The Pyramid of Purpose

The most important thing an agency leader can do, especially as the agency grows, is to clearly communicate the culture, strategy and purpose of the agency.

Why are we here? What will we do? How will we work together to do that?

The Pyramid of Purpose is a core part of the Convivio Way. A framework for you to use to think about these things yourself, to collaborate on them within the agency, and to communicate them widely.

The 5 levels of the Pyramid of Purpose

Each of the levels of the pyramid is defined as:

Purpose

The Purpose of the agency should be a clear and compelling reason for the organisation to exist. It will act as a beacon to gather the right kinds of people around the agency to become staff and clients.

Ambitions

What should the agency be challenged to achieve in the coming 2-3 years, in order to work towards fulfilling its purpose?

Focus

The Focus of the agency isn't a single point — it's a number of points that can help the agency triangulate to find where its best work can be done towards its Ambitions.

These are the things the agency is going to prioritise above all else in the next year.

Motivations

Why do the people in this agency want to be doing this with their working lives right now? What will they get out of this? Why do they want to work together, here?

This is the section that gets ignored by most businesses, leading to a disconnect between staff and the strategy. In agencies, this is even more important because they are primarily people businesses.

Behaviours

The behaviours are sometimes referred to as values, but that can lead to there being a disconnect between intention and reality. "Sure, we value those things. lets put them on the wall. Now, what do we do?"

Instead, we prefer to call them behaviours and set them up as being the desired behaviours we expect to see at all levels in the agency.

This should be a roughly 75% accurate, 25% aspirational version of the behaviours clients can expect to see across your whole agency, and staff can expect from each other.

It sets a standard to which everyone should hold each other accountable.

What the Pyramid of Purpose represents

The layers are arranged in this order because of the logical progression up the stack.

Behaviours and Motivations capture the definition of the organisation's culture.

Then the Focus and Ambitions capture the strategy of the organisation.

Then, at the top is the Purpose.

So, the strategy is the way the CEO directs the culture of the organisation to best serve the purpose.

Therefore, what the Pyramid of Purpose represents is how the strategy connects the culture to the purpose — and how everything is then pointed in a common direction..