Becoming a Purpose-Driven Company

Are you ready for your business to do more? To become a true leader for your team? To build camaraderie and loyalty and drive success through your team’s aligned efforts? If you answered Yes, you are ready to transform your business into a purpose-driven company.

If you answered No, keep reading. Purpose-driven companies tend to grow faster, attract and retain better talent, and exceed customer expectations more often than their counterparts.

That sounds good, right? Because it is!

What is a Purpose-Driven Company?

A purpose-driven company aligns its success to a greater mission or goal. This alignment starts with a clearly articulated Purpose Statement that everyone in the company understands. Your Purpose Statement is WHY your company exists, beyond the obvious goal of being profitable. For example, our Purpose Statement at Mobilization Funding is, “To help the people we come in contact with.”

A Purpose Statement is more than a feel-good moment in your company handbook. It should guide your business strategy and inform your team’s actions.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting for one sentence. To shoulder the weight effectively, your Purpose Statement must be crystal-clear. Your team should be able to recite it from memory. It also needs to resonate powerfully with everyone in the company, starting with YOU and all the way down to your newest employee.

Creating your Purpose Statement isn’t easy, and the deep-dive, soul-searching it requires of you as the business owner could be a blog in and of itself (and will be). Here is a hint to get your started – your purpose statement needs to come from what is really in your heart. It must be about serving your customers and your team FIRST. If it is all about what you want it will not be nearly effective enough or something your team or customers will embrace and follow.

For now, let’s talk about WHY you should align your company’s efforts around a shared purpose.

Becoming purpose-driven is a journey. Don’t go it alone. Subscribe to our CEO’s newsletter for tips and insights from his own purpose-driven journey.

Why Become a Purpose-Driven Company?

According to a Deloitte Insights Report, “Purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow on average three times faster than their competitors, all the while achieving higher employee and customer satisfaction.”

Mic drop.

Attitudes about brands are shifting. More and more customers want to know WHO they are doing business with, and this trend is not restricted to B2C industries. Whether you sell directly to consumers or business-to-business, your clients and customers want to know who you are and what you stand for.

Having a stated company purpose tends to increase team morale, collaboration, and productivity. Once your entire team is marching to the beat of your purpose, it becomes easier to identify, attract and retain new employees who also believe in your purpose. It also makes everyone’s job clear and easier because the purpose is understood. It guides each and every person’s decisions.

Loyalty, from both customers and workforce is, a forceful growth agent. Happy customers who align with your purpose become vocal brand evangelists, and a team joined around a common goal is willing to push harder to achieve it. Your purpose is a powerful differentiator for new business as well, and when you get the big job you’ve been dreaming of, you know you have the team to get it done.

Examples of Purpose-Driven Companies

What does a purpose-driven company look like? Well, we are one, for starters. Here are a few slightly more famous purpose-driven companies:

CVS. Remember in 2014 when CVS stopped selling tobacco products? That revolutionary and controversial decision was guided by their stated company purpose, “helping people on their path to better health.”

The decision wasn’t made lightly, and it wasn’t made in a silo. Leaders from almost every department discussed the potential ramifications. In the end, CVS took a $2 billion loss in annual cigarette sales in order to live its purpose.

It paid off. The company ultimately ended up with a 10 percent revenue increase.

TOMS Shoes. This shoe-maker combines purpose with profit. For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS donated one pair to a child in a developing country. TOMS has since shifted from this one-for-one model, but continues to directly aligns sales with its purpose. For every $3 the company makes, it donates $1.

IBM “Smart Cities.” The tech giant’s purpose to advance innovation led to the creation of the Smarter Cities Challenge, which has helped over 100 cities so far solve complex environmental, infrastructural or social challenges. It also drove revenue for IBM, as part of the Smarter Planet campaign, which generated over $7 billion in revenue.

2021: Your Year of Purpose

We are launching a campaign this year to help as many construction, manufacturing and other businesses as possible make the transformation to be purpose-driven companies. Why? It’s part of our purpose — to help those we come in contact with. We know the fulfillment and pride that comes from being purpose-driven. We want you to feel it, too!

Join us in making 2021 your Year of Purpose. Subscribe to our newsletter and we will walk through this journey together.

You are going to dig deep to find and define the true purpose in your work. You will scrap those meaningless core values created in a boardroom and replace them with values true to YOU. You will carve a path for your team to follow. You will LEAD them toward your vision for the company.

We can’t wait to see what you become.

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