AMPLIFY VOL. 37, NO. 9
Purpose and crises go together. Crises rekindle our attention to purpose and heighten our expectations of purpose-driven leaders. The global pandemic brought purpose so far up the strategic agenda that many leaders threw away their playbook and relied on purpose instead.
Because the need to make purpose profitable and profits purposeful remains at the top of the agenda in all sectors, there is an implicit assumption that purpose serves us especially well when times are tough. We often presume that crises toughen up leaders, that toughened leaders hold fast to purpose as times get tougher, and that purpose can be found, rather than lost, as adversity endures.
But when crises become so endemic and intertwined that new words are needed to describe their confluence and consequence, purpose finds itself in crisis. Leaders who already have it must work harder and harder to hold onto it. Losing one’s purpose is rarely talked about, even as many leaders risk being accused of “purpose washing” when their claims fail to yield the promised results. But how can leaders hold on to their purpose when circumstances are heart-wrenching or harrowing?
Starting from the premise that purpose is something we need and want, our first issue of this two-part Amplify series on scaffolding purpose likened purpose (as a noun) to property and explored who has it.1 Here in our second installment, we focus on how leaders who already have purpose hold onto it when times get tough. We also examine how purpose can be actively reset in the midst of multiple crises. The seven articles in this issue bring to light counterintuitive aspects of purposing (as a verb).
The Path to Purpose
This issue opens, perhaps counterintuitively, with advice against the myriad varieties of purpose washing many of us have experienced in organizations that claim to have purpose but do not always hold on to it. The path to purpose, we learn, must be paved with all sorts of formulations of the word “no” for leaders to hold fast to their purpose. We then delve further into the art of asking challenging questions, deliberating democratically, and cultivating virtues and character.
Staying on this path, turns out, is not easy. But it is worthwhile. Once we appreciate the importance, and master the skill, of saying no to some of the factors that may distract us from purpose, we turn our attention to the power of unexpected (and sometimes undesired) occasions to rekindle it. Saying yes to hardship may seem as counterintuitive as saying no to opportunity.
Our last three articles dwell on the importance of steering right into the storm, especially when answers are unknown, solutions have not been validated, and victories have not been won. As they shift our attention from the everyday to the extraordinary, these three pieces move us into some of the least explored leadership grounds, where purpose is challenging to hold onto yet self-defining for those who manage it.
Each article contains practical perspectives, leveraging the pragmatic foundations underpinning much of today’s management and education systems, but their value increases when read in (any) combination. They represent the perspectives of authors based in Brazil, Canada, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and the US, with disciplines ranging from classics, philosophy, and theology to education, policy, law, leadership, and business. This reminds us that the path to purpose is not linear; rather, it’s repeatedly rediscovered as we take its power more and more seriously. The issue begins with the up close and personal but gradually lifts our concern up to systemic inequities and grand challenges, culminating with the extraordinary existential purpose marking 1,000 days of suffering, subsidiarity, and solidarity in Ukraine.
In This Issue
In our first piece, Vanessa M. Patrick, author of The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No That Puts You in Charge of Your Life,2 and Murali Kuppuswamy explain how saying no can be an essential antidote to purpose washing. Leveraging insights on empowered refusal, the authors suggest that by exemplifying no, leaders not only reaffirm their own purpose, they permit everyone else to uphold theirs. This positive feedback loop between exemplifying and permitting can also be read between the lines of the other six articles that follow. Before you rush on, ask yourself what example you set by your most recent no and who received permission to follow their own path to purpose as a result. Take note of how these two types of no (exemplifying and permitting) work for everyone around you: employees within your organization and the stakeholders watching for deviance from the company’s stated purpose. This first piece reminds us that at the core of any type of “washing” lies our timidity in spotting and combating deviance from purpose. Purpose can only be washed, it turns out, when leaders like us don’t say no when we ought to.
Next, Kanina Blanchard coaches leaders on how to recognize, resist, and redirect deviance from purpose. Her article reminds us that asking questions that matter is more an art than a science. It takes us behind the scenes, where vulnerability often makes otherwise brave leaders shy away (and sometimes stay away) from probing their everyday. Blanchard meets them there, offering the empathy and humility required to get at some of those important, if often unasked, questions: “Why not?”; “What if?”; “Where else?”; “How otherwise?” From the classroom to the boardroom, you may soon hear yourself embolden others to check in with their purpose so that they don’t deviate too far from it.
Our third article, by Frank Jan de Graaf, invites us to try on deliberative practices. Firmly rooted in pragmatism, deliberation has historically played a significant (some say central) role in democratic societies. It also comes in handy when opposite perspectives invite us to summon new ways to converse about issues that matter — but matter differently to each of us. Rather than bracing against those who don’t share a particular purpose, de Graaf advocates for open dialogue, so we begin to look beyond the current divides and discover integrative ways to develop new rules of engagement, frame new responsibilities, and discover new solutions.
