When I was young, I hung with a fellowship of Christians that one might say was ahead of its time. Today it goes by the name Watoto Church. It was there that I first came in contact with a purpose statement. That is to say, not just a glossy arrangement of words and phrases meant to look cute on a brochure; but what this fellowship had come to see as its reason for being. Today I am a member of an equally amazing fellowship doing incredible things in the lives of people – Worship Harvest Ministries. Here too there is a defined statement of purpose that is not just a hip sales pitch; it’s the heart that beats beneath everything we do: “Resourcing people in worshiping God and serving others meaningfully for community transformation”. I remember the Watoto purpose statement too: “A cell based community church, growing and multiplying as each one reaches one, touching those around us with the love of Jesus, bringing healing to the city and to the nation”. Why do I bring these up? Because I remember them! Even years after I have moved on I remember the Watoto purpose. No, it’s not because I have an amazing memory (I like to flatter myself that it is somewhere above average); it’s because both these fellowships are very deliberate about all the members knowing what we are for, what we add into our communities, how we change the destinies of our communities and the country. It will be flashed in every service (or as we call them in Worship Harvest, “garage time”); rehashed by the entire congregation led by the “MC”; it will be explained in detail in specially committed ‘Envisioning’ meetings, it is unrepentantly used as the yardstick for evaluating any activity, program, initiative, partnership, and overall ministry impact; the testimonials of all initiatives are presented to demonstrate how the purpose is a living – and increasingly being realized – intent.

I am very firmly persuaded that the passion that underpins living and community in these fellowships – together with the discipline of clarity through which this purpose is consistently communicated, practiced, assessed and reinforced – would not be any less transformative if it resided at the core of any enterprise, whether for profit or not-for-profit. In their book “Built to Last”, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras made this interesting observation in respect to purpose: “…Contrary to business school doctrine, we did not find ‘maximizing shareholder wealth’ or ‘profit maximization’ as the dominant driving force or primary objective through the history of most of the visionary companies”. They found in their research that visionary companies were generally more ideologically driven and less purely profit driven than their comparison companies.

When I contrast my church experience with my ‘marketplace’ experience, what quickly impresses me is that what for church are calls to action and rally-to-the-flag convictions on purpose receive more mechanical thrift in an enterprise setting. I have noticed this trend afflicts for-profit structured enterprises more than not-for-profits (though even with the latter there have been instances in which I was not impressed that the organizations truly considered their purpose as a true-north for their decision making e.g. operational models tended to be structured more to comply with the requirements of specific funders than with the core purpose of the organization). Most organizations did not really spend time speaking of their purpose; the pragmatic assessment of circumstances “now” was usually the more immediate guide to strategic decision making, hiring and organization structure than “how relevant is this choice to how we want to change the world?” Making the end-year profit target always dominated any other narrative that was written into the statements of purpose. Those nice looking grandiose sounding posters and banners with “Vision” and “Mission” tended to mostly be marketing tools. The staff tended to be cynical about these statements and conducted their work accordingly. The leaders whose task it was to communicate the purpose, articulate it, and demonstrate how it explained the life of the enterprise did an occasional town hall, video or email but generally did not speak much about this purpose. In all fairness, they tended to conduct themselves according to the examples that had been set before them. The passionate “i-could-strip-and-run-naked-with-conviction-about-why-the-world-needs-XYZ Ltd” is not really considered corporate decorum.

If the discipline of clarity of purpose has proved to be a significant element in the journey of enterprises that today measure their impact in periods of time over 100 years, then it is a discipline worth spending the time to practice and become proficient at. The knowledge of your purpose is an essential ingredient in organizing your enterprise to live intentionally. It’s the ever steady true-north of your enterprise. It will inform the behaviors you intend to be characterized by, determine the kind of customer you sell to, the kind of employee you will seek to hire, the form of structure you organize it into, the kinds of supplier you get into relationships with, the strategy of success you commit it to. It influences the scale to which your business will be built to grow. Very importantly, it is a core element of clarity around which your leadership team and staff will rally around in understanding the actions you commit yourselves to e.g., why should we source this item from country Y instead of country Z; why should we work at developing local resource yet the same resource is affordably available in region Q, why should we have an executive role of “Chief Happiness Officer” yet our competitors do not pander to such fluff.

You very likely already know (especially if you are the founder) or have access to knowledge as to why your organization came into existence at all. You certainly know how you hoped to make life better for your customers, transform your industry or vocation, support the future potential of your employees or re-write the destiny of your community or country. I invite you to write it down. Don’t look for it to be perfect, and do not be afraid to write it down as big and incredible as it actually looks in your head. Use the words that work for you rather than common boiler-plate terms. Write down what you believe rather than what you think is achievable (that comes later). It is very likely that after you do this the first time, the picture you had in your mind will get richer and acquire more clarity. Keep refining it until you are satisfied that it has achieved the purest form you can get to. Along the journey, in whatever version it is, put it in a place where you get to look at it often – on your desk, by your bedside, pasted to your dressing mirror or your car dashboard. Allow yourself to think on it regularly. Talk about it to those you trust to listen. Allow it to grow in influence in your business decision making process. There will very likely be some immediate benefits to this – especially if you find you are engaged in two or more activities. This statement can show which activities align with your purpose and should be grown further, and those which you should stop doing to free resources for the on-purpose ones. You may also find it helps you sketch the type of staff team you want to work with – which can be very useful in identifying, hiring and retaining the right team members in the right places. You may begin to spot opportunities for optimization of your supplier relationships. You will most definitely be clearer on exactly what type of customer is your king and worth courting; and what type you will be OK to lose. If you have it written down, communicating it later on will be so much easier.

Jim and Jerry include some helpful advice for entrepreneurs and small business managers in their book; not all of the visionary companies they studied begun life with a well-articulated purpose or ideology. Some didn’t pin it down till they had gotten over the initial start-up phase; in some it wasn’t until their second generation. However, all of them did so before they became big. The earlier you articulate your purpose, the better.