Scaling With Purpose Kit: The Evolutionary Purpose

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
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** (0:16)
Welcome back to the show. We are doing our Scaling With Purpose series today. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa. Hey, Tullio. Hello. So in this series, we're exploring how to embed purpose at every level of your organization to guide growth and create meaningful impact. So in our last Scaling With Purpose episode, we clarified the difference between purpose and mission and why both are crucial. Today we're diving into the evolutionary purpose, which is kind of a concept of understanding how purpose can be a dynamic force in driving your business forward. Tullio, pick us up here.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:04)
So this is an interesting conversation because we're talking about an evolutionary purpose in the context of an organization. So referring to purpose that isn't static. So we did talk about in earlier episodes about how purpose can be a guiding star for many, many years, and it doesn't necessarily change. But we live in a time where things are constantly evolving and changing, so you don't necessarily want it to be static. Now, unlike traditional mission statements, which tend to remain fixed for years, an evolutionary purpose is something that changes and adapts as the organization and the environment evolve. So it's really about listening to the organization's voice and allowing it to find its own path forward. That's the key thing that a lot of companies miss out. They will set the path and align everyone around it.
Instead of following the path and aligning everyone around it, it's being market-driven and listening to what's going on versus kind of like, well, we think this is the way we should go. So it's very actually design thinking oriented, this purpose of evolutionary purpose.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:21)
Yeah, exactly. So there's a great book, Reinventing Organizations, that explains how organizations can be designed to be this living adaptive systems. And so that means that purpose can be this guiding star, can help you navigate things as they change around you. And it's less though about having a rigid long-term plan and more about being open to emergent possibilities. So in a way, the organization kind of grows organically around its purpose, rather than trying to mold the purpose to fit some sort of predetermined strategy. Because we know, technologies change, things change rapidly. And if you think of any kind of organism, it will evolve with those changes. So what does it actually mean to be evolutionary? Well, it means that the purpose itself can shift or expand or can even transform as the organization learns and responds to new circumstances. So it's about being in a state of continuous alignment where the organization purpose evolves alongside those changes in the marketplace or society and the needs of its people.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:45)
So you hear a lot of talk about being an organization that's moving to the next level. Everyone's always talking about what's the next level for us. And what makes purpose in a next level organization different from traditional approaches to business strategy is that these organizations, the purpose isn't dictated from the top down. It actually emerges from collective intelligence. And I would dare say that's a very common term, collective intelligence, but I would say it's collective adaptive intelligence. That's a new thing we should add in there, collective adaptive intelligence of the organization, which means that the employees are encouraged to contribute to the organization's evolving sense of purpose, making it more holistic and authentic. And what drives that is the market. You know, organizations that are consciously aware of operating in such a manner to do it effectively, they decentralize decision making because it's about being agile and flexible, allowing teams to self-manage to adapt to different situations, especially in different markets. So giving employees more autonomy, more decision power, would also align in this evolutionary purpose process. This is how you get to be a next level organization. And then ultimately, it's about shaping the direction of the organization. And that input comes from those, the boots on the ground, so to speak, the people in the field, those touching the clients, having a relationship with the client, listening to the clients firsthand, are best suited to bubble up that collective intelligence to adapt the company's purpose. So to do that, you have to create a sense of ownership and alignment within the organization that makes people feel that they're part of the finding and in supporting that purpose, not just following through on it or being compliant with it. So it's incredibly motivating for organizations that are structured this way, because it energizes teams to have the power to redirect the company and adapt the company's purpose based on reality, which is really good. Some concrete examples of this are like companies like Patagonia or Buurtzorg. I mean, Patagonia's purpose has evolved from simply making high quality outdoor gear to a broader mission and purpose to being environmental activists.