Spark 20 – How to think more strategically: Purposeful Thinking: Example

To incorporate purposeful thinking into your strategies, employ these steps:

1. Define your core purpose: Start by clearly articulating the fundamental purpose of the organisation. This involves understanding your mission and the core values that drive you.
2. Align goals with purpose: Ensure that all strategic goals are directly aligned with this core purpose. Each objective should reflect and advance your primary mission.
3. Adopt purpose-driven decision-making: When faced with strategic choices, consistently ask how each decision aligns with and furthers your purpose. This becomes a guiding principle for all decision-making.
4. Communicate the purpose: Effectively communicate this core purpose across the organisation. Ensure every team member understands and is committed to this central mission.
5. Integrate your purpose into organisational culture: Foster a culture where purposeful thinking is valued and practised at all levels. Encourage teams to regularly consider the purpose in their daily tasks and decisions.
6. Regularly review alignment: Continuously review strategies and operations to ensure they stay aligned with the core purpose, making adjustments as needed.
7. Measure impact based on purpose: Develop metrics to measure how well your strategies and actions are fulfilling your organisational purpose.

By methodically practising these steps, purposeful thinking becomes deeply ingrained in your strategic approach, ensuring that every decision and action taken is consciously aligned with your core mission and long-term vision.

How to think more strategically: tools for purposeful thinking

Once you have the basic process under control, you can continue to build your skill at incorporating purposeful thinking when creating strategy. Here are some tools to get you and your team going:

• Core values exercise: Sometimes, the purpose is a bit fuzzy because it’s mixed up with a lot of other good but non-essential things. A core values exercise can help filter out the noise. Get your team together and list out all the values you think are important. Then, begin the hard task of cutting that list down to the most critical few. These core values often point directly to your core purpose.

• Simon Sinek’s ‘golden circle’: This is a tool for organisations to define their purpose (Why?), how they do what they do (How?), and what exactly it is that they do (What?). By answering these in a structured manner, one can gain clarity on the overarching purpose.

• Purpose alignment matrix: Create a matrix where one axis lists your key activities and the other axis lists your organisational objectives and social impact goals. The intersections will help you see where you are, or are not, aligned with your purpose.

• Stakeholder interviews: Sometimes an external perspective can provide valuable insight. Conducting interviews with key stakeholders can offer a clearer understanding of how your actions align with your intended purpose, and may help to redefine that purpose in more actionable terms.

• Vision boards: An underutilised tool in a business setting, a vision board can make abstract concepts tangible. Whether using an actual board with cut-outs or a digital app, place on it images, quotes, metrics, or anything else that resonates with what you feel your purpose to be. Refer to this regularly and adjust as necessary.

• Daily intention setting: Start each day by setting a clear intention. It could be as simple as a sentence or a phrase that encapsulates what you aim to achieve or how you want to conduct yourself. This act can bring a surprising level of clarity and focus, helping you align your activities with your overarching purpose.

• Time blocking for purposeful actions: Allocate specific blocks of time for tasks that serve your intentions. If your intention is to engage more deeply with stakeholders, for example, block out two hours every week solely for that purpose. No emails, no distractions, just undivided focus on fulfilling that part of your purpose.

• Decision filter: Create a one-pager that includes key elements of your purpose and strategic goals. Use this as a filter for decision-making. Whenever a new opportunity or challenge arises, pass it through this filter first to see if it aligns with your purpose.

• Mindful meetings: Begin every internal meeting with a brief statement of its purpose and what you intend to achieve by the end. This aligns everyone’s focus and enables more purposeful discussion. If the meeting diverges, anyone in the room has permission to bring it back to its stated purpose.

• The ‘5 Whys’ technique: Originally part of lean manufacturing, this technique involves asking ‘Why?’ five times in succession to drill down into the root cause of an issue or the core reason behind an activity. This can be incredibly enlightening for ensuring that your actions are aligned with your intentions and long-term objectives.

By embedding these tools into your regular strategic routines, you’re not just setting an intention; you’re living it in each action and decision you make. This focused approach ensures that intentionality isn’t a buzzword but an actual operational asset, integral to your strategy and organisational DNA.