Mike Pelfini — 02 October 2025
Purpose driven companies outperform their competitors in significant ways. Dialogue, relationships, and autonomy are three keys to success.
The power of purpose
Let’s start with some stark statistics: only 27% of employees agree that their companies consistently deliver on customer promises, while just 46% of B2B customers think the companies they deal with deliver on promises, according to a Gallup survey. The missing ingredient, writes author Jake Herway, is a purpose driven company culture. Purpose driven companies keep their promises.
A company’s purpose is what it stands for apart from selling goods and services. Having a strong purpose gives organizations advantages that Deloitte describes as a “purpose premium.” Deloitte’s analysis finds that purpose driven companies outperform competitors in significant ways, including:
Talent, retention, and performance: Purpose driven companies find it easier to attract and retain top-quality talent. Employees in purpose driven companies are also more productive, innovative, and engaged than those in companies lacking purpose.
Market value and return on equity: Purpose driven companies can double their market value up to four times faster than competitors and they provide consistently higher returns to investors.
Brand and reputation: A brand that exhibits strong purpose is better remembered by customers. Deloitte reports that 78% of customers remember a brand with purpose. And having a brand with a culture of purpose provides companies with six times more protection against the effects of negative publicity than companies without it.
Sales and revenue: Consumers are four times more likely to buy from a purpose driven company than from its competitors. In addition, slightly over one-half of purpose driven companies leverage their purpose to create new revenue streams, while many realize price premiums for their products and services.
This article examines what it means to be a purpose driven company and three steps needed to become one.
What are purpose driven companies?
Purpose driven companies prioritize “having a positive impact on the world alongside making a profit. It’s not just about what the company sells, but what [it stands] for,” writes business professor Julie Kratz in Forbes. “Purpose driven businesses win because they tap into primal human needs for connection.”
Leaders might feel overwhelmed by the task of identifying a purpose, but it doesn’t need to be so daunting. “Not everyone’s meant to be Patagonia and give away their company for the planet,” notes author Jennifer Moss, quoted in the Forbes article. “Even if your company makes widgets that may not seem to have a [profound purpose], there is purpose in how the work is done.”
Examples of purpose statements include toolmaker Black & Decker’s “for those who make the world,” and retailer Best Buy’s “enriching life through technology.” Other examples are Airbnb’s “to create a world where anyone can belong, anywhere,” fashion brand Zappos’ “we deliver happiness,” and Apple’s “think different”.
The questions companies can ask to find their purpose include: What are our core values as an organization? What makes our company, our team, our products and services unique? What customer needs do we meet and how do we uniquely meet them? How would the world be different if our company didn’t exist?
How to create purpose driven companies
Three keys to creating a purpose driven company culture – dialogue, relationships, and autonomy, are identified by Rodolphe Durand and Pauline Asmar, of the HEC Paris business school, and Jean-Marc Laouchez, of the Korn Ferry Institute, in an August 2025 article published by the MIT Sloan Management Review.
Step 1: Purpose dialogue. The first key to creating a purpose driven culture is to foster dialogue about purpose between leaders and team members. Dialogue is two-way communication. Leaders must listen as well as speak; team members must contribute feedback and ideas.
Drawing on a study of 57,000 employees from 469 companies, the authors find that moderate improvements in team dialogue can provide a 10% increase in employee commitment to purpose. That increase “translates into improved team performance, reduced turnover, increased motivation and innovation among employees.”
Practical steps to improving dialogue include having regular discussions about how the company’s purpose benefits both clients and team members. At the conclusion of projects, many successful organizations conduct team-level reviews of how the project aligned with company purpose and how it can be improved. The reviews help team members feel more confident and valued, leading to “higher levels of engagement, loyalty, and collaborative effort,” the authors write.
Step 2: Relationships and fairness. The second key to a purpose driven culture lies in the relationships between leaders and teams. “At their best, high-quality relationships between a team leader and their team members are marked by mutual respect, trust, and the equitable distribution of resources and opportunities,” according to the authors.
The authors find that moderate improvements in relationship quality can raise team commitment to company purpose by 7% to 9%, drawing on the large employee study described above.
Consistency and fairness are critical to building high-quality relationships. If there is “high variation” in how leaders treat team members, relationships and company culture suffer. “Team unity can severely fracture when some team members experience strong, supportive interactions with the leader while others feel ignored or undervalued,” the authors write.
Cohesiveness is even more important on a company-wide basis. The authors give the example of an unnamed “AI and cybersecurity company” that did well in discussing purpose but failed to deliver consistent management practices across teams.
Some teams tried to align their efforts with company purpose while others ignored it, depending on manager preferences. The result was “low commitment to purpose and inconsistent strategy implementation.”
By contrast, the authors cite the “spectacular turnaround” retailer Best Buy achieved in recent years. Best Buy made sure employees across the company experienced consistent, high-quality relationships with their leaders.
Practical steps included (1) “cohesion workshops,” (2) “open conversations about difficult subjects,” (3) “peer to peer learning sessions,” and (4) developing HR policies to support workplace wellbeing. The results were remarkable: absenteeism dropped, sales increased, return on invested capital more than doubled, and Best Buy’s stock price more than quadrupled over five years, the authors report.
Step 3: Autonomy and purpose. The final key to developing a purpose driven company culture is employee autonomy. The authors find a substantial correlation between greater autonomy and a strong purpose driven culture.
The authors contrast the experience of nurses working for two healthcare providers. In one organization, the nurses were given broad authority to make independent decisions based on clearly defined goals. In the other, the nurses were subject to constant oversight and rigid controls over their activities. The results were predictable:
The organization with high levels of autonomy provided better health outcomes, delivered a better patient experience, and experienced higher levels of productivity and innovation – all of which reinforced employee commitment to purpose. The organization with low autonomy struggled with employee engagement and motivation, and delivered poorer patient outcomes.
Overall, the authors find that incremental improvements in dialogue, relationships, and autonomy can increase commitment to company purpose by 25% or more. While that figure might sound modest, it can lead to “spectacular” success, better employee engagement and retention, enviable financial performance, and other decisive advantages over competitors.
If you would like to learn more about becoming a purpose driven company, please contact us.
===================================
ForeMeta offers breakthrough leadership coaching to develop CEO self-leadership and leading teams and organizations. We offer both individualized coaching or peer group coaching to help leaders and their teams achieve greater success.
Copyright ©️ 2025 by Mike Pelfini. All rights reserved.