Scaling with Purpose Kit: Purposeful Decision-Making Across Teams

**SPEAKER_1** (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.

**Stephen Zagash** (0:17)
Welcome back to the Bliss Business Podcast series, Scaling with Purpose. These are our short 10-minute podcast episodes where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. I'm Stephen Zagash here with Tulio Siragusta and Ash Mar. Hey, guys.

**Tulio Siragusta** (0:33)
Let's do it again. Hello.

**Stephen Zagash** (0:35)
Hey. So today, we're diving into purposeful decision-making across teams and exploring how different teams within an organization can make purpose-driven decisions to ensure cohesion and alignment across departments. Let's get started.

**Tulio Siragusta** (0:52)
Well, thanks, Steve. So purpose isn't just a leadership concept, okay? It's a decision-making framework. When teams at every level understand and align their choices with the company's purpose, it creates consistency and unity amongst their peers and colleagues. It ensures that no matter the department, whether it's marketing, product development, operations, planning, whatever it is, or even customer service, everyone is pulling in the same direction.

**Ash Mar** (1:20)
And you know what? If you're an organization that's been sort of trying to figure out how to break down the silos, this is an excellent way to do that because purpose-driven decisions help break down silos. Because what they do is they align goals and actions across teams and across the entire company, making collaboration more effective. It's about creating a shared language and vision that guides every choice, big or small. So let's dive into seeing how this works and why it matters.

**Stephen Zagash** (1:52)
Yeah, so Tulio, that's exactly right. So purposeful decision making ensures consistency, right? So when teams make decisions based on that shared purpose, it creates that cohesive experience for customers, for their employees, and for stakeholders. And it avoids mixed messages or conflicting priorities that can arise. Like you said, Tulio, when teams kind of operate in isolation.

**Tulio Siragusta** (2:21)
And you know what's really interesting? It really drives strategic alignment. When decisions are purpose driven, they naturally align with the organization's long-term mission. That's super important to remember. This keeps teams focused on what truly matters. Even when navigating complex challenges, competing priorities, having to pivot back and forth, left and right. As long as everyone is aligned, those decisions are more so streamlined than abrasive, if that makes sense.

**Ash Mar** (2:49)
And you know what? If ever you wonder why is some organization able to operate with so much autonomy, decentralized decision-making, this is one of the reasons they can't, because purpose empowers teams to act with autonomy. It's really next level organizations. Decentralized decision-making is key in this whole thing.
But autonomy only works when teams understand the purpose and they use it as a guide. That becomes the boss, so to speak. And this reduces the need for constant approval loops, rubber stamps, speeding up decision-making, and also maintaining alignment. What a beautiful thing. And we've seen it in action over and over, of that organizations that do this.

**Stephen Zagash** (3:34)
Yeah, and it's not just about that speed, too. It's about trust. So when leaders see teams making these purpose aligned decisions, it builds that trust, and it really reinforces this culture of accountability and empowers teams to innovate and take ownership of their outcomes. So it's really one of those cohesive building aspects to your business that if you aren't doing it, you really need to focus on because it helps you run not only smoother but builds that trust. So let's explore how to implement purposeful decision making across teams. So there are three key strategies here. So strategy one, so establish purpose driven decision making principles. So start by setting clear principles that guide your decision making. These principles should be simple, memorable, directly connected, of course, to your company's purpose. So for example, you can have customer centricity. So decisions should enhance the customer's experience and align with the company's mission. And then you can have impact over profit. So prioritize decisions that create positive impact, even if they don't offer immediate financial gain. So this gets you thinking more on that long-term thinking versus that short-term thinking that causes a lot of problems. And then transparency and integrity is one of the other principles to really focus on. Ensure that all decisions are honest and consistent with the organization's values.

**Tulio Siragusta** (5:04)
So these principles create a shared framework for decision making, right? They don't need to come to their boss or their supervisor or here and there to make those. They have the framework. And this helps teams evaluate choices that they have to make on a day to day against the company's purpose and values. So this really ensures that decisions are consistent and aligned, even when it's made independently. So I don't even go tell my boss anymore what I'm doing because the decision I'm making, I'm running through a framework that is aligned with the goal and the mission. And as long as that is aligned and everyone knows that they can reference their choices that they make based on that North Star, then you're able to, like what Tulio mentioned, just autonomously run teams and efficiently run teams without having to constantly micromanage and look over the shoulder. It's like, no, things are being done because each person involved is aligned with the mission.