Tim Chamberlain
- Oct 13, 2022
- 4 min read

Untangling Purpose, Vision, Outcomes & Strategy - Part I

Updated: Oct 26, 2022

Overview

If you are a leader, chances are you have spent many hours working on some combination of defining purpose, vision, mission, outcomes, objectives, and strategy for your organisation or function. Part I of this series provides an overview of purpose, vision and mission and is intended for those newer to this process or if you are still struggling with ambiguity and misalignment. In Part II we look at how to bring these together with outcomes and strategy. Finally, in Part III, we tackle the “what’s in it for me” question for managers and individuals.

Key Takeaways

Let's start with this simple framework.

Purpose

A company’s purpose is why you exist or why you do what you do. It’s no accident that Simon Sinek’s classic “Start with Why” [1] TED Talk is the third most popular of all time. When Simon tells us that “customers don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”, it intuitively makes sense. But in the real world of complex organisations, clearly articulating the why – your purpose – is often more challenging.

Understanding and living your purpose is also a critical success factor for leaders. What gets you up in the morning and how do you understand what drives those around you?

Hubert Joly, the former CEO of Best Buy, uses the term “Noble Purpose” in his excellent book “The Heart of Business”. He defines it as:

“A noble purpose is the positive impact it is seeking to make on people’s lives and, by extension, it’s contribution to the common good. That common good is the core focus of the company and is integrated into every aspect of what the company does. Business does well by doing good”. [2]

Articulating a clear and authentic purpose for both leaders and companies creates the anchor that aligns and focuses outcomes, strategy, and tactics throughout the organisation. Even more importantly, it connects what you do and why you do it with your organisation’s core values.

As we alluded to above however, connecting individual and company purpose is not always easy to do. The first thing to keep in mind is that it rarely starts with an epiphany and is best approached as a journey. Our further reading section has some recommendations for diving deeper into this topic but asking yourself the simple question of “what drives me” and seeking the understand the same of others around you is a good place to start.

If you are struggling to articulate your purpose, we advise stepping back to invest the time in this area before going deeper into outcomes and strategy. Where you already have outcomes and strategy defined with work in-flight, reassessing your purpose will guide decision making on potential areas where you need to pivot or reprioritise.

Vision & Mission

Vision

A company’s vision is an aspirational statement of where it wants to go and lays out a compelling view of a future state that flows directly from the company’s purpose. It should provide clarity on what your organisation does and is focused on outcomes, not activity.

There are many possible elements to a business vision, but we consider the following four to be foundational.

Mission

Mission and purpose are often used interchangeably however we use it to articulate more specifically how the business intends to achieve its vision. A simple way to avoid confusing vision and mission is to think of them as:

For example, Google’s mission statement reads:

“Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Contrast that with its vision:

“To provide an important service to the world - instantly delivering relevant information on virtually any topic”.

In the vision, “instantly delivering relevant information” might be aspirational for now but the mission clearly states “organizing and making the information universally accessible” is how they are going to get there.

Framing Purpose, Vision & Mission Together

To start constructing our story, let’s use a hypothetical example of a start-up that is disrupting the electric car charging business. It has developed technology that allows car owners to charge their vehicle by parking within 3 metres of a wireless charging hub. The business is growing rapidly in multiple countries, and they want to ensure they have a clear and compelling story for potential customers and investors.

Example:

You’ll notice that these statements don’t contain explicit references to growth or financial targets however they include all our four foundational vision elements. We’ll cover more specific targets, outcomes, strategy, and metrics in Part II.

Now we know where we want to go, we need to do some work to figure out how to get there. Part II looks at the intersection of outcomes and strategy.

How Alpin Partners Can Help

Talk to us about the services we provide that help companies build compelling visions and robust, outcome-focused strategy.