Neil Gaught On Purpose: In Conversation

Neil Gaught On Purpose: In Conversation is a monthly interview series featuring leaders, thinkers and practitioners at the forefront of purpose-driven business.

Each conversation explores how purpose is being applied in practice, across strategy, governance, culture and performance.

At a time of growing complexity and uncertainty, the series brings together diverse perspectives to examine a simple but increasingly urgent question: What does it take to build a business that creates enduring value for both shareholders and society?

 

Julie Gill is the Founder and CEO of Best Places to Work™, which she helped relaunch in 2023 with an ambition that goes well beyond recognising great employers. Driven by a belief that strong organisations and positive workplace experiences go hand in hand, Julie is building BPTW as a continuous improvement platform that helps organisations listen to their people, understand what shapes their experience and turn that insight into better leadership, culture and performance. Her wider ambition is simple but bold: to help Aotearoa New Zealand become one of the best places in the world to work, “floating all the boats higher” in the process.

 

NG: Julie, before we talk about Best Places to Work™ (BPTW), I’d like to start with you. What has driven your interest in people, workplaces and organisational culture, and where did the idea that work could, and should, be better first come from for you?

JG: I’ve always been fascinated by people and the difference they can make to an organisation, but equally, the difference an organisation can make to people.

We spend such a significant part of our lives at work, so the workplace experience matters. It affects our confidence, our wellbeing, our families and communities, as well as what we’re able to contribute professionally.

Over the years, I’ve seen organisations with very similar resources and opportunities achieve very different outcomes. Often, the difference comes back to people, leadership and culture.

When people understand why they’re there, know what’s expected of them, feel valued and trusted, and have the right environment around them, they can do extraordinary things.

That’s really where my interest comes from. I don’t see creating a positive workplace experience and creating a strong organisation as two separate things. They go hand 
in hand.

Because when people love where they work, everything changes. For them, for the organisation and, collectively, for Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

NG: BPTW has been part of the Aotearoa New Zealand business landscape for two decades and was relaunched in 2023. What did you see happening in the world of work that convinced you the time was right to bring it back?

JG: Best Places to Work has been part of New Zealand for more than 25 years. After a short hiatus, we brought it back three years ago because work had changed enormously, and people’s expectations of work had changed with it.

We’d come through COVID. Flexible and hybrid working had accelerated. Wellbeing and purpose had become a much more serious workplace conversation. And people were asking different questions of their employers.

Not just, “What do you pay me?” but, “Do I belong here? Does my work have meaning? Can I grow here? Does my voice matter?”

At the same time, organisations were trying to understand what all of that meant in practice.

So we brought BPTW back with the same mission: to float all the boats higher and lift the standard of workplace experience across New Zealand.

But we also had an opportunity to build something much broader – a continuous improvement programme built around employee voice, insight, benchmarking, learning and recognition.

Although the Best Places to Work™ Awards are an important part of inspiring leaders and celebrating the exceptional work happening in organisations across Aotearoa New Zealand, our ambition goes further.

Ultimately, we want to inspire New Zealand to be the best place to work in the world!

 

NG: BPTW talks about its mission as “floating all the boats higher.” I love that phrase. What does it mean to you, and what does it tell us about what you ultimately want BPTW to achieve beyond simply recognising great employers?

JG: I love that phrase because it really captures what we’re trying to do.

Of course we want to recognise and celebrate the best workplaces. We want to tell their stories and showcase the leadership, teams, cultures and innovation within New Zealand organisations.

“Floating all the boats higher” is about lifting the standard of employee experience across Aotearoa New Zealand.

An organisation might hear through its employee feedback that there’s an issue around trust, workload, communication or leadership. We don’t see that as failure. We see it as a signal.

You now know something you didn’t know before, and you have an opportunity to do something about it.

That’s why continuous improvement is so important to us. Success isn’t only seeing the best workplaces continue to perform strongly. It’s seeing organisations listen to their people, understand where to focus, make changes and come back a year later having improved.

If we can help organisations of various sizes right across New Zealand make meaningful improvements year after year, the collective impact can be significant.

That’s what “floating all the boats higher” is all about.

 

NG: We often talk about a “best place to work” as though we instinctively know what one looks like. From everything you have learned through BPTW, what actually separates the best workplace from an organisation that simply has good benefits, good intentions or a strong employer brand?

JG: For me, the biggest distinction is that an exceptional workplace is something people experience every day. It’s not something an organisation can simply say about itself.

It shows up in the everyday things: how your manager speaks to you, whether you understand what’s expected of you, whether you trust the decisions being made, whether you feel confident speaking up, whether your workload is manageable, whether you understand where the organisation is going and the part you play in getting there.

Those experiences matter.

That’s also why our Employee Experience Survey looks across the nine BPTW Pillars of Workplace Experience, with each question aligned to those pillars.

So we’re not simply measuring how people feel. We’re understanding the conditions and behaviours that shape their experience.

What we see in the best workplaces is consistency. People understand the purpose and direction of the organisation. Leaders communicate and listen. People feel trusted and supported. They feel connected to their teams and have the environment, tools and clarity they need to perform well.

And none of that means everything is perfect.

For me, one of the hallmarks of an exceptional workplace is being willing to listen to your people, understand what the signals are telling you and keep learning and improving.

 

NG: There is still a tendency in some organisations to regard culture, wellbeing and employee experience as the softer side of business. What have you learned about the relationship between creating a best place to work and harder measures such as performance, productivity, innovation, resilience and retaining good people?

JG: I think separating the “people stuff” from the “business stuff” is increasingly unhelpful.

If people aren’t clear about what they’re trying to achieve, don’t trust their leaders, are consistently overloaded, or don’t feel confident speaking up when something isn’t working, those things will show up in the organisation.

That’s why we think about the connection between experience, behaviour and performance.

Experience shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes performance. And performance shapes results.

The last few years have brought real pressure for organisations, and that’s when strong foundations, investment in people, and having the right systems and insights matter most.

Employee experience gives leaders valuable information. Where are people performing well? Where is there friction? What might be getting in the way? That makes employee insight useful management information, not simply an annual engagement score.

 

NG: Purpose has become an increasingly important part of the BPTW approach. What role do you believe a clearly understood organisational purpose plays in creating workplaces where people feel connected, motivated and able to perform at their best?

