Making A Statement With Purpose & Vision

The Purpose Of Purpose

They have journeyed from vegetable oil, to soaps, to medical equipment, and to IT Services. But despite all of those changes, they stuck to four constants that gave them “a clear sense of purpose”.

Today, they have an enviable record in Corporate Sustainability. They are a blue-chip stock and an ethical benchmark. Even two years after handing over the reins, their founder is in the spotlight for the right reasons.

If Wipro and Azim Premji had viewed their Spirit solely as profound words of no value — instead of using them as their Purpose — we’d all be living in a very different world.

The Mission of a company deals with what it wants to do, for whom, and why. The Purpose provides existential clarity on the “why”.

If we were to compare a firm to an actual human being, its body — which helps it think, move and express — is the Mission. While its heart is the Purpose, since it (figuratively speaking) adds an emotional or a philosophical dimension.

Last year, when the global economy felt the first wave of the pandemic’s repercussions, a study had a few things to say about what a strong Purpose translated into:

1.???Four-time multiplier for purchases.

2.???Six-time multiplier for public goodwill after a misstep.

3.???Four-and-a-half-time multiplier for getting championed by purchasers.

4.???A 4.1-time multiplier for customer trust.?

Purpose can also double up as a North Star for Agility. As depicted in this visual model conceptualized by Dale Carnegie, it works on three fronts: emotional (Resilience), psychological (Social Intelligence) and analytical (Tools and Processes).?

Dale Carnegie also has dedicated resources that shed light on the abstracts of how these three internal dynamics, Customer-Centricity and Change Management can amalgamate into Agility.

Purpose also seems to have the full attention of the younger demographic. Razorfish found out recently that while 62 per cent of consumers across all ages feel that Purpose is a purchase-dictator, Gen Z places twice the amount of faith in such brands as compared to their Millennial counterparts.?

View From The Top

In the context of the bigger picture, organizations need to be clear about what they intend to be in the future.

Continuing the human-company analogy from above, if the Mission is the body and the Purpose is the heart, the Vision is the dream it wants to realise some day.

Hence, Vision serves two purposes:

a.???Determining a firm’s long-term strategy.

b.???Aligning stakeholders with a firm’s direction.

A clear-cut Vision Statement can also help companies go beyond their perceived capabilities while investing effort and resources in a reasonable manner. Dale Carnegie too abides by the belief that Vision has its place in the DNA Of Success.

The Anatomy Of Purpose & Vision

Now that we’ve established their importance, let’s look at some elements that can help in framing good Purpose and Vision statements.

???Purpose Statements:???

a) An inspirational peg. b) Brevity. c) Clarity in current position and aspired destination.

d) A sense of dichotomy between the means and the end.

Tesla’s Purpose (Mission) statement is “to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy”. In this phrase, “sustainable” showcases “stability” in terms of Tesla’s eventual goal.

But it wishes to “accelerate this transition”, which implies “change”, creating a dichotomy of sorts in the statement itself.?

The motto is inspirational, describes what Tesla wants to do in minimal words, and is clear-cut in implicitly stating the gulf between energy-generation in today’s world and the eventual target.?

Vision Statements:???

a.???Core focus. b) Differentiator(s). c) Clarity in incremental goals.

Google’s Vision has the common theme of free access, which falls in line with its mission to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".

The core focus also serves as a differentiator here. Google has positioned itself as an Open Source ecosystem, which it touches upon in its statement through “Android Phones”, “Google Maps”, and “Google Chrome”.

All of these three entries, along with “Calico” (a biotech venture focusing on battling age and disease), also outline what these technologies have achieved and will achieve.

From A Leader’s Perspective

There have been enough advocates and literature in support of Purpose-driven Leadership for a long period of time. But the turbulence that the world has gone through over the past three years has sparked conversations on Embedding Purpose; a paradigm shift from Corporate Responsibility (CR) to Corporate Wokeness.

Leadership perspectives on Vision too have seen changes in this timeframe, with more emphasis on CR seeping in. As the world tries to leave these tough times in its wake, it’s up to the industry leaders to wholeheartedly commit to these goals and continue the tightrope walk of balancing value-creation and societal-welfare.?????