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The hype train on corporate purpose keeps steaming down the tracks. I have written about it before and tried to be positive. But I feel the need to be more constructively critical. If everyone has been convinced that they need to have a corporate purpose, lets at least have it be a useful one. I try to contribute to that goal in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The hype train The articles and books on corporate purpose just keep coming. For example, in the past month alone, Harvard Business Review published four pieces on purpose (one, two, three, four). And the books keep coming, whether David Gelles Dirtbag Billionaire, Ranjay Gulatis Deep Purpose, or the somewhat earlier Corporate Purpose: Why It Matters More Than Strategy by Shankar Basu. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} There is lots of sensible stuff in the articles and books. However, there is a theme across them that is most explicit in Corporate Purpose: Why It Matters More Than Strategy. It reminds me of the logical problem in my least favorite business book everExecution, which argues that execution is more important than strategy and then proceeds to include strategy as a subcomponent of its definition of execution. In this (il-)logical construction, if there is anything useful at all about execution outside of strategy, it will be more important than strategy by tautology. In similar fashion, if you think corporate purposewhich is clearly one of your strategic choicesmatters more than strategy, you have no idea what strategy is. The general view being put forward in the purpose arena is that having a societally lofty corporate purpose is the most important thing a company can doand largely guarantees success or at least is strongly correlated with success. I dont buy it. I dont see it as a helpful view. Integration is the key The same thing worries me about purpose as worries me generally about the first box of the Strategy Choice CascadeWinning Aspiration. Visually, it is the first box. And management teams and boards get excited about diving into it first. They often spend massive amounts of time on determining their Winning Aspiration and in due course nail it down and etch it in stone. But their chosen Winning Aspiration not infrequently lacks integration with the other four questions. That is how you end up with insane aspirations like WeWorks infamous to elevate human consciousness. I dont know what that has to do with leasing office space, even if it is funky space! A Winning Aspiration of that sort is worse than nothing at all. And that leads to my concern about the corporate purpose hype train. Purpose is just another name for that first box. You can call it vision, mission, purpose or aspiration. It doesnt really matter to methough I think having one of those four is better than having multiple ones (which I have argued before). And because of the hype, I fear that the outcomes will be unconnected and unrealistic because companies have been convinced that if they have some lofty save-the-world purpose, they will succeed. So, make it bigger and better! No. The absolute key is integration. The five choices on the Strategy Choice Cascade need to fit with and reinforce each other. The only way that happens is if each of the five choices is flexibleand customizes to the others. If the five choices independently are inflexibly locked and loaded on, you will have a bad strategy. That means if you start by setting and locking on a lofty purpose, it is unlikely that you will be able to realize that purpose because you wont be able to make four other choicesWhere-to-Play (WTP), How-to-Win (HTW), Must-Have Capabilities (MHC), and Enabling Management Systems (EMS)that bring the purpose to life. Chances are, your purpose, regardless of how lofty, will end up looking nave and unrealistic, like WeWorks. Instead, you need to toggle back and forth between the five choices to build the fit and reinforcement until such time as you have a purpose on which you can reasonably expect to deliver. If you care about having a lofty purpose and you do the hard thinking work, you should be able to achieve a nicely integrated Strategy Choice Cascadewith a purpose about which you can be proud. Sustainability is the goal A critical aspect of any great strategy is sustainability. By this I dont mean the narrow goal of environmental sustainability. I mean a strategy that is built to last. We like and admire strategies like those of P&G or Lego or Apple because they are successful across generations. That doesnt mean they are immune to crisesthey are demonstrably notbut that they have the strength to get through the crises and renew themselveslike Apple in 1997 and Lego in 2005. I believe that the only strategies that are sustainable are strategies that are good for all the parties involved. If your strategy requires you to abuse your employees, rip off your customers, hurt the communities in which you operate, and/or skirt societys laws and regulationsit wont last. It may be profitable for a time, but in due course, one or more of these constituencies will successfully undermine it. For sustainability, you need employees who thrivewhich I wrote about earlier in this series with Zeynep Ton. You need customers to truly benefit from your existence. You need communities that are delighted to have you as part of them. And you need to make society a better placewhich I also wrote about earlier in this series. Any company has the ability, as I termed it in that piece and in a longer Harvard Business Review article earlier, to improve the civil foundation of society through innovation designed to make the world a better place. If you do these things, it is much less likely that anyone will fight you or undermine you. You will get the benefit of the doubt. Competitors will be inclined to go elsewhere and/or compete differently. And the ecosystem around you will help you evolve positively because the players in it have the desire to see you prosper. If a corporate purpose integrates seamlessly with the other Strategy Choice Cascade choices, resulting in a high level of fit and reinforcement and it helps the company pursue a sustainable strategy, it is a strong positive feature. And I support that kind of corporate purpose as an integral part of strategy (which I view as