In the Zen tradition there’s a story about a man on a horse who is racing through a village.  A villager shouts to the man, “Where are you going so fast?”  “I don’t know,” replies the rider, “ask the horse!”

Many firms start out as a purpose in search of assets only to later become an asset in search of a purpose.  Which are you?

This essential question was posed by Emmanuel Gobillot in the provocative book Leadershift.  He goes on to observe:

“As leaders our role is not only to get people to do something, it is to get them to do more than they thought possible.  We want them to allocate their discretionary effort to our cause.”

If what you’re focused on as a leader can be displayed on a speadsheet, you’re missing the real reason why agency people come into work in the morning.  Knowledge workers ultimately don’t work for money. Rather, they seek to make a contribution to something important.  Purpose provides the meaning behind the work. 

Purpose provides an indirect – but essential – pathway to success

The nature of purpose is to give direction not only to what your agency’s goals should be, but how you achieve them.  Most major goals are in fact achieved indirectly, through a circuitous set of events and efforts that eventually take you to your destination. 

When NASA recently sent a spacecraft to Mercury, they didn’t do it by aiming straight at Mercury.  If NASA had done that, the planet would have been long gone by the time the spacecraft arrived, having moved to a completely different place in its orbit.  Instead, the spacecraft reached Mercury by first orbiting around several other planets on the way.  As economist John Kay demonstrates in a series of books and videos about “Obliquity”, important business goals are almost always achieved in indirect ways, with purpose as the guiding star.

Not just strategy, but strategic intent

The business best seller, Built to Last, by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras is largely based on the premise that the most profitable companies are not the most profit-oriented.  They are companies with a strong sense of purpose.  Collins says the most successful companies are guided by a core ideology – core values and a sense of purpose beyond just making money.  “A deeply held core ideology gives a company both a strong sense of identity and a thread of continuity that holds the organization together in the face of change,” he says.  “We chose the word ideology because we found an almost religious fervor in the visionary companies as they grew up that we did not see to the same degree in the comparison companies.”

“Strategic intent” is another way to look at the question of purpose.  Writing in The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore advocate that leaders must apply the principle of intention to business strategy.  “The strategy of a business confers meaning,” they say, “only if those called on to execute it understand how the company plans to alter the very structure of the world through its industry.”  That’s pretty high-minded thinking.  That’s the stuff of purpose.

The stuff of dreams

Writing in his treatise on “Lovemarks,” global Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts says the purpose of his agency is (paraphrasing) “To create and perpetuate Lovemarks in order to connect, transform, and empower the people in the 82 countries we operate in.  We will demonstrate that to be sustainable in the new century, enterprises need to take on an emotional dimension.”  Roberts invites us to think of purpose as a “dream.” Dreams create action.

Dr. King said, “I have a dream” not “I have a plan.”  Big difference.

Simon Sinek’s excellent book on this subject, Start with Why, illustrates the power of purpose through the story of the Wright Brothers.  Wilbur and Orville actually had a rival, a wealthy Harvard professor named Samuel Pierpont Langley, who was also racing to get an airplane off the ground.  Langley, a personal friend of Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell, was working with a $50,000 government grant, and saw the tremendous commercial opportunity at hand. 

On the other hand, the Wright brothers ran a humble bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.  But they had a strong “why” – an intense passion to fly.  This passion literally changed the world.

Says Sinek, “Average companies give their people something to work on.  In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.” 

One agency’s approach

Ogilvy calls the power of purpose “The Big IdeaL™”, the premise being that powerful brands were built not just on ideas, but also on ideals – a higher purpose that rallies support for the brand both inside and outside the company. 

The Ogilvy approach to defining the big ideaL is to complete the phrase:

“Brand X believes the world would be a better place if …”

Here’s how that approach plays out when applied to several notable consumer brands.

Getting to purpose

How else can you get to the roots of your firm’s purpose?  Ignition has published lists of purpose questions to ask in the past, but here are a few more powerful ways to understand the “why” of your firm:

1. What are some of our bold, outlandish, or unreasonable expectations?
2. What breakthrough would we like to achieve or what complex problem would we like to solve?
3. What would we like to create that never existed before?
4. What would the agency be like if we were leading a movement instead of running a business?
5. If our people were volunteers instead of employees, what would they be volunteering for?
6. Who or what does our business glorify?
7. What kind of legacy do we want to create?

Adman Roy Spence points to the practical benefits of a strong purpose in his book It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For.  Purpose, he says:

• Is a path to high performance
• Fosters visionary ideas and innovation
• Holds you steady in turbulent times
• Recruits passionate people
• Brings energy and vitality to the workplace
• Contributes to a feeling of a life well-lived

The agency he co-founded, GSD&M, specializes in what they called “purpose-based branding.”  The home page of their website proudly declares “We work with visionary companies. Ambitious companies. Companies that stand for something and companies that want to transcend their categories and be a positive force in people’s lives.”

Southern California-based agency DGWB has formed “The Values Institute” as a means of helping companies better define their values and sense of purpose.  A video about “The Values Economy” tells why a clear purpose is indispensable now more than ever in the wake of the Great Recession.

Profit is not a purpose

One thing has always been true about the best agencies.   It’s not about who has the most money, but who has the best ideas.  Making money is a result, not a purpose.  Peter Drucker preached that profit is the evidence of a successful company, but should never be its reason for being.