Strategic purpose is king

A boat without a rudder is essentially just a vessel floating on water which is at the very whim of either the wind, currents, or both, and can eventually find itself washed up and in a dire position

Steve Robinson

1. Having a sense of purpose

The analogy of a boat without a rudder can also be true of organisations that have not properly defined the ‘purpose’ of their organisation.

A colleague and friend of mine used to say, “an arrow shot at nothing surely hits it”.  How true is this statement?  Having a deep sense of purpose is critical for direction, organisational alignment and future success.

If we think about it, having a clear purpose is incredibly important.  Interestingly, the need for a clear purpose is sometimes not fully understood or can simply be overlooked by some organisations.

A good strategic purpose is the ‘pointy end’ of good strategy and is made up of at least a mission, vision, values and the behavioural culture of the organisation.  All too often these appear as wallpaper statements, marketing tools that just adorn websites and the reception areas of businesses.

2. Mission & vision (Call it what you will)

The mission and vision are sometimes confused as being interchangeable by organisations but in reality, they have distinctly different intent.

The mission is the very reason why the organisation exists (it is ‘why’ we do what we do).  The vision is an aspirational end goal at some distant point possibly 10 or even 20 years into the future inspiring the organisation into action along a defined path to achieve a desirable end result.

The book ‘Visioneering’ by Daffydd Wiesner-Ellix included a four yearlong study which showed organisations that had a culture of ‘shared destiny’ significantly outperformed organisations that did not, in terms of revenue growth, expanded workforces, stock prices and net incomes (profit).

Although the book is little bit old now, some things in life are simply fundamental and will always apply in this world.  In my experience it has been invaluable getting organisational agreement as to why they exist, what they should be doing, where they are going, and how they will work together to achieve their goal.

3. Nothing but a bunch of fluffy words

Earlier in my career I had little time for things that I perceived to be a waste of time, such as the values that were displayed on the office wall where I once worked.  I simply saw them as a bunch of fluffy words that no one really paid any attention to anyway.  Perhaps I did not have a shared sense of destiny?

Over the years I have come to realise the significance of ‘values’ and how these values protect and serve our communities, our families, and our organisations – values are important!  Although, values by themselves are useless.

Values must be critically relevant to achieving the mission and vision of the organisation and more importantly need to be supported by the right cultural behaviours.  For instance, if one of the values helping an organisation along its pathway was ‘honesty’ then the organisation (and everyone in it) must be honest.

That means people should be able to say what they think without fear of ridicule or rejection.  So how does the organisation ‘shore up’ it’s values?  And what are the consequences when the organisation or its people do not demonstrate the agreed values?

Indeed, this is all very challenging, but if values are important, then they need to be consistently deployed by the organisation, otherwise people see through it and it becomes nothing more than a thin veneer of meaningless words.

A good strategic purpose sets the tone and direction for the organisation and ‘underpins’ the business strategy.  The elements of the strategic purpose should work in harmony with good business strategy to achieve amazing results.

4. Making it happen

When establishing a strategic purpose, it is vital that people in the organisation are involved in order to create the ‘shared destiny’ discussed earlier in this article.

It is also a very good idea to establish some criteria that can be used to guide the team during the development of the mission and vision statements.  The criteria can be used to confirm good words and points relevant to the task and to discount the ones that do not fit.

When establishing values, it is important to ‘brainstorm’ without interjection to allow everybody to have input.  The team can then refine the list of values established to a number of points that succinctly support the purpose and future direction of the organisation.  I think that it is also good practice to ‘define’ each of the values with a supporting statement so that others can understand the intent of the value and its relevance.  And then of course, the values need to be exhibited by everybody.