FROM BUSY WORK TO IMPACT: How to focus on ‘less, but better’

Image credit: Vadim Adamov x Unsplash

Too many workplaces confuse activity with achievement. Meetings, emails, and long hours create the illusion of progress, but they don’t necessarily lead to results. The most successful organizations recognize that real productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters. They don’t chase busyness; they prioritize impact.

Purpose-driven organizations play by a different set of rules. They aren't just spinning their wheels in the mud of mundane tasks, they're blazing trails toward impactful results, and leveraging purpose to drive business performance AND create happier, healthier and more resilient cultures. Let’s peel back the curtain on how these companies are redefining productivity in harmony with employee wellbeing.

The Art of Being Purpose-Driven

Purpose-driven organizations and teams have a secret weapon: a laser-focused mission that transcends the drab world of daily tasks. They often operate on a higher plane, aiming to grow by enriching society, whether by driving innovation in sustainability, designing new solutions for underserved audiences, or creating products and experiences that make people’s lives better in meaningful ways. It's not just about making money—it’s about making money by making a difference. For these organizations, purpose doesn’t just live on an ‘about us’ page, it’s at the heart of every decision, and every move.

Busywork Be Gone

In a world that glorifies hustle, these organizations ask a better question: Are we truly productive, or just distracted by busyness? It’s not about who has the fullest calendar or the longest list of programs to manage — it’s about who creates the most impact relative to the higher order goals, ideals and ambitions the team is in service of, whether those ambitions are articulated by the company’s strategy or its purpose, vision or mission. Every team can give itself the gift of focus by orienting itself around what matters most to the organization, the business, and the people it is serving in the world.

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT: the gift of focus

These organizations understand that focus isn’t just about choosing what to do—it’s about choosing what not to do. If something doesn’t fit, it’s out—no matter how tantalizing it might seem. Leaders of these companies channel their inner Steve Jobs, who famously said:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

- STEVE JOBS

Image credit: Apple

Culture of Impact

Forget the archaic model of clocking in and zoning out. In truly purpose-driven organizations, every employee has a sense of mission in their role and is fully engaged and emotionally invested. They don’t just work—they champion the cause. And when people believe in what they do, the tedious becomes the transformative, and a culture emerges where work means something more than just meeting deadlines.

Measuring What Matters

In the pursuit of impact, these organizations measure success not by how busy everyone is but by the tangible change they create. It’s about outcomes, not output. They’re constantly tweaking and tuning, using feedback loops that keep them agile, adaptive, and always improving. It’s not about how many hours you log; it’s about how those hours move the organization closer to progressing its strategy and fulfilling its purpose, and driving growth by adding new value to society.

Image credit: Kateryna Hliznitsova x Unsplash

Tech as a Tool, Not a Taskmaster

Here, technology isn't just another shiny toy—it's a sword to cut through the thicket of trivial tasks. Automation? Yes, please, if it means humans can focus on what humans do best—innovate, create, and strategize. These organizations use tech to liberate, not subjugate.

Enough with the theory - WHO ARE THE real world CHAMPIONS OF THIS GAME?

Let’s look at a few examples of purpose driving focus, innovation, and growth in the real world:

• Mattel (where I served as VP for Culture and Transformation): After rediscovering and recommitting to its purpose of ‘empowering the next generation to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential’ several years ago, we were able to marshall our limited resources with a laser focus on empowering kids, resulting in the amazing resurgence of Mattel’s Barbie brand as an icon of girl power (and scoring the highest grossing movie of 2023). Check out more about the work here.

• Sephora (one of our current clients): Sephora’s purpose is centered on creating inclusive beauty experiences, and this acts as a touchstone for decisions across their entire business. It guides how they show up in-market, how they merchandise, how they innovate, how they incubate new store brands, and how they design meaningful, inclusive store experience. And with almost $5B in growth in 2023, this focus is clearly paying off. Find out more about how Sephora grows through Purpose here.

• Tesla: Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, a goal that drives its innovations in electric vehicles and renewable energy solutions. Tesla literally does nothing else. They don’t even have a PR department, as it’s not considered ‘mission-critical’. Does it work? We would argue yes, since, despite the recent turmoil around its co-founder Elon Musk, Tesla’s market value is higher than that of General Motors, Toyota, Ford, VW, BMW and Mercedes combined.

Image credit: Tesla

• Google: From its inception, Google committed to ‘organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful’. Over the first 25 years of its existence, their single-minded focus on their purpose has resulted in countless legendary innovations, from the original search engine, to gmail, google maps, google docs and countless other products which have literally helped billions of people access, share and leverage information in new and useful ways.

• Microsoft: Their purpose is to ‘empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more’, and they use this to win through driving a laser sharp focus: From their leadership position in AI (Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT), to how Microsoft Co-Pilot is boosting productivity of MS Office users everywhere, to their incredible innovations in making technology more accessible to people with disabilities - when it comes to purpose, Microsoft means business. And clearly it’s working; in 2024 Microsoft overtook Apple to become the most valuable company that has ever existed.  

Image credit: Microsoft

And of course, Patagonia : Known for its environmental activism, Patagonia commits substantial resources to conservation efforts and encourages sustainable practices within and beyond its industry. Patagonia’s extreme focus leaves little to no room inside the organization to be disengaged with its purpose and mission.

SO, THERE YOU HAVE IT

While much of the corporate world drowns in inconsequential emails and endless meetings, purpose-driven organizations have the potential to steer their ships with incredible focus on the impact they want to have in the world, across both its business and society. They prove that in an increasingly distracting world, being busy isn’t enough; it’s about being busy doing what matters most. 

If anything sparks your interest in this or the following articles, please do email philipp@purposefulgrowth.co