Strategic Alignment Reconciles Purpose and Profitability
Sustained performance requires a company purpose that is validated in the market.
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The long-running debate about whether a company’s purpose should be a values-based goal or simply the goal of turning a profit presents a false choice. Strategic alignment requires both: Chasing profit alone won’t yield a sustainable enterprise, and a noble purpose that is out of step with market realities is destined to fail. Successful long-term strategies align both purpose and profit.
For many leadership teams and boards, discussions about a business’s corporate purpose are mired in conflict. All too often, the participants position purpose and profit as opposing priorities — and, in doing so, sideline purpose as an indispensable driver of strategic alignment and sustainable performance.
A corporation with no avowed purpose other than to earn profits for shareholders is a hollow endeavor — one with no guiding star for formulating strategy and little to encourage the intrinsic motivation that is critical for employees to perform at their best. At the same time, highly idealistic statements of company purpose that managers and employees perceive as disconnected from their day-to-day work likely function as little more than window dressing.1
At an enterprise level, purpose and profitability are both vital components of a strategic alignment equation that defines a company’s raison d’être, how it is striving to fulfill its purpose against the demands of the marketplace, and how it defines and measures success.
While profit is an important measure of a company executing its purpose well, it can never be the purpose itself. An enterprise’s purpose is what it exists to do as an organization, and why doing it well matters. A well-understood and meaningful purpose should be a unifying force common to all within and without the enterprise. It helps employees intuitively understand why they matter in the larger context.2 It also provides the ultimate definition of strategic success, which should never be confused with measures of success — including profitability.
Many executives struggle to articulate their company’s purpose meaningfully, limiting their potential to create strategic alignment within their enterprise. All other factors being equal, better-aligned businesses tend to perform better than their poorly aligned peers.3 In this article, I’ll outline an approach for how leaders can strategically align purpose and strategy to drive sustainable performance.
The Validating Role of Market Demand
No matter how well articulated a company’s purpose is, it is only as valuable as the degree to which it is valued externally by others, as evidenced by the demand for the enterprise’s offerings in any exchange of value. Otherwise, the enterprise risks becoming inwardly focused and unsustainable.
References
1. S.L. Hart, “How to Embed Purpose at Every Level,” MIT Sloan Management Review 66, no. 3 (spring 2025): 58-64.
2. J. Collins, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t” (New York: Harper Business, 2001).
3. J. Trevor and B. Varcoe, “A Simple Way to Test Your Company’s Strategic Alignment,” Harvard Business Review, May 16, 2016, https://hbr.org.
4. J. Trevor and B. Varcoe, “How Aligned Is Your Organization?” Harvard Business Review, Feb. 7, 2017, https://hbr.org.
5. J. Trevor, “Why Purpose Matters,” Ares & Athena 20 (June 2022): 6-11.
6. S. Ghoshal, “Global Strategy: An Organizing Framework,” Strategic Management Journal 8, no. 5 (September-October 1987): 425-440, https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250080503.
7. J. Trevor, “Re:Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance” (London: Bloomsbury Business, 2022).
