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From Purpose to Alignment: Reflections from the Philippines
by Dr Assad Schuitema
I recently returned from Manila, Philippines, where I worked with the executive team of a rapidly growing digital bank. Having achieved considerable success as a start-up, the organisation is now entering the challenging transition from entrepreneurial growth to organisational scale. Although there were many fascinating aspects of Filipino culture I could reflect on, the most valuable lesson from the trip concerned the importance of ongoing executive dialogue about purpose—and its role in creating alignment across an organisation. My original objective was to help each functional head define the standards of excellent contribution within their function. Our Care and Growth process approaches this from the bottom up: clarifying what each level of the hierarchy must contribute to enable the level below it and, ultimately, serve the customer. As often happens with work that is important but not urgent, limited progress had been made before my arrival. I therefore decided to begin with the groundwork: exploring the organisation’s cross-functional dependencies and establishing a shared understanding of how each function contributes to the organisation’s purpose. Over two days, we worked through a two-step process with each function.
First, we clarified what we call its Benevolent Intent by answering four questions:
1. Who are your customers?
2. What are their needs and wants?
3. What transformation are you trying to effect?
4. Therefore, what is your Benevolent Intent?
The customer may be external, but in many cases it is another function within the organisation. This is one of the strengths of the process: it invites executives to see their colleagues as internal customers and opens a meaningful conversation about mutual contribution. When approached seriously, the results can be both profound and beautiful. Some of the Benevolent Intent statements that emerged included: Legal: “We exist to create the confidence and integrity required to unlock human potential.” Talent Acquisition: “We exist to build the team that will build the bank—making every person who meets us, whether they join or not, feel that the experience was honest, efficient and worth their time.” People Operations: “We exist to remove the friction between a person and their work.”
These statements are significant because they define the fundamental intent that should govern how people within each function engage with those they serve. They communicate the spirit of what is required—the “why” behind the function’s activities. Once each function’s Benevolent Intent had been clarified, we explored its cross-functional dependencies.
Every functional head was invited to explain what their function needed from each of the others to contribute effectively. This created space for honest requests, greater mutual understanding and practical alignment around the organisation’s shared purpose. The outcome was not only a Benevolent Intent statement for each function, but also a clear set of cross-functional requirements that could inform the next stage of defining leadership standards.
My enduring reflection from the process is that executive alignment cannot be achieved through structures, scorecards or strategy documents alone.
It requires deliberate and ongoing dialogue about whom we exist to serve, what contribution we are trying to make, and what we need from one another to make that contribution possible.
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