Here comes the shift: How purpose is bridging the divide - part one
Here comes the shift: How purpose is bridging the divide
PART ONE
As 2025 comes to a close, I’m noticing something rare in a year marked by noise and division — alignment. Not perfect alignment, the world is far too messy for that, but a quiet, unmistakable coalescence around the idea that unity through shared purpose is no longer fringe, optional or idealistic. It is emerging instead as a realistic antidote to the destruction that division wreaks. Purpose, as a driver of future prosperity and human wellbeing, has crossed a threshold. The innovators have broken down the barriers, the early adopters have done their job and we are now unmistakably in early-majority territory.
And when the early majority moves, markets move.
This shift isn’t ideological. It’s structural and it’s being driven by five converging forces:
- Geopolitics, which have made fragility impossible to ignore.
- Socio-economics, where inequality and insecurity are reshaping beliefs and behaviours.
- Demographics, with younger workers, acutely aware of the world they’re inheriting, increasingly unwilling to collude with business-as-usual.
- The environment, where climate change, biodiversity loss and resource constraints are forcing ever more urgent thinking around risk, resilience and responsibility.=
- Technology, particularly AI, which is forcing organisations to define what makes them meaningfully human.
Together they form an irresistible tide. You can, of course, sit on the shore like King Canute and command the waves to stop rolling in. But, just like the waves, markets will continue to do what markets do and reward those who meet the needs, values and preferences of customers, employees and investors.
This is why the 2025 narrative coming from the business-as-usual ‘Canute Brigade’, that ESG or sustainability has somehow gone away, is so misplaced. ESG hasn’t gone away. The only thing that has changed is the language. And frankly, thank goodness for that, because we are finally talking about how purpose drives performance, catalyses innovation and creates long-term value, rather than being sidelined by deny–delay–distract tacticians with their ‘woke caricatures and ‘dig-baby-dig’ calls to invest in industries in decline, while, the world’s richest and arguably most successful businessman pointed out, “severely damaging industries of the future.”
Mr Musk isn’t wrong to identify the tension. Many nations, including Aotearoa New Zealand, still find themselves caught between two instincts:
- Dig, baby, dig — invest in what we know, even as it declines.
- Bet on the future — back the industries, capabilities and governance models that will define the next 10–20 years.
These are not abstract forces grinding away in the background. They are choices made by people, in rooms, around tables, weighing up risk, reward and reputation. Which is why the question of who sits at those tables and how they think about their role matters now.
In a recent interview, Barack Obama said something that captures the spirit of this moment. He reflected on sitting in rooms with “folks with fancy titles,” only to discover they were not superhuman after all. Some brilliant, some not, some admirable, some deeply questionable. In his words:
“Once you sit at these tables…you talk to them and you go…oh, they ain’t all that.”
That sentiment is at the heart of why purpose is spreading. People are finally realising that the work of building better organisations, and better societies, isn’t reserved for the anointed few. It belongs to all of us.
Qiulae Wong, The Opportunities Party’s recently anointed leader, summed up her CitizenVoice policy in strikingly human terms: Connect as people first rather than hiding behind screens, give those most affected by decisions a genuine role in shaping them and remember that community, not radical individualism, is ultimately what makes societies work.
What interests me is what this signals about expectations of governance from the point of view of a relatively young political party entering an arena dominated by traditional organisations, with traditional ideas for a traditionally minded ‘voting constituency’. This is not challenger-brand veneer. It is a pragmatic and thoughtful reaction to the status quo and a model of governance that reflects what society is increasingly demanding from all our organisations — participation, transparency, fairness and long-term thinking.
Part Two will explore what this means for leadership in 2026. The courage to choose the future over the past, the discipline to align governance with purpose and the role of ISO 37011 in separating those who are merely talking about change from those who are prepared to contribute and lead it.
