Scaling With Purpose Kit: Purpose at the Heart of Your Culture

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Steven Skash** (0:16)
Welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast series, Scaling with Purpose, our 10-minute podcast series where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. I'm Steven Skash here with Tulio Siriguza. Hey, Tulio.

**Tulio Siriguza** (0:32)
Welcome back, everybody.

**Steven Skash** (0:35)
So today we're talking about purpose at the heart of your culture. How to make purpose a living, breathing part of your organization's DNA so it inspires every employee every day. So purpose isn't something that is living on a plaque, right? Or in some strategic document somewhere, it's something you really need to feel when you walk into a room or work with a team or talk to an organization's leaders. When purpose is embedded in the culture like this, it becomes the foundation of how people think, act, and make decisions. I love the way describing it as this living, breathing thing because it really does bring your company to life in a lot of ways.

**Tulio Siriguza** (1:22)
So, it's not about, that's why people want everybody back at the office, so that they can see that plaque at the entrance with some cool statement on there, right? No.

**Steven Skash** (1:32)
Yeah, that doesn't do it.

**Tulio Siriguza** (1:34)
That's not what it is. So, you know, the challenge is that many companies have a clear purpose, but struggle to translate it into their daily culture. It's this idea like, let's get everybody in the office so they can see it. Well, that's not going to solve anything, right? So, it's not enough for leadership to talk about the purpose. It really has to be woven into the organization habits, systems and behaviors. So, we're going to discuss some of the ways to embed purpose into your culture so that every employee feels connected to it. That's the goal. You got to enroll and connect everyone to it, and it can't be sold. So, let's talk about that, because I think that's going to be key. So, first, you've got to make purpose part of everyday conversations.
For purpose to become part of your culture, you need to talk about it often and intentionally. So, it becomes like part of your shtick every day, right? And, you know, leaders can weave purpose into team meetings, one-on-one conversation, performance reviews. And the key is connecting what people do and why it matters as it ties to the company's purpose. So, it's constantly bubbling it up and then tying to, hey, what you do really contributes to our purpose. So, there's a lot of that that needs to happen. And then when employees see how their work contributes or ties to the bigger picture, that adds more meaning and motivation behind what they're doing, right? So, the leaders can also ask purpose-driven questions to keep it top of mind. Questions like, how does this project align with our purpose? What impact are we creating with this decision? So, it's got to be an intentional conversation that takes place. And by bringing purpose into these everyday conversations, you're reminding people why they work matters. Not why they are there, but why their work matters. They all understand why they are there on their own, and that's the beautiful thing about it.

**Steven Skash** (3:39)
Yeah, exactly. And you know, when we're talking about employees too, I also think as founder of company, having this helps me a lot too. Like, when we first articulated this way back when, within our own company, I just felt my energy shift and change. So it's, yeah, not just employees, but your leadership, everybody. So if you're a small business and you're trying to move everything yourself, this is really kind of a key to giving you a lot of that energy back in your life, for sure. So it's about really reinforcing the why consistently is what we're talking about. So that it doesn't feel abstract. It feels real. And so that brings us to this second key element, recognize and reward purpose led behavior. So when people live the purpose through their actions, celebrate it. You know, we do this a lot and we even have specific things that we do, sort of ritualized, systemized things within our company. So recognition is one of the most effective ways to embed that purpose into the culture because it signals what your organization truly values. So, for example, highlight employees who made decisions that are aligned with purpose, even if it was the harder choice. You know, that comes up every now and then. Share stories of purpose led wins. So whether it's customer success story or an internal project that exemplified the company's mission, you know, and every time we're mentioning these two points, I'm thinking of several things we're doing at our company, where like the stories will come up or, you know, the Slack channels we have to share this.