Is it Time to Re-frame Your Organization’s Purpose?

Is it Time to Re-frame Your Organization’s Purpose?

Recent months have driven us to a new understanding of the word “disruption”— from the health crisis and tragedies of COVID, business downturn and failure, the Work from Anywhere (WFA) phenomenon, to pivoting our organizations to new ways of working and perhaps to new customers or markets entirely. This year has taught us more than we could have imagined and may have revealed more to us and to our customers and stakeholders about things that really matter.

If your organization has experienced change, it may be a good time to revisit and perhaps re-frame your Purpose Statement (not to be confused with Vision or Mission), or to develop one if your company does not have one. The pandemic likely changed your organization, your customers, and stakeholders in some way; now is the time for organizations to figure out how they’ve changed and rethink who they are, why they exist, where they’re going, and how they will help the world or their customers.

Reframing (and living by) your company’s Purpose has several advantages:

1. A clearly stated, meaningful Purpose demonstrates and communicates how your organization is different from your competitors.

2. It sets direction and becomes the foundation for organizational culture and organizational alignment. Employee development, organizational development strategies, and cultural change management plans best evolve from a clearly defined and agreed upon organizational Purpose.

3. It provides purpose when things get tough. It acts as a regular reminder to leadership and employees of the organization’s vitally important purpose.

4. It helps you keep your customers. Your customers and stakeholders have had a rough year, no matter who they are. Your purpose statement should directly speak to them about how you contribute to addressing social, environmental or other important issues. 2019 research conducted by Markstein, an integrated communications agency, and Certus Insights, a public opinion firm highlights how important Purpose has become.

5. It helps you retain, engage, and nurture high performance and morale in employees. This year, many organizations have learned who their best employees are and how important it is to keep them. A 2018 Mercer study discovered that “75% of thriving employees – those who are fulfilled personally and professionally – say that they work for a company with a strong sense of purpose.”

6. Because of its impact on culture and employee morale, it helps you recruit employees even in the tightest, candidate-driven markets.

With a clear Purpose Statement, your organization can then develop appropriate metrics to measure progress related to that purpose, align your culture to it, make it a part of external and internal messaging, and use it in coaching employees for excellence.

For more information on improving effectiveness in your organization, please contact us through LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations or at [email protected].