, change- and supplier-management. In house development teams are trending at present because organisations realise the longterm cost of hollowing-out expertise is great indeed. Savvy organisations understand the positive benefits gained in terms of agility and value-for-money by bringing delivery expertise in-house.

Joy at work is derived from a sense of Purpose

If you’re not enjoying your work, it could be because you’re working without passion. Passion requires a sense of direction, and that’s derived from Strategy. If either of these are missing, or are not clear to you it’s time to speak to your leader. If they are clear but not something you feel excited about, perhaps it’s time to move on?

Have you seen an elephant herd defend its young?

The Elephant’s investment in its young is legendary. Your investment in a Strategy and Plans need to be surrounded by a strong sense of Purpose. Without this, vision and direction will quickly be replaced with Business As Usual (BAU). All stuff that must be done, easy to justify, but when you look back over one or two years, what do you have to show for your work?

A strong sense of Purpose protects the Strategy

The Purpose of the elephant herd is represented by the baby elephant: the perpetuation of genes. Their Strategy is to teach, to defend, and to nuture — at all costs. If the plan is simply: we go to the watering-hole everyday at 2pm, this could be likened to BAU. Sure, it’s necessary but it doesn’t prepare the herd for migration. A Plan cannot stand for long without a Strategy. A Strategy needs to be understood and agreed-to by everyone, and be underpinned by a sense of Purpose.

Purpose comes from the board, Strategy from its lieutenants and Plans from the delivery units on the ground. Communication about all aspects must be two-way, allowing for continuous adjustment and refinement.

If you’re experiencing no joy at work? You tell me why…