JG: Purpose can be incredibly powerful, but only when people can see it in the decisions an organisation makes and the way work happens every day.

A beautifully written purpose statement on the wall isn’t enough.

People need to understand: Why are we here? What are we trying to achieve? And how does what I do contribute to that?

When people are clear on purpose, work feels more connected. There’s context around why something matters, people can see the part they play, and decisions become easier because there’s a shared understanding of where you’re trying to go.

For me, purpose becomes particularly interesting when an organisation has to make a difficult decision. Does it influence where you invest? What you prioritise? What you say no to? Who you work with? How leaders behave? What you measure and reward?

That’s where purpose turns into performance.

Through BPTW, we see organisations where employees can draw a very clear line between their everyday work and the difference the organisation is trying to make.

When what an organisation says matters is reflected in what employees actually experience, purpose becomes much more than a statement. It becomes something people can connect to and act on.

 

NG: BPTW is much more than an annual awards programme and it includes employee insight, certification, learning and access to specialist expertise. How do you see that evolving, and what do you want an organisation’s journey with BPTW to look like?

JG: I want organisations to see BPTW as a workplace improvement partner.

At the heart of the programme is our Employee Experience Survey, because everything starts with listening to your people.

It gives every employee a safe, independent and confidential way to share how work feels, and it gives leaders a clear view of what’s working, where to focus and how their results compare.

Then it’s about what you do with that insight.

For one organisation, that might mean building leadership capability. Another might use Pulse Surveys to understand whether changes are having an impact. Others might access a Masterclass or specialist support, work towards BPTW Certified, or recognise their progress through the Awards.

There isn’t one pathway because organisations are at different stages and have different needs.

What we want to provide is a continuous improvement programme that helps organisations listen, understand, act, measure and improve. Recognition sits alongside that journey, but continuous improvement is at the heart of it.

 

NG: We have recently begun working together through a partnership between BPTW and NG&A, including around purpose and the emerging ISO 37011 guidance. What opportunity do you see in bringing the workplace and purpose agendas closer together, particularly here in New Zealand?

JG: I think there’s a really interesting opportunity here because purpose and employee experience are deeply connected.

An organisation can have a very clear purpose, but if its people don’t understand it, can’t see how their work contributes to it, or don’t see leaders making decisions consistent with it, there’s a gap between intention and experience.

And purpose needs to do more than make people feel positive about where they work. It should help an organisation make choices, set priorities and be clear about the value it’s trying to create.

That’s what makes the emerging work around ISO 37011 interesting. It brings another level of rigour to how organisations think about purpose and how it translates into governance, strategy and organisational practice.

The opportunity for us is to bring that together with employee voice.

We can look at what an organisation says its purpose is, how that purpose is intended to influence the organisation, and then understand what employees actually experience.

That connection between intention and experience is powerful. It helps turn purpose from something an organisation talks about into something people can see in leadership, decisions and the way work gets done.

 

NG: Finally, BPTW has an ambition to help make New Zealand one of the world’s best places to work. If we were having this conversation five years from now and you felt that ambition was becoming a reality, what would have changed for employees, organisations and New Zealand as a whole?

JG: I’d want to see improvement at scale.

For employees, we’d want more people to feel that work is a positive part of their lives. That they trust their leaders, understand what they’re contributing to, feel supported to perform at their best, have opportunities to grow and know their voice matters.

For organisations, I’d like employee experience to be treated as seriously as other important business measures.

That doesn’t mean every workplace needs to be perfect. That’s not what BPTW is about.

It’s about listening. Being curious about what your people are telling you. Understanding the signals. Making meaningful changes. Then measuring again and continuing to improve.

And for Aotearoa New Zealand, I’d love the best workplaces to become part of our competitive advantage.

We’re a relatively small country, but I think there’s something very powerful about the way we think about connection here. Connection to people, to place and to the environment around us. Those values can shape the kind of workplaces we create and the kind of leadership we want to be known for.

If we can combine that with workplaces where people are trusted, connected to purpose, encouraged to innovate and enabled to perform at their best, I think New Zealand has an opportunity to lead in its own way.

Not by trying to replicate what the rest of the world is doing, but by building on what is distinctive about Aotearoa New Zealand and showing that strong organisations, positive employee experience and care for people, planet and place can sit alongside each other.

That has an impact far beyond an individual organisation.

It’s good for our people. It strengthens our organisations and our communities. And collectively, it strengthens New Zealand.

That’s ultimately what floating all the boats higher means to me.

The Machine Needs a North Star

Meta’s faltering attempt to become an “AI-native” company reveals something much bigger than the limitations of today’s artificial intelligence. It raises a fundamental question about what an organisation is for, and why purpose will become more important as machines take on more of the work.

Within the space of a few days last week, two stories emerged about Meta — Mark Zuckerberg’s technology giant and the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that appeared, at first glance, to have very little to do with one another.

The first dominated the headlines. Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion over the next decade to settle claims brought by US states alleging that Facebook and Instagram had been designed in ways that harmed and addicted children. Meta admitted no wrongdoing, but the agreement reflects a much wider international reckoning over social media and its impact on young people.

The second story received less attention, but may ultimately prove just as consequential. In a special report Reuters revealed that inside Meta, Zuckerberg and his senior team had been attempting something extraordinarily ambitious. Not simply introducing artificial intelligence into the organisation, but redesigning the entire organisation around it.

Its codename was Project OT (Organization Transformation). The ambition was to make Meta “AI native”. Traditional product teams of ten or twenty people could become pods of three to five “builders”. Specialist roles would blur, management layers would disappear and AI agents would take on increasing amounts of work. Some planning scenarios contemplated reducing the size of individual teams by as much as 60%.

But then things went quickly wrong. Employees rebelled, morale plummeted and plans for a second wave of restructuring were abandoned. More importantly, Meta’s own internal evidence suggested that the promised productivity revolution was proving far more complicated than anticipated. According to Reuters, code changes to Meta’s internal systems increased by 220% year on year, while changes resulting in new or improved features actually reaching users rose by only 36%. Technical and security incidents reportedly increased by 40%.

There is an important lesson buried inside those numbers: More output is not the same thing as more value. And that fact takes us far beyond Meta.

For more than a century, management thinkers have wrestled with the question of how organisations should be structured and what they should exist to achieve. The twentieth-century corporation was largely hierarchical. Authority travelled downwards, information upwards and managers coordinated people occupying clearly defined roles. In business, Milton Friedman’s argument that the responsibility of business was to increase profits provided an equally clear organising logic.

