Whether I am working with a client or having an informal chat, my brain invariably tries to solve for, “Why?”, or its corporatised cousin, “Purpose”.
Why are you doing this?
Why should anyone else care?
Why is this the right path for your unique strengths?
The truth is that excavating answers to these questions feels like hunting for gold in the kitchen sink.
At the same time, because our social feed is tattooed with a kaleidoscope of purposes, we pressurise ourselves to come up with our purpose quickly; or else. And when we can’t find real answers, we manufacture them.
I used to be paid good money to come up with purpose statements for brands, campaigns, and whole companies. And after getting it wrong as many times as I got it right, I have learnt this →
- Purpose is discovered through observation, not intellectualisation
- If making money is the only stated purpose, I have to work much harder to uncover the real purpose
- Money is the goal, purpose gives the ‘how’.
- The danger of judging purpose by its size
- You can’t read the label from inside the bottle
1. Purpose is discovered through observation, not intellectualisation
Clues hide in plain sight. They are inside what you care about and the choices you make when no one’s watching.
My fitness coach loves clothes. He has a keen eye for good fabric, button details, stitch quality, and which brands don’t clear the odour test after a sweaty marathon.
He can teach me how to do a deadlift without hurting my knees as well as he can help me pick the right T-Shirt for my workout.
He cares so much about this that he recently put his savings into a shop to sell high-quality apparel at discounted rates.
My corporate training can now kick in and word craft his purpose, which could read something like this → “Just because it’s branded, doesn’t mean it’s good quality. That’s why, I want to rescue people from cheap fabrics and poorly made clothes that hide behind fancy brand labels.”
Had I ‘run a workshop to unlock his purpose’, I would only have wasted his time or worse, confused him and pushed him off his path.
Sure, he wants to make money. Who doesn’t? The difference is that here, making money is not the main purpose. It’s a happy by product.
2. If making money is the only stated purpose, I have to work much harder to uncover the real purpose
Praveen understood that he won’t build wealth on a monthly driver’s salary. So he quit his job and joined a bunch of guys in his village who sell disputed property and make money through commission.
With land prices hitting Rs.6+ crore1 per acre, he stands to make 3 years’ salary in one deal.
No matter how much I dig, his main purpose seems to be only to make money. Sure, being a better provider for the family is a part of it. But that’s not a differentiating enough purpose.
In the business world, potential clients open every briefing meeting with money-centric ‘whys’
Perfumes are growing, Bella Vita is doing well. So, we are also launching a perfume.
We need to grow 30%, we are only growing 15%.
We are planning an IPO in two years.
This is when I try to get longer conversations going. I slow down, observe teams in action, and listen deeply. With time, the purpose statement reveals itself organically.
In situations where clients can’t seem to look beyond their balance sheets and P&Ls, I interview consumers, find an insight, and build a strategy that starts with consumer insight. I might even back fit a purpose statement into the package, but later.
3. Money is the goal, purpose gives the ‘how’.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. But a strategy that’s based only on ‘getting rich’ does not guide us on how we will create value, and what guides our decisions.
In such cases, ‘strategy’ becomes the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket every tuesday because everyone else does.
Unilever is investing in influencers, let’s also get influencers,
let’s also make ‘Gen Z’ packaging,
let’s copy Ordinary, but for hair care.
There are many things that could go wrong with this playbook.
- its not differentiating enough to help you win the attention economy
- someone else can copy it and execute it better than you
- without a unifying belief or insight, it becomes difficult to decide which path to take when there’s a fork in the road
- it doesn’t come from your strengths, so your strengths don’t compound with time
Why not make beautiful things, solve problems, improve processes, help people save cost/invest better/get fitter AND make money while doing that?!
And that btw has been the genesis of the FMCG industry!
All legacy FMCG companies started in one of three ways.
i. One, as lucky inventions
The Kellogg brothers were experimenting in their kitchen because they wanted to create an easy-to-digest bread alternative for their patients at their health centre.
One night, they left the wheat dough out by mistake. By morning, the dough had become stale and hard. When they used rollers to flatten it, they created the first version of cornflakes.
One of the brothers saw the opportunity to make this bigger by taking it beyond their patients and he ended up building Kelloggs and a $40 billion breakfast cereal industry.
ii. Two, as a problem that the founder wanted to solve.
Dyson was pissed that vaccum cleaners lost suction and clogged up when dust bags filled up. He cared so much about righting this wrong that it took him 5,126 failed trails over 5 years to get it right.
iii. Three, as a response to government’s call to improve citizens’ lives. (common to India)
Aardeshir Godrej saw a public announcement by the Bombay Police Commissioner, urging inventors to make better locks because Bombay was inundated with theft.
He borrowed Rs.3,000 from a friend and made India’s first high-security, springless, “unpickable” lock.
FMCG was founded by men and women of craft and science – doctors, inventors, chemists, tailors, make up artists.
None of them started just to make money.
All of them started with a real problem they wanted to solve.
4. The danger of judging purpose by its size
This age of trillion dollar valuations has trained us to judge a purpose by its size. We must be changing the future of humanity, battling evil, or building systems that help the top 0.1% live forever; otherwise what’s the point.
In return, the world must reward us. That house in The Camellias, that Nobel Prize, that Nikhil Kamath interview; all of this in the same year would be great!
A purpose doesn’t have to be grand to be useful. It has to feel meaningful to YOU. That’s why selling clothes made from better quality fabrics to people who blindly trust brandsis a valid purpose.
5. We can’t read a label from inside the bottle
Every company, every founder has a purpose. They can feel it, even if they haven’t found the right words for it yet.
At some point, it’s important to put your purpose down in words. Because when you see your purpose in front of you – in black and white, in words – it feels like looking into a mirror. When you get language that describes why you do what you do, your conviction grows. Soon, your purpose becomes a self-fulfilling loop.
But people can’t ‘see’ their own purpose, it helps to have a non judgemental witness. When we really listen to what people say, what they do, what they care about, we see their purpose even when they themselves can’t.
Take the time to slow down, observe and listen and ask ‘Why are you really doing this?’
1 $6.37 Million