fitting into the Winning Aspiration box of the Strategy Choice Cascade). E.l.f. Beauty example Wildly successful e.l.f. Beauty provides a great example of a constructive and strategic corporate purpose, which is: To create a different kind of beauty company by building brands that disrupt norms, shape culture, and connect communities through positivity, inclusivity, and accessibility. That Purpose/Winning Aspiration choice is perfectly integrated with its other strategy choices. Those choices include a WTP focused on millennials and Gen Z, who find the e.l.f purpose highly appealing. It includes a HTW focused on providing premium quality cosmetics and skincare products at extremely affordable pricesto achieve the accessibility purpose. The MHC include low-cost sourcing, and both understanding and supporting the community of e.l.f. enthusiasts. The EMS include management approaches that enable “moving at e.l.f. speed,” in keeping with the needs and demands of the customer community the company serves. The strategy, including the purpose, shows the hallmarks of sustainability. Employees love working there and being part of the diverse, inclusive community inside the company. Their retail partners love e.l.f.s focus on their productivity, not just e.l.f.s own. The customer community loves them, including e.l.f.s commitment to clean, vegan, and cruelty-free products, and its willingness to challenge industry norms and shape a more inclusive and positive culture in the beauty world. Competitors mainly choose to compete elsewhere or in different ways rather than challenge e.l.f. head on. Sustainability can only ever be proven over the fullness of time. But thus far things are looking positive for this integrated, sustainable approach to strategy and purpose. Practitioner insights A corporate purpose wont help the world just because it is lofty. Purposes would all be loftier than they are today if it was easy. It isnt. Like all strategy choices, the choice of Purpose (or Winning Aspiration, whichever term you prefer) entails making hard and creative choices. When making your purpose choice, aim for sustainability through integration. Never consider your purpose choice independently of the other four key choices. Consider multiple draft purpose possibilities and build Strategy Choice Cascades for each of them. Only then choose the purpose and remaining cascade choices that give you the best shot at the holy graila sustainable strategy. If you do it that way, I will applaud your purpose. I wont fear that you have simply boarded the corporate purpose hype train! {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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Below, Jane Marie Chen shares five key insights from her new book, Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. Jane is a leadership coach, public speaker, and cofounder of Embrace Global, a social enterprise that developed a low-cost infant incubator. She has been a TED Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Her many honors include being recognized as a Forbes Impact 30 and receiving The Economists Innovation Award. Whats the big idea? Like a Wave We Break is a story of self-discovery. When achievements define us or serve as an escape from hidden scars of trauma, we do ourselves and others a disservice. Pushing onward from a fractured foundation can break a person and limit their leadership potential. Self-compassion and self-worth are found not by running ahead, but by looking within. Such a journey is the incubator of lifes biggest breakthroughs. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Jane herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Our wounds can drive us until they break us I grew up in a home with physical violence. As a little girl, I often felt powerless. That sense of powerlessness became the engine that unknowingly drove much of my life. When I was a graduate school student at Stanford, my team invented a portable infant incubator for premature babies. Unlike traditional incubators, our technology could work without constant electricity. It was designed to be used in remote parts of the world. We turned the idea into a company called Embrace and set a goal to save a million babies. After graduation, I moved to India, where nearly 40 percent of the worlds premature babies are born. Over the next few years, we did product development, clinical testing, figured out manufacturing, and then we finally launched the product. It was so rewarding to save lives with our incubators. One of the first babies we saved was in China. We donated a few incubators to an orphanage in Beijing and they rescued a two-pound baby that had been found abandoned on a street. They kept him in our incubator for weeks, and he survived. Seven months later, I visited this orphanage and held this baby in my arms. Stories like his kept me going. Over the next few years, I gave my life to this mission. Seven months later, I visited this orphanage and held this baby in my arms. Our work was recognized by President Obama, funded by Beyoncé, and covered by global media. On the outside, it looked like a success story, but what fueled me also eventually broke me. The powerlessness I felt during my childhood had given me purpose, but it also drove me to complete burnout. After a decade of insurmountable setbacks and obstacles, Embrace nearly collapsedand I did too. Through it all, I learned that achievement, even when rooted in purpose, can be a survival strategy or way to outrun our pain. Our wounds can give us extraordinary drive, but if we never face them, those same wounds can consume us. This is a trap I see many leaders fall into. On the surface, it looks like grit or vision, but beneath, there may be an unconscious attempt to fill an inner void. Leadership can carry shadowsburnout, perfectionism, control, hunger for validationbut when we do the inner work, we stop leading from fear. We begin to lead from wholeness, and that shift makes leadership far more sustainable. 