The power of purpose
Identifying purpose is key to trust, engagement and performance, says Helen Rosethorn
Trust seems to be the focus for so many organisations at the moment, particularly, of course, those in the financial services sector. It’s resulted in a flurry of values refreshes across the City, but what you still tend to hear is that nothing has really changed and bankers are still villains.
Whilst values are writ large in many a bank reception, they clearly haven’t created real behavioural change. That’s not, I’m sure, much of a surprise to many – old ways die hard, particularly when they deliver handsome returns. And when you look at the values themselves, they belong somewhere on a spectrum between ‘me too’ and ‘meaningless’.
In my world, values are important behaviours or principles that bind the culture of that community or organisation. They should not be a statement of the what but more about the how of that organisation. However, there’s something equally important in this mix that you don’t tend to hear enough about these days, and that’s the why.
By not thinking about why, organisations are missing a big trick. The why is what we buy – whether it’s a good night’s sleep in a hotel as a customer or the chance to help put the man on the moon for the employees at NASA. The why is our cause, our belief, our purpose.
Nikos Mourkogiannis, the Greek leadership consultant, talks about it as the overriding and underpinning reason an enterprise exists. I’m not a fan of this: it feels too detached. For me, the why or the purpose, appropriately expressed and integrated into the what and how for each employee is the ingredient that can unify people and inspires their actions.
I was listening to the wonderful Jo Malone on Desert Island Discs a month or so ago. She never mentioned values. She never mentioned trust. But what she did talk about was her sense of loss of purpose when she sold her luxury goods empire to Estee Lauder.
She talked about the emotional torment of letting go, that she would have done anything ‘to do a day’s work’. It’s interesting that the sheer power of her purpose was only revealed once she lost it. Perhaps leaders need to realise just what a driver of trust, engagement and performance purpose really is – whilst they have the opportunity to harness it, rather than after the event.
And if you want to hear Jo Malone talk about her amazing life, and the way she has fought to overcome real adversity, you can listen to it here.
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