Ashish Kothari argues that companies often hide behind purpose statements instead of fixing real problems. His pharmaceutical client example shows that cutting workload and restructuring teams helps employees more than defining purpose ever will.
I'll give you an example of a pharmaceutical client of mine that I was serving. They are literally struggling with stress. There's too much work to be done. They feel things need to improve and the organization decides to put massive effort, right? You can decide to put your effort on different places. They decide to put their effort on activating the why why we exist. Let's remind everybody this is one of those classic examples. Shouldn't you restructure work, rationalize teams? If people are struggling with overwork, shouldn't you address that problem to improve performance? Do we really need to start and spend so much time on defining? I mean by the way, this is a pharmaceutical company, right? You're literally making life saving drugs. And so this gives the exact one of those examples of yes, purpose is good. If it came free in some situations, purpose would really matter. But I think you have to be discerning around when to pull that lever versus when other levers might help more in helping your people flourish.
Reducing Regrettable Attrition in Organizations by Fixing the System, Not the People Reducing Regret
