Learn how your Noble Purpose can make a positive impact in the world and help to differentiate your company from competitors by focusing on your company’s core competencies.
What is a noble purpose?
Noble Purpose is a concept created by Lisa McLeod that is defined as a mission for your organization that represents how your company’s core competencies can positively impact the world. Making a profit is not a noble purpose. If you have to send your assistant back into the board room to snap a photo of your company’s mission and text it to you before you speak to your team, well, that mission isn’t shaping any positive behaviors at your organization.
Why is it important?
We are currently living in one of the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times in human history. The world is moving faster than ever and organizations that are not leading their markets are falling behind faster than ever. If you want to:
Retain and recruit top talent
Stay relevant against your competitors
Reach new levels of organizational health and effectiveness
Then your company needs to be leading with a noble purpose.
A strong mission is powerful, especially today when people are searching for more meaning and purpose in their work. Does your mission inspire people to want to hitch their wagons to your organization? In today’s competitive talent market, it better.
Creating a noble purpose
When creating a noble purpose, It has to be:
Believable
Aligned with the company’s current core competencies
A cause employees can rally around
Not a hollow promise
All too often, large companies think they can promise anything in their mission statement and expect their employees to follow. An example comes from one of the country’s biggest fried chicken chains. They promise to be a healthy choice in the fast-food world. Sorry, folks, fried chicken will never be healthy. Healthy just can’t be part of a fried-chicken company’s mission statement.
How can having a noble purpose help your organization?
Today, more than ever, people crave meaning in their work. The Great Resignation is a result of employees being dissatisfied with their jobs and quitting to find more meaning in their work and in their lives.
By creating a noble purpose that gives meaning to the work of everyone in your company, you can:
Give employees a reason to stay
Provide an external motivator that drives productivity
Give meaning to the work of your employees and increase job satisfaction
Employees who feel their work has meaning are more engaged, productive, and happy with their jobs. Organizations with fulfilled employees have an easier time recruiting and keeping top talent. A noble purpose will boost employee engagement and in turn, boost organizational health, productivity, and success.
Along with helping your employees, a noble purpose will drive customers into your business. There is a movement of people who want to support companies with good values and causes. A noble purpose will give another reason for customers to want to work with you and will differentiate you from your competitors, creating a winning workplace culture.
Roadblocks to developing a Noble Purpose
Creating a noble purpose that is inspiring, truthful, and aligned with your values can prove to be complicated, especially if you don’t already have a bigger vision for your company.
Before you can even begin to create a Noble Purpose, you must have a set of firm values that govern everything thing you do as a company. All employees within the company should have a solid understanding of these values and reflect them in their work.
If you don't have integrity in your values, you won't be able to create a successful Noble Purpose.
Having an outside perspective that can view your options through the eyes of a customer, can genuinely help to ensure your noble purpose is being delivered clearly and is in fact noble.
How KeenAlignment can help you develop a Noble Purpose
KeenAlignment’s noble purpose is to “forever liberate the human spirit at work.” Every day, it inspires our employees. Here is why it works:
It’s simple but powerful
It captures people’s attention, attracting both clients and talent to the organization
It gives meaning to our employees' work, which is probably the most important aspect of a noble purpose
Our executive coaches have worked with hundreds of companies, helping them develop a noble purpose and watching as they move into some of their best-performing years as a business.
At KeenAlignment, in our Compelling Future Workshop, we take you through the step by step process of creating a noble purpose. We help you create a vision for your company, and give you the second opinion you need to determine which Noble Purpose is right for you. We hold you accountable to your values and goals and help you create a compelling vision for the future you want to live into.
If you want help creating your company's noble purpose, you can sign up for KeenAlignment’s Compelling Future program to receive the guidance of a top-level executive coach and change your organizational culture for good.
You can learn more about Compelling Future here.
Conclusion
A noble purpose gives meaning to the work of your organization; it gives purpose to your employees and it makes you stand out from competitors. In this ever-evolving world, businesses without a noble purpose will fall behind fast. People want meaning and purpose; they want to feel like they are contributing to something bigger than themselves, whether as an employee or as a customer. Create a noble purpose and be a part of the movement.
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can boost your company’s performance and productivity and create a high-performing organization check out KeenAlignment founder and CEO Margaret Graziano’s new book Ignite Culture. The book will be available this Fall and in the meantime, you can sign up here to receive exclusive sneak peeks of the book.
To Your Success,
The KeenAlignment Team