The first rule of purpose is that, for it to have any impact, it must not only be credible and congruent to the activities of the business. It must also be absolutely authentic.
How do you know if purpose is working effectively in your culture? And if it is not, why not? Larry Fink is right to say purpose leads to performance. But pursuing ‘purpose’ without understanding the cultural attributes that activate it is at best a waste of time and at worst fundamentally damaging to the cultural fabric of the business.
Here’s some good news. It is perfectly possible to make yourself and your people dramatically more productive. To turn conflict into creation, pressure into progress, breakdown into breakthrough. And make everyone a great deal more joyful in the process.
90% of CEOs don’t believe their business is moving fast enough to adapt to the changing world. It raises a mass of questions. How do I create an agile, high performance culture? How do I engage and align our people? How do I drive productivity? Land strategy? Create trust in our business?
How can you get people aligned round your strategy? How can you speed up strategic implementation? 61% of C-Suite acknowledge that they fail between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation. We can learn a lot from entrepreneurial business. And it’s not hard to replicate their play-book.
What drives agile, highly productive businesses? It’s a question that leads directly from the current debate about culture and organisational ‘Purpose.’ It’s a question that has made us determined to understand and measure the impact purpose – and to show definitively whether purposeful companies are really better – both ethically and commercially.
What drives high-performing, agile businesses? What do they have that is missing in so many sluggish ‘corporate’ organisations? It’s a question that we have become obsessed with – and spent the last couple of years researching with leading institutions including the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth. It’s a question we think we may just have answered.
Can purpose be measured may well be the question of the moment. How can we unpick the various factors that impact on company performance? In less than 2 minutes John Rosling explains why we think it can.
Purpose and entrepreneurs are natural bedfellows. They are both architects of social progress says EY’s Carmine Di Sibio
Help prove beyond doubt that purpose-led businesses are better businesses; better for people, planet and performance.
Our ambition is to measure the commercial impact of Purpose and show specifically how Purpose is acting to change human behaviours and drive business performance. It’s widely accepted that Purpose-led […]
If you knew, beyond doubt, that making 3 changes to your culture would make your people 30% more engaged, 29% more joyful and 26% more productive, would you make them?
In his 2015 book Thirteeners Daniel Prosser makes the claim that 87% of businesses fail to execute their strategy each year. The colossal waste in money, energy and simple human […]
Sometimes it seems as if the idea of talking about love in a work situation can bring people out in a rash. It’s just not British is it? Much less […]
How can you help individuals and teams to be more entrepreneurial, faster, more innovative – and perform under pressure?
We’re big on trust here. We believe it is one of the fundamental ways for an organisation to bridge the gap between its Purpose, as articulated by the board, and everyday reality for its people
Purpose in business has not gone away – it continues to be the topic of the moment. And thank goodness, as the prize for getting it right could make a real difference in the world. Read, digest and critique our pick of the best five articles for purpose-led leaders for 2017.
Gallup estimates lack of engagement at work is costing the US economy $450bn a year. If you factor that globally, that’s $1.7trillion. We could stop this by making our places of work fulfilling and purposeful, compassionate and meaningful
If your #purpose is congruent with the stuff you actually do it can drive business performance
Love in business? What an absurd, even uncomfortable idea. But what, after all, is ‘love’? Passion, regard, affection, enjoyment, zest, understanding and compassion? Are these not exactly the attributes we […]
“What entrepreneurs do is that they care so passionately about an outcome – and the outcome matters – that they are prepared to take a personal risk to achieve that”
What can CEO’s and boards learn from entrepreneurs about enabling their Purpose to drive actual behaviours
Kindness in business? Isn’t is just about being all fluffy and nice? Not at all
Leadership is nothing without followship
People are only human – we get excited about a sense of purpose or an intention – not so much about a product.
The prize for getting sustainability right is huge – John talks to The Eth Word about how to start on the journey.
Purpose is not just doing ‘good stuff’. It has a clear commercial reason for being.
It is said that most business owners don’t believe that their bank understands their business or, worse, even cares about them. Is this even true? And if it is, is […]
Love is central to every joint human endeavour; war, sport, relationships. Just business that’s weird
At a recent event on the concepts of corporate purpose and social responsibility, senior leaders of several large businesses were asked whether their organisations had a clear and inspiring purpose. […]
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg published a strong defence of both globalisation and Facebook’s business model. In a nearly 6,000-word letter, he argued persuasively that Facebook thrives under a globalised socioeconomic system, where […]
Building high trust cultures is a key concern for most organisations in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. But how do you start?
What drives agility in large, complex organisations? Most have spent a great deal of time, trouble and money creating and communicating a clear Purpose. And most are finding it’s making no difference to the behaviours in the organisation. There is a gap between the purpose at Board level and the experience of employees and customers.
Entrepreneurially-minded organisations achieve agility not by having a purpose but what they do with it. These agile and entrepreneurially-minded businesses display a clearly defined set of drivers within their cultures that are the secret to bridging the Purpose Gap and making purpose work in an organisation.
We’re big on trust here. We believe it is one of the fundamental ways for an organisation to bridge the gap between its Purpose, as articulated by the board, and […]
What drives agility in large, complex organisations? Most have spent a great deal of time, trouble and money creating and communicating a clear Purpose. And most are finding it’s making no difference to the behaviours in the organisation.
There is a crisis of trust between small companies and their Bank. 74% of small businesses don’t believe that their Bank understands their business and, worse, even cares about them. […]
We thought we’d find out by getting leading lights from the pensions and investments industry around the table with global corporate leaders, academics, charity heads and a sprinkling of entrepreneurs […]
We love Susan Cain’s work to shine a light on the unappreciated introverts amongst us, and reference it in our UNDERSTAND work. If you’re interested in knowing more we have […]
There is a crisis of trust between small companies and their big business suppliers. 74% of small businesses don’t believe that the banks, tech and utility companies that seek their […]