Lesson 6 - Purpose alignment between individuals, teams, and organisations

Where is the link?

We briefly talked about aligning the purpose of your organisation with your team and the individual purpose of your people. This is key to building a purpose-driven culture and company. If there is no alignment, the whole thing will break down. The same thing that happens to hundreds of companies worldwide will happen to yours. They have a vision, mission and values but there is no link between those and what people working there believe in, or even worse, they don’t believe they exist or aren't real.

Once you know your purpose, it is very important to be clear about your goals too. Once your goals, which need to be aligned with your purpose, are clear, it's time to work on that alignment between the organisation, the team and individuals.

It's all about knowing your impact. As a team, you need to define which of your goals will contribute to the organisation's goals, and that are aligned with its purpose.

As an individual, you need to understand why you go to work there every morning and what impact you are making that enables your team and organisation to achieve their goals, which again are aligned with its purpose.

When it comes to individuals, there are probably several reasons why they work for your company. You, as a leader, need to find at least one that can be properly linked to the organisation's reason for existence.

Once you find that alignment, you need to continually reinforce it over time. Organise regular alignment sessions so that people don't forget about the impact they are making every single day, and why.

Communication is key

Communication. Communication. Communication. 

As Phil Knight, chairman and co-founder of Nike Inc. once said:

The same applies to your purpose as an organisation. It needs to be known for people to believe in it and become the core of your activities. 

When we talk about communication, we’re not only referring to employees. You need to share your organisation’s purpose openly  with employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders, prospects, vendors, service providers. In other words, with everyone. 

A detailed internal and external communication plan is your next step. Be consistent. If your purpose is real, it should not be communicated differently to different audiences. 

Find out how to create a communication plan here:

Think about Patagonia again: 

"We are in business to save our home planet." 

Everybody who works there knows about this, as do most of their customers, prospects, vendors, etc. Everybody believes it to be true because it’s based on actions. Ultimately, that's the reason why people want to work for them, with them and buy from them.

What’s coming next?

Have fun in tomorrow’s “Purpose alignment between individuals, teams, and organisations” lesson, where you’ll be learning about 

• Running a company that’s so strongly aligned with its values that people will give their all when working for you! 😃

So stay tuned!

To learn more about Kenjo’s solution to increase employee satisfaction, click here. Grab a demo from Kenjo. We’ll show you around, and you’ll be armed with more info than when you started.