What it does
The argument is that most organisations can say what they do and how they do it, and very few can say why — and that the ones people follow are the ones that lead with the why. It is less a method than an ordering principle, and its usefulness is in the discipline of refusing to answer the easy question first.
- Reach for it when
- When a purpose statement keeps coming out as a description of the product. Working outside in is the fastest way to find that you have written a what and called it a why.
- Where it stops
- It orders the question; it does not answer it. Nothing in it tells you whether the why you arrived at is true, or whether anyone inside the company would recognise it.
Simon Sinek, Start With Why, Portfolio, 2009.
Why it sits at Purpose
The reason the organisation exists, stated from the inside. Purpose sits at the centre of the Goal Core, and through it at the centre of the whole framework — the point every other core turns around.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- Reason for beingCollins & Porras, Built to Last (1994): core purpose as part of core ideology, tested by the five whys and by whether it would still hold in a century.
- Core valuesCollins & Porras on core values as the second half of core ideology, tested by whether the organisation would keep them even if they became a competitive disadvantage.
- Stakeholder rationaleFreeman’s stakeholder theory (1984), and the more recent corporate-purpose literature on where a firm’s obligations extend.
- AlignmentHoshin Kanri, the policy-deployment discipline of carrying a small number of commitments down through an organisation.
- IntegrityArgyris & Schön’s distinction between espoused theory and theory-in-use — the reason organisations can believe their own statements sincerely and still act against them.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Purpose lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Vision CoreVision and mission are built on purpose and should be readable as consequences of it.
- Brand CorePurpose made external: the promise has to be operationally keepable, and the core values have an outward form as brand values.
- Business CoreA purpose the monetisation model cannot sustain is a purpose the company will quietly abandon.
- Data CorePurpose itself is not measurable; the goals beneath it are, and that is where measurement belongs.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Purpose too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- Core ideologyThe part of a company that is meant never to change, separated from everything that should.
Elsewhere in Goal Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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