Other models followed. Peter Drucker shifted attention towards customers and knowledge workers. Charles Handy repeatedly challenged conventional assumptions about organisations, hierarchy and the nature of work, anticipating a world in which organisations would become less rigid, careers less linear and knowledge increasingly more important than physical assets. Stakeholder theory widened the responsibilities of business, reflecting a growing recognition that organisations exist within complex networks of relationships rather than in isolation. Agile methodologies challenged rigid planning, while Frédéric Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations proposed self-management and “evolutionary purpose”.

My own small contribution to this continuing conversation came with my book CORE in 2017, when I introduced the Single Organizing Idea (SOI®) to a wider audience and the idea that organisations perform better when governance, strategy, culture, innovation, operations and performance are aligned around a clear and shared purpose that is both valuable and relevant to all stakeholders.

The important word has always been ‘organising’, however you chose to spell it. Purpose was never intended to be something inspirational sitting above the real business of the organisation. Properly understood, it should help organise it. This is why Meta’s curtailed ‘Organizational Transformation’ experiment matters.

AI is not simply another office technology. The spreadsheet made accountants faster. Email transformed communication. The internet radically reduced the cost of distributing information. AI agents may change something much deeper. The way organisations themselves are organised.

If organisations can deploy hundreds or thousands of digital agents capable of researching, analysing, coding, communicating and undertaking increasingly complex sequences of work, many of the structures we have traditionally used to organise human activity begin to look very different. Teams may become smaller, job descriptions broader, management layers thinner and organisational boundaries more fluid.

Meta may have moved too quickly, but that does not necessarily mean it is wrong about the direction of travel. The harder question is what happens if this becomes normal.

Imagine an organisation of 500 people working alongside 5,000 AI agents, all constantly analysing information, initiating tasks and making decisions. No chief executive could instruct them individually and no operating manual could anticipate every circumstance. If the organisation changes, what organises the organisation?

This is where much of the current discussion about AI begins at the wrong end. We ask what AI can do, which jobs will disappear, how many employees companies will need and how much productivity can be extracted. Those are questions about means. But the more important questions concern ends.

Faster towards what? More efficient at doing what? More productive in whose interests? Better according to whose definition of better?

Artificial intelligence is powerful because it can optimise. Give it an objective and it can increasingly find efficient ways of pursuing it. But optimisation requires orientation. And at this point the other Meta story becomes relevant.

For years Facebook and Instagram became extraordinarily sophisticated at maximising engagement. Their systems learned how to keep people looking, clicking and returning. Whatever one’s position on the litigation, the scale of the settlement illustrates that extraordinary optimisation can produce consequences far beyond the metric being optimised.

Society is now asking whether maximising ever more human attention was always the right objective in the first place. That question cannot be answered by a better algorithm. It is a question of governance and ultimately purpose.

This is why the two Meta stories belong together. One concerns the consequences of technology Meta has already built. The other concerns how Meta intends to organise itself to build the next generation. Both lead to the same question: What is all this extraordinary capability actually for?

AI may reduce the need for hierarchy, but it will not remove the need for coherence. In fact, it will likely increase it. Organisations composed of humans working alongside intelligent agents will require a clear shared understanding of the outcome they exist to create and the principles governing how that outcome should be pursued.

That is precisely what genuine organisational purpose should provide. A Single Organizing Idea becomes an organisational compass, something against which boards can govern, leaders can develop strategy, teams can make decisions and, increasingly, AI systems can be designed and directed.

Not because machines should determine an organisation’s purpose. Quite the reverse. Humans must determine the purpose precisely because machines will increasingly determine how that purpose is pursued.

This is why the emerging ISO 37011 guidance on the governance of organisations by purpose feels so timely and necessary. The central governance challenge of the AI age may not simply be deciding where artificial intelligence can be deployed, but ensuring that extraordinary new capability remains directed towards outcomes worth pursuing.

There is a danger that organisations will see AI primarily as an opportunity to become faster, leaner and cheaper. But a badly oriented organisation does not become a better organisation simply because it becomes more efficient. It simply becomes a badly oriented organisation capable of travelling considerably faster, and the likely consequences of that should worry us all.

Reuters’ account offers an early warning. The future organisation will not simply require better artificial intelligence. It will require better human intention. Because the more powerful the machine becomes, the more important the North Star and the power of purpose.

This is Not a Purpose

For many years, a reproduction of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images has hung on the wall of my office. Painted in 1929, it is one of the most recognisable works of twentieth-century art. The painting itself is remarkably simple. Against an otherwise empty background sits an almost perfectly conventional tobacco pipe. Beneath it Magritte has written, in careful script, six words:

Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
(This is not a pipe.)

The first reaction is almost instinctive. Of course it is a pipe. We can see it. Except Magritte was right. It isn’t a pipe. It is a painting of a pipe. You cannot pick it up, fill it with tobacco or smoke it. However convincing the image might be, it remains a representation of something rather than the thing itself.

That distinction is precisely why the painting has followed me from office to office for so many years.

Magritte called the work La Trahison des images (The Treachery of Images). He was interested in the relationship between objects, images and the words we use to describe them. We see an image of a pipe and our mind immediately converts the representation into reality. The picture becomes the thing.

Nearly a century later, I think we have developed a remarkably similar problem with organisational purpose. Over the past decade in particular, businesses around the world have invested enormous amounts of time, energy and money in defining their purpose. Consultants have been hired. Employees interviewed. Workshops held. Boards engaged. Words debated and refined. Eventually, after much deliberation, a sentence emerges intended to capture why the organisation exists and the contribution it seeks to make.

It’s then launched. It appears on the website and in the annual report. It’s incorporated into presentations, corporate communications and, inevitably, the ‘merch’: coffee cups, lanyards, pens, tote bags, USB flash drives and so on. It might even be painted on a wall.

And somewhere along the way, the representation becomes confused with the reality.

A purpose statement is not an organisation’s purpose.
(The words are not the purpose. They merely describe it.)

There is nothing wrong with that. Words matter. I have spent more than two decades helping organisations find the clearest and most compelling articulation of the idea around which they can organise themselves. Done well, a purpose statement can provide extraordinary clarity. It can make something complex understandable and memorable. It can give thousands of people a common language for describing why their organisation exists.

