What's the purpose?

How many times have you left a meeting feeling underwhelmed?  

No clear purpose, a lack of actions, or sub-par attendance. 

A pervading sense of time poorly spent.  

McKinsey says that the key to effective meetings are purpose, preparation, and presentation. 

The same can be said for organisations wanting to achieve success, and especially those working in partnership. 

But what do we mean by ‘purpose’? 

Purpose can be defined as an organisation’s core reason for existing.  

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) has argued that purpose is crucial not just for creating value, but also for identifying opportunities with stakeholders: 

‘High-growth companies...think about whole ecosystems, where connected interests and relationships among multiple stakeholders create more opportunities. But these firms don’t approach ecosystems haphazardly. They let purpose be their guide’. 

Consider how Aldi has used their purpose to create opportunities in their ‘ecosystem’ with their customers, distributors, suppliers, and so on.  

Their core purpose: ‘we provide value and quality to our customers by being fair and efficient in all we do’. 

Judging by Aldi’s recent profits and expansion plans, its clear they’re holding true to their purpose. 

Fair? Aldi, for the sixth consecutive year, topped the list of the Grocery Code Adjudicator’s 2022 survey, which asks suppliers whether supermarkets act ‘fairly, in good faith and without duress’. 

Efficient? Aldi’s operating profit tripled to £178.7m in 2022 and has been described as ‘brutally efficient’ by CNN.

There’s also a softer side to focusing on your purpose. According to the HBR, this includes unifying your organisation, motivating employees, and broadening impact. 

Clarity of purpose can set your organisation apart from others, enable partners to identify potential synergies, and draw out differences for consideration. 

So why don’t we seem to have clear purposes in health and care services? 

Is it because the purpose is obvious; providing excellent quality care as efficiently as possible? 

Or the opposite: because of upheaval from COVID, regular legislative change, huge pressure, and competition, is our purpose no longer obvious? 

Or perhaps it’s more complicated because a patchwork of different organisations, with their own responsibilities, contribute their specific services for our populations. 

A learned behaviour to deliver what’s required? A consequence of having to quickly mobilise an enhanced and/or new service? Or simply because us Brits are more ‘indirect’ communicators?  

Whatever the cause, if a strong purpose really is crucial for strategy, connecting with partners, and generating value, then perhaps the opposite is true for organisations that don’t have one. 

So how can an organisation develop a clear purpose when part of an ‘ecosystem’? 

• Engage widely and inclusively. Do this internally and externally, and ideally, simultaneously. I often hear organisations want to ‘get their ducks lined up’ before going out to partners. This would be a lost opportunity. 

• Hear from patients, family members, and carers to understand what matters most, and work out how to provide this more efficiently and effectively, together. 

• Map out what your organisation and others’ purposes are, if they have them. Are they aligned? Where might there be opportunities to provide better care? 

• Put out a ‘straw person’. It’s always better to start with something on the understanding that it may look radically different when you’ve finished crafting your purpose. 

• Create spaces where leaders have the authority and ‘psychological safety’ to test new ideas. 

And finally, a hard one: be honest about the purpose of your organisation.

It’ll be impossible to collaborate if partners don’t feel like they’re getting the whole picture. This requires building trust. 

So whether it’s a humble meeting, a discrete project, or a whole strategy, clarity of purpose is crucial for ‘generating value’, connecting with partners, and unifying organisations. 

Obvious and painstaking as it may be, clarifying the purpose must be better than drifting into disillusionment.  

Image courtesy of Elisa Ventur on Unsplash.