purpose is an imperative

chapter 2 of 8

the accelerating power of a crisis

These unprecedented times have accelerated the power of purpose. Never before, for most of the global active workforce, has the focus been more on a shared purpose and created so much energy for a common good.

Being the reason behind it either pure and blunt survival, fighting for your job and source of income or reaching out and helping your fellow human, the fact is that people have gathered around a common purpose, a shared ‘why’. And by acting towards that, they’ve tasted the power behind it. For some, this was a clarification of their norm, for others it became shear realization of the need to find and pursue their purpose as an individual: acting as citizens, community members, voters, consumers, business leaders or employees.

Reporters and researchers alike, across the globe, have sought memories of the eldest amongst us and pieces of recent recorded history, insights that might provide useful comparison to long forgotten realities and similar felt crisis in the past. The shear truth is that, while this is not the first and certainly won’t be the last global crisis we face, its underlying cause deeply challenges what we value most: our health and well-being. It imperils not just our jobs or businesses but our own lives and the ones of those we love. It changed our view of the world, of how we behave and how we [will need to] work. It is way more personal and unpredictable than ever felt. And with a virus came social distancing and ‘lockdown’ measures, a break in everyone’s daily routines. For some, amidst all the turmoil, it created the opportunity to slow down and ponder: ‘What do I love doing?’, ‘What am I good at?’. This has now become close and personal.

As the pandemic moved the world into an almost complete shutdown, entire industries and businesses were forced to quickly adapt to the situation. Some went to appeals of help followed by silence, furloughs and layoffs. Those are a large part of the ones that have, unfortunately, folded their game. Others opted – or, at least, were able – to resist and take the fight back to the crisis. We have all been actors or privileged witnesses of great business ingenuity and reinvention in these last couple of months:

• Companies that have thought of their ‘what’ [are we able to do well], i.e. core capabilities such as innovation processes or efficient production lines to make ventilators and respirator parts (like Dyson or Tesla), face masks or shields (like HP or Apple), protection clothing and gear for health professionals (like Inditex or Yves Saint Laurent);
• We’ve also seen organizations that have quickly adapted their ‘how’ [do we do it] to social distancing; education either at the elementary or university levels, quite literally, had to transform their classic physical operating model and hastily deliver knowledge to millions of students over digital means overnight; or insurance companies that have converted their medical assistance to the long promised and overdue telemedicine and e-health services;
• Businesses that have focused on their value chains and networks, their [with] ‘whom’ we do business turned into who do we need to support during this crisis; financial institutions and large organizations that have strengthened the treasury of their ecosystems (e.g. Amazon, Unilever, Google); companies have pledged to protect their employees through job guarantee, benefits expansion (Target), raising hourly wages (Chipotle), cash bonus (Walmart), keep regular pay while reduced service needs (Microsoft), unlimited paid leave to hourly employees (Apple), wages increase for the next month (PepsiCo), or support pay on equipment and internet fees for working at home employees (Amgen);

Rethinking their role in these challenging moments, these organizations all acted on at least a part of this simple framework: what, how, whom. And with that need, the moment inadvertently created the conditions for organizations and their leaders to be forced to pause and reflect: what can we do to help society as a whole in this dire moment? With that reflection they’ve recreated their role in society, at least temporarily, to give back: from business, with love.

close and personal

People are more interested than ever in having the time they spend working matter. And questions derived from ‘what do I love doing’, and ‘what am I good at’ may help shaping the fundamentals on how individuals approach and experience meaning in their life, but also in their work and workplaces. Research indicates that people prefer and achieve more meaning from activities and jobs that allow them to use their strengths [1].

Purpose, which is positively associated with a variety of positive psychological and physical benefits, will be increasingly important to individuals that (i) aim to fulfill their individual purpose, (ii) focus more on what really matters to them and (iii) make choices based on those assumptions.

A year of full-time research on the topic of purpose and meaningful work, which included a detailed review of more than 100 academic studies, revealed that today we are closer to understand what contributes to the experience of meaning. However, most academic advancements have been made on the individual experience only, not fully incorporating organizational factors that affect the individual-in-work and the organization itself.