But the statement is still only a representation. A strategy document is not strategy. Values written on a wall are not culture. A sustainability report is not sustainability. An organisational chart is not an organisation. In each case, the words, pictures and diagrams are attempts to describe something that has to exist in the real world. Purpose is no different.

For over two decades I have argued that purpose should operate as a Single Organizing Idea, or SOI®. The choice of the word ‘organizing’ (with a z), has always been deliberate. Purpose has little value if it simply describes an organisation. Its real value lies in its ability to organise one.

If an organisation genuinely understands why it exists, that understanding should have consequences. It should influence the choices a board makes and the strategy an executive team develops. It should affect where capital is allocated, which markets are entered, what products and services are developed, who is recruited and rewarded, which partnerships are pursued and which opportunities are declined.

It should influence what gets measured and, most importantly, it should help when the answer is not obvious. It is in those moments that purpose stops being a statement and starts becoming useful.

Which is something New Zealand’s political parties may wish to reflect on. As TVNZ News reported this week, with elections come election campaigns and the inevitable campaign slogans; a handful of carefully chosen words intended to tell us something about who the parties are, what they stand for and what they intend to do.

Magritte would have enjoyed this year’s batch. Not because any of them are particularly memorable or clever, but because even if they were, that would rather miss the point. A slogan, after all, is no more a government than a purpose statement is an organisation. However appealing the words on the tin, they remain merely a representation of what is supposedly inside. Whether the contents bear much resemblance to the label is something we will only discover by experiencing what actually happens.

Perhaps The Treachery of Images should hang in more boardrooms — and maybe a few campaign offices too.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe. This is not a pipe. And that purpose statement on the wall? That isn’t your purpose either.

The Leadership Challenge Hidden in Plain Sight

The latest Oxford–GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey reveals far more than the changing priorities of one corporate function. It offers a compelling picture of why governance, purpose and organisational alignment have become strategic imperatives in an increasingly uncertain world.

Every year, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and GlobeScan survey senior Corporate Affairs leaders from around the world to understand the issues shaping their profession. This year’s research draws on the views of almost 300 senior practitioners across 51 countries, representing some of the world’s largest organisations.

The report catalogues an extraordinary list of pressures confronting organisations. Geopolitical instability dominates concerns once again. Artificial intelligence has surged from a relatively minor issue to become the second most significant perceived business risk in just twelve months. Economic uncertainty, regulatory change, cyber threats, climate change and reputational risk all feature prominently.

On the surface, these appear to be separate challenges requiring separate responses. I suspect they are nothing of the sort.

Rather, they are different expressions of a single reality, namely that the world has become so interconnected that political, economic, technological and societal issues can no longer be managed in isolation. Decisions taken in Washington reverberate through supply chains in Asia. Advances in artificial intelligence create opportunities for innovation while simultaneously introducing new risks around misinformation, cyber security and trust. Political polarisation reshapes expectations of business just as quickly as it reshapes government policy.

Complexity itself has become the defining management challenge. That observation becomes even more interesting when viewed alongside another of the report’s findings.

For many years the conversation around Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) was dominated by climate change and social responsibility. This year’s survey tells a different story. Governance has overtaken both environmental and social issues as the greatest source of reputational risk for organisations. Ethics, accountability, transparency and board oversight are now seen as more significant than environmental performance or social impact.

That should not come as a surprise. In an increasingly unpredictable world, organisations are judged less by whether they face challenges than by how they respond to them. Governance determines the quality of decisions, the speed of adaptation and, ultimately, the level of trust that stakeholders are prepared to place in leadership. In these challenging times good governance has quietly become a competitive advantage.

Yet perhaps the most revealing finding concerns purpose.

Contrary to some popular narratives, organisational purpose has not disappeared. More than four in five organisations surveyed still have a formal corporate purpose in place (even if it is just a slogan). What has changed is the level of executive attention devoted to it. Discussion of purpose within executive teams has declined significantly over the past year, even while respondents overwhelmingly expect societal expectations of purposeful leadership to increase over the next three years. That tension is fascinating.

Boards have understandably become preoccupied with tariffs, inflation, geopolitical instability and artificial intelligence. Immediate risks demand immediate attention.
Stakeholders, however, have not lowered their expectations. Consumers, customers, employees, investors and wider society continue to judge organisations on the quality of their leadership, the values they demonstrate and the contribution they make. If anything, those expectations are becoming more demanding, not less.

The real issue isn’t that purpose has become harder to discuss. It’s that leaders risk becoming distracted by the urgent at precisely the moment when purpose is becoming even more valuable as a means of navigating uncertainty.

Purpose is not a luxury for more settled times. It is precisely what enables organisations to navigate unsettled ones.

The greatest risk is not abandoning purpose altogether. It is allowing it to be crowded out by the urgent. Organisations that lose sight of why they exist risk slowly eroding the trust, relevance and value on which their long-term success depends.

The smartest organisations appear to recognise this. Rather than stepping back from purpose, they are quietly doubling down on it; not as a communications exercise or a branding statement, but as the strategic discipline that brings governance, strategy, culture and stakeholder relationships together around a single, coherent direction.

Reading the report, I was struck by how frequently respondents returned to the same themes. They called for clearer strategy. Better internal alignment. Stronger governance. More integrated operating models. Better measurement. Greater influence at board level. Enhanced stakeholder engagement. Improved organisational capability. Seventy-four per cent believe the Corporate Affairs function itself requires revision to meet the demands of today’s environment.

Those recommendations describe something much bigger than the future of Corporate Affairs. They describe the future of organisational leadership.

For over two decades I have argued that the greatest challenge facing organisations is rarely a lack of purpose. More often, it is a lack of alignment. Strategy competes with culture. Governance sits apart from communications. Sustainability is managed separately from commercial priorities. Every function pursues legitimate objectives, yet too often without a common organising principle. The consequence is fragmentation precisely when coherence is needed most.

The Oxford–GlobeScan report documents the symptoms of that fragmentation with remarkable clarity. It also points, perhaps unintentionally, towards the solution.

The organisations most likely to thrive in the coming decade will not necessarily be those with the largest AI budgets, the most sophisticated communications teams or the most comprehensive ESG reports. They will be those capable of bringing governance, strategy, reputation, stakeholder relationships and organisational purpose together around a single, coherent direction.

