Just Shouting ‘Purpose’ Won’t Motivate Anybody.

“If you want a company to be excellent, you have to draw people’s discretionary energy, their extra energy. Well, what do you give your extra energy to? I give it to things I care about and believe in.” - Gerry Anderson, CEO of DTE Energy.

Over the past decade, ‘purpose’ has become a management slogan. But even the most brilliant purpose statement is of limited use if the business cannot execute it.

People want to work for organisations whose business philosophies resonate with them personally, intellectually and emotionally.

If a company’s drive is disconnected from their talent’s personal purpose, the outcomes that they’re working to achieve start to feel meaningless.?

If what the company expects from its people isn’t aligned with who they are and what they stand for, the talent pool will inevitably not give its best.

Excellent leaders know their teams so well that they can take the organisation’s objectives on the one hand, take the employee’s personal mobilisers on the other, and marry the two.

Each employee operates from a slightly different set of assumptions about the world, the industry, what is (or isn’t) achievable. That individual perspective allows them to create high value and have a significant impact.

Equally important is interlocking their personal beliefs with organisational purpose. The company morphs into an entity of excellence because everyone is willing to do more and go further.