Purpose: where do you start?
PURPOSE: WHERE DO YOU START?
Unilever shared six months ago that their responsible brands 69% are growing faster than the rest of their portfolio. (Brands with purpose grow - and here's the proof) Enough evidence to continue their strategy of providing more and more brands & products in a sustainably responsible manner.
They are not alone in this; purpose is becoming a core element in business strategy. (Purpose as the basis of future-proof businesses) Purpose is a long-term guide to choices. From your supply chain to product & service development, innovation, HR, facility choices etc.
But what exactly is purpose? If you read articles about purpose, you will notice that there are still many different interpretations of 'purpose'. For us, the core of purpose is staying relevant in the long term. This means speaking the language of the long term, the 'triple bottom line' (people, planet, profits). So in addition to finance, start talking about ecological and human & social value.
So time to work on your purpose. Here are two steps that can help you do this. An initial exploration of your purpose and a first look at transformation.
A FIRST EXPLORATION
Getting to purpose starts by making it negotiable. Starting by talking about the impact and responsibility you have as an organisation. To start this conversation faster, we have come up with a simple framework. In this framework, we indicate how future-proof each profession is. The green shows the degree of future-proofing, planes with a positive triple bottom line. The red areas are still single (financial) or double bottom line, and are therefore not yet relevant in the long term.
Where do you see your organisation's potential? How much value do you want to deliver on the ecological & human axis? Where do you want to move as an organisation? Where would you place your current business models?
MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION VISIBLE
From the triple bottom line, you can deploy the following value components. These are pieces of human (incl. social) and ecological value that you can weave into your business model(economic value). Which of these value components can you deploy to make your current business models more purpose-driven and move towards the long term? Are there barriers or elements in your business model that prevent you from delivering human and environmental value? And which are hindering your organisation from moving from growing to thriving?
Compare the barriers on the impact of solving and the extent to which the barrier is interwoven into the business model. Translate the high-impact and highly interwoven barriers into "What if...?" questions. These provocative questions show what you need to work on as an organisation and also provide creative fodder for innovative ideas. Some examples of questions:
"What if we could supply carpet tiles without using fossil resources?" - Interface
"What if we made clothes without destructive cotton farming?" - Patagonia
"What if we made the chocolate chain fair?" - Tony Chocolonely
"What if we as a bank stop unsustainable investments?" - Triodos
With this exploratory exercise, take the first step towards developing the purpose for your business. Also want to talk about your purpose?
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