The Importance of Purpose in Organizational Strategy

Organizations that thrive over time do so by invoking and fulfilling a purpose: ideally one based on a moral tradition that has stood the test of time.

Leader To Leader offers insights in this indepth overview of the book Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies, by Nikos Mourkogiannis.

His premise?

• While it may be tempting to think of organizations as being made up of instructions, processes, and resources, it should never be forgotten that people are their fundamental components.
• One of the distinguishing features of people is that they have strong ideas about what is right and wrong. If you can resonate, collectively, with those ideas, then you can tap into people's commitment and creativity to a far greater degree

BOTTOMLINE: Many people who talk about organizational purpose are concerned either with accountability or responsibility--what the organization must do to fulfill its obligations. But if you are interested in promoting greater levels of success, then purpose must be considered as a form of choice: to what ends are the leaders, and the rest of the organization, willing to commit themselves?