If your purpose is vague and hazy, start finding out, go out and get knowledge about it. Look anywhere but a document. It’s never in there. Purpose doesn’t come with version control, isn’t written by a strategic planner and never need be approved by senior management. It’s there regardless. You don’t get it from a survey or questionnaire, from a CRM or Big Data(?). It’s not derived from consensus or born in meeting rooms.

It isn’t cascaded through strategic planning, there’s no golden thread, never any need for linking.

It’s waiting to be discovered, it won’t run away from you, it’s there walking through your door, in your inbox, in your holding cell and hospital bed.

You find purpose in the work, not in the management factory. Purpose has nothing to do with planning and everything to do with finding out.

“Managers keep forgetting it is what they do, not what they plan that explains their success.
They keep giving credit to the wrong thing-namely, the plan-and having made this error, they then spend more time planning and less time acting. They are astonished when more planning improves nothing” Karl Weick, Sensemaking in Organisations, 1995″