“Purpose Congruence should permeate your whole organization and become a core part of how you hire and build teams. Getting this right is like found money.”

—Jon Duschinsky

Key Insight: Purpose Congruence is a new term that refers to the alignment of each individual team member’s Purpose with that of the organization.

Food for Thought: 

State of Purpose Governance in Canada

Purpose Congruence: What Is It And Why Should You Care?

Purpose Congruence is the alignment of individual and organizational Purpose.

It is the term that has emerged in the last few months to describe the state where the purpose of someone working for an organization intersects with the purpose of that organization.

The reason that matters is that if you come to work feeling like you’re not just contributing to something that is important to your bosses but is also important to you — on an emotional and spiritual level — then you’re more likely to bring your A-game, be more creative, innovative, passionate and stay with the organization for longer.

And all of that translates into productivity, performance and impact for the employer.

Sounds pretty simple.

But it’s not.

Lots of organizations have invested in articulating what they stand for. It’s fairly well understood across boardrooms in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that if you clearly articulate what you stand for and take action to generate the change you want to see in the world, then you will attract more customers, donors, supporters and fans.

But in my experience, the same level of understanding does not exist around the importance of giving each person in the organization the chance to articulate what they stand for – and crucially, then helping them figure out how that intersects with the organization’s purpose.

I know, a lot of this can sound rather conceptual. Here’s a true story to illustrate it.

Sophie works in marketing and sales at a travel company whose purpose is to bring fun and adventure into people’s lives. She’s in her mid-20s and enjoys the job. The people she works with are generally fun and she gets to take at least one big trip every year.

Sophie likes her work, she’s generally happy, but she isn’t overly passionate about what she does. It’s a good job, it’s fun but if she got a better offer to work at a competitor she’d not feel too compelled to stay.

The company then invests in giving Sophie a chance to reveal her own personal purpose.

They do this through a coaching and transformation program, perhaps like our own Purpose-Driven Leadership Journey. As Sophie goes through this process she understands that what truly lights her up is teaching and inspiring kids, helping them build self-belief.

Sophie’s boss invites her to spend some time with the teams that develop new tours in Asia, and suggest that together, they might explore how to align her purpose with the purpose of the company — to create fun and adventure.

Sophie is given a few hours each week to explore and pursue this and within a few months, the team have developed a series of tours that engage with local educational NGOs and support projects working with kids.

When these tours are launched, they turn out to be some of the best selling products the company has ever run.

When the CEO looks at the numbers he finds that Sophie and the small group of the sales team that work with her are responsible for almost all those sales.

He pops by her desk to find out more and learns that her passion for these projects and for the impact they are creating has inspired others around her. The way Sophie and her friends at work talk about these projects to future clients on the phone is so compelling and authentic that they are selling them like hot cakes.

Fast forward to today, Sophie leads a team that creates social impact travel programs at this company. She has no intention of ever finding another job – at least not any time soon. And the programs that her team creates remain among the highest performing of the company.

What this story illustrates is the power of aligning an organization’s purpose and an employee’s purpose.

Here at centrepoint, we call this unique space where the two overlap the Zone of Leadership Excellence (ZLE), because it is where each of us can make our greatest contribution.

Now, what is fascinating is that most of us do not spend the majority of our time in our ZLE.

Actually, after observing and working with hundreds and hundreds of leaders and team members, we think that the percentage of time most employees spend in their ZLE is closer to 25%, sometimes less.

Now, if you pause to think about this for a moment, it’s quite baffling.

Because what this means is that if you have someone working for you who is only spending 25% of their time in their ZLE then you are only realizing 25% of the potential value of their contribution to your organization.

Why would you pay someone a full salary and only get a quarter of their value?

In a world where turnover is high, conscious quitting remains a thing and the challenges of finding and keeping good people is among the things keeping CEOs awake at night, it astounds me that we perpetuate a system where the majority of employees only deliver a fraction of their value and feel little to no emotional connection to the purpose of the company they work for.

This is why Purpose Congruence matters.

In my experience you’ll never get to 100% of time spent in a Zone of Leadership Excellence. But can you move to 50%, or even 70%? Sure. Sophie was at about 25% at the start of the story. She’s probably around 60% today, but look at the impact. Imagine if you could do that for every one of your team members?

And then, you can think about how this can also drive recruiting strategies. Rather than selecting candidates only on the basis of how they meet job descriptions, companies that prioritize Purpose Congruence can look for people whose goals in life are ready-made aligned with the business.

Having a lit up, purpose-congruent workforce demands more than just a purpose statement that is perfectly captured by a sign on a wall. It means investing in your team, giving them the chance to see how their individual purpose can integrate into the purpose of the company.

The result can be like found money.

If you are intrigued and want to explore how you could invest in your teams to get the same results as the company in this piece, then drop us a line and we would be happy to jump on a call.