The Dead Duck Principle and the Power of Purpose
When my wife was learning to windsurf, she encountered a dead duck on the lake. Her mantra at the time was “don’t hit the dead duck, don’t hit the dead duck”. But even though she wanted to avoid it, she was looking straight at it. In windsurfing as in surfing and skiing, where the head leads, the body follows, so unwittingly, she steered straight into the dead duck she was so intent on avoiding.
For a company, obsessing about the competition is like focusing on the dead duck. You’re so intent on beating them that you aim straight at them, becoming just like them and end up competing just on price.
But an inspiring purpose can help take your focus off immediate competitive threats and get you considering how what you do will impact the world for the better. Your decisions become more strategic with a longer-term benefit.
In our research, we asked 32 CEOs and founders “why” their business exists. The most common answers we heard related to creating something unique and working with and caring for great people. All noble causes, but very few were able to articulate a clear and concise purpose.
So, do you have a purpose statement for your business? One that inspires but also aligns everyone and is used as a filter for making decisions? For example, our purpose at Salple is “to help leaders excite and delight the human spirit”. It permeates everything we do and every decision we make, big or small.
Over the years, we’ve refined a very deliberate process for uncovering the purpose of a company. Here are some purpose statements we have helped our clients define.