‍

Defining your company’s purpose… it’s one of the most difficult sets of words to develop. It’s a statement that needs to inspire, a testament that needs to stand the test of time, and a message that organically creates marketing as a result. Outside of the paper work for your corporate entity, it could very well be the most important document for your organization. Why? This may be personal opinion, but I see it as the heartbeat that fuels a prospering organization. This thinking was confirmed at Outsell’s DataMoney conference in February of 2018 with Jeff Tarr, the former CEO of Digital Globe, delivering an ending keynote sharing the importance of purpose and how it fueled the company.

Almost every successful company whose path I cross has a beautiful purpose that inspires its team to go above and beyond to build something amazing. The data is starting to support this as well. At the Outsell Women’s Conference, Patsy Doerr, the Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability and Inclusion at Thomson Reuters, stated that “8/10 employees care about the purpose and impact that their company makes.” Not to mention, purpose is in and it is hot! Like, “when the Nintendo Wii came out in November 2006” hot. Between Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk “Start With Why” with over 39 million views, Echoing Green hosting a movement-building Purpose Summit, and every company taking a stab at its own, the purpose statement is the statement to have on your “About” page.

While many companies are latching onto the creation of purpose for obvious benefits to the business, many are developing their purpose for outbound marketing and missing the mark. In a recent conversation I had with David DeWolf, the CEO of 3Pillar (a very purposeful company), he shared in my thinking about the lack of quality purpose statements coming from hundreds of companies in data, tech, and numerous other industries. “They’re missing the mark and building outbound marketing campaigns,” David states. We see this often in the Outsell world as well.

So that leaves two obvious questions: How do you build a quality purpose statement? And what are the measures of success?

Outsell recently completed an exercise to create our first purpose statement. These are the steps we took to build what we felt would be the most effective selection of words for our company.

Step 1: Define what the purpose statement needs to accomplish for your company.

Our executive team met to discuss these goals. With a recent adjustment in strategy, one significant goal was to align our team around a common purpose to keep the ship sailing in one direction, so to speak. Another goal was to simplify. At Outsell, we had a vision statement, mission statement, boilerplate, and values. We decided to only keep our values, doing away with our other statements to align the company around one purpose. The third goal was to create a purpose that inspired our employees and was bigger than the company itself. With these goals in mind, we were able to start the creation process.

Step 2: Involve your company. Your entire company.

There is a reason why every single one of your employees comes to work at your company every day. Ask them. Every month we have a company all-hands call, and we opened this discussion up to all of our employees. “Why do you come to work here every day? What do you think our purpose is?” The responses were nothing short of inspiring. Some of the responses from our team:

“Our purpose is to help the world understand how technology impacts our lives.”

“To help the world understand the tools that impact the access to justice and the quality of that justice.”

“To feed curiosity.”

“We help the world to know.”

“Trust.”

Step 3: Piece it all together.

Now, armed with all the input you could ever need, it’s time to cut, extract, and refine. Our team decided to have two pieces to our purpose statement. The first was a one-line statement that summarized our purpose. After that came the details that explained it. This step of the process took the longest as we wanted to build a statement that would stand the test of time for the company. Versions of the statement circulated around the executive team. At the end of the day, the CEO needs to finalize the statement with their final vision of the purpose of the company. At last, we had the end result:

‍

‍

Step 4: The acid test.

How do you know if you have the right purpose statement? I believe that if a purpose is bigger than the company itself, is providing natural cohesion, and demands expansive thinking, driving innovation and progress, you’ve created the right purpose. My favorite example is SpaceX. Everyone at SpaceX knows their company exists to make space radically more accessible. That is what they work to do every day. (That is why their employees work 9–9–6: 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week.) If you can check all those boxes, I think you’ve done it.

If you don’t have a purpose, I encourage you to make one. If you already have a purpose, I urge you to take another look and think about your purpose through this lens. Not only does it create a number of fantastic benefits for your business, the exercise itself ensures that as a company you’re focused, performing, and working toward something that is bigger than the company itself. Those are the companies people want to work for. Those are the companies we need more of.