Ananthi Al Ramiah, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, and Matthew Phillips then focus on the crisis of purpose within professions. Premised on purpose to begin with, many professions are struggling with inner distress and outer distrust. Instead of taking purpose for granted, the authors invite professionals to work on it by employing four Stoic virtues (wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance). Quoting philosopher Christopher Gill, who describes virtue as “expertise in leading a happy life,”3 the authors encourage purpose-driven professionals to reimagine themselves at the center of circles opening up to progressively widening communities, so they can ask how to take setbacks seriously, defy indifference, and reify the joy of tackling what matters most. How can all this hard work make a stressed professional happier, you wonder? Here comes more Greek: eudaimonia. Stoics understand happiness as the pursuit of a good soul, using virtues as the North Star. Instead of assuming that professions are purpose-driven, professionals like us can retake charge of one’s pursuit of purpose by borrowing three Stoic tools: (1) acknowledging their roles in the many communities they serve, (2) reflecting on how they have performed these key roles, and (3) searching for better ways to keep doing so.
Next, Christian Busch, author of The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck,4 and Nele Terveen explain how purpose helps leaders connect the dots between grand challenges and strategic responses. When leaders expect the unexpected, the authors explain, they incent their stakeholders to embrace uncertainty so they can better guide their organizations through adversity and disruption. By leveraging the five practices of Serendipitous Impact (impact mission, impact leadership, impact governance, impact networks, and impact measurement) previewed in a 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review article coauthored by Busch,5 unexpected events can help leaders come up with solutions that often cannot be seen, let alone fully defined, in advance.
How far forward can hardship take purpose-driven leaders? Lara Liboni, Luciana O. Cezarino, Alessandro Goulart, Vera Goulart, and Rafael Petry offer a real-life case of success created from adversity. Before there was a solution, they tell us, there was a problem. This problem was so big, they insist, that it instigated purpose, which then inspired many stakeholders to partner for “Symbiotic Impact.” Unlike serendipity, where chance encounters enabled previously unimagined opportunities, the Symbiosis Project carefully crafted first-of-their-kind collaborations to systematically undo barriers keeping marginalized youth from accessing higher education and being employed in competitive sectors.
Wrapping up the issue, Andriy Rozhdestvensky, Sofiya Opatska, and Gerard Seijts (coauthor of Character: What Contemporary Leaders Can Teach Us About Building a More Just, Prosperous, and Sustainable Future6) move us to extraordinary purpose, counting up to the 1,000 days of Ukraine’s resistance to the 2022 Russian invasion. “How can societal leaders come to terms with the damage inflicted on them and then make the substantive shift of returning to a peacetime leadership approach equipped to rebuild and regenerate the country?” the authors ask. The article features hard-won insights from five resilient Ukrainian leaders (from parliament, the armed forces, church, business, the not-for-profit sector, and academia) who open up about their journey to, and undeniable power of, existential purpose.
Purposing as Scoping
From the authors of “Purpose in Management Research: Navigating a Complex and Fragmented Area of Study,” we borrow the idea of scoping dimension as the extent to which purpose is understood as given or co-constructed through complex interactions among many stakeholders.7 The former, deemed universal, approach to purpose holds leaders up to a single shared measure of moral duty under so-called reasonably foreseeable circumstances. The latter, or contextual approach, lets leaders negotiate what the right thing to do is under unexpected circumstances. Some crises, like inflation or inequality, may be easier to anticipate than others, like wars or global pandemics. When we expect leaders to face critical issues or grand challenges, we tilt this balance from the universal to the contextual.
When polycrisis brings the contextual front and center, leaders of all ages purpose (as a verb)!
Knowing how to purpose is not a new endeavor. Strings of thought tie together ancient philosophers and modern historians. This issue offers a translation of practices that have stood the test of time to the domain of leadership under fire, speaking both figuratively and literally.
Scaffolding purpose requires both saying no to many temptations and saying yes to worthwhile challenges. This issue of Amplify coaches leaders in how to purpose. It explains how scoping purpose can not only prevent purpose washing in everyday settings, but can also help leaders hold on to their purpose when circumstances call for the extraordinary.
References
1 Branzei, Oana, and Dusya Vera (eds.). “Scaffolding Purpose: An Infrastructure for Humanity.” Amplify, Vol. 37, No. 8, 2024.
2 Patrick, Vanessa. The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No That Puts You in Charge of Your Life. Sourcebooks, 2022.
3 Gill, Christopher. Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and Its Modern Significance. Oxford University Press, 2023.
4 Busch, Christian. The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck. Riverhead Books, 2020.
5 Busch, Christian, and Lisa Hehenberger. “How to Evaluate the Impact of Corporate Purpose.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 27 July 2022.
6 Seijts, Gerard, and Kimberley Young Milani. Character: What Contemporary Leaders Can Teach Us About Building a More Just, Prosperous, and Sustainable Future. ECW Press, 2024.
7 Chua, Nathania, et al. “Purpose in Management Research: Navigating a Complex and Fragmented Area of Study.” Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 18, No. 2, July 2024.