Research supports the view that “having multiple sources of meaning in life protects the individual against meaninglessness”[2]. Meaningfulness is achieved through experiencing a sense of wholeness where different aspects of life happily coexist[3]. Such integration hints that meaningfulness, and particularly the pursue of purpose in life, is likely to be a dynamic process where conscious choices need to be made to continue to integrate different aspects into a coherent whole. Regardless this, most studies tend to be static and lack integration by focusing on one or two dimensions of meaning such as high-quality relationships, meaningful work or making a contribution to society.

An integrative way to move forward would be to create an approach focusing on how individual and organizational purposes can align, fostering greater meaning. Seeing such bigger purpose would allow individuals to find meaning in their work and organizations to establish the conditions that allow such workplaces to flourish.

The quest for meaning gives Individuals a growing power to influence companies in their different roles as employees, consumers, influencers or partners. This new enhanced power is already starting to be recognized by companies that are taking on a new responsibility to address purpose as an imperative.

from business, with love

This new and enhanced power rolled out by individuals is already starting to be recognized by companies, making them face the need to address purpose not as a ‘nice to have’ but rather as a competitive condition to survive. It also means that organizations need to achieve a higher degree of clarity on their role in society. Their pure existence needs to move from ‘making a profit’ to become a wider role of some sort within society.

We’ve been witnessing the rising importance of purpose in business throughout the more recent years. In 2019, the Business Roundtable members have pledged to move companies from a shareholder primacy to a stakeholder one, through a new Statement[4] signed by a group of 181 CEOs of significantly sized businesses, which basically has endorsed the importance of this by affirming that: ‘purpose over profits’. Also, The World Economic Forum has recently released a new Davos Manifesto 2020[5] with a set of ethical principles to guide companies and encourage a new social contract for the 21st century.

Clearly, the consensus exists – or at least is forming – for businesses to reflect on their purpose in society. But more than just signaling intent, companies need to act. They need to ascertain themselves they fully understand ‘why’ it is they exist. It is not about where they envision themselves to be in the future. It is a frequent misconception of leaders. It is rather about their raison d’être, where they come from, the one thing that comes from the roots. And they need to clarify it and make that very clear for all stakeholders – and not just to shareholders.

The fact is that action is still to be taken in a decisive way, because inertia tends to take over business when things are going well. An example of this is around purpose in brands. In a recent survey in the US, when asked to recognize a purpose-driven brand, only 27% of consumers where able to[6]. Another 2019 research on Business-to-Business[7] operations revealed that, while 86% of the companies consider purpose as important to their business, only 24% professionals said purpose is embedded in their business to the point of influencing culture, innovation, operations and their engagement with society.

But the question needs to be answered: Are we truly acting according to our corporate purpose? Purpose should be what truly grounds us, and therefore it needs to be used as a beacon to show us the way forward.

‘To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more’ Sataya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.

Companies with a strong sense of purpose tend to benefit, in these turbulent times, from being more focused, efficient and able to make quicker decisions on addressing the needs of individuals and broader society. And therefore, it is not surprising that most of the brands that ‘stood out’ for their creative and generous measures, where the ones with an already established purpose driver. 

Having acted on all of this for a common purpose, proves that not only it is possible but the ones that don’t, risk being heavily judged by consumers, employees and shareholders for not acting. And so, post-COVID era will reveal two things. One, which companies cared and took the opportunity to support people and society in this crisis; and two, from the companies that did act, which ones “dressed purpose” as an isolated behavior, and which ones will continue to be purposeful as a business-led movement.

when the stars align

Our purpose at pur’ple is to empower those who pursue true purpose, to make evolution happen and have a lasting and positive impact in the world. The most significant way to achieve this is when companies:

1. have clarity and know their purpose;
2. push every single day on every major decision they make to change towards their purpose; and
3. are able to align their leaders and their employees on this never-ending journey.

We strongly believe it is important to explore the joined influences of person and environment on the experiences of meaningful work and understand how they relate to each other in a dynamic system. We therefore aim for a comprehensive model of purpose able to assess not only different dimensions of meaning, but also their relationship to each other. An integrative framework that places individuals fully within their job, and within their organizational, and social contexts.

