Looking Inward – What is your CorePurpose

Looking inside our organization and accurately assessing where and what we are isn’t always easy.

Because we live where we are every day, we often do not see the little things all around us.

Many changes, for good or bad, are gradual. If we are living them every day, we may not notice the change. It’s like a pearl growing in an oyster or the grass growing in your yard. You do not notice how much the grass grows each day, but go away on vacation for two weeks and you immediately notice the difference on your return.

OK, so we need to take stock inside our organization, but what are we looking for?

The first key area to examine is who you say you are. A good place to start is with your core purpose and value statements.

What’s your core purpose?

Your core purpose is what you are and what you work to be. Unlike mission statements that should be time bound, your core purpose is a continual quest and directing force. It is the first component in who you are as a company.

The second component is the set of values that you adopt as an organization to realize that core purpose. Your values point your people towards HOW they will realize the organization’s core purpose. How they will deal with each other and how they will deal with customers and partners. These values drive your organizational behaviors – what you do day in and day out.

Let’s look at an example.

My own company, CorePurpose, Inc., (www.corepurpose.com) is a distributor of value added services and outsourced solutions. We work with companies ranging from start ups to the Fortune 500^® to establish where they are, where the want to be and how to get there. We then build solutions from our portfolio of specialty service providers in the area of human resources, sales & marketing, operations, finance and information technology.

At CorePurpose®, our core purpose is To Provide Services and Solutions that Build Businesses. Everything we do in the company is focused on building businesses – our own – our partners – our customers.

From that core purpose, we then determined our corporate values: People, Acceleration, Promises Excellence, and Results. If you look at the first letter of these words you will note that put together they form PAPER. This was done with specific intent since values are noting but words on paper without sustaining behaviors demonstrated every day.

Looking at our corporate values, we can break them down into specific behaviors:

People – are the most important – no business exists without people – they are our employees, our partners, and our customers.

• We treat people with respect.
• We seek out diversity and partner with people who compliment our skill sets.
• We create services and solutions that are designed to make people successful in what THEY want to achieve

Acceleration – our customers and partners look to us to help get them where they want to be faster.

• We set aggressive but achievable milestones.
• We offer resources that allow things to happen faster.
• We do not wait and wonder. We are decisive and help our customers be decisive also.

Promises – to succeed we must be trusted. That means we must keep our promises.

• Be clear in the promises you make – gain shared understanding.
• Don’t EVER make promises you can not keep. Don’t over commit.
• Ask for help when you need it.

Excellence – people choose to work with us because of the quality of what we deliver.

• As experts we stay at the top of our field.
• We know our facts and do not guess.
• If we don’t know – we say so – we find out – and communicate back.

Results – it’s what we are looking for and what our clients and partners expect.

• We measure what matters.
• We do the job right the first time.
• When we achieve our result, we set the bar higher and start again.
• We deliver.

If you worked at CorePurpose^®, would you know what was expected of you?

If you were the customer or partner, would you know what to expect?

Hopefully so. But as we all know, seeing is believing.

Our employees, partners, investors,  and customers watch what we do, and make their own assessment of the strength of our commitment to our core purpose and corporate values.

What we say is fine… but what we do is what really counts.    

Thanks for stopping by.  Stay Tuned…

Joan Koerber-Walker

 

CorePurpose^® is a registered service mark of CorePurpose, Inc.