Why Leadership 'Purpose' is a Bottom Line Issue

Leadership Purpose is a top line issue because your customers and employees need to understand clearly why your business should matter to them. The fact that you want to make a profit is not good enough to inspire the type of loyalty from both customers and employees that ensures you will be able to sustain growth through excellence over time.

Purpose is also a bottom line issue because of its ability to drive the personal and work outcomes in employees that allow you to operate your business efficiently. If you are doing a poor job on the personal and work outcomes you will be incurring excessive costs (e.g. poor quality products, waste, absenteeism, turnover) and squandering profit.

The key to these enhanced work outcomes and the coveted profits that accompany them lies between the ears of your employees. Experienced meaningfulness, or 'why work matters', is the critical psychological state most closely associated with purpose. Your mission and even your vision are most often meaningless to your employees (have you asked them lately?).

Purpose, why we do what we do, has the potential to make work meaningful for your employees, and that makes purpose a bottom line issue. Make sure you understand why your business matters to your employees.

As Colin Powell says in this speech, the role of a leader is to put people in the best possible position to achieve the 'purpose' of the organisation. The best leaders are those who can convey this purpose throughout the organisation.

Why Leadership 'Purpose' is a Bottom Line Issue