Turning crisis into opportunity: Start with Purpose

As businesses continue to navigate their way through the disruption and uncertainty created by COVID-19, does your organisation have a strong enough and compelling enough sense of Purpose to emerge strongly from the crisis?

Do your employees not only know what to do in this crisis, but know how to do it, and are motivated enough to care and follow through?

If not, you might want to consider working on it now, suggested Laurence Smith, Chartered Fellow CIPD, and a thought leader in digital mindset and transformation.

He explained, “Companies with the strongest sense of Purpose embedded throughout their organisations, will be those that emerge the strongest. Organisations that still rely on traditional means of command and control will flounder.

“Those that can only ‘manage by presence’ and have never built trust with their teams will struggle to cope with everyone suddenly working from home, and will revert to a panopticon of technologies to try to exert their control remotely to cover their own anxieties.”

In his upcoming new book, Transformation Mindset: 10 Things Leaders should be Doing Today to turn Crisis into Opportunity, Smith argued that when people are empowered with a sense of Purpose, they become both intrinsically motivated and self-guided, thus requiring less management.

Aligned with organisational values, culture, leadership behaviours, as well as HR systems and processes, this creates employees who are far more engaged, self-motivated, internally driven and likely to work hard to achieve their professional and personal goals.

Smith concluded, “When you have a clearly articulated organisational purpose, you will attract talent that believes in it and their intrinsic motivation will drive them to contribute and perform. They won’t need layers of managers but will be inspired by purpose-driven leaders.”