Why We Need Purpose-Driven Organizations More Than Ever

And Why So Few Live Up to the Name

In the early 1990s, a small mountain village in Japan quietly began an experiment.

Facing a declining population, an aging community, and a growing sense of cultural disconnection, the town of Kamikatsu made a decision that, on the surface, seemed like a logistical challenge. They would eliminate waste.

Not reduce it. Eliminate it. Entirely.

The idea was ambitious, perhaps even absurd. Kamikatsu didn’t have the money for incinerators or landfills, nor the infrastructure of a major city. What they had instead was resolve — and a slow-burning sense that something deeper had been misplaced.

So, they built a recycling station out of old materials. They created a swap shop where goods could be traded freely. They introduced a radical new sorting system: 45 different categories of waste, all managed by hand. The town’s elderly residents — most in their seventies and eighties — became experts in separating milk cartons from bottle caps, styrofoam from soft plastics, metal from aluminum.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t convenient.

But here’s the remarkable part: they did it not because of environmental mandates or brand messaging, but because, as one town official put it,

“It’s not about the garbage. It’s about dignity. About living in a way that says: I am part of something larger.”

There was no mission statement. No quarterly sustainability report. No TED Talk.

Just purpose, lived.

The Illusion of Purpose

Contrast this with the average modern organization.

You’ll likely find a clean, professional mission statement, proudly displayed in the “About Us” section of the website. Something noble and broad: “To inspire positive change,” or “To empower every person on the planet.”

And yet, step inside these companies, and you’ll feel something else entirely.

Not inspiration. Not conviction. But a quiet, creeping dissonance.

A sea of employees who can recite the brand’s mission —
but no longer believe it applies to their work.

Skepticism disguised as professionalism.
Fatigue dressed up as culture.
A sense that purpose lives on posters, but dies in meetings.

This is the paradox of modern purpose:

It is everywhere — except where it matters.
We’ve never spoken more about meaning.
And rarely felt it less.

What Happens When the Purpose Ends?

In 2019, Unilever was being hailed as a purpose pioneer. CEO Paul Polman famously prioritized long-term sustainability over short-term profits, reshaping the company’s strategy around environmental and social responsibility. Harvard Business Review wrote glowing pieces. Davos cheered.

Then came the cracks.

By 2022, major investors began criticizing the company for being, in their words, “purpose-obsessed.” Terry Smith, a fund manager with a significant stake in Unilever, mocked the brand’s attempts to define the social mission of Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

“A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s has, in our view, clearly lost the plot,” he said.

It wasn’t just snark. It was a symptom.

Unilever had once been praised for embedding purpose into business strategy. Now, it was being ridiculed for turning purpose into performance art.

This is what happens when companies confuse marketing with meaning — when the story becomes more important than the behavior it’s meant to guide.

The Quiet Alternative

Let’s leave the boardroom and go to a quieter place. A smaller place.

Barter Books, a secondhand bookstore in Northumberland, England, is housed inside a converted Victorian train station. It has no mission statement on its website. No social impact tab. And yet, it has quietly become one of the most beloved cultural spaces in the region.

In 2000, the owners found an old wartime poster buried in a box of forgotten books. It read: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

They framed it. Customers asked to buy it. The phrase spread. Today, it’s a cliché, pasted on coffee mugs and office walls around the world.

But Barter Books never tried to trademark it.

Because for them, the poster wasn’t a product.
It was an expression of what they already believed:
that amidst chaos and noise, people needed stillness, focus, and quiet connection.

They serve tea in china cups. They welcome dogs. They build trust not through mission statements, but through rituals that reflect what they stand for.

This is purpose, not as branding — but as behavior.

Purpose as Alignment

So how do we tell the difference between a brand that has purpose and a brand that claims it?

It comes down to alignment.

Alignment between:

• What a company believes (its core truth)
• Who it serves and how those people transform
• The role the brand plays in that transformation
• Its cultural relevance — why it matters now
• And most of all, its actions — how it behaves when no one’s watching

You don’t need a manifesto to create alignment.
You need integrity, clarity, and repetition.

