When you’re leading change – for example, growing revenue, launching something new or redesigning how your organisation works – the day-to-day work rarely leaves room to remember why you’re doing any of it. You’re too busy making decisions with incomplete information, holding your team’s nerve as well as your own, and adjusting the plan for the third time this month.
If you’re saving the strategic conversation about purpose for when things calm down you’ve missed the point. Purpose isn’t a nice-to-have question on a strategy day. It’s the reason you get up in the morning, you tackle the difficult conversations, and you remain curious to find a better way.
Why purpose helps you make progress
I spent years training people in the culture and behaviours where innovation thrives, before anyone called it psychological safety. One pattern showed up again and again: the leaders who could weather a failed launch, a stalled project, or a decision that turned out wrong without it knocking their confidence sideways all had one thing in common. They were clear that the decisions they took were rooted in purpose – decisions that would help the organisation reach its goals. It meant when something didn’t go to plan, it was not a failure – it was information, a step in the right direction towards a better way. It was worth the risk of trying something new in order to get closer to the end goal.
When you can’t be certain what’s coming next – and if you’re leading change, you can’t be – purpose helps you navigate and focus. It becomes one of the only fixed points available to you, so it’s the thing you check decisions against: does this get us closer to what we’re here for? It helps us not to just respond to the loudest problem in the room today. Leaders without that filter end up reactive, chasing whichever fire is currently burning brightest. Leaders with a clear purpose still feel the heat. They just don’t let it set the agenda.
Your purpose and your organisation’s purpose
None of this means purpose arrives in a flash of clarity on a long walk. Our purpose is connected to values, and it’s something we’re shaped by early in our lives whether we realise it or not. When your own purpose lines up with your organisation’s, that’s when the job starts feeling joyful. For most of the senior leaders I work with, purpose is closer to a working hypothesis that refines over time – developed by what energises them, what impact they want to have on their organisation and the people in it, and the impact they want their organisation to have on the world.
What we choose to protect under pressure can be another nod to our values and purpose. If you’re not sure what your purpose is yet, look for patterns. Notice which parts of the work pull you in, rather than the parts you’re just getting through. And notice what impact you want to have, separate from your job title. If you’re in a leadership role right now and you can’t remember the last time you checked a decision against why you’re doing this at all, that’s worth ten minutes of your attention before the next decision lands on your desk.
If this resonates, reply and tell me: what’s the purpose you check your decisions against when you can’t be certain what’s coming next?