Your Core Purpose acts like a giant magnet aligning and engaging the leadership team and the whole organization towards your defined and shared destiny.   Your Core Purpose answers several questions:

–          Why do you exist? – should be compelling, inspiring and contributing to a better world

–          Why should someone be interested in joining your company? Why should current team members give it their all? – should address their head and their heart

–          What would happen if your company shuts down tomorrow? – should create a void well beyond the team members of the company itself

When you think of Nike – what do you think of? Competition, that’s right.   Phil Knight, the Founder of Nike, has always proposed that Nike would help competitors excel through use and association with Nike’s products, culture and people. Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, Wayne Gretzky, and Lebron James, all top competitors in their sport, are associated with Nike.   Nike is a company that has been true to and grown in the context of its Core Purpose; its deeper reason for being.

In Verne Harnish’s upcoming book Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Scaling Up, he suggests the process of getting the team together and starting with the question “What do we do?”.  Then ask “Why” several and enough times until you get to your version of “to save the world” and then step back one time.  To do this properly, I suggest you pretend you are 5 years old again to ensure you ask why enough times.

Out of your Core Purpose should come the single powerful idea that should then be shared repeatedly to remind everyone of why we do what we do.

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