In the book “Essentialism - the disciplined pursuit of less”, Greg McKeown advises that you make your purpose; what he calls “essential intent”, both concrete and inspirational. This is different from:

• mission statements which are inspirational but not concrete;

• values which can tend to be general and bland;

• and quarterly objectives which are concrete but not inspirational.

So I’ve used McKeown’s framework to line up a purpose for every team I’ve led in recent years. Nothing fancy. Just a simple line that everyone can understand and rally around. For example, when I was on a team building a data visualisation platform, we all agreed that our purpose was to “help our clients use data to drive better decisions”.

That simple phrase led to a sense of ownership. For every feature, every enhancement, we’d ask if it would indeed “drive better decisions”. There was a healthy tension to do the right thing. The team would come up with ideas for the product with this purpose in mind. It was at the centre of our existence. 

Would your teams benefit from having their individual purposes? How can you encourage them to define and own these?