The Purpose of Purpose: (Business) Purpose Isn't Strategic
Is "purpose" what you're doing or how you're doing something else?
One of the shows within ‘90s classic Animaniacs was “Buttons and Mindy”, featuring toddler Mindy (voiced by Bart Simpson!) wandering about barely avoiding catastrophes. Her recurring gag was to ask random people what they were doing (“whatcha dooooin?”) and then repeatedly asking “why?” when they answered.
Once she was partnered with The Brain. He tells her it’s time to take over the world. She asks why. He explains that his superior intellect means he should be in charge. She keeps asking why. Eventually he yells, “Because it’s what I wanna do!”
NB: In this post, in talking about “purpose”, I’m talking about “business purpose” (the reason the business or organisation exists) as distinct from “brand purpose” (what the business or organisation tells the world is the reason it exists). The two might be identical, and they’re certainly related, but don’t always have to be identical. Business purpose is typically internally facing, while brand purpose is public-facing.
When teaching about objective hierarchy, I often frame it as a series of answers to the question “why?” – in the sense of “to what end?” Of course, that can’t go on forever. At some point, you hit bedrock and there is no further answer. The only answer left is: “I just do.”
What’s always been interesting to me is that this is a different kind of answer. Up until this point, every “because” answer to every “why” question has been instrumental, a justification in terms of some higher-order objective. But when you hit that final answer, there’s no higher-order objective to which to appeal. The answer is instead a statement of fact, not of instrumental justification.
Incidentally, this is a huge hassle for people who believe in some kind of absolute objective morality in the universe. Justifications always take place within a moral framework, only have meaning inside a moral framework, and therefore the moral framework itself can’t be justified. To put that more simply…
What’s so good about good?
The utilitarian can justify all kinds of things in terms of increasing happiness in the world, but can’t justify “increasing happiness” itself. The Christian can justify all kinds of things in terms of doing God’s will, but can’t justify “God’s will” itself. And so on. The final answer is always that unsatisfactory: “You just should.” Or, “I just do.”
At the same time, “I just do,” can’t really be argued with. It’s a report, not an argument.
I touched on this in the last article, in the difference between prescriptive and descriptive elements in an objective hierarchy – “purposes” in particular.
That is, the highest-order purpose of a business is either to make money for its owners or to do whatever its non-financial purpose is. But in either case, if that is indeed its purpose, there is no further justification required for it. It’s a statement of fact about the business.
One reason this distinction is important is because getting it wrong is a different matter for prescription and description.
We can criticise description for being factually inaccurate. If we’re disagreeing about a descriptive purpose, we’re saying, “No, that’s not the business purpose. The business purpose is actually ________.”
We can criticise prescription for being inadequate or counterproductive – which means instrumentality in reference to some higher-order objective. If we’re saying that a “purpose” is wrong because a different one would be “better”, then we are referring to some higher-order purpose for that judgement.
In other words, any business purpose that can be “worse” or “better” than another one is not really the business purpose.
There’s no criticising or critiquing an actual business purpose in itself. The purpose, the highest-order objective, is the ultimate measure against which all strategic decisions are evaluated. But it itself cannot be measured. It is the measure. That is the reason I say that purpose isn’t strategic, if it is indeed the highest-order objective.
I keep saying “if indeed it is”, because I think some people do treat “business purpose” as a strategic choice. They look at the facts – facts about the market, the competition, the assets and capabilities of the business – and say, “This is what the purpose of the business should be.”
But that word “should” is the signal that some higher-order real purpose is being appealed to. And typically, that’s about profitability. They’re saying, “Since our purpose is to make money, and a different ‘business purpose’ would make more money, we should change our business purpose.”
And that’s fine – just be aware of it, don’t fool yourself.
Arguably, there is one thing you could critique about a descriptive business purpose: the way it’s worded. This is an interesting one, because I think the criticism here can be either about accuracy (is that really your purpose?) or about instrumentality (it would be better if your purpose were…)
Consider this thought: “If we define the business purpose a bit more broadly, that gives us room to expand into other products and services in the future.”
This could mean two things. On one hand, it could be about recognising the actual broader scope of the purpose of the business – describing it more accurately in a way that happens to rationalise brand extensions. On the other hand, it could be about finding a “purpose” that will be as profitable as possible in the future – recommending a “better” purpose.
There is one final aspect to the wording of a business purpose which does kind of combine both description (is) and prescription (should). And that is communicability. One instrumental use for a written business purpose is to align and inspire the team members in the business – it is useful for the effectiveness of any business if its employees share an idea of what they’re all trying to achieve. A clear and accurate statement of the purpose of the business can do this. And a better written purpose statement can achieve that more effectively than a poorly written one.
But to be clear, in this case, “your business purpose could be better” is not judging what the purpose actually is, but rather the quality of its articulation.
Clarity is always useful, and whether the “business purpose” is the actual purpose of the business or is just the way it achieves the actual purpose of making money, it will benefit from the team cohesion and direction of a well-worded purpose statement. Asking a team to rally around the grand goal of maximising shareholder value is probably doomed to failure, so a more specific and inspirational objective is always going to be more effective as a motivator.
But let’s not fool ourselves.
In the next article, I’ll talk a bit about some of the motivations involved in “purpose” and the joys of fooling ourselves.