The brands that resonate are not always the loudest.
They are the most consistent.

From Alignment to Action

If alignment is the foundation, what does living purpose actually look like inside an organization?

It’s not a motto. It’s not a one-off campaign. It’s a set of shared behaviors, reinforced over time.

Think of it as a living contract — not between a company and its customers, but between a company and its conscience.

A contract that is:

• Witnessed daily in decisions, not just stated in slide decks.
• Mutual — between leaders and employees, brand and audience.
• Flexible, not fixed. Designed to evolve with context, not ossify into cliché.

It plays out in small, repeatable ways:

• In hiring: Do we choose people who reinforce our values — or simply fit the culture?
• In product development: Are we solving for convenience, or for transformation?
• In customer support: Do we treat complaints as transactions — or as moments of trust?

In the most purposeful organizations, this contract is not centrally enforced. It’s locally interpreted — each team, each role, each region translating the story into action in their own way.

Purpose, when alive, doesn’t require everyone to say the same thing.
It allows them to act in harmony — guided by a truth they all recognize.

That’s what makes it real.

Purpose as Mental Model

Brand strategist Jasmine Bina recently wrote:

“Sometimes the best brand strategy is to give your consumers a new mental model.”

In commoditized industries — where the functional differences between products are negligible — mental models become decisive. They determine how people assign value, how they make trade-offs, and what they’re willing to pay a premium for.

Jasmine said it best:

Beds are for sleeping — until Eight Sleep tells us they’re for healing.
Food is fuel — until Ezekiel reframes it as sacred.
Baby formula is science — until Bobbie reframes it as simplicity and trust.

What these brands are doing isn’t just positioning.
They’re redefining the context in which their product lives.
They’re changing what the product means.

And this is where purpose becomes more than alignment.

Purpose creates a worldview.
It introduces a new lens through which your audience sees themselves, their needs, and what matters.

When purpose is clear, coherent, and lived — It becomes the emotional infrastructure for a new mental model.

It’s what makes your strengths obvious.
Your weaknesses irrelevant.
And your audience’s loyalty almost irrational.

In that sense, purpose doesn’t just answer “Why us?”
It reframes the question entirely.

And crucially — mental models don’t live in mission statements.
They’re embodied in rituals, decisions, tone of voice, hiring practices, even product design.

A lived purpose isn’t what you tell people to believe.
It’s what you teach them to see — by showing them, again and again, what you stand for.

Why It Matters Now

So why do we need purpose-driven organizations more than ever?

Because we’re in a crisis of meaning.

Work has become a source of burnout, not identity.
Skepticism toward institutions is at an all-time high.
And younger generations — who will soon make up the majority of the workforce and consumer base — are no longer satisfied with clever branding. They want coherence. Authenticity. Action.

And not just on social issues, but in how a company treats its people, how it shows up in small moments, and whether its products reflect the values it claims to uphold.

Purpose, when real, gives direction.
Purpose, when faked, breeds cynicism.
And purpose, when ignored, leads to drift.

The crisis of meaning isn’t just poetic — it’s measurable.

A recent Gallup report found that only 23% of employees globally feel engaged at work. Meanwhile, the Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 68% of consumers expect brands to play a role in societal progress, yet 56% don’t believe companies are delivering on their promises.

What we’re witnessing isn’t brand fatigue — it’s purpose fatigue.

When people are overexposed to messaging and underexposed to meaning, they stop listening.

Or worse — they stop caring.

More than ever!

The story of Kamikatsu is not just about zero waste.
It’s about what happens when a community reclaims the right to believe in something bigger than convenience.

And the same holds true for organizations. People don’t disengage because they’re tired. They disengage because they can no longer see the meaning in what they do.

We don’t need more brands that say they stand for something.
We need organizations brave enough to live it — quietly, consistently, even when no one is watching.

Because purpose isn’t a statement on the wall.
It’s the way we sort the trash, pour the tea, and treat each other in the spaces in between.

And in a world overwhelmed by noise, that might just be the most radical thing of all.