When Purpose Isn’t Enough
It’s easy to embrace purpose as an organizational goal, but to determine if it’s truly a guiding principle, ask yourself one simple question.
Purpose has been popular in recent years. It has become, in the language of business and social-sector leaders, something like a deeper version of an organization’s mission. If mission is our what, then purpose is our why, Fast Company explains.
Take the beloved Southwest Airlines as an example. The company has an entire page dedicated to outlining its Purpose, Vision, Values and Mission. According to the airline, its purpose is to “[connect people] to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel.” And for those of us who know and “LUV” Southwest, you can feel its workers’ commitment to this purpose. Their friendliness, fairness, and flexibility clearly differentiate them from their competitors.
Southwest, of course, isn’t alone. Patagonia, Whole Foods, Toms, and countless others have encouraged us to reconsider the role of business in society for years — imploring organizations to aim for more than profit. And there’s plenty of help for anyone looking to discover their purpose: You can work with The Purpose Institute to develop a “Purpose Anthem” (with the support of its Chief Purpologist). Inc Magazine offers “5 Ways to Build a Purpose Driven Company.” The Aspen Institute provides resources from its annual Ideas Festival to support “Rethinking Company Purpose.”
At first glance, all of this focus on purpose seems to be a good thing. It is inspiring companies to mitigate the potential negative impacts of their business, invest more in their employees, and play a positive role in society beyond just providing goods and services. But many people are skeptical. When the Business Roundtable updated its statement on the purpose of a corporation last year, it was dubbed a PR move and criticized for lacking specifics and being unrevolutionary. There is a strong “We’ll believe it when we see it” sentiment floating around.
Despite the promise of purpose, why isn’t purpose enough?
The Problem with Purpose
A few weeks ago I attended a dinner with a group of social sector leaders. Our conversation focused on how we might activate purpose in our work and organizations. In our minds, purpose already infused everything we did. One nonprofit leader shared about organizational rituals, like telling the stories of the people who benefited from our work. A researcher discussed how meditation might ground us in the deeper things that motivated us day in and day out. And a financial advisor said that he doesn’t let his wealthy clients leave without talking about how they plan to give back.
And yet, something was missing from the discussion. It seemed purpose had become a way for us to have it all — to make money and give back, to pursue success and be conscientious — a reinvention of the old “do well by doing good” adage. Purpose didn’t seem to be forcing any tradeoffs. It didn’t seem to have any costs associated with it.
This isn’t surprising given the way purpose is sold. It promises to engage employees, make decisionmaking easier, benefit your bottom line, reinvigorate your brand, and give everyone a deep sense of meaning.
But in the day-to-day of organizational life, nothing is that simple. Even if we’re infusing our workplace cultures with purpose, we will inevitably come to the point where purpose isn’t enough. We will have to make tradeoffs. Do we choose people or profit? Beating our competitors to market or building a great product? Sparking a movement and not leading it from the front?
If purpose is just something we tack on to our ambitions, it will often take second place. Instead, we should see purpose as the place from which all of our ambitions flow. It’s not the thing we give up first, but the thing we should be willing to give up everything else for.
Sacrificing for Purpose
At its best, purpose can act as a sort of organizational backbone. It can keep us oriented in the right direction when we might be tempted to change course. It’s a way of identifying what we’re willing to sacrifice. But even if we write purpose statements and host day-long purpose workshops, we may fail to do the one thing that can actually make us purpose-driven.
The organizations that have found a way to do this well ask themselves one simple but important question: What are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of our purpose?
It’s easy to think this is just about money. We believe that purpose boils down to a willingness to make less money in order to do more good. That’s certainly one approach, but there are many more ways we might sacrifice for the sake of purpose.
What about sacrificing the credit? Take as an example PelotonU — a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas, whose purpose is to help nontraditional college students earn degrees. Over the last seven years, the organization has pioneered a new model known as “hybrid college” which combines self-paced online learning with in-person coaching. The results have been incredible: Eighty-four percent of students are on track to graduate on time compared to 52% of students at 4-year public universities in their home state of Texas according to their latest annual report.
As you might expect, many people are interested in replicating the idea. Cofounders Hudson Baird and Sarah Saxton-Frump were faced with a choice: Do we create a network of PelotonU programs around the country or do we empower others to create their own homegrown programs using the principles and practices we’ve developed? Both approaches achieve their goal of serving more students. But the first approach would also ensure their brand of hybrid college get the most recognition. Instead, they chose the second path, driven by the conviction that every community is different and that students deserve grassroots approaches tailored to their own circumstances. PelotonU has made the conscious choice to sacrifice getting the credit in order to spark a movement bigger than one organization.
Consider another example. Coming Clean is a national network of environmental and economic health and justice organizations with a long history of working in and with communities of color and low-income communities to fight the harmful effects of the petrochemical industry. Rather than establishing its priorities from the top down, the organization works from the bottom up, collaborating with “fenceline” communities to determine goals and strategies for action. Every Coming Clean campaign is a collaboration between multiple stakeholders, with affected communities at the center and not simply waiting in the wings to be rescued.
To do this, the organization is guided by the Jemez Principles, created in 1996 by “forty people of color and European-American representatives” on the frontlines of environmental and economic justice advocacy. These principles govern how they work together and interact with one another. From “Let People Speak For Themselves” to “Commit to Self-Transformation” to “Be Inclusive,” the Coming Clean network consistently prioritizes how they work together at least as much as what they are working to achieve. At times, this means the work can happen more slowly than some might like. Issues are deliberated at length, decisions are made via consensus, and people’s biases are constantly examined for how they might affect their thinking. Coming Clean has sacrificed optimal efficiency for equity — a necessary component of their commitment to justice.
The people working at these organizations would tell you the same thing: making sacrifices isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. They aren’t alone in their belief. Every day, leaders and their teams are confronted with decisions that test their commitment to purpose. Yes, our shared rituals can shore up our resolve: stories can remind us of the people at stake, meditation can ground us in what’s important, and a triple-bottom line definition of success can keep us honest. But in the moments when our purpose might take a backseat, it is our shared willingness to sacrifice that ensures purpose stays front and center.
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