In the modern landscape, being purpose-driven is no longer a peripheral concept but is recognized as a critical driver of organizational success. The challenge for business leaders and purpose practitioners is clear: ensure your purpose doesn’t end with a whimper but rather invigorates and propels your organization forward. This Advisor draws on the findings of the Purpose-in-Practice Community, which explores more favorable conditions for transformative change and a lasting impact.¹ The community notes that human behavior within an organization can hinder purpose and warns of nine traps to avoid on the journey to shared understanding and purpose:

1. Chasing achievement. This involves viewing shared understanding as an end state that one achieves, as opposed to an ongoing process you are in a relationship with. Creating shared understanding is a practice that is progress in and of itself.

2. Seeking perfection. This involves seeking a frictionless end state and rigidly working toward that fixed outcome, instead of sensing and facilitating the best next step. We must instead accept that no state is truly tension-free and that to approach this work with such an assumption prevents us from enjoying the present moment and leads to frustration.

3. Jumping to action. Don’t be concerned about spending too much time talking about purpose. We must understand that dialogue, continuous sensemaking, and generative conversation are part and parcel of the driving of purpose because they create shared understanding, helping to reinforce our commitment and ensuring consistent action.

4. Reinforcing hierarchies. Assuming that the power to change is outside oneself, that someone up the organizational ladder sees and sets purpose, distracts from the importance of taking seriously one’s own discovery.

5. Overworking. Jumping from one idea/solution to the next, anxiety, and busyness are warning signs we have strayed away from purpose. Space to reflect is needed to find the way back to purpose.

6. Assuming we can control change. People find comfort in project plans and communications efforts. However, it‘s good to lean into the discomfort of challenging beliefs, assumptions, and mental models and instead move toward relationship-focused ways of driving change.

7. Polarizing. Some people tend to reinforce polarized positions by seeking out “believers” and making others feel they are wrong. It is better to assume that everyone’s intentions are good and look for ways to bridge the gap.

8. Taking on too much responsibility. Some of us can take on too much of the burden of change instead of sharing the responsibility. There is value in driving purpose with and alongside others.

9. Positioning ourselves as experts. Most people feel the need to know the answers, but the journey to purpose neither requires nor rewards individual expertise.

Table 1 links the personal qualities that enable reaching the organizational practices that help build a shared understanding.

Table 1. Successful personal qualities and organizational practices for building a shared understanding (source: The Purpose-in-Practice Community)

Note

¹The Purpose-in-Practice Community brings together more than 200 business leaders and organizational changemakers to collectively explore how they can accelerate a transition that puts purpose at the heart of business success. The Purpose-In-Practice Community is hosted by A Blueprint for Better Business, a UK-based charity that helps businesses be inspired and guided by a purpose that benefits society and respects people and the planet. This is achieved by stimulating and energizing a different way of thinking and behaving in business.

[For more from the authors on this topic, see: “The Purpose-in-Practice Community: Bang, Not Fizz!”]