On Purpose

Why great leaders start with the PLOT

Karen James

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780730323945
• eBook ISBN: 9780730322474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

A witty, insightful guide to rediscovering Purpose and leading like you mean it

On Purpose is a modern-day business book for those who want to steer their work — and life — back on course. When your head and heart connect in both, our humanity becomes the hero in the story. Shed the mediocrity that comes from halfhearted decision-making, and rediscover your PLOT — Purpose, Leadership, Operations, and Technology — as you learn to live and lead with purpose. This insightful guide provides a framework for re-evaluating your direction, then stepping back and re-aiming the ship. It starts with a fable that illustrates just how businesses lose their PLOT every day, then digs down to the nitty-gritty to give you the actionable steps and practical advice you need to climb out of the rut. Deliberately ironic and witty, this book presents a fun, but informative read that is anything but cynical. You'll learn from the author's own successes using PLOT in her career, as she turned a $9M business into a $100M business and went on to drive international and domestic philanthropic ventures and leadership training programmes.

• PLOT will become the most practical four-letter word you'll ever use. This book shows you how a simple framework can become the turnaround your organisation and life so desperately need. Get your work on target
• Shift engagement methods for better results
• Leverage technology into a purposeful tool
• Get up and act

You may already have a documented vision and mission statement, but that's no longer sufficient. You need to act and lead with purpose, every day, in every decision you make. You need to recognise and utilise good people and tools, and redefine your goals to make them worth striving for. On Purpose shows you how, and gives you the practical, tested guidance you need to start moving in the right direction.

PART I
The Fable (Back to School)

We've all been eight years old, innocent and wide-eyed. We've all been students willing and wanting to learn. And we've all had a teacher we loved.

This modern-day fable seeks to help us find — and stay true to — our purpose when we're charting off course.

Our fable is set in Glen Fark County, post GFC, in a world where reality TV takes precedence and the size of celebrities' derrières is at the front of too many people's minds.

Our all-seeing narrator takes us into Ms Molloy's classroom, where a class of students will soon begin work on one of their most challenging assignments yet: learning leadership lessons of a complex business world and staying true to these, no matter the circumstance.

It's an adult world — you'd think, at least — so the children seek a little help from one of the parents, Bob. Bob is a hard-working banker (and, as you will soon see, many of us have worked for, or with, a ‘Bob').

I hope you enjoy the fable in all its irony, which may weave some morals and lessons through a little piece of your world. Some are stated, some are subtle and some are specific only for a few of us — unique for ‘our' stories. A free-form Smartboard has been created in the back of the book for the note-takers like me (give me digital, but please let me keep my Moleskine notebook). With or without notes, it, as we say in New Jersey, may help you to get shit done.

Oh, just one more thing: every good fable features an animal and this one is no different. There's an elephant in the room. See if you can find it …

Meet the characters

The adults

Ms Molloy teaches Glen Fark County Elementary School's Grade 3 class, which is filled with wide-eyed eight-year-olds. She is a firm but fair teacher with a huge heart. Our narrator will introduce you to her shortly.

Mrs Laforte is the assistant principal, a career teacher committed to the betterment of children and society. She has a heart of gold and coaches the teachers regularly to be bold and creative.

Mrs Doogan is the wire-haired, affable principal, who knows she has to follow the rules although she would rather get back to basics and hug the children like she used to in the 1970s.

Vikki is Betsy's mum and works in the IT industry. She loves getting involved in the school and is committed to making sure her daughter Betsy has everything that a two-parent-family child has.

Steve works for Synergy Bank and looks after the school banking program. He knows the importance of good customer service but is often torn between customers and process.

Bob is a banker who works in New York City. He grew up in a working-class blue-collar town in New Jersey, and grafted his way to Wall Street. Bob is a family man, a businessman, and — well, you will learn more about him as you read on.

The students

Bobby is the son of Bob the banker. Bobby is not sure of himself and is sometimes nervous. He knows he wants to be more than the influences around him.

Nicholas is earnest and eager. He is very smart and has a sharp sense of bringing the team with him. Nicholas builds bridges between people even at the young age of eight.

Abby is quiet but profound. Most of the class knows she has the answers; they just need to give her the chance to be heard. Sally and Abby are good friends.