That is not simply better Corporate Affairs. It is better leadership. And in a world where uncertainty has become the norm, that may prove to be the greatest competitive advantage of all.

Neil Gaught On Purpose: In Conversation is a monthly interview series featuring leaders, thinkers and practitioners at the forefront of purpose-driven business.

Each conversation goes beyond the rhetoric to explore how purpose is being applied in practice, across strategy, governance, culture and performance.

At a time of growing complexity and uncertainty, the series brings together diverse perspectives to examine a simple but increasingly urgent question: What does it take to build a business that creates enduring value for both shareholders and society?

Purpose is often discussed in boardrooms as though it were a strategy, a marketing statement or a communications exercise. Spend an hour with Gavin Findlay, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Food Network, and it quickly becomes clear that he sees it very differently.

After a career spanning the military, sport and the charitable sector, Gavin believes purpose is ultimately about one thing, and that is creating a positive impact on someone else’s life. That simple philosophy has shaped both his leadership and the organisation he has helped build from the ground up.

In this latest interview in the Neil Gaught ON PURPOSE interview series, we discuss leadership, community, commercial reality and why purpose is far easier to write on a wall than it is to embed into an organisation.

 

NG: Purpose has become one of the most widely used words in business. What does it actually mean to you?

GF: For me, purpose is about the positive impact you have on someone else’s life.

Years ago I took a group of New Zealanders to South Africa during the Football World Cup. We delivered hundreds of kilograms of football kit into one of Johannesburg’s poorest communities. Seeing the reaction of those children when they received that equipment was unforgettable.

Around the same time I came across something Sir Michael Jones once said: “It’s much better to give than to receive.” That really resonated with me.

Whenever I know we’ve genuinely made a positive difference to someone else’s life, I come away feeling better myself. That’s what purpose means to me. Everyone should have a purpose, whatever form it takes.

 

NG: The New Zealand Food Network exists to address food insecurity, yet you work closely with businesses. How do you balance social impact with commercial reality?

GF: One of the first conversations I had with our chairman, David Kirk, was about the phrase “not-for-profit.”

I’ve never liked it because every organisation has to generate a surplus. The difference isn’t whether you make money, it’s what you do with it.

We’re a ‘for-profit’ organisation with a clear purpose; a ‘for-profit’ and ‘for-purpose’ organisation if you like. Every surplus we generate goes back into achieving our purpose.

Commercial discipline isn’t the opposite of purpose; it’s exactly what enables purpose to succeed. It’s total nonsense to say that there is a ‘for-purpose’ sector and this is the exclusive domaine of charities. All organisations have to make a profit and almost all of them can be purpose-driven.

 

NG: Many organisations have purpose statements. Far fewer are genuinely driven by them. What’s the difference?

GF: It’s relatively easy to write a purpose statement. It’s much harder to ensure everyone lives it.

Large organisations naturally create silos. Sales have one set of priorities, operations another, finance another. Unless everyone understands the bigger picture, purpose remains words on a wall.

We’ve been fortunate because we’ve built the New Zealand Food Network from scratch. Everything we do comes back to one simple question: Does this help us get food to where it’s needed most?

That doesn’t remove tension or difficult decisions, but it gives everyone a common direction that we are organised around achieving together.

 

NG: Partnerships seem to sit at the heart of everything you do. What have you learned about bringing businesses, charities, government and communities together?

GF: The biggest lesson is that every partnership has to create value for both sides.

Too often charities approach organisations with their hand out. I’ve always taken a different approach. Tell your story honestly, understand what matters to the other organisation, and recognise the value they bring as well.

Some companies genuinely believe in what we do. Others become involved because partnering with us also solves a business problem by reducing food waste and disposal costs. Either way, if the outcome is more food reaching families who need it, that’s a partnership worth building.

 

NG: Many people struggle to understand why organisations like yours are still needed in a developed country.

GF: People often think giving someone food solves the problem. It solves today’s problem. It doesn’t necessarily solve tomorrow’s.

The bigger issue is that we’ve lost something we’ve traditionally relied upon —community.

When I was growing up, neighbours knew each other. If someone lost their job or was struggling, the street often rallied around them. Today many of us don’t even know who lives a few doors away.

At the same time we’ve created a society where housing is dramatically less affordable and more people are living under financial pressure. That’s the reality we’re working in.

Long term we’d love to see more people become food secure rather than continually responding to food insecurity. But until then, organisations like ours have an important role to play.

 

NG: What advice would you give a CEO who genuinely wants to build a purpose-driven organisation?

GF: First, you have to believe in it yourself. If you don’t genuinely believe in your purpose, nobody else will either.

Second, recognise that you can’t do it alone. Great leaders surround themselves with people who are better than they are in different areas.

Finally, don’t confuse purpose with reinvention. Too many leaders arrive believing they have to create a brand-new purpose. More often the real challenge is asking: How can we fulfil our existing purpose better than we’ve ever done before?

 

NG: New Zealand has traditionally seen itself as a country that cares. Do you think that’s still true?

GF: Overall, yes. We’ve certainly lost some of our sense of community, but compared with many parts of the world I still believe New Zealanders care deeply about each other.

The challenge is that the gap between those who have and those who don’t continues to widen. As that gap grows, organisations working to support vulnerable communities become even more important.

 

NG: Finally, if you could leave business leaders with one piece of advice, what would it be?

GF: I’d encourage every leader to ask themselves one simple question: What is enough?

Businesses absolutely need to be profitable. They have to generate returns. But purpose asks what you do with that success.

Could we show a little more empathy? Could we think a little more broadly about the people and communities our organisations affect?

If this conversation encourages even a handful of leaders to ask those questions, then it’s been worthwhile.

Orientation Before Action: The Wisdom of Matariki

While the United States recently marked the 250th anniversary of its founding, New Zealand has just celebrated something shaped by more than a thousand years of accumulated Māori wisdom.

Over the past weekend, communities across Aotearoa gathered to observe Matariki, the Māori New Year. Recognised as a national public holiday only since 2022, Matariki is nevertheless rooted in centuries of Māori knowledge and Polynesian navigation. Marked by the annual rising of the Matariki star cluster, known elsewhere as the Pleiades, it signals not simply the beginning of a new year, but a moment to pause, reflect and renew.

