Do you still cringe when your hear the word Purpose?

Does it make you wonder if you’ve been doing it all wrong? Having a purpose doesn’t make you sound tough enough? You can relax now and toss your judgments aside. The data is in. Purpose pays off.

DDI’s 2018 Global Leadership Forecast – one of the several studies that have piled up data on the fact that formulating and acting on a purpose is a winning strategy – highlights that there is a strong and positive financial bottom-line benefit to both defining and acting with a higher sense of purpose.

In a survey of 1,500 global C-Suite executives, DDI found that those companies who both define and act with a sense of purpose outperformed the financial markets by 42 percent. On the other hand, companies that don’t walk the talk —that is, they have defined their purpose but don’t do anything about it—performed at the mean of all organizations. And those without a purpose statement and who obviously do not act or behave with a sense of purpose underperformed by 42 percent.

To back up the data, the authors of the study elaborate on the transformation of DTE Energy’s U-turn after the 2008 economic meltdown. The CEO, Gerry Anderson, decided to transform his whole organization by declaring a purpose for the company and then weaving it into everything imaginable, be it training, meetings, and even sing-alongs. The result? DTE’s stock price more than tripled from the end of 2008 to the end of 2017.

The EY Beacon Institute and the Boston Consulting Group have also reported similar good tidings here and here, resulting from the definition and enactment of organizational purpose. 

So if the data is in, why aren’t more organizations operating this way? Because CEOs and managers are still stuck in a rut thinking that having a purpose makes you sound weak or esoteric, or they are too proud to admit that their current strategy is wrong.

So shake off your old thinking patterns, cast your doubts aside and jump on the ‘purpose’ bandwagon if you don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.

You can read the full article here