Importance of Purpose in Today’s Trying Times
During today’s trying times, construction leaders are finding themselves increasingly distracted. What is PURPOSE, and why might it be an important motivator at your company?
Watch Digging Deeper this week as Dennis talks about the importance of having clarity of vision, mission, and purpose so that you are able to lead through challenging times.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments.
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Hello everybody, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper.
Today I want to talk about purpose, purpose for your business and the importance maybe of thinking about purpose now
in today's trying times. It is a trying time for a lot of individuals and families. We may have folks who have been affected
by the COVID-19 or folks that are into the social unrest and things that people have been touched in a very personal way.
I think when it comes back to work, work is work. And I think it's probably easy in these interesting times for people to be
distracted, possibly even go through the motions, things like that. So, why purpose? How can purpose help me keep our
team motivated, keep them going together, get the best out of our company?
Well, first of all, let's talk about what we mean by purpose. By purpose, we really mean the why of the business. Why do
we actually do this? Why do we build these buildings? Why do we do this construction work? What's important about it?
What's important externally about it? And purpose is really an external thing. You probably in your company have a
mission and a vision, and it's possible your purpose as a company is embodied in the mission. That's probably where it
best belongs and, in your vision,, but I would say that at least 50% of the companies I've looked at it really isn't there. Their
mission and envision may be more internally focused as opposed to externally focused. Think about in construction,
construction's really very much a purpose rich industry, purpose rich environment, if you will.
I mean, think about what we do in construction. I mean, we construct where we live, where we work, where we socialize,
where we pray, how we get around, the roads and everything else. All of this is produced by construction. I mean, we
create a tremendous worth to society in this business. Generally speaking, we try to do it with quality. We try to build
things that are long lasting. What I hear from construction workers in of their pride to be able to drive past something you
had a hand in 20 years ago, 30 years ago, still standing there, something you can show your children, you can show your
grandchildren. This is really great stuff. And then there's the client experience. Certainly, part of your purpose is around
achieving the dreams of your clients. They have dreams for what they want to see, their business and you as a builder are
helping them achieve that dream.
Surveys show, interestingly enough, that companies with a clear purpose on average, 90% of those companies achieve
better than average profitability and success. 90% of those who have a clear purpose achieve better results. Another study
that I read recently was the three key drivers of high growth. Interestingly enough purpose was not one of those key
drivers, but the study found that there was a fourth driver and the most important driver of all was really purpose. That
those companies that had an authentic purpose had a more united organization, had more motivated stakeholders. The
purpose helped inspire employees to try new things, a deeper level of learning and development. And people make
surprising contributions when they're working toward an authentic purpose or a higher purpose than just the paycheck.
We talked about in a blog a few weeks back, transactional employee relationship. You think about it, I hire you, you do
this job for this amount of money. That's transactional and it's not particularly motivating. I think with the things we're
going through today in society, more and more people are asking about the why, the purpose, their own purpose, and
looking to that more and more. So, I think there's an opportunity today for you as a company and you as a leader to really
focus in on what that purpose is and try to get the company working around that, rallying around that higher purpose. I
think perhaps that'll help you get past this distracted work is work, go through the motions thing that you may have some
people experiencing.
So again, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper. Thanks for tuning in today.
