Words matter when you talk about purpose. Doubly so when you lead an organization focused on language and communication. But what if that organization is not comfortable discussing purpose and strategy?

That was the dilemma facing Sara Crofts when she became CEO of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the UK professional body for translators and interpreters.

Learn how she solved it in this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Loss of momentum can be fatal to any organisational change project. But committed leadership can keep the cause alive. Three years into an ongoing initiative to bring Matrix’s purpose to life, CEO Mark Inskip and his team doubled the company’s size by acquiring another business.

Despite this welcome complication, the purpose is taking root inside the organisation, employee engagement is high, and the leadership team have embarked on an inclusive initiative to develop a set of values that support the purpose.

Learn how Mark and team managed through the distractions, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

The founders of Office Space In Town (OSIT) set out to build a company that “reflects who we are as people and the ethics and morals that we live by.” Their goal was to be a provider of boutique, design-led workspaces where businesses thrive and people are inspired, focused and happy.

Co-Founder and CEO Niki Fuchs and Georgia Sandom, Director of Operations and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) explain how the company’s purpose has helped the business grow in a tough marketplace.

Listen to their story on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

In its quest to become the most trusted personalised service business in the world, the global concierge company Ten Lifestyle Group has kept its purpose and its revenue streams closely aligned.

The result is a remarkably resilient organisation, that has survived some very testing times to deliver long-term success.

Alex Cheatle, co-founder and CEO of Ten, reveals how sticking to the purpose, and consulting with an invisible customer, keeps the business growing. Learn more on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Sometimes commercial success can cause an organisation’s original purpose to dim over time. That was the challenge facing Mike Astell, CEO of FCDO Services, an executive agency and trading fund owned by Britain’s Foreign Office, with customers in both the public and private sectors around the world.

Re-grounding the organisation in its original purpose unlocked a surprising amount of enthusiasm and revealed unexpected potential. The initiative also led to a new business strategy and a more effective way of communicating with the executive and the board.

Purpose is presenting business leaders with the biggest opportunity in the past 200 years, according to Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business. And it’s going to happen fast.

But how do you change business to serve society better, while still acknowledging the need to make money? That’s the question that Sarah is helping the senior leaders of large businesses to answer.

Learn how she has evolved her own organisation’s purpose and used it to help her leadership team co-create a new adaptive strategy, designed to focus the organisation’s resources and cope with the chaos and uncertainty of today’s business environment. All in the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist

When a simple five-word purpose has successfully served the business for over 260 years, how do you use it to develop a strategy that is relevant to today’s reality? The answer, for Tom Willis, CEO of the UK’s bustling Shoreham Port, was to think deeply about the meaning in every word of their five-word purpose, and then engage the organisation to develop a one-page business plan, with just eight bullet points. The resulting brevity and clarity mean that almost 90% of the organisation’s people now say they understand the strategy and where they fit into it.

Listen to the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist podcast, to hear how Tom did it.  

When Sarah McMath became CEO of MOSL, the UK’s retail water market operator for business customers, she faced some serious challenges. There was no shared sense of the organisation’s purpose among the leadership team; no clear approach to business planning; a low level of engagement among employees; and a skeptical customer base.

Five years later, the organisation has transformed. Join me on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist to learn how Sarah took an inclusive approach to develop a shared organisational purpose, and used that to shape a new strategy, grow the organiaation’s capabilities, craft practical operating principles, and turn around employee engagement.