How You Can Use Purpose to Create Competitive Advantage for Your Company

You might have reflected on the concept of purpose on a personal level at some point in your life. For some, purpose comes up when determining your next career or relationship move. Well, it is a very essential topic in the organizational context as it relates to brand and it’s important to have a firm grasp for how it aligns with other more talked-about aspects of an organization.

Purpose has been a hot topic in branding and organizational development for some time now. It is said to be an organization's why or a bold affirmation of its reason for being in business. Another way to describe organizational purpose is the overarching reason for existing. It is something that will never reach its full potential. It is the ideal that you will always strive toward.

Many metaphorically refer to purpose as the North Star. Having it assures that you have a guide and are headed in the right direction. If you travel from New York to California or South Africa to Ghana without a guide (or a pilot), it will likely be a challenging journey. You can still very well make it to California or Ghana but you will likely get lost along the way, take routes you wish you’d avoided, and run into some detours.

That would not be the most efficient way to make your journey. Alternatively, having a North Star as your guide would enable you to make more well-informed choices and reach your destination with less frustration, better safety, and utilizing fewer resources.

Establishing and operating from an anchor of purpose can create a competitive advantage for your brand.        

Furthermore, purpose-driven brands have a stronger affinity for being authentic and that should be your goal.

So, what does a solid organizational purpose statement actually look like? ?Let’s take a look at two great purpose statements from some companies you are likely to know and one from a client.

Female-founded apparel and footwear company, Spanx, has a great brand purpose,

“To help women feel great about themselves and their potential.“

That is a powerful statement and provides the latitude to continually expand the product offering to accommodate the ever-growing (and never-ending) needs for women to feel great about themselves.

Spanx founder and self-made billionaire, Sara Blakely, is an inspiration for many women because she solved a problem that many of us experience—daily wardrobe woes. Since its inception in 1998[JS1] , this American brand has grown from its retail shops in Atlanta, GA to expansion into more than fifty countries.

American fast-food restaurant chain, Chick-fil-A, has a purpose that drives them internally and it is also in the public eye. Chick-fil-A’s stated purpose is

“To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A.”

Most people know about Chick-fil-A’s schedule which is unusual for the restaurant industry. Being closed on Sundays, Chick-fil-A believes they are supporting employees while driving their purpose. There are even optional Monday morning devotions at the corporate headquarters site in College Park, GA.

This brand, which has a franchise business model, realizes that people join cultures and not just companies when they seek employment. Their stated core values reflect their purpose statement and they foster a culture of care for their employees and customers.

Let’s have a look at a healthcare organization and the process they went through to discover their purpose. We will explore the process of discovery with Quality Dialysis, an in-home dialysis company.

The first step in creating your purpose is to identify what it is that you do. For Quality Dialysis, Brand Rebirth identified these three main aspects of their organization.

They provide (see diagram below):

After identifying what Quality Dialysis does– typically the easiest part – Brand Rebirth began the journey of helping them to identify why they do it. ?Keep in mind that profit is not a reason for why, but an outcome.

Some of the reasons they provide in-home care include the need for one on one dialysis care. Once we identified what Quality Dialysis does and why they do it, we began to discover their core purpose.

During this phase of exploration, Quality Dialysis dove deeper into their why, exploring the benefits that come along with work. By pulling apart the reasons they do what they do, they were able to list the benefits to the patients (consumers) and the world as a whole.

Through exploring their this company's what and why, we were able to discover their purpose statement. Looking back at Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model, with their purpose at the center of it all, we determined that Quality Dialysis’ purpose is ?“To eradicate the generational pattern of end stage renal disease”.

End Stage Renal Disease plagues many communities, particularly the Hispanic and African American communities and Quality Dialysis is committed to educating its patients, families and communities at large on how to prevent diabetes. They are also committed to promoting better nutrition and overall wellness so that the future generations of its patients will not have the same fate with their health.        

Notice how this purpose statement does not discuss what they do or how they’ll do it. It is aspirational that they will succeed in making this purpose come to life, as it is very lofty, but it is definitely inspirational. It also validates the fact that the company really cares about its patients and the families of its patients. More importantly, it empowers patients (customers) to think about leaving a legacy of wealth and health for generations to come.

Purpose statements are something you should continue to strive towards and push employees to strive towards. Company purpose statements are essential and high-potential leaders should work to develop purpose and/or why statements for themselves as well.

Tanika Vital-Pringle, Global MBA Brand Management, is a Personal Brand and Corporate Brand Strategist for Brand Rebirth who has over 20 years of experience working for global Fortune 50 companies and beyond. She is a certified WHY Coach and offers comprehensive personal branding coaching programs for Emerging Executives & High-Potential Leaders and Workshops to build corporate brands as well. Book a discovery call today.

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