Are you clear as to what your personal or organisation’s purpose is? In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati. Professor Gulati’s research around purpose focusses on why it has become increasingly important for organisations. In his book ‘Purpose, the heart and soul of high performance companies’, Ranjay Gulati argues that a deeper engagement with purpose can serve as a radically new operating system, enhancing performance while also delivering meaningful benefits to society.

‘Deep Purpose, the Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies’ (Ranjay Gulati, Penguin, 2022)

0.00 Introduction

2.17 Could you start by giving us a brief tour of your career and tell us what sparks your curiosity?

5.43 Why do you think purpose has become such a key focus for organisations in the last decade?

8.26 How do you define purpose and how might some people be misconstruing what purpose is?

12.31 You’ve said that pursuing a purposeful course means maintaining a difficult balance between meeting the expectations of old and new stakeholders, something that you refer to as walking the razor’s edge. Can you describe what that entails?

16.32 How might organisations that do not have an embodied sense of purpose start to build that?

19.16 Can you talk us through the ‘four levers that you need to pull’ in order to align purpose with performance?

24.58 You talk about purpose being rooted in organisational history. How does having this connection with the past give people more clarity about the future, especially in a world that is changing so quickly?

27.50 How can purpose help an organisation face quite considerable disruption more ethically?

33.39 When you start talking in these terms, you are inviting greater scrutiny on your organisation, and that can be really helpful can’t it?

36.32 Have there been any companies that you’ve spoken to that have left you deeply inspired?

38.15 Do you see (in your students particularly) a shift in interest towards this area? How has the values of the generations you are working with influenced the future in this respect?

40.07 You also say that purpose is fragile….

43.16 What impact has this work had on you personally, how has it changed your sense of purpose?

46.47 What’s next for you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Why Purpose Really Matters with Ranjay Gulati