There’s a common question people ask, it usually goes; “If you had to have someone take a football penalty for your life, which player would you choose?”
As someone who has spent most of my career being dedicated to helping businesses be more purpose-driven, if some madman made a trap where you had to get someone to convince a profit-focused company to be more purpose-driven, some people might choose me.
A weird villain. A weird premise, but let’s give it a go anyway.
How I’d convince a company to be more purpose driven.
Well, for starters, I wouldn’t start in a boardroom. I’d start somewhere uncomfortable. A place where a product is actually used. I’ve stolen this from a Christmas Carol, by the way. Horror, Dickens, Football.
Imagine the scene. You can even be in your Victorian nightgown. Fluorescent lighting. A queue. A customer is annoyed but polite because that is how people are when they still hope you might be better than the last lot.
We’d stand there quietly and watch.
Because this is the thing most profit driven companies forget. The story of their business does not live in spreadsheets or brand decks. It lives out here. In the small exchanges. The sighs. The moments where someone decides, consciously or not, whether you are worth the effort. The lighting, the queue, the fact they’re annoyed. They’re done for the benefit, knowingly or not, of the business, and they’re having consequences for the customer.
Learning everything you need to know.
Anthony Bourdain used to say you learn everything you need to know about a place by eating with the people who live there. Businesses are no different. You learn everything by watching how customers, and staff, behave when no one from head office is in the room.
This is where purpose starts. Not as a belief. As a fact.
No one is evil here.
I’ve spent enough time with companies who only talk about profit to know the pattern. They are not villains. They are tired. They are optimising constantly. They are chasing efficiency, scale, margin. And slowly, without noticing, they lose the plot.
The product still works. The service is technically fine. But something is missing. No one is thinking about the person paying the money.
You feel it straight away. The place feels hollow. Interactions are transactional. Staff are polite but distant. Customers are tolerated rather than welcomed. It all functions. It just does not mean anything.
Purpose is not a bolt-on to fix that. It is the act of remembering who you are actually for.
Back to the Trap
If I’m trying to convince a profit driven company, I do not talk about values. I talk about navigation.
For centuries, sailors carried lodestones. Natural magnets. Not magic, not mythology, although people thought they were. They did not tell you where you were. They told you which way was north.
That is what customers are.
Most businesses treat customers as feedback after the fact. Surveys. Complaints. Net promoter scores. That is like checking the stars after you have already hit the rocks.
Purpose means treating the customer as a directional force while you are still moving.
When a decision comes up, and it always does, you ask one simple question. Does this make life better for the person we exist for.
If it does, you proceed. If it does not, you stop. Even if it looks efficient. Even if it looks clever. Even if it makes next quarter look slightly better.
That discipline is purpose.
What’s the alternative?
I’ve seen what happens when companies do not have it.
- They add features because competitors did.
- They launch campaigns because the calendar said so.
- They chase growth that feels impressive and delivers nothing lasting.
It all looks busy. It all looks professional. And it all quietly drains energy and money.
Purpose-driven is another word for Customer-centred. Those companies waste less because they are embarrassed to waste time. They cannot justify complexity that customers feel immediately and hate silently.
Purpose exposes nonsense early. That alone is worth millions.
There is a moment, usually over bad coffee, where someone senior will say: “But does this actually make more money?”
This is where my final statement would come:
- Purpose creates pricing power because trust is valuable.
- Purpose reduces churn because people stay where they feel understood.
- Purpose lowers risk because decisions can be explained when things go wrong.
And things will go wrong.
When they do, a company without purpose sounds defensive. A company with purpose sounds human.
That difference matters more than most executives realise.
The calm after the storm
The best businesses I work with do not feel obsessed with profit. They feel calm. Focused. Deliberate.
They know who they are for. They know who they are not for. They make fewer decisions, but better ones. Their products feel coherent. Their teams know what good looks like.
Competitors can copy the surface. They cannot copy that consistency.
Purpose compounds quietly.
The end scene of our movie.
So if I were trying to convince a profit driven company, I would not ask them to care more.
I would ask them to look harder.
- At where customers hesitate.
- At where staff apologise unnecessarily.
- At where the experience feels thin.
Would I succeed? Would the person in the movie’s life be saved?
I sure hope so, because they’re a customer, and I’ll need them for the sequel!