Critical review of “Infusing Purpose” by Richard Ellsworth

    The article  “Infusing Purpose”  serves as the conclusion for the Lessons for Leadership of the book “Leading with purpose” by Richard R. Ellsworth, a Professor of Management at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Richard calls for a transforming leadership to lead the company with a constructive and widely shared purpose, so that corporations can become a source of valued products that enriches lives, opportunities through work that yield individual self-realization and bring increased meaning to life, and economic performance that increases society’s wealth.

    The author stress that the leader is responsible for corporate performance, explicated by its responsibility for providing the direction for creating a certain harmony among the realities of the marketplace and the firm’s defining characteristics.  “Infusing strategy and operational goals with a customer-focused purpose helps to align individual motivations and aspirations with the firm’s strategic mission and objectives.” Richard points out that leader at all levels are able and responsible for the collective effort in their entire organizational units with a worthwhile purpose. 

       An essential step in the effort of building moral organization’s character is defining corporate purpose. It starts with the faith that in constructive environment individuals will strive to do what is right.  Without such faith along with the corporate purpose that of no real personal value to employees, rampant self-interest sows the seeds of politicized dissention, conflicting goals, and eventual apathy. Organization should not be treated as a tool, nor people be treated as a means to any other end.  When people are treated as an end, not as a means, they normally create more value for others as well. The end as defined is personally worth sacrificing their narrowly defined self-interest.

   Thinking transforms behavior. We need to increase our faith in that as long as leader acts to enable followers to move to higher levels of moral development, narrow self-interest is transformed into an interest that connects the individual more closely with other human beings.  As their work rises above a narrowly self-interested “career” or “job” to become a “calling”, they have taken a critical step toward the self-transcendence that the psychologists and theologians have linked to a fully developed, self-actualized adult life. 

    Richard provides six specific steps to define the purpose. Because he strongly believe that the leader must assume responsibility for developing and guiding the process by which the organization defines a common purpose that is valued by a broad cross section of the employees and that at the outset, CEO should encourage individuals to think for themselves and to challenge commonly accepted ideology, conventional wisdom, underlying assumptions, and what others might believe.

    The first step is to develop a complete list of alternate constructs of purpose that people have in their minds. The leader asks questions that” Why does our company exist? What is its primary purpose for being”?  Step two divides the constructs of purposes into two groups----those statements that describe that current reality within the company and those that define a desired normative state. Step three makes clear the assumption underlying the purposes and delineates purposes elaborately into sequential categories. Richard proposed an important issue that whether the purpose should call for balancing the interests of key constituents or whether it should express an explicit priority among these interests. He found the later provides useful directions for defining purpose.

Step four results in a clear, simple statement of the company’s ultimate priority that will provide that foundation for statements of vision, mission, strategy, and related objectives. Step five tests whether the draft statement of purpose can be a shared purpose in all organizational layers. The final step requires the leader to come up with the new purpose statement.

     Making the purpose live in the daily decisions of people throughout the company is essential part of the leadership challenge. Richard first emphasized the importance and effectiveness of using symbolism and metaphors to reinforce the purposes’ influence. He then pointed out that a meaningful purpose helps attract, motivate and retain high-caliber people, who once a part of the high-performance firm, help actualize the high purpose. Thirdly, an environment of mutual respect for individual at all organizational levels should be created.

    There are two important aspects for leaders to live the purpose. First is the ways to infuse the purpose---using symbolism and metaphors, which are effective in reinforcing the purpose’s influence on organizational character.  Second, attracting and retaining high-caliber personnel is crucial and fundamental in building a strong organization.

    In reality, Richard proposed one way to address the common frustration  that common sense and practice are so different ------ the courage to lead. The leader need courage to do the right thing for company in the long term, to be honest and candid both with themselves and with others, to deal constructively with uncertainty, and to stay the course when confronted with unjustified criticism.

    In conclusion the ideology of corporate purpose, capable of traveling well across cultures and national boundaries, will be one that has legitimacy and acceptance within society, unleashes latent human potential, generates greater total value, that is serving customer needs while placing a high priority on the employee’s development and satisfaction.

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