For readers beyond New Zealand, Matariki may appear to be simply another cultural celebration. But it is much more than that. Matariki reflects a worldview in which human wellbeing, the natural environment and future generations are perceived not as competing priorities but as parts of an interconnected whole. It is a philosophy that has shaped Māori society for generations and one that, once understood, feels remarkably relevant to many of the challenges confronting organisations, governments and communities today.

Before encouraging us to look forward, Matariki asks us first to stop. To remember those who have passed. To give thanks for what has been. To reconnect with one another and with the world around us. Only then does it invite us to consider the future. In a world that prizes momentum above almost everything else, Matariki quietly reminds us that the quality of our direction matters far more than the speed of our progress.

Looking back on my first full year back in New Zealand, that is a thought that has been reinforced for me several times.

In September last year I wrote about the quiet authority of the Māori queen Te Arikinui Kuīni Ngā Wai hono i te Pō and the way her leadership embodies values such as humility, stewardship and collective responsibility rather than personal prominence. More recently, while reviewing Kate Raworth’s ‘The Evolving Doughnut’, I was reminded that many of the principles underpinning Doughnut Economics draw upon Māori thinking, where social, ecological, spiritual and economic wellbeing are understood as inseparable rather than independent pursuits.

Those observations have prompted me to think more deeply about New Zealand itself. Having lived and worked in several countries, I have increasingly come to believe that every nation possesses a distinctive contribution to make to our understanding of leadership and society. Britain has long prized its institutions. America has often been defined by optimism, entrepreneurship and individual opportunity. New Zealand’s gift, I believe, lies elsewhere. It is an instinctive appreciation that people, communities, nature and future generations cannot be separated from one another without diminishing them all.

That perspective finds expression through concepts such as whanaungatanga (relationships), manaakitanga (care and generosity towards others), kaitiakitanga (guardianship of people and place) and kotahitanga (unity). These are not simply cultural ideals to be admired from afar. They are practical principles that shape everyday decisions. They remind us that leadership begins not with authority or ambition but with responsibility, and that before deciding what to do, we should first understand who we are, where we stand and what we exist to serve.

The more I reflect upon these ideas, the more I recognise how they must have influenced my own thinking when I conceived Single Organising Idea (SOI®) during my first term in New Zealand between 2002 and 2009. At the time I was simply looking for a way organisations could identify and define a way of aligning strategy, culture and brand management with decision-making. Looking back, however, I suspect that this wonderful country and its people influenced me more profoundly than I realised.

For centuries, Polynesian navigators crossed vast expanses of open ocean by reading the stars. The stars did not tell them every decision they needed to make, nor did they eliminate uncertainty. What they provided was orientation. They offered a constant point of reference against which every course adjustment could be made.

It strikes me that this is where Matariki offers one of its most important lessons for contemporary leadership. Modern organisations can be exceptionally good at planning. They produce strategies, targets, milestones and implementation plans with impressive sophistication. Yet many still struggle to answer a simpler question: What ultimately guides our decisions?

Strategy determines where an organisation intends to go. Purpose, on the other hand, ensures it never loses sight of why the journey matters. A Single Organising Idea does not prescribe every decision; rather, it provides the enduring point of reference against which every decision can be judged. Like the navigators of old, organisations still encounter changing conditions, unexpected obstacles and difficult choices. What matters is not that every decision is perfect, but that every decision remains oriented towards the same enduring purpose.

Increasingly, this is also the direction of travel for modern governance. The forthcoming ISO 37011 guidance on purpose-driven governance encourages organisations to create and protect value in ways that contribute to the long-term wellbeing of all people and the planet, rather than focusing solely on financial performance or shareholder returns. Likewise, Doughnut Economics challenges us to measure success not simply by economic output but by our ability to enable human flourishing within planetary boundaries. Both point towards a more integrated understanding of value and one that Māori thinking has long embraced.

Uncovering Matariki’s link to my work and my core message around the power of purpose resonated but the reason it really touched me is more poignant.

One of its most moving traditions is the remembrance of those who have died since the previous rising of the stars. Before looking towards the future, communities first acknowledge those whose lives continue to shape their own. It is a deeply human act, recognising that memory is not an obstacle to progress but part of it. This year, I found myself quietly thinking of Joanne who I miss deeply.

Matariki reminded me that remembrance, love, gratitude and hope for the future are not separate emotions. They exist together, even in loss: We remember before we renew. We reflect before we resolve and we orient ourselves before we move forward.

In business we often speak of purpose as though it were another management technique or competitive advantage. Matariki suggests something richer. Purpose is not something we invent. It is something we discover through our relationships, our responsibilities and the contribution we choose to make to the world around us. Strategy then becomes not merely a plan for achieving success but a means of honouring that purpose through consistent action.
What I have ultimately learnt is that Matariki is about orientation. It reminds us that progress without reflection is simply movement; that prosperity without stewardship is ultimately self-defeating; and that purpose is less about declaring ambitious intentions than quietly orienting our daily decisions towards something greater than ourselves.

For organisations, that may be the difference between having a strategy and possessing a genuine sense of direction. For nations, it may be the difference between economic success and collective wellbeing. For each of us, it is perhaps a reminder that the people we have loved, the values we choose to uphold and the legacy we leave behind all become part of the constellation by which others navigate.

In the end, the stars do not tell us where to go. They simply help us recognise true north when we see it.

When Governance Becomes the Handbrake

The greatest threat to organisational progress is often not poor leadership or weak strategy, but misalignment in the boardroom.

A CEO’s ability to lead is shaped not only by their own capability, judgement 
and energy, but by the quality of alignment above them. However strong the executive team may be, progress becomes difficult when the board itself lacks clarity around what the organisation exists to do, how success should be measured and what kind of value it is ultimately trying to create. This matters more than many directors realise.

Boards often think of their influence in formal terms. They approve strategy, oversee risk, allocate capital and monitor performance. All of these responsibilities are important. Yet much of a board’s real influence is exercised less formally, through the signals it sends, the questions it asks, the concerns it elevates and the behaviours it rewards.

In a nutshell, it is these signals that ultimately shape executive behaviour. They shape what gets prioritised, what gets delayed and, crucially, what becomes too politically difficult to pursue.