Sally has the nickname ‘Swivel Neck' because she is always turning around in class and just cannot sit still. She is constantly observing but she is also a bit of a chatterbox. Sally has itchy feet, so they say.

Julia is a very smart high achiever. She should probably be advanced a year and put in a program for the gifted. Julia sometimes forgets to wait for her classmates to catch up.

Betsy is a natural sharer with an innate sense of empathy. She loves helping others and is very determined to do so.

David and Johnny Hehman are the twin sons of a controversial investment banker. They are relatively new to town and are often getting in trouble.

CHAPTER 1
BACK TO SCHOOL

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

— Robert Burns

Once upon a time, in a land filled with wi-fi, 24-hour news and too much fast food, our teacher Ms Molloy prepared for the school year ahead.

Ms Molloy knows she has a big year ahead of her — new students, an updated curriculum, a daily goal of 10 000 steps (always tracked on her wrist), and the usual aches and pains that come from dealing with a few high-maintenance parents and their long-suffering kids.

What Ms Molloy doesn't realise is that this year she will create a ripple effect that will change a family's life forever, for the better, and that countless others will benefit from her teachings.

Why? Because Ms Molloy lives her life on-purpose and she has a plan. Without a plan, purpose can be meaningless, and a purpose without meaning quickly loses its way.

Ms Molloy's purpose is to make a measured difference in the development of her students, particularly those from disadvantaged families. Her how, which helps her to act with her purpose in mind, is evident in the way she treats her students: with respect, equality and a firm eye on their future.

This is why Ms Molloy's teachings are not just about school but also about life — and, specifically for this assignment, about business.

I am the narrator, by the way, better known as the voice that appears as a thought bubble above people's heads. I am that guiding, nagging feeling we all get when our gut tickles away at our conscience. I jump forward or backward in time to hold a mirror up to the truth when the occasion requires.

But back to Ms Molloy. Every year Ms Molloy asks the kids in her class to build their own organisation. She loves the hands-on teaching experiences it gives. But this year she wants to take it further, to immerse the children as much as possible in their assignment, so that the lessons on business, humanity and life are abundantly clear and felt by all — through the how, or the doing, as Ms Molloy often calls it.

To kick-start these sessions and frame them in a little context, she plans to introduce what she calls New Big Words.

Each year Ms Molloy's New Big Words change to reflect the tide of trends and the shift in the global picture. Today she is at her desk at home with the fresh smell of autumn blowing through her window and a cup of tea sweating on the coaster.

She's doodling away in the big white sketchpad that she buys ten at a time from the local stationers and fills solely with words. Those clean paper surfaces always help the right words to flow forth, and her sketchpad moments give her great satisfaction.

This year, Ms Molloy has decided that her New Big Words are ‘humane', ‘humanity', ‘ethical' and ‘collaborate'. These four words are vigorously circled in her sketchpad, springing forth from the mind map that surrounds them. She's chosen these words to show her students how they can become courageous leaders who put humanity into the heart of smart business, with good outcomes resulting when grounded in the details of doing.

But on with the story. It opens at the start of a new school year at Glen Fark County Elementary, in a Grade 3 classroom where there are more Frozen lunchboxes and Minecraft drink bottles than one could even imagine.

Welcome to Ms Molloy

The playground at GFC Elementary School, New Jersey, is buzzing with the frenetic kind of excitement that goes nowhere and everywhere all at once.

It is the first day of the new school year, which means plenty of tears and heartache. ‘And that's just the parents', Ms Molloy thinks to herself as she scrapes old adhesive off the classroom walls with her fingernail.

Ms Molloy is not your typical teacher (if there even is such a thing). She values teachings that are humane and ethical and thinks large scale: for the collaborative betterment of humanity. It might sound rather large and lofty, but Ms Molloy is nothing if not serious about her ability to teach others.

Her teaching tactics divide the parents and teachers around her. Some love her purpose-driven teaching style while others resent their child missing out on the participation prize they had earmarked for display.

Reg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The Fable (Back to School)
• Part II Manifesto
• Part III PLOT
• Afterword
• Notes
• Smartboard
• Index
• Advert
• EULA