[caption id="attachment_936551" align="alignnone" width="1024"] -[/caption]
In the last column, we looked at the rise of the corporation and decided that there is need to return to purpose. What is purpose? Organisational purpose is linked inextricably to shared beliefs about the world and expected behavioural norms, ie, organisational values.
These beliefs and values supply the energy necessary to move forward in time and to face challenges and competitive pressures without the company losing its collective identity or its way.
In this Fourth Industrial Revolution, the challenges we face, taken as a whole, feel unprecedented and overwhelming.
Nation-states, governments, NGOs seem ill-equipped to deal with it individually. Except for good works here and there, at their core, most corporations have lost sight of their original purpose, having become mainly driven by a profit motive that is an accelerant to the fire that is consuming our planet.
How do we ensure that corporations, as collectives, can rediscover the original purpose that went beyond profit and become innovative to shift the balance? It is apparent that the now-common approach to building organisational identity by articulating only mission, vision, and values is missing an essential component: the organisation’s meaningful and authentic true purpose.
CSR is not the answer
Despite the good and dedicated work of so many working in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) field, that approach has not led to the required systemic change. CSR was likely not born out of a true sense of purpose, but was seen as an obligation and a response to increased expectations from the nations and communities in which they operate.
In 1970 Milton Friedman described such efforts as “one way for a corporation to generate goodwill as a byproduct of expenditures that are entirely justified in its own self-interest.”
There are, of course, instances where corporations have demonstrated bold, pioneering leadership in their journey to rediscover purpose. However, these instances are typically spearheaded by a charismatic and visionary leader.
But corporations that depend only on the strength of one leader to rediscover their purpose are always at risk of returning to dysfunctional behaviours once that leader is gone.
Towards wellbeing
Most leaders can articulate the customer benefits that drive their company’s existence. The elephant in the room is that they are blind to see beyond that and determine just exactly how these benefits could be related to more fundamental concepts such as wellbeing.
This may be the reason that mission statements, as they are currently written, effectively stop at parochial benefits, first-order customer-centric benefits that companies believe are within their spheres of influence. This is completely understandable, because if the focus is only "doing" and immediate transactions that lead to payments, they do not realise that the wellbeing of people and planet are also within their sphere of influence.
Purpose empowers
