Forbes, Best Business Books of 2022
The Next Big Idea Club, Best Leadership Books of 2022
Thinkers50 Top 10 Best New Management Books for 2022
A distinguished Harvard Business School professor offers a compelling
reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting
the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when
firms manage to get purpose right.
Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent years than
the notion of corporate purpose, and for good reason. Too many companies
deploy purpose, or a reason for being, as a promotional vehicle to make
themselves feel virtuous and to look good to the outside world. Some
have only foggy ideas about what purpose is and conflate it with
strategy and other concepts like "mission," "vision," and "values." Even
well-intentioned leaders don't understand purpose's full potential and
engage half-heartedly and superficially with it. Outsiders spot this and
become cynical about companies and the broader capitalist endeavor.
Having conducted extensive field research, Ranjay Gulati reveals the
fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a
reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose
much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive
performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees,
shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must
fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they
conceive of and relate to it. They must practice what Gulati calls deep
purpose, furthering each organization's reason for being more
intensely, thoughtfully, and comprehensively than ever before.
In this authoritative, accessible, and inspiring guide, Gulati takes
readers inside some of the world's most purposeful companies to
understand the secrets to their successes. He explores how leaders can
pursue purpose more deeply by
As Gulati argues, a deeper engagement with purpose holds the key not
merely to the well-being of individual companies but also to humanity's
future. With capitalism under siege and relatively low levels of trust
in business, purpose can serve as a radically new operating system for
the enterprise, enhancing performance while also delivering meaningful
benefits to society. It's the kind of inspired thinking that
businesses--and the rest of us--urgently need.