The following 6 dimensions will support our exploration and understanding of how purpose is found by both individuals and corporations.

for individuals:

• time. Time is the main resource an individual has to fulfill his purpose. Individuals will fast track to their purpose if more time is allotted to activities that push them closer to a desired state.
• reach. Reach is about the time and space of the individual purpose. Purposes come in all shapes and forms and reach is a framework to cluster them: short or long-term impact? Individual, community or global impact?
• action. Purpose in life is inspiring and compels to action. The discrepancy between how time is allocated and the reach of the undertaken activities, determines the alignment with the individual purpose. This is the key variable that connects to organizations: the actions taken, and the organizations individuals connect to.

for organizations:

• clarity. Organizational purpose is knowing your why. Clarity of purpose brings an ability to assembly people to a common goal and strengthens relationships with whom values and connects with the same purpose.
• alignment. Organizational purpose is in everything we do. Purpose alignment means revisiting and embedding purpose in every core activity and interaction.
• leadership. Leaders support corporate purpose on their decisions and leading their teams. They are a key lever moving towards the desired state and they became leaders because they have been beacons for that transformation journey.

In short, the experience of meaningful work is associated with a range of beneficial outcomes for both individuals and employers, including high levels of engagement, performance, creativity, improved wellbeing, job satisfaction and intent to remain. It is no surprise then, that this subject is receiving increasing attention from academics and business leaders.

Although organizations still struggle to foster purpose-driven environments, the momentum is building, and leaders are making the efforts.

While this is just the beginning, organizations are increasingly onboard for purpose. And we have seen a significant growth of companies putting the intentional efforts to become more purpose-driven, creating and communicating it better[8].

While the gap between the “stated” and the “activated” purpose still exists[9], COVID-19 may well be the silver lining companies’ (and the world!) needed to rethink their purpose and finally, start closing that gap. 

At pur’ple, we believe purpose is the reason for being. A desired end state that elusively pushes us forward.

We hope that you might join us in believing it to.

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Article written by Katia Pina, Jo?o Almeida and Rui Luz

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Read more about our Trends’formation of work articles:

chapter 1 – Seven drivers that shape the future

[1] Dik, B., Duffy, R., Allan, B., O’Donnell, M., Shim, Y., & Steger, M. (2014). Purpose and meaning in career development applications. The Counseling Psychologist, 43, 558-585. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000014546872.

[2] Baumeister, R., Vohs, K. (2005). The pursuit of meaningfulness in life. In C. Snyder & S. Lopez, Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 608-618). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

[3] Martela, F. (2010, August 6-10). Meaningful work—An integrative model based on the human need for meaningfulness. Paper presented at the Academy of Management, Montreal, Quebec.

[4] https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans

[5] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-2020-the-universal-purpose-of-a-company-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution

[6] Purpose Power Index? (2019): A study conducted by the Reputation Institute and Strawberryfrog to measure perceptions of brand purpose. The research was conducted online in the Fall of 2019. It was based on more than 17,500 individual ratings among over 7,500 U.S. consumers, and encompassing more than 200 different brands https://www.purposepowerindex.com/  

[7] The B2B Purpose Paradox: How Purpose Powers Business-to-Business Growth (2020): A study conducted by The Harris Poll as a collaborative effort between Harris, the ANA, and Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. This survey was conducted online from June 25 to July 19, 2019. It involved B2B professionals within the U.S. (https://www.carolconeonpurpose.com/b2b-purpose-paradox).

[8] https://www-statista-com.manchester.idm.oclc.org/statistics/1017365/employees-sense-purpose-organization-country/

[9] The B2B Purpose Paradox: How Purpose Powers Business-to-Business Growth (2020): A study conducted by The Harris Poll as a collaborative effort between Harris, the ANA, and Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. This survey was conducted online from June 25 to July 19, 2019. It involved B2B professionals within the U.S. (https://www.carolconeonpurpose.com/b2b-purpose-paradox).