Defining success as a purpose-led business

Are you a purpose-led business looking to define success metrics related to your purpose? Do you work with a shared vision and intention but struggle to articulate the role purpose plays in the success and growth of your company?

Many leaders intuitively know there is a benefit to knowing and embracing your brand purpose but have yet articulated the metrics to prove its value. This episode is meant to help you define those metrics.

The value of being a purpose-led business

A 2015 Harvard Business Review Analytics/Earnst&Young (EY) study showed that companies able to articulate their brand purpose enjoy on average a higher growth rate (at least 10%) and higher levels of success than those companies who do not or cannot express their purpose.

The global survey of 474 executives found that although there is near-unanimous agreement that there is value of purpose in driving business, less than half of the executives surveyed said their company had actually articulated a strong sense of purpose and used it as a way to make decisions and strengthen motivation. Only a few companies appear to have embedded their purpose to a point where they have reaped their full potential.

What is a business purpose?

A business purpose is a short statement describing what you want to be, addressing the problem it solves for your customers and the impact your business makes on the greater good. Successful brands have clarity around their purpose:

Life is good: Spread the power of optimism
Nike: to bring into every innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world.
Google: to organize the world’s information and makit it universally accessible and useful
Air BnB: to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.

Tips for defining your business purpose:

It should be aspirational. Meaning it is not something you do already. What is it you dream of doing? What is the impact you want your company to make on those you serve and the community?
Start with Why. What did you start the business? What did you hope to accomplish with it? Have you achieved that goal? What is the next step? What is the contribution you/your business makes and what is the resulting impact?
Your purpose should be bigger than an individual product or service provided by your company.
It should be centered on a solution to a recurring or ongoing problem. It needs to resonate emotionally with your audiencence, your team, owners, distributors, vendors….everyone who engages with the business in some way.
It should need little explanation. If you need to explain why your business exists, it is probably too complicated.

How to be a purpose-led business

The power of purpose can elevate a business forward it if stays true to the vision. If a brand as a purpose that is in name only or is just a series of words on the wall – ones that are not acted on daily, but instead operates in a manner inconsistent with their purpose…. guess what happens? They will lose credibility. And credibility is hard to win back.

Use your business purpose to help guide: strategy development, formation and communication of culture and core values, branding, business model structure, customer acquisition and training, new business development/market exploration, marketing, product/service development, operations, leadership development/training, performance metrics & rewards, supply chain management, talent management and vendor management.

That is nearly every aspect of business.