The Reason Why Purpose Matters So Much.

Search “what is my purpose” on Google and the engine will serve you over 1.5 billion results. Clearly, many of us are interested in finding out why we are on this planet.

This obsession is also valid for why companies exist.

Corporate purpose is one of the most prominent themes of this early twenty-first century.

Why this obsession with purpose?

The reason is that work and life are fully integrated. They seem to be virtually one.

As a result and more than ever, our work shapes our identity.

• As consumers, we pay more and more attention to the purpose of the brands from which we buy. In a way, we are the brands that we buy.
• As workers, it also matters that we align with the values of the brands with which we trade our time. In a way, we are the work that we do.

The Industrial Age segregated work and life. As a reaction to that separation, and because we are humanely both about life and work together, the concept of work-life balance started to emerge in the 20th century. We needed to limit the amount of time dedicated to work.

In 2020 the COVID crisis forced many of us to let work come into our personal space. We had to integrate both life and work. We are not anymore in the era of work-life balance, but in the era of work-life integration.

Because of that integration, we have the feeling that it is not OK to devote our time and energy to businesses that don’t stand for something meaningful to us.

You might want to keep this in mind as you make plans for the future of your organization.

Until then,

Guillaume