Governing any organisation can be challenging. Leaders around the board table, as well as the management team, often have high demands placed on them and, with scarce resources available, they can all struggle. This is often made worse by a lack of clarity or alignment about “the why”. Why is there is a need to invest all this effort? What is the point? Or to phrase it another way – what is the purpose that underpins the organisation, its activities and its contribution to our community?
An organisation’s purpose is at the heart of good governance. It is central to the guidance we use in all our work here at Grounded Governance. However, it’s a piece of work that is often overlooked even at a board table, where discussions often focus more on business plans (busy-ness plans?), budgets and beyond. At Grounded we suggest that before undertaking any planning it is vital that the board get clear about its organisations purpose – its “why”.
“WHY is not about making money. That’s a result. It’s a purpose, cause or belief. It’s the very reason your organisation exists.”
– Simon Sinek
We’ve noticed that community organisations really get this. They know why they exist and what impact they want to have on the world. Many businesses, on the other hand, struggle with the concept of purpose. It saddens us to hear “to make me money” or “to make the bosses money”. The truth is that if leaders are to improve organisations, they must be able to define, communicate and enact the why. Why does the business exist?
There is still a lot of work to do, to broaden understanding of an organisation’s purpose. Grounded uses these 4 steps to help evaluate whether a purpose statement is effective:
The Grounded team thrives on helping boards to get their organisation’s purpose clear, so that they can be more impactful and more effective. When an organisation’s purpose feels authentic to all stakeholders, they feel connected to it and inspired by it. We believe this helps them to be more motivated too.
We are Grounded. Are you?
Helping organisations to define their purpose is the foundation of what we do. It is also rewarding and motivating for us. But it is about more than that: we’ve also got clearer about our purpose here at Grounded – to help businesses and boards to flourish, so that they can reap the rewards of their efforts. We do this so that our country, and our communities can thrive too. We’re spreading the word of good governance, one workshop at a time.
If you would like to find out more about our workshops and training programmes take a look at what we do.