Where a board is aligned around a shared understanding of purpose, values and strategic direction, this dynamic becomes enormously powerful. Decision-making improves. Delegation becomes clearer. Challenge becomes constructive rather than confusing. Executives gain confidence because they are operating within a coherent framework of judgement. Where that alignment is absent, ambiguity quickly fills the vacuum.

One director prioritises short-term financial returns above all else. Another emphasises stakeholder trust and reputation. Another focuses almost exclusively on operational risk. Another believes the organisation has wider societal obligations. Each perspective may have merit, but without an agreed organising logic to reconcile them, governance becomes fragmented. The consequences are rarely immediate or dramatic; more often, they emerge slowly.

Management receives mixed messages. Strategic initiatives stall. Decision rights blur. Important issues are revisited repeatedly because the criteria for judgement remain unresolved. Leadership energy is diverted away from execution and towards interpretation. In effect, governance becomes a handbrake on progress.

This is not because boards are incompetent or malicious. Most directors are thoughtful, conscientious and deeply committed to their organisations. The problem is more subtle. Governance structures designed primarily for oversight and control can, under conditions of complexity and uncertainty, unintentionally constrain the very adaptability organisations need.

Add to this the inescapable fact that complexity is rising everywhere. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries. Climate transition is changing risk profiles and capital flows. Geopolitical instability is creating new uncertainty. Trust in institutions continues to weaken. Employees increasingly seek meaning, not merely compensation. Customers expect more from organisations than functional delivery alone. These are not peripheral trends. They represent a profound shift in the context within which organisations operate. Under such conditions, governance centred solely on risk mitigation becomes insufficient.

Boards must do more than protect organisations from downside. They must help them navigate toward long-term relevance and resilience. That requires a different kind of governance conversation.

There is another uncomfortable reality worth acknowledging.

Many boards continue to be populated by highly experienced, often deeply respected individuals whose judgement has been forged over decades of business leadership. That experience can be enormously valuable. Wisdom, pattern recognition and institutional memory matter. Yet experience alone is no guarantee of relevance.

Some directors built their careers in an era shaped by relatively stable markets, clearer hierarchies and predominantly top-down management models. The instincts that served them well in that environment do not always translate cleanly to today’s world of accelerating change, distributed leadership and growing stakeholder complexity. This is not an argument against experience. Quite the opposite. It is an argument against homogeneity.

The strongest boards are rarely those with the most impressive individual résumés. They are those with the richest diversity of perspective. That includes gender, ethnicity, professional background and lived experience, but increasingly it should also include generational diversity.

Age diversity matters because different generations often see risk, opportunity, technology and societal change through different lenses. Boards that combine hard-won wisdom with fresh perspective are better equipped to challenge assumptions, avoid groupthink and remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.
Diversity of perspective strengthens judgement, but only when anchored by shared foundations. Without that anchor, diversity can just as easily amplify fragmentation as improve decision-making.
In my view, that anchor is a clear and shared sense of purpose.
Purpose is frequently misunderstood. It is often dismissed as soft, aspirational or merely rhetorical. Yet properly understood, organisational purpose is neither a slogan nor a marketing device. It is the clearest articulation of why an organisation exists, the value it creates and for whom. Its value lies not only in inspiration but in utility.

Purpose provides the organising logic through which governance, strategy and performance can be aligned. It enables better judgement when trade-offs become difficult. It helps directors distinguish between reckless risk and necessary transformation. Without such an anchor, governance naturally becomes reactive.

Risk begins to dominate opportunity. Oversight drifts into control. Prudence gradually hardens into conservatism. The irony is that many boards believe this posture reduces risk. Increasingly, the opposite may be true.

The greatest risks facing organisations today are often linked not to moving too fast, but to moving too slowly. Markets evolve. Technology rewrites competitive advantage. Talent migrates towards organisations offering meaning and clarity. Social expectations continue to shift.

Organisations that fail to adapt rarely collapse overnight. More often, they lose relevance gradually and almost imperceptibly. By the time that loss becomes obvious, recovery is difficult. This is why board alignment matters so profoundly.

Alignment does not mean uniformity or the absence of challenge. Healthy governance requires robust debate, intellectual diversity and rigorous scrutiny. But productive disagreement depends on shared foundations. Directors must be able to disagree strongly on strategy while remaining aligned on purpose, values and the principles guiding judgement. That distinction matters because it enables challenge without dysfunction.

I believe this represents one of the defining governance challenges of our time. The board director of the future cannot simply be a guardian of compliance and financial stewardship, important though those responsibilities remain. Directors must also become stewards of long-term relevance, organisational alignment and systemic value creation.

That requires curiosity. It requires courage. Above all, it requires clarity.

The organisations most likely to thrive in the years ahead will not necessarily be those with the largest balance sheets or the most conservative governance structures. They will be those whose boards can provide both discipline and direction, balancing protection with progress.

The question every board should ask itself is a simple one. Are we enabling progress?Or are we quietly becoming the handbrake?

The Uncomfortable Truth About Corporate Purpose


Many businesses now claim to be purpose-led. Far fewer are aligned with purpose, and some may never be capable of it.

The image accompanying this article is a striking metaphor for the state of corporate purpose today. Two opposing forces pull in opposite directions, with the word ‘purpose’ stretched between them like a rope in a tug of war. That tension captures something many leaders instinctively recognise but rarely articulate. In most organisations, purpose is not absent; it is contested. It exists in a constant struggle between competing priorities, competing incentives and, ultimately, competing beliefs about what business is for.

Over the past decade, purpose has moved from the periphery of corporate conversation to its centre. Boardrooms discuss it. Leadership teams workshop it. Annual reports promote it. Recruitment campaigns lean heavily on it. Almost every major organisation now seems keen to demonstrate that it exists for something more meaningful than the pursuit of profit alone.

This shift is not imaginary, nor is it insignificant. The best available data suggests that the move toward purpose-led business has been underway for several years. In 2020, McKinsey found that 62% of organisations claimed to have a formal purpose statement, yet only 42% believed that purpose meaningfully influenced decisions or outcomes. Given the acceleration in ESG, stakeholder capitalism and governance reform since then, the number of organisations articulating purpose has almost certainly increased. What is far less clear, and far more doubtful, is whether the number genuinely governed by purpose has grown at anything like the same pace.

My own sense, based on more than two decades of working with organisations around the world, is that genuinely purpose-driven organisations remain relatively rare. If the benchmark is not simply having a purpose statement, or even claiming that purpose influences decisions, but being truly aligned and governed by purpose, then the proportion of organisations that currently qualify is probably closer to five to ten percent.

