Walking the purpose talk: A series exploring how leaders bring purpose to life by aligning what they do with what they say their organisations stand for.

Late last year, a review of the ASX100 by Griffith University produced a statistic that should make all business leaders pause for thought. Seventy-two per cent of the companies analysed had a publicly available purpose statement. On the face of it, that sounds like real progress, a moment to celebrate even.

However, the gloss quickly fades. According to the researchers, fewer than half of those identified could credibly be described as being purpose-driven. In other words, while most large companies on the ASX have convinced themselves that having a purpose is reputationally advantageous, far fewer have understood or allowed purpose to function as the guide to the future of their organisations.

That gap, the difference between what you say your purpose is and what it actually drives, is critical and will define whether your communications help build business success or simply undermine it.

A lesson from history


A quarter of a century ago, BP unveiled a new brand identity and its infamous ‘Beyond Petroleum’ positioning. It was elegant. It was bold. It was, from a creative standpoint, irresistible. BP no longer stood for British Petroleum and oil; it stood for Beyond Petroleum and the harnessing of the forces of nature to generate energy. Green, already a corporate colour, became of four declared values underpinning it. The alignment between acronym, aspiration and aesthetics was almost too perfect.

Announced internally, it was a truly inspiring rallying call that had the potential to unite over 100,000 people around an exciting new direction that would secure the long-term investment and interest of key stakeholders, including shareholders and the planet. Announced externally, it was a premature declaration that would lead to costly outcomes and a reputation that has never fully recovered.

‘Beyond Petroleum’ implied arrival, but the business hadn’t gone anywhere and remained overwhelmingly locked into its oil and gas heritage. When operational failures followed in Texas City, Prudhoe Bay and finally in the Gulf of Mexico, the phrase did not merely look optimistic. It looked hubristic. As former CEO John Browne later acknowledged, the issue was the gap between rhetoric and reality. A more prosaic line such as ‘Going beyond petroleum’ would have lacked the creative neatness. But it would also have been more honest.

That was 25 years ago. One might have expected the lesson to stick.

It has not.

Since then, airlines have been reprimanded for implying that flying can be made sustainable through marginal adjustments. Financial institutions have been censured for advertising green credentials without adequately disclosing the carbon intensity of their lending books. Asset managers have faced fines for overstating ESG processes. Retailers have been challenged over the elasticity of words like “conscious”, “ethical” and “responsible”.

The pattern is familiar. A business highlights a positive slice of activity. The wider context tells a different story. Regulators intervene. The public shrugs and trust erodes a little further.

The cumulative effect has been corrosive. Each overstatement reinforces the suspicion that purpose is merely marketing fluff and that corporate virtue is a veneer applied when convenient and discarded when costly.

The tragedy is that many of these organisations are not insincere. They are in transition. They are wrestling with legacy assets, shareholder expectations, technological constraints and political headwinds. But communications that declares victory before the work is done converts a difficult journey into a credibility problem.

In a world mediated through screens, communication is no longer a decorative overlay. It is evidential. It is archived. It is searchable and scrutinised. It is compared against performance in real time. When purpose sits outside the operating system of the business, communications becomes theatre. When it sits at the core, communications becomes accountability.

From slogan to substance


So what does disciplined purpose communication look like in practice, especially in the vulnerable transition phase?

First, be transparent about the gap. Don’t pretend you’ve already become what you are still becoming. Use language that invites scrutiny rather than dodges it. The public is more forgiving of ambition than of misdirection, provided you’re honest about what is still work in progress.

Second, communicate trade-offs, not just goals. Purpose is real when it constrains as much as it inspires. If your purpose is shaping strategy, you will be able to point to choices you won’t make, revenues you won’t chase, suppliers you won’t tolerate and markets you won’t enter.

Third, manage the creatives. Advertising and PR agencies are paid to amplify. In a purpose transition, amplification without governance is how you manufacture reputational risk at speed. The brief must be anchored to the core purpose and bound by what the organisation can evidence. Passionate creativity is not the problem, untethered creativity definitely is.

Fourth, publish goals and report progress, religiously. Announcing targets is not virtue signalling; it’s a contract between you and your stakeholders. Regular reporting turns communications into an ongoing dialogue and brings stakeholders on the journey with you. It also creates internal pressure for delivery, because once you’ve made commitments public, the organisation can’t hide behind internal narratives.

Finally, put employees at the centre. Most purpose failures are not external, they are internal credibility collapses. If your people think purpose is a ‘slick marketing campaign’, you’ve already lost the plot. Internal communications must be grounded in operational changes, clear decision rules and genuine invitations to contribute, not grand declarations about saving the world.

The point of this series is simple – walking the talk is not about being perfect. It is about being aligned. And when it comes to communications, alignment comes from a deceptively unglamorous discipline; saying only what the operating system of the business can support and then steadily expanding what that system can truthfully claim.

In the age of social media, the most strategic communications move is often the least dramatic one. Be precise. Be proportionate. Let the evidence do the persuading.