Purpose goes deeper.
Everyone knows the russian nesting dolls, called matryoshkas. A large wooden doll that you can open, and inside there is another smaller doll, in this one another one, and so forth until you arrive at the center of the doll where you have a very tiny doll that you cannot open anymore.
The purpose of an organisation is like one of these nesting dolls. The outer shell, the purpose, is what unifies everything that is happening within the organisation and also what becomes visible to the outside. An organisation truly unified by purpose will radiate with that purpose. People will notice that in this organisation, people walk the talk, they do more than a job, they do something they truly believe in, and they reflect carefully about how they can achieve the purpose, all the time.
A unifying purpose in itself already creates alignment among all people involved inside the organisation, and if done right, also with all partners, stakeholders and customers interacting with this organisation.
Purpose helps people take decisions without having to follow strict guidelines, it creates a common vision and shared values. This, obviously, is only true if you talk about that purpose again and again, if you make it explicit, if you fill it with meaning, and if you are ready to shape it into a new direction when it no longer serves you.
But not just the outward matryoshka doll is important. The more hidden dolls also contribute important elements to the common purpose. First, there are people, working in smaller teams, or, of course, different bodies of the organisation that need to define their own purpose and their own explicit agreements or manifests. These can be decision making boards, management boards, shareholder meetings and many other gatherings where people come together and, under the common purpose of the organisation, take decsions together.
It is not only helpful, but crucial, that such bodies or teams ask themselves what their purpose is, too. Of course the unifying purpose is still the same, the one of the entire organisation, but that does not mean that the different groups cannot have a purpose that is like a matryoshka inside that unifying purpose.
For instance, if the purpose of the entire organsiation is to delight customers, the purpose of the HR department can be to find exactly the people who will excel at fulfilling that purpose.
Another matryoshka layer are activities. For each meeting, each activity within an organisation, reflection should always be towards the main purpose of the organisation, but we should also take time to define the purpose of the activity itself. What is important in this particular meeting? Sometimes it can be reaching a decision. But it can also be to create a sense of belonging or unity in a team. It can be alignment of opinions, or the purpose can be to just exchange ideas or even just to spend a good time together.
To sum it up: To achieve true fitness for purpose, each person, group and activity should be aligned with the common unifying purpose of the organisation, the purpose of this particular group or individual and the purpose of the activity at hand.
