Advancing a Purpose

At Purpose Group, everything starts with a simple belief: business is one of the most powerful tools on the planet for creating a better world. When a company aligns its Purpose with its operations, it not only performs better financially, it becomes a place where people are proud to work.

Imagine that, being proud of your workplace. That’s our aim with our portfolio companies.

What it means to “advance” a Purpose

Advancing a Purpose is different from simply defining one.

• It means translating a set of words on a wall or website into daily decisions, tradeoffs, and habits.

• It requires leaders who consistently model the behaviors they claim to value, especially when it is inconvenient or costly in the short term.

In other words, a Purpose is advanced when it shows up in how a company hires, invests, communicates, and responds under pressure.

How we advance Purpose in our companies

At Purpose Group, we buy, grow, and hold purpose-driven businesses with the explicit goal of operationalizing Purpose inside them, not just admiring it from afar.

• We work with leadership teams to clarify their Purpose, Vision, Tenets, and Values (PVTV), then build rhythms and mechanisms that make those real in the business.

• Just as critical, we connect Purpose to financial performance by designing models where teams share in the upside they help create, reinforcing the link between doing great work and building a better company.

Over time, this creates a flywheel: trust builds, people are more engaged, and the business becomes more resilient and attractive to both clients and talent.

Lessons from the Berkshire mindset

If you read our writing, you’ll notice a recurring theme: a deep respect for compounding and long-term thinking, heavily influenced by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway1.

• Just as Berkshire looks for enduring moats, we look for businesses where Purpose can be a long-term competitive advantage, not a marketing slogan.

• Holding businesses “forever” whenever possible gives us the freedom to make decisions that advance purpose over decades, not quarters.

Advancing a Purpose, then, is our version of building a moat: it makes the company harder to copy, easier to trust, and more valuable over time.

What this looks like on the ground

In practice, advancing purpose inside a portfolio company rarely starts with a grand gesture; it usually starts with a conversation.

• A CEO recommits to radical transparency with their team, sharing not only financial results but also the “why” behind major decisions.

• A manager begins 1:1s with a Purpose-oriented question: “How does your work this week move us closer to our vision?”

From there, Purpose shows up in who is promoted, which clients are pursued, and what the company is willing to walk away from.

An invitation to leaders

If you are leading a business today, you are already advancing a Purpose—whether you have articulated it or not.​

• Your people learn every day what truly matters from what you celebrate, tolerate, and ignore.​

• The opportunity is to be intentional: to name a Purpose worthy of your team’s talent and then build the systems, incentives, and habits that move it forward.

Purpose Group partners with leaders who want their companies to be both great businesses and forces for good. If that resonates with you, advancing a Purpose might just be the most important work you do.