Some organisations seem to forget why they exist.
If you tried to work out what they were all about by observing what they spend their time, money and executive attention on, you might think they were there to:
- Avoid risk at all costs
- Win procurement system awards
- Get the fanciest IT systems
- Protect their reputation at all costs
And managing risk, having smart procurement and IT systems, and cultivating a good reputation are all important functions within an effective organisation.
But none of these things is the reason why they exist.
These functions are there to serve the organisation’s core purpose – not the other way around.
When push comes to shove between the mission and these secondary functions, the mission must win. Every time.
The level of investment and attention given to these secondary issues and functions must always be calibrated depending on how they affect the long term impact of the organisation against their purpose.
For example, if someone steals a million dollars from your business every 10 years, that’s obviously bad. But if every year you spend $500k, tonnes of attention and grind productivity down just to avoid it… this is far worse.
Too often, organisations become so conservative that they’re consumed by secondary functions.
It’s like the iceberg capsizes and all the supporting functions become the primary preoccupation.
What’s the antidote when this happens?
Refocus on purpose.
It requires a leadership team to re-engage and recalibrate. And to consciously and deliberately test every initiative and activity to ask:
- Is this a primary function designed to directly contribute value against our mission?
- Or is it a secondary function designed to indirectly add value by supporting the primary functions?
If it’s the latter, there needs to be explicit recognition of this. There’s no shame in being involved in secondary functions – they’re important. But they must be optimised against the primary functions. They’re not an ends in themselves.
Of course, this is hard if you don’t have a clear purpose. In which case that’s the first step.
Need help defining your organisation or team’s purpose?
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