Vision & Purpose

When you aspire to create change in your organization, it’s advantageous resonate with people at the deepest level. The fact is, people seldom change their behavior unless they change their beliefs.

Rarely is belief change as simple as “I believe I’d like to make more money.” (HA! We wish it were this easy, right?) Did you know only a small percentage of people are truly dollar driven? Especially when they already make “enough” to be comfortable or complacent. A wise boss of mine once said, “It’s pretty hard to get people to listen when they have hundred dollar bills stuffed in their ears.”

Instead of being money driven, most people are purpose driven. When shown new evidence as to how their purpose is further achieved, their beliefs begin to shift.

Belief changes come down to seeing things in a new way. And this is where Michelle excels. She helps people explore new perspectives, identify and safely challenge false assumptions, and then opens minds to new ideas. In this way, by organizing a meeting’s flow to move people from mind to heart and back to mind, they can be ready to do something new, that they’d never been open to before.

Michelle works closely with you to create a session that gets results. Her warmth and sensibility put your group at ease. She can help through highly polarizing subjects, and can usually help move even the most curmudgeonly “change avoiders” to action.

Another engagement type Michelle can perform is leading your firm to arrive at a common Purpose or Why. This is useful foundational work before embarking on large-scale change or prior to strategic planning.

With business gurus advising that we need separate statements for our missions and visions and values, you may wonder, is it redundant to create a purpose statement?

Simon Sinek probably answers this question best in his exceptional 18-minute TED talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” Simon conveys the significance of the relationship between purpose and engagement, explaining that the greatest successes (external and internal) come when people feel an emotional connection with an organization’s purpose.

Your vision is what your firm aspires to be, years down the road—your lofty goals—often size, location, market position, or product mix. Your mission tells others what your business is and how you go about what you do. Your values describe your culture and how you conduct yourself.

But your organization’s purpose is bigger and it’s in the present. When you work within an organization, your organization can be aligned through the collective purpose or why of its people. 

The unifying purpose is most impactful when shared by employees, leaders and customers.

Michelle developed a creative and effective process through which she brings people together to first explore their “personal whys” before even thinking about the firm’s “why.” This step is essential for their authentic, collective “why” to emerge—and the bonding that results is valuable, too. Without this step, purpose statements can feel manufactured or scripted and miss the mark, failing to resonate with others.

The result of Michelle’s two-step approach is a unique, heartfelt firm-level purpose statement that’s based in truth and surfaces naturally from the “souls” of the people who participate in this process. It’s ultimate engagement.

Whether your business is facing major transformation, or you just want it to feel more cohesive to improve culture, consider hosting a purpose-defining leadership retreat.