Purpose - The Vision and WHY to Guide Your Business

Why does purpose matter in business? And because it's one of those things that can come across as a bit ethereal, it can come across as something that you can't necessarily grab easily. People kind of dismiss it, and what's funny about it is that they usually understand purpose at the beginning when they're starting a business, but it's one of those things that gets forgotten in the complexity, the chaos, the confusion of scale-up.

So, what is it? Well, first and foremost, purpose can also be called vision. It's simply about understanding where you are going. It's about sometimes starting with the end in mind and the best analogy, perhaps an overused analogy that I've heard around this is, if you're going to jump in a plane and go somewhere, you're going to end up somewhere, right, you know the plane’s going to take off and it's going to end up somewhere. But if you haven't got a destination that's clear, you could end up somewhere amazing, equally you could end up somewhere that you don't want to be.

Whereas if you set the intention, you know exactly where that plane's going to go before takes off, then it doesn't really matter what happens on the journey, you know, if the winds pick up or there's some storms or whatever else, you know you're still going to get to the end place because you've set that intention early on. And it's much easier to be able to navigate that path with all the things you have to do, the strategy, the tactics, the people you bring in to help you, the advice, the investment, how you allocate resources, all of those things become significantly easier when that destination is front and centre.

Purpose is the same as vision. It's about understanding where you're going, it's about understanding why it matters, and it's about having a plan, a plan that certainly from the beginning, shows the pathway, shows the way that you are going to get from A to B.  And as I said, the path may change, things may come in left of field that either present opportunities or challenges, but ultimately you have to start with that blueprint, you've got to have that in place because it's going to give you the best chance, the best momentum to really drive forward and hit the ground running.

I just want to come back to why, because Simon Sinek says you should start with why, whereas I say you should start with vision, you should start with purpose. Both are equally important, but the why is the thing that's going to give you the juice to keep going. So, when things do become challenging, you're going to draw into your why, which might be freedom, it might be creating wealth, it might be making a bigger impact, but it's the why that's going to ground you, it's the why that's going to get you up working late at night or early in the morning or whatever it takes to be able to go through those rough patches. But if you haven't got the vision, and you haven't got the purpose, in my view the why doesn't matter, because quite often you might just get clouded confused.

And just to finish up, when I work with people, when they come into our world, Scale Up Your Business, quite often, as I said, they start with a strong purpose and they start with a strong why, and then they lose it. So, it's a foundational piece. If that's happening to you right now, you've got to get away for awhile, you've got to start working more on your business, you've got to reconnect with the reason you started this process. And I guarantee if you do that, you're going to have one of the key foundations, one of the six peaks of value creations, I call it, in place and that's going to give you momentum to fire, to grow, to scale and get to the place that you've always wanted to get to, both for your business and for you.