How does a purpose-driven business bring its purpose to life across the business?
By dedicating time to align their glorious people and by making sure that personal and professional values match
Being a purpose driven business takes energy and will. Deciding and defining it is the first step. Then there are organisations who show clear intention by taking the work to the next level.That is embedding purpose across their glorious people. Dedicating the time to align your senior teams and individuals around it. This is when it really begins to come alive. It’s when you move from purpose to legacy.
That work takes my breath away and it’s exactly what urbanbubble did, brilliantly, yesterday. hashtag urbanbubbleway
I knew it would be good when I spotted an urbanbubble notebook with the the standard front cover of ‘we think you’re amazing’
Thanks so much to Louisa Dentith and Louise Bangee for inviting me, to the whole team for such a warm welcome and for this ‘in mid flow’ shot 🤣

How do you become a purpose-led business?
- What is at your core?
- Define the values and motivation to ensure congruence
- Connect to the potential impact.
- Create the vision
- Author a compelling narrative
- Engage all audiences
- Move to action
- Commit, measure, celebrate
1. What is at your core?
Go right back to the need that you saw, that drove you to form your organisation. Step back and step into that moment that you were motivated, intentional and decisive. What were your thoughts? What were you listening to that drove your energy? Define your belief system, the emotions you felt. There is fundamental intelligence to harvest here. These were your foundations.
2. Define your values
Your values run through you, your team and your organisation like a stick of rock. What are they? What really matters here? Which values underpin your culture, actions, behaviours. These will be the non-negotiables. Some may be obvious, others may take some work to discover. Look for the truths and consistencies. Name the values with real examples of what brings them to life to enable others to connect with them easily.
3. Connect to the potential impact
And we don’t mean what you will probably achieve. Dedicate time and space to stretch your thinking, to literally dream big. Repeat the phrase ‘so what?’ relentlessly. Think big, then think bigger. You cannot achieve what you can’t see. So take the time to create the picture of the pipe dream. When you find it, your hairs should stand on end. If they don’t, it isn’t big enough. Remember, this impact once clear will become the driver for your organisation behind which everything will align. And be patient. Take the time to get it right.
4. Create the vision
Design your vision. Put yourself in the place of having achieved it. What is happening. Who is involved. What has changed. Which measures of success are happening. Use the present tense to create a colourful and vivid picture of what it is like to be there. Pack it with descriptions, micro and macro details, colours and emotion.
5 Author a compelling narrative
Create a narrative that cuts through business jargon, encapsulates the vision you see and one that creates a vivid picture in the minds of others. A compelling narrative creates, when heard, actively creates a response and reaction in the listener. Evoke emotion and communicate the feelings, emotions, motivations that you had. This is fundamentally a human story. Capture it in 120 characters to know that you have it.
6. Engage all audiences
Adapt your core narrative to each of your audiences and channels to ensure that you tell the right story, to the right audience, in the right way. The edits of your story will have to engage verbal and non-verbal learners, analysts, strategists and creatives. So design a narrative for the full spectrum of communication and leadership preferences.
7. Move to action
Rich levels of engagement with your audiences will already have moved them into action. This is all about motivation and momentum. Create the common goal, create the short, medium and long term actions and align personal and professional goals of all involved around each of them. Accelerated action is fuelled by deepest connection and engagement.
8. Commit, measure, celebrate
Early transparency around ‘real’ resources and the ‘real’ commitment needed keeps it real and avoids distraction or de-priorisitng purpose. As a leader, the purpose must be remain at the forefront of the business, success is measured against it, decision are made by it and engagement derives from it. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Acknowledge and champion those actively contributing to it and those who challenge to stretch it even further. Evidencing progress invites progress.