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How you can MAXIMISE your impact & performance

Writer's picture: Carolyn Butler-MaddenCarolyn Butler-Madden

Updated: Oct 25, 2021



Lets say you've defined your Purpose and/or Social Purpose.


You’ve understood how to give your people ownership of your organisation’s Purpose; and to embed it into the culture of the organisation, so that along with the values, it shapes and guides behaviour and action.

You have identified your Partners in Purpose.

You have learnt how to use your marketing and communications to attract people who share your vision of the future, so that together you can build a movement of change.

And finally, you understand how building purpose into your customer experience, can strengthen the clarity of your brand positioning and enable you to solve your customer’s problems and deliver on their deeper desires, which connect with their narrative.


Now you've come to the final piece of the Path To Purpose Program and the sixth pillar of our methodology. It is time to establish some goals.


A Purpose Strategy is based on the idea that by using your business as a force for good, you will attract and retain quality employees and customers; and your employees will be invested in and drive the organisation’s success. Because of this, your business will perform better financially.


There are two core categories that we need to consider:

1. Social Impact – linked to your social purpose. 2. Business performance – people, brand, revenue.


1. SOCIAL IMPACT: Choose your Impact, Change the World

A good starting point for social impact is the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For readers who may not be familiar with this... in 2015, world leaders agreed to seventeen global goals (known as the SDGs or the Global Goals. Also known as “the world’s to do list”).


They are huge, ambitious goals for the world to come together to achieve by 2030. Goals like “No Poverty”, “Zero Hunger”, “Good Health and Wellbeing”.





As you can see, these goals create focus on the world’s biggest issues, but breaks them down into achievable targets.

You can learn more at globalgoals.org. You can also access the artwork for the goals and the target icons. The UN have made the artwork open-source and available to any organisation or individual to use freely, to encourage them to align with one or more goals and to drive widespread public awareness of the goals and.

Awareness of the Global Goals is growing and more and more organisations across the world (non-profit, for-profit and government) are starting to publicly align with them and focus their efforts according to the Goals.


It is very likely that the Social Purpose you have defined can be aligned with one or more of the UN Global Goals.


You can have one goal or a number of goals. They can be big and bold or small and achievable.

I usually encourage my clients to define a combination of goals, depending on what their Purpose Strategy looks like. I like to challenge them to establish one to three “mega” long- term goals alongside some smaller shorter-term more achievable goals.

The “mega” goals are big, bold and ambitious goal. Hopefully these goals scare the bejesus out of them!

What that does, is it forces them to think more expansively and innovatively than they may otherwise allow themselves. It connects them in the most direct possible way with their higher purpose and propels them towards being a truly purpose-led or purposeful organisation. Of course it also gets them thinking long-term and it is only when you think long-term that you can be truly ambitious.


One “mega” goal may not suit you. You might want to aim for multiple goals.

Each business will have different circumstances when it comes to setting goals.


Ultimately, the most important thing is to have goals, however big or small they may be. They are vital in driving the action that is the definitive characteristic of a purpose-led business.

Equally important is to track them and report on them.


2. BUSINESS PERFORMANCE: Now let’s look at what measurables you should consider when it comes to business performance.

People The more invested a company’s people are to its Purpose, the more successful the business will be in fulfilling its Purpose and in realising the full benefits of a Purpose Strategy.

Measuring employee engagement on Purpose is vital.

Employee Net Promoter Score can be a good way to measure the impact of a Purpose Strategy at different stages of the journey to Purpose.

Additionally, you may want to consider adding some of these questions to your regular survey, once the strategy has been launched internally.

How excited are they about the opportunity the organisation’s Purpose Strategy offers them?

How invested are they in the organisation’s Purpose?

To what degree has the Purpose of the organisation changed the way they feel about the organisation positively or negatively?

The value of the answers to these questions is in understanding how well the Purpose Strategy is flowing through the organisation. It’s an opportunity to identify blocks, concerns and challenges and to address them. For this reason, it’s also valuable to capture anecdotal feedback


Brand Health Consumers are more likely to switch to brands with a meaningful purpose, as well as pay more for them, remain loyal to and advocate for them.

So when it comes to Brand Health, here are some of the metrics you may want to consider tracking.

Brand engagement: Quantitative data (tracking)

  • Media impressions

  • Social engagement

Brand trust: Quantitative data (surveys)

  • A brand I can trust

  • A brand that represents my beliefs

Brand advocacy: Quantitative data (surveys)

  • Likelihood to recommend brand to others


Revenue Purposeful brands perform 42% better than brands that just have a purpose statement and 84% better than brands without any purpose beyond profit.

The impact of engaged, invested employees and customers/clients who love what you stand for should flow through to increased sales. So track your sales, factoring in wherever possible, seasonal fluctuations, competitive activity like discounting; and unique events that may affect your category or the market as a whole (e.g. extreme weather events; pandemics).

Ideally, for existing brands, capturing data pre-launch of your Purpose Strategy will give you a reference point for all metrics. Then capture the same data at varying intervals through your brand’s path to purpose. Frequency and timing will depend on your business and how active it is in marketing.

As I explain in my new book "For Love & Money", building a purpose-led business and brand is not a short-term exercise. It’s a long-term strategy, because the credibility of your brand is built over time through the actions you take that are driven by your Purpose.

So if you don’t get a strong uptick in the first instance, don’t start second guessing the strategy. Give it time. We need to change our expectation for short-term returns.

The future is calling and it needs us to re-set our vision and expectations to the long-term

 


FREE WEBINAR - IMPACT & PERFORMANCE

Wednesday November 3rd, 12:30pm - 1:30pm (AEST)

If you want to learn how to maximise your impact and improve the performance of your business as a result- come along to our next free webinar.


On the Wednesday November 3rd, I’m going to be taking a deeper dive into this topic, discussing all things Impact and Performance. We’ll be building on the foundations we’ve covered in this blog and how you can action them, so you can start getting your business on a path to purpose.


This webinar is the final installment of a six part webinar series covering the six pillars of purpose. If you missed the other webinars, you can watch them here.


...AND for every webinar attendee we also provide one day of education to a girl in need, to create strengthened family and safer communities. So if you have someone that you think might be interested in this series- bring them along!





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