2. Healing starts with feeling When Embrace nearly collapsed, I didnt just lose my company; I lost my entire identity. Everything I had poured my soul into for a decade was gone. I felt utterly broken, and because I dont know how to do anything halfway, I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia and launched a healing quest. I tried every healing modality I could find. I did a 10-day silent meditation retreat in the jungle, where I sat cross-legged for 14 hours a day, and no reading, writing, exercise, or even eye contact was allowed. I surfed epic waves, chasing adrenaline in the ocean just as I had once chased it in my work. I tried psychedelic therapy. I even did a frog poison ceremony, burning holes in my leg and vomiting so that there was nothing left inside me. With each experience, I hoped that maybe this would be the magic elixir that would fix me, but my real breakthroughs didnt come in the jungle, ocean, or during a ceremony. They came when I stopped running and finally turned toward the grief I was avoiding. This was way harder than it sounds, especially given that I trained myself not to feel anything to survive my childhood. As Bessel van der Kolk writes, The body keeps the score. Trauma isnt just in our memories. It lives in our bodies. Healing required me not to do more, but to feel moreto turn toward the pain Id spent a lifetime outrunning and to meet it with compassion. Our feelings are data. They carry so much wisdom. We live in an escapist society that offers endless ways to numb, be that through work, achievement, substances, or self-help rituals. You might be listening to this podcast as an escape, but true healing isnt about chasing the next fix. Its about learning to sit with ourselves, and this isnt just personal; it applies to leadership. Our feelings are data. They carry so much wisdom. When we can slow down enough to notice and honor them, we make wiser choices personally and for the people we lead. Leaders who can feel are leaders who can truly connect. 3. Resilience comes from self-compassion For most of my life, I thought resilience meant powering through. If I was tired, I kept pushing. If I was afraid, I doubled down. I believed grit was strength, but that belief is what led me to burn out. On my healing journey, one of the most transformative frameworks I encountered was Internal Family Systems (IFS), which teaches that we are all made of a multitude of inner parts: Protector parts that drive us to achieve control or push harder so that we dont have to feel pain. Exiles are the wounded parts that hold emotions like shame, fear, or loneliness. The Self, with a capital S, being the calm, compassionate core of who we are. One of my protectors was the warrior within who was willing to fight every battle. Someone nicknamed this part of me, Janis Khan. Another protector was the overachiever, the part that kept me working to exhaustion. That part had won my life for decades. When I began turning toward my parts with compassion and curiosity, I began asking, What are you protecting me from, and what are you afraid of? Beneath these protectors, I met the scared little girl who felt like she was never enough. For years, I had abandoned her. Slowly, I turned toward her. I told her, You are enough exactly as you are. For the first time, I met her with love. This practice changed everything. Real resilience is about cultivating self-compassion so we can meet life with authenticity and courage. When we are kind to ourselves, we are more willing to take risks, stumble, and even fail because we know we will still be okay. As leaders, this matters deeply. If we wan to create psychological safety for others, we first need to create it within ourselves. Only then can we build teams and organizations where people thrive. 4. Our biggest breaking points can become our biggest breakthroughs When Embrace shut down after 10 years, I reached the lowest point of my life. I was having panic attacks. I was depressed. There was a part of me that didnt want to be doing the work anymore because I was so burned out. Another part of me saw the collapse as a failurethe death of everything I had worked so hard for. But the unraveling of Embrace ended up cracking me open. It forced me onto a healing journey. For the first time, I had to confront the history that lived inside me. I would have never chosen that path if the company hadnt collapsed. For the first time, I had to confront the history that lived inside me. One of the teachers I had the opportunity to learn from was Tony Robbins, who often says, Life happens for you, not to you. I really believe these words. The adversity I faced growing up and the powerlessness I felt as a child became the foundation for my purpose, and the collapse of Embrace became the doorway into my healing. We often think of challenges as obstacles to overcome or detours from the life we planned, but sometimes they are the teachers we need. My most painful breaking point turned out to be the catalyst for my deepest breakthrough. 5. We are worth more than the sum of our achievements For years, I believed that if I just worked harder, achieved more, and saved more lives, then maybe I would finally feel like I was enough. But no award, recognition, or headline ever quieted that inner voice of self-doubt. When Embrace shut down, I had to ask, Who am I without my mission, my work, my title? I think its a question many of us are facing now because of AI that is capable of doing our jobs faster and better than us. We live in a culture that defines us by our output, but we are enough just as we are. We each carry an innate worth beneath all that noise of titles and social media likes. We each carry an innate worthiness that cannot be taken away. Having an unshakeable inner sense of worthiness gives us the resilience to face whatever life brings. The collapse of Embrace freed me from the prison of equating my worth with my achievements, and as a result, opened me to a life that feels fuller, freer, and more authentic. In a miraculous and serendipitous turn of events, Embrace was saved. It continues as a nonprofit, and this year we reached a million babies saved with our incubators. That goal we set nearly two decades ago. I am so proud of this milestone, but it no longer defines all of who I am. My worth is not in headlines or metrics. Its in the simple truth that I am enough, just as I am. You too are enough, just as you are. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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Large language models have started creating their own terms and mixing them into everyday speech. Experts call it ‘lexical seepage.’
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