Scaling With Purpose Kit: The Difference Between Purpose and Mission

**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 Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show. We are in the middle of starting our, is that the thing? In the middle of starting our scaling with purpose series. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa. Hey, Tullio.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:32)
Episode 2 in the series.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:33)
Yes, that's what it is. So in this series, we're diving deep into how to embed purpose into every level of your organization to guide growth and create meaningful impact. The last time we explored what purpose is and why it matters in business. Today, we'll discuss an important distinction. The difference between purpose and mission and why understanding this is crucial for next level organizations.
Tullio, kick us off here.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:05)
This is very interesting and there's even a third element that the difference between purpose, mission, and vision, but that we can talk about it another time. Right now, we're focusing predominantly on these two, right? So, these are often interchangeable, but they're not the same thing. So, it's important for an organization to have both because both are guiding principles for an organization, but they serve different roles.
So, the deeper alignment with purpose is really about evolutionary growth. This is sort of the guiding star for everything the organization would do. The mission can adapt and change, but the purpose doesn't. So, whereas, for example, the mission of a company is what it does, the core activities, the services it provides, the products. It's really about how and what the company does that aligns with the purpose, which is the why. So, for example, if you're a healthcare company, your mission might be to provide high quality medical care to patients. On the other hand, purpose goes deeper. So, it's really the reason why an organization exists beyond just the activities it engages in. So, purpose speaks to the impact an organization has or aims to have in the world. So, in that example of the healthcare, you know, sticking with that, the company's purpose might be to improve the well-being of communities by advancing access to quality health care. And so, the purpose captures the why and the driving force behind the mission. And of course, the mission can be adapted because communities change and adapt and what is needed in the marketplace to improve the well-being of those communities can also change and adapt over time. The purpose stays steady. It's the fundamental core ideology of why the company exists. And then, the mission can support what is needed in that time. So, very important to understand these two concepts and to capture them in a way that benefits the organization.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:19)
Yeah. So, well, the mission kind of defines the scope of what the company does. The purpose is kind of about that bigger picture and longer term impact. I think this is important because a lot of times when we're talking about these next level organizations, the purpose is what can kind of be seen as the true leader of the organization in a lot of ways. It does evolve and it can kind of adapt over time and the company can grow along with it. But day-to-day, that purpose is kind of what we've talked about in the past, what is kind of the boss sometimes, right? Where everything is sort of aligning to that.
So this is kind of key to understanding why both purpose and mission matter. So let's break down how they complement each other a little more.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:13)
Yes. So again, on the concept of mission, right? If we think of purpose as almost like the belief, but without any action, it's just a thought. It doesn't turn into anything, right? So whereas mission provides direction, it clarifies what needs to be done. It enables you to set goals and tasks that the organization can take forward or can work towards, which becomes the mission of the organization, of the employees, whether they're short term as well as long term. There's an operational aspects that aligns with the mission that supports the purpose.
So the purpose provides meaning. You know, it's really sort of tied to this, what my beliefs are, but my actions support my beliefs. So it's important that people get inspired by the purpose, especially during challenging times. We had talked about earlier that, you know, when a company needs to pivot or go through difficulties, it could focus on just turning the corner financially, or it could become very mission oriented around supporting the purpose, which is a higher commitment. And so it guides, it's a higher level way to guide decisions, provide filters and strategies and initiatives that are going to be important as the company evolves. And, you know, this is really where less hierarchical control is needed because purpose becomes really the the reporting structure. You know, we report to a purpose. The purpose is the driving force, if you will. So purpose can also fuel adaptability because the business landscape shifts. Companies that are mission driven tend to struggle when they need to pivot because their mission could be very rigid and fixed. Now it's like, oh, what do we do now? We have to reinvent ourselves, right? You'll hear that we have to reinvent ourselves. That term of reinventing yourself is usually tied to not having a purpose, because if your purpose was solid, there's no reinvention, it's just redirection to stay in alignment with the purpose. It becomes the center point of the organization, the purpose gives a deeper why and gives companies a way to continue to evolve without losing their identity, and that's the key thing. There's no need to change your identity when you have a good purpose in place. It's not as big of a surgical change when you have to adapt to the marketplace because you're just really just adapting new ways of doing things or a new mission that's still in alignment with why you exist.