Valerie Keller, of the EY Beacon Institute, researched the impact of varying degrees of mission-orientation within organizations by performing a survey of 474 executives across many types of organizations [1]. She asked executives to identify if their companies were prioritizers, developers, or laggards in relation to how their organizations had articulated and viewed purpose:
Here are the high-level results:
- 39% – Prioritizers – Organizations with clearly articulated and understood their purpose
- 48% – Developers – Organizations still in the process of developing a clearly articulated purpose
- 13% – Laggards – Organizations that did not have an articulated purpose and were not developing one
So what?…Prioritizers were almost two times more likely to succeed in innovation and change when compared to developers
Prioritizers realized a benefit from more streamlined decision-making
62% of prioritizers were focused on continuous improvement compared to 46% of developers and 26% of laggards
A clearly articulated purpose directly relates to the bottom line (Keller, “The Business Case for Purpose” 2015, p 5).
Keller’s research shows there are tangible benefits to organizations that create and communicate a clearly articulated purpose with their ability to achieve their goals, succeed, and maximize their mission impact.
To be an effective prioritizer, Keller recommends providing employees a sense of meaning and fulfillment, aligning systems and infrastructure with purpose, aligning goals and incentives with purpose, enhancing leadership communication, and embedding purpose as the central focus of leadership development and training.
Is your organization a prioritizer, developer, or laggard? What are you doing to prioritize purpose? How well are you aligning everything you do to prioritize purpose?
[1] Keller, Valerie. “The Business Case for Purpose” EY Beacon Institute and Harvard Business Review. https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/purpose/purpose-pdfs/ey-the-business-case-for-purpose.pdf
