Defining your company’s Purpose

A clear and compelling Purpose will attract customers to your products and services, and equally important, it will align and inspire your people to work collaboratively towards serving the Purpose of the business.

If your brand is positioned for everyone then your brand is positioned for no one.

A clear example of this concept is in the contrasting strategies of Apple and Android mobile devices. Apple is developed for customers who want a seamless user experience. Apple achieves this by developing both their own hardware and software and implementing stringent approvals into every app that is on the Apple App Store. In contrast, Android is software owned by Google and is free to use by any mobile device manufacturer. Google allows apps to be offered on Google’s Play Store without review. Android devices are not as seamless as Apple devices in user experience but provide great flexibility to their customers.

Both are very successful companies playing in the saturated market of mobile devices; however, both have made very unique and deliberate strategic decisions that appeal to very specific target customers rather than attempting to own the entire market.

So how does a business take the first step to determine its unique strategic decisions?  It starts by defining its Purpose. It must answer the pivotal question: WHY does it exist beyond profitability?

Simon Sinek, bestselling leadership author once said, “People don’t buy what you do, people buy WHY you do it.” He continues by saying when a business is able to clearly articulate a powerful purpose, it speaks “directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior”.

This is why every Corporate Strategy engagement of Acumen begins with assisting businesses to clearly define the unique Purpose of their business. The more powerful the articulation of the Purpose of a business, the higher the chance it has to drive customer behavior to purchase their products and services. Equally important, a powerful purpose inspires and aligns employees of the business to get up every day and work collaboratively to achieve that purpose, as well as attract the specific talent who are driven and have the ability to help the business achieve its purpose.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976 with the following Purpose: “Apple is dedicated to the empowerment of man — to making personal computing accessible to each and every individual so as to help change the way we think, work, learn, and communicate.” This drove several strategic decisions, including pricing. The first Apple computer, the Apple 1, was sold for $667 compared to an IBM 511 Portable Computer which was selling for $8,975.  Although Apple’s Purpose has taken different forms, it’s essence has not changed.  It was the beginning of Apple’s legacy of being “dedicated to the empowerment of man” and changing “the way we think, work, learn and communicate” for almost half a century. It is the same Purpose that has made Apple one of the most financially successful businesses in our lifetime.

Last year, I was part of a team of Acumen Strategy Consultants that facilitated the development of a strategic plan for a 3rd player in an industry with a highly saturated market. We started, as we always do, by facilitating a discussion on and definition of the Purpose of the business among its key stakeholders.

“Some leaders are tempted to skip this step because they find talking about these topics too fuzzy, too subjective, maybe even too emotional," says Zinnia Rivera, former President of Johnson and Johnson Philippines Inc. and Red Ribbon Bakeshop Inc. and currently a fellow Client Director at Acumen Strategy Consultants.  “They prefer to get on with the hard stuff… But where and how you want to play and win in your industry greatly depends on where you want to go,” she adds.  

Prioritizing the definition of an organization’s Purpose ensures that the resulting strategies and plans are anchored on a clear destination.  This ensures delivery of a more compelling, meaningful, and comprehensive strategic plan that inspires sustained support from the organization and loyalty from its customers.