Is Your Company Purpose Truly Part of Your Culture – or Just Marketing?

“The pur­pose of human life is to serve, and to show com­pas­sion and the will to help oth­ers.” ‑Albert Schweitzer, Ger­man the­olo­gian, philoso­pher, physi­cian, med­ical missionary

Many com­pa­nies say they have a pur­pose and sup­port a good cause. They’ll write a cheque or do some things. But I’ve found that few actu­al­ly live it. Few are able to con­nect to their com­pa­ny pur­pose in a way that the peo­ple in the orga­ni­za­tion are direct­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the purpose…seeing it, hear­ing it and talk­ing about it.

When it comes to pur­pose, I’ve noticed three types of companies:

• No pur­pose beyond prof­it – it’s just about mak­ing money
• Say they are pur­pose led, and say all the right things. But if you look at the actions behind the behav­iours and actions, it’s about money
• Tru­ly pur­pose led, with a cause that dri­ves the com­pa­ny ahead. It shows up in the lead­ers DNA, and in every­thing they do.

I’ve seen the dif­fer­ence a pur­pose-led orga­ni­za­tion can have on a com­pa­ny — how it makes the work much more mean­ing­ful and impactful.

One com­pa­ny is my client Chica­go-based Medix, a lead­ing provider of work­force solu­tions for health­care, sci­ence and IT industries.

A few years ago we defined that the core pur­pose of the com­pa­ny is to ​“pos­i­tive­ly impact lives”. It means that every day, and in every way, they tru­ly strive to make a real dif­fer­ence for the tal­ent they rep­re­sent, their clients and their inter­nal team – and to strength­en the com­mu­ni­ties they touch.

It’s so far from mar­ket­ing – it’s who they are.

And CEO Andrew Limouris has an amaz­ing gift to bring this pur­pose to life in a way I’ve nev­er seen lead­ers do. It is excep­tion­al­ly powerful.

Once he had com­pa­ny lead­ers par­tic­i­pate in a team-build­ing exer­cise to build bicy­cles for kids – with­out instruc­tions. When they’d fin­ished the dif­fi­cult chal­lenge, they were sur­prised when the con­fer­ence room doors opened. In walked a group of kids who had nev­er owned bikes in their life — ready to receive them from the exec­u­tive team.

Anoth­er time, the exec­u­tive quar­ter­ly plan­ning ses­sion took place in Phoenix where the com­pa­ny had raised mon­ey to buy a house for a vet­er­an, in sup­port of Jared Allen’s Homes for Wound­ed War­riors project. When the house was com­plet­ed, we held a team meet­ing in the veteran’s back­yard. The man and his wife spent the evening with us, telling sto­ries of what they had been through. At the end of the night, the vet­er­an gave Andrew one of his ser­vice medals, in grat­i­tude for help­ing them.

This year, to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments of exceed­ing their finan­cial tar­gets, and annu­al pri­or­i­ties set a year ago, Andrew held our three-day plan­ning meet­ing in Pun­ta de Mita, Mex­i­co. One of those days was carved out for a pur­pose expe­ri­ence, to vis­it Refu­gio Infan­til San­ta Esper­an­za, a children’s shel­ter just out­side Puer­to Val­lar­ta. (We worked ​‘til almost mid­night every day in order to get this done, and then in the evening to wrap up our work, after we got back from the shel­ter. Worth every moment.)

Of course, we had all packed an extra bag full of clothes and school sup­plies for the kids.

But Andrew took it to a whole oth­er lev­el. When set­ting up the vis­it he asked how else could we pos­i­tive­ly impact them? What did they need? A doc­tor, a den­tist, an eye doctor?

They need­ed a den­tist, bed­ding, dish soap and laun­dry deter­gent. So we hired two den­tists, and bought at least 40 sets of sheets and pil­lows, and oth­er sup­plies at Wal­mart. Andrew also arranged for the woman who was the cook and maid in our vil­la to come and join the expe­ri­ence as well.

We set up a mini car­ni­val and oth­er games, and had a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence with the kids. They all saw a den­tist who cleaned and extract­ed teeth, and arranged to do more work where need­ed. And the den­tists were so touched, and so thrilled to be a part of it they did it for free!

Remem­ber, we are emo­tion­al beings who ratio­nal­ize things. If a pur­pose is approached ratio­nal­ly, it’s not that pow­er­ful. But cre­at­ing expe­ri­ences where peo­ple feel the intent of that pur­pose is extreme­ly pow­er­ful for those you help – and the peo­ple in your company.

We could have just writ­ten a cheque for a few thou­sand dol­lars – but we did so much more, and are bet­ter for it. I’ll tell you why in the next blog.