Back to Work, Back to Life

There is an air of hesitancy surrounding our coming back to work—and, for that matter, our coming back to social interactions in general. No doubt we will find our way to a new normal sooner or later. But what if your company could be one of the sooner ones? What could that do for you, for your customers, for your colleagues, and all your other stakeholders? People like to follow leaders. What would it take for your enterprise to lead?

This is not the time to change your business model or your operating model. People are looking to get back to anything that is even vaguely familiar. We have had enough of disruption for a while. We’d like to see some stability emerge for a change.

The challenge is to bring energy and commitment to this effort, to engage and enlist our own workforce first, and then to radiate that energy out to our customers and partners. We don’t need to do different things. We need to be different in the way we do the things we are known for doing. We need to show up in a new way.

I was reminded of this when I read a recent blog about metaphors for culture. It began with a debate between thinking of your company as a family or a team and ended up by advocating for the metaphor of a village. All three metaphors have arguments to back them up, but for me, on the most critical of all dimensions, they all fall flat. That dimension is purpose.

The purpose of a family is to take care of itself. The purpose of a team is to win games. The purpose of a village is to thrive. All good, but none of these can pull us out of ourselves and put us in service to some greater good. That’s what a purpose-driven organization can do. That is the kind of energizing tailwind we need now.

Now, for non-profits and social services enterprises, this is a bit of a no-brainer because it is their reason for being and core to their differentiation. For profit-making organizations, on the other hand, purpose can get lost in the noise, particularly once you get outside the boardroom and away from headquarters, out into the middle of the organization where anything that really matters actually gets done. This is where we need the energy, not on the earnings call.

So, first things first. Why does your company need to exist? Why should the world want it to? What purpose does it serve? In answering these questions, you need to be aspirational. We all have feet of clay, and none of us is likely to compete with Sister Teresa when it comes to altruism. But brush away the cobwebs, and ask, If we really could be our best selves, who or what would we be in service to, and what difference could we make? Set that as true north.

Now, to activate your compass, you need to tie it as closely as possible to your operations and your organization. A key concept that can help here, one that can unite the profit-making with the purpose-making, is trapped value. That is, one way you can define the purpose of your enterprise is to target a state of affairs that is trapping value today, be that economic value in inefficient processes, or human capital value in underutilized talent, or simple well-being that is being crushed by an unresponsive status quo. In that context, your purpose is to release this trapped value and, by the way, get paid for doing so. The money is there to be made, and your company has committed to make it. But that money is a trailing indicator of success, and an indirect one at that. The leading indicator is your customers’ success, the realization of released trapped value in their context. Get that right, and the rest will follow.

The reason all this is so important at this time is that a shared purpose energizes people.  It causes them to lean in, reach out, give back, and stretch themselves in order to make an impact. It makes them better colleagues. It makes them better family members. It makes them feel better about themselves. We all could use a little more well-being nowadays. We just need to get out of ourselves to find it.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Geoffrey Moore | Zone to Win | Geoffrey Moore Twitter | Geoffrey Moore YouTube