And yet the direction of travel is clear.

Why now? Partly because the world is changing. Trust in institutions has declined. Public frustration with inequality, short-termism and extractive capitalism has grown. Climate risk has moved from abstract concern to lived reality. Populism, polarisation and corporate greed have created a growing sense that something fundamental in the relationship between business and society is broken. Against this backdrop, purpose has emerged as both response and remedy — a recognition that business cannot sustainably prosper in a failing society.

But this is precisely where the first uncomfortable truth appears. Most organisations that adopt purpose never truly align themselves with it.

The reason is simple, though often overlooked: there is a profound difference between ‘having a purpose statement’ and ‘being organised around purpose’.

The former is relatively easy. With sufficient time, budget and facilitation, almost any executive team can craft a purpose statement that sounds inspiring, socially aware and commercially sensible. The latter is considerably harder because it demands change — not in language, but in behaviour.

Purpose only becomes real when it influences difficult decisions. It becomes real when leadership teams must navigate trade-offs between short-term financial performance and long-term value creation. It becomes real when revenue opportunities conflict with stated values. It becomes real when incentive structures need redesigning, governance models need rethinking, and leaders must accept that some profitable activities may no longer be compatible with who they claim to be.

This is why purpose, by itself, changes nothing. What matters is alignment.

Strategy must align with purpose. Culture must align with purpose. Incentives, behaviours, systems, governance and measurement must all align with purpose. Without this alignment, purpose remains little more than carefully managed theatre. Cosmetically attractive to customers, employees and investors perhaps, but largely disconnected from the way the organisation actually functions.

This is the problem with so much corporate purpose today. It often sits above the organisation rather than within it. It inspires presentations while leaving power structures untouched.

A business may declare that it exists to improve customer wellbeing while rewarding employees almost entirely on quarterly sales targets. It may commit to sustainability while continuing to allocate capital toward environmentally destructive activities. It may champion human flourishing while promoting internal cultures built on fear, burnout and aggressive competition. In such circumstances, purpose is not acting as an organising principle. It is acting as decoration.

This brings us to the second, and more uncomfortable truth.

Perhaps the challenge is not always one of execution. Perhaps some businesses are structurally incapable of becoming genuinely purpose-driven.

This is where the debate becomes particularly interesting. A common counterargument is that every organisation has a purpose because every organisation exists to do something. By this logic, purpose is universal. Even criminal enterprises have objectives, intent and direction.

At one level, that argument is correct. But it also renders the concept almost meaningless.

A cartel has purpose. A scam operation has purpose. A weapons trafficker has purpose. If purpose simply means intent, then the word loses all useful distinction. It becomes nothing more than a synonym for objective.

This is precisely why the International Organization for Standardization ISO 37011 – Guidance for the Governance of Organizations by Purpose, due for publication later this year, matters so much. It helps clarify what purpose actually means in a governance context.

Under ISO 37011, purpose is not simply about having an objective or ambition. It is about an organisation’s ‘reason for being’, expressed through the value it creates for stakeholders and society. That distinction is critical because it moves purpose beyond intent and into the realm of legitimacy.

In other words, purpose is not merely about what an organisation seeks to achieve. It is about whether the organisation’s existence creates genuine value beyond shareholder returns. Once viewed through this lens, another uncomfortable truth becomes hard to ignore.

Not every business model is inherently compatible with purpose as a force for societal value creation.

That sentence may unsettle those who believe purpose is universally available to all businesses, but it deserves serious consideration.

Consider industries whose economic models depend heavily on addiction, deception, exploitation or engineered dependency. Tobacco remains the clearest example. A tobacco company can improve governance, reduce emissions, invest in harm reduction products and articulate a sophisticated purpose statement. But if its core economic engine remains dependent on selling addictive products known to damage human health, there is an unavoidable contradiction at the heart of the business model.

The same question increasingly applies to certain parts of the gambling sector, exploitative payday lending, and even aspects of social media whose economics depend on monetising attention through outrage, addiction and division. Likewise, parts of the fossil fuel industry now face a difficult tension. Major oil companies frequently speak of powering a sustainable future, yet in many cases continue allocating the vast majority of capital expenditure toward hydrocarbon extraction. That does not automatically invalidate their intentions, but it does raise a legitimate question — when capital allocation tells a different story from corporate rhetoric, which should we believe?

Usually, the money.

That is not to say such businesses cannot improve. Many can and should become more responsible. Harm can be reduced. Practices can evolve. But becoming more responsible is not necessarily the same as becoming purpose-driven. Unless the underlying economics change, the contradiction often remains.

By contrast, genuinely purpose-driven organisations tend to exhibit something quite different: coherence.

Take Patagonia for example. Whatever one thinks of the brand, there is a clear alignment between what it says and what it does. Its environmental purpose is not confined to marketing language. It is reflected in product design, supply chain choices, activism and governance. When Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership of the company so future profits would support environmental causes, he did something few leaders are willing to do. He aligned governance with purpose. That is the real test that Patagonia can credibly claim to have passed. The company is not perfect—no business is—but it demonstrates something rare: coherence.

Critically, this is also why profit should never be framed as the enemy of purpose. Profit matters enormously. Without profit, businesses cannot survive, invest or create value at scale. But profit is an outcome, not a purpose. Profit is to business what oxygen is to life; essential, but not the reason for living.

The best organisations understand this instinctively. They recognise that enduring commercial success increasingly depends on creating genuine value for society, not extracting value from it.

Ultimately, purpose reveals itself not in language but in trade-offs. It becomes visible when leadership must choose between short-term gain and long-term legitimacy; between what is easy and what is right; between what can be justified financially and what can be defended ethically.

This, perhaps, is the deepest reason purpose remains elusive for so many organisations.
Genuine purpose is demanding precisely because it exposes contradiction. It forces organisations to confront the uncomfortable gap between what they say and what they are structurally designed to do. It requires courage, discipline and, above all, honesty.

And that leads to the question every organisation should periodically ask itself.
If this organisation disappeared tomorrow, would the world lose something of genuine value? Or would there simply be one less mechanism for extracting profit?

That final question cuts through branding with brutal efficiency. Because in the end, purpose is not about sounding good. It’s about being worthy of existence.