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Optimising Performance Create Purpose in Your Organisation

Most organisations are in business to make money, but truly great companies have a purpose that extends beyond the bottom line. Here's the amazing paradox: by aiming for something more important than money, organisations actually end up making more money.

This product magnifies this energy in your organisation by showing your people how together they can achieve meaning far greater than they can alone. This energy is available to every organisation. This energy is money in the bank. With this product we will work with you and your senior team to identify your Purpose (the chances are they can't do this on your own because they are too close to it) and help you get it into every head.

The Importance of a clear Purpose

There is a spiritual side to all human beings. Every person has a role to play, a contribution to make. When people find their Purpose they are filled with energy far greater than any physical, emotional or mental energy. It's the ultimate energiser, this is why I have shown it as the sun.

Victor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned by the Nazis in World War 2, once said, "Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon as as long as he can see meaning in it". Frankl used his brutal experience in the concentration camps to gain insights into how people survived the atrocities. Closely observing who survived and who didn't he determined that survival was not based on youth, or physical strength but rather on strength derived from having a purpose and meaning in life.

The purpose statement answers the basic questions:

1. "Why do we exist?"
2. "What is our reason for being?"

Examples of purpose statements:

1. The Purpose of Disney is to make people happy.
2. The Purpose of Virtual Group is to liberate the human spirit at work.

Problems with Purpose statements

There are major problems with Purpose Statements in most organisations.

Why Purpose is important?

When your organisation is driven by a common compelling purpose it can overcome almost any challenge. It attracts passionate people committed to helping the organisation achieve its reason for being. It also attracts customers who don’t buy ‘what you do’, they buy ‘why you do it’.

Without a clear compelling purpose, there is a direct business cost. If you're confused on the inside, then you become confused on the outside. If you lack leadership on the inside, you lack leadership on the outside. So it is no surprise that customers see the organisation as wishy- washy and undifferentiated. Confusion saps energy.

There is the people cost, i.e. the wasted potential of employees who need a Purpose they can support and identify with. Human beings need to live with a constant sense of meaning and purpose. We are meaning seekers and meaning makers. If we attach meaning to what we do, we feel significant and connected to the organisation and our co- workers. In a driving, profit-focused company, it's difficult to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction, because, as a matter of principle, what a company wants its customers to feel, its employees must feel first. If you want your customers to feel nurtured, cared for, inspired, then employees must first feel nurtured, cared for and inspired.

Teams with a common purpose:

1. Work for a cause
2. Get satisfaction at work
3. Need to know how contribution adds to the organisation
4. Describe work in terms of outcomes.

Teams with no common purpose:

1. Work for the money
2. Get satisfaction outside work
3. Not sure or interested in how their contribution adds to the organisation
4. Describe work in terms of activitiy.

When to use Purpose Statements

1. When managers and/or staff seem unclear why we are in business
2. When new products/services are being developed that are outside the core
3. Falling sales, profits, customers
4. When energy levels are low
5. When you find yourself lurching from crisis to crisis
6. If your environment has changed
7. When managers understand the Purpose but staff have no interest or knowledge about it
8. If managers and staff have no common understanding of the Purpose.

Benefits of Purpose

1. Far more focus on what really matters
2. Everyone working to the same agenda
3. People working hard on the focused core of the business rather dissipated effort
4. More energy
5. More collaboration and participation because everyone understands their role.

How Virtual Group supports Purpose

1. We work with managers and staff to define the appropriate Purpose
2. We work with managers and staff to introduce the required Purpose
3. We support managers and staff who are having problems in adopting the new Purpose
4. We help managers measure and reward behaviours that reflect the new Purpose
5. We advise on the structural issues and organisational issues that arise with the introduction of Purpose.

In a word ... the whole organisation becomes energised with the power of meaning and spirit!

Product support

This product has been developed and is supported by Bruce Holland with help where required from other members of the Virtual Group Business Consultants.

Guarantee

All work undertaken by Bruce Holland is guaranteed. If at the end of the program the client doesn't feel that they have received value for money, they may adjust the bill and pay an amount equal to the value they feel they received.

Next step

For more information about how you can use our Purpose Program give the Virtual Manager a call or ring Bruce Holland direct.

Bruce Holland
Phone +6421 620456
Bruce.holland@virtual.co.nz.
Key words: Leadership, leadership development, leadership management, leadership training, leadership program, leadership skills