Opportunity Knocks: From Purpose Promise to Purpose Practice
Opportunity Knocks: From Purpose Promise to Purpose Practice
Aotearoa New Zealand has always punched above its weight when it is united by something more than short-term advantage. Our best chapters, whether in social progress, enterprise, innovation or community resilience have enhanced and enriched our reputation abroad and delivered pride at home when we’ve acted as if we were responsible for far more than just ourselves. For me, this is the very essence of what sets us apart, what defines this extraordinary country and what defines those who call ourselves Kiwis.
Now imagine a near future in which the essence of that approach helps us navigate the chaos of today’s world. An approach that embraces, and enables, the birth of a new world out of the old one. An approach that challenges outdated, self-serving practices that benefit a few and catalyses new ideas that benefit everyone.
Imagine a business sector where every enterprise treats employees as stakeholders in the real sense. Investing in capability, wellbeing and belonging because it improves performance and strengthens society. Imagine supply chains designed for resilience and trust, not just cost. Imagine organisations measuring success through a wider lens that results in both commercial strength and societal wellbeing.
Imagine what that would do to our confidence, our productivity, our innovation, our social cohesion and our standing in the world. A small country, at the edge of the map, quietly pioneering and establishing a more coherent model of capitalism. One that is competitive, inventive and fit for everyone, today and tomorrow.
This is not utopian. It is simply what happens when new ideas are made possible by a purpose that is not limited to a clever line captured in a slick slogan, but sits at the core of the systems we organise ourselves around. Helping us daily shape decisions, guide trade-offs and align what we reward with what we claim to value.
2026 is not ‘just another year’. It arrives in an era where disorientating geopolitical and social-economic turbulence powered by dizzying technological advances are testing every leader and every institution. The old world is not coming back and the new one is arriving faster than many expected.
The question is no longer whether your organisation has a purpose statement that sounds relevant in this new world. It is whether your business is actually driven by a core purpose that will help you navigate this era and emerge stronger and better from it. Because that’s the real gap in the era we now live in. An era where almost every organisation has learned the language of purpose but far fewer have built the machinery and discipline capable of delivering it in real terms. Purpose has been widely adopted as communications but not yet as capability.
That distinction is about to matter more. With the emerging international guidance standard ISO 37011 on the horizon, the expectation will increasingly shift from purpose as promise to purpose as practice, and from what is stated to what can be actually demonstrated. In other words, purpose will become less of a vibe and more of a test. One that is visible in governance, clear in strategy, consistent in incentives and measurable in outcomes.
If purpose is going to drive business advantage and not just organisational virtue it must be treated as a discipline. That means it must be designed into how decisions are made, how performance is evaluated, what leaders are rewarded for and how progress is measured over time. It must live in the operating system of an enterprise not just in the brand management department.
Many people read and shared my articles last year and I’m truly grateful for your support and especially to those who sent thoughtful messages and challenges.
I’ve taken that feedback seriously and my intention is to focus my first few articles this year on how leaders embed purpose once they’ve identified and defined it. How they align governance, strategy, culture, measurement and avoid the drift that quietly turns good intent into reputational risk.
If Aotearoa is going to get back to punching above its weight in the world that is being born around us, we will need more than good values and great storytelling. We will need organisations public, private and social that are prepared to grasp the future. Not organisations nostalgically looking backwards but ones with a clear road-map and a pre-determined destination that will deliver long-term value for people, country, organisations and planet.
That’s the opportunity of 2026.
