TRANSALTING PERSONAL PURPOSE INTO A VIABLE BUSINESS
Pursuing one’s heart is a daring path that some are courageous enough to take. The head of a family who had to escape the war in his home country positioned the family office in the UAE. Although many reasons can be found to stay with the obvious, his desires are far stretched. In addition to the establishment of a foundation, the pursuit of a heart-guided venture was next. For this great assignment, Plena 8 was tasked to support this entrepreneur, father, philanthropist, head of the family, and businessman with the development of a purposeful strategy for his new venture. This article shall dive deeper into our process of creation.
The venture would be a wellness company with the focus on the creation of soul expanding experiences. These types of projects are relatively rare for Plena 8 but none the less incredibly enjoyable. Creating a new venture from scratch is a very daring task with many assumptions and a lot of uncertainty. Startups know this by heart, establishing clear assumptions to test to validate their initial premise. Plena 8’s aim is to establish a clear cut, easy to understand and purposeful strategy that is scalable, aligns with the founder’s desires, and has a high potential and certainty to rack in revenue. But before testing any assumption, Plena 8’s methodology starts with an intense dialogue with the founder. A conversation with the aim to turn every stone and dive deep into the founder’s purpose, meaning of life, competencies, life experiences, joy, and a whole range of topics. Carl Jung would be proud of us with what we achieve in just a few hours. Generally, in case of a group of founders or executives, this exercise goes on for several days.
THE CREATION OF A MAP
A map is created to clearly showcase the direction of the purposeful strategy. The basic premises should create an image that is easy to relate to and incorporates someone’s path (or paths in case of multiple people) within this life. As we see “purpose” as the meaning in this current moment which fully depends on where an individual is in their current point in time of their evolution. This varies tremendously across people and should not be compared to avoid ego driven opinions. The visual frame is the starting point to adjust any inconsistencies, misalignments, and create more clarity. An iterative process starts from here and several interactions are to be expected to drill down to the core.
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
– Carl Jung
At this point of the strategy creation, we draw a lot from external sources to match the internal purpose with the state of the collective, the so-called match with external world. It is important to close the gap of dreams with the collective reality (if one reality exists) as much as possible. As we aim to establish a viable business, we aim to create a strategy that creates revenues instead of simply fulfilling a hobby. We look at a business as an entity that aims to supply a clear need in the world while creating a durable competitive advantage. These businesses have a purpose to exist and should enable themselves to carve out their own identity. An identity is being created with internal systems that fully incorporates the company’s purpose in each step. Systematically developing parts of itself based on its own meaning of existence, from the entity’s perspective.
This is truly the beauty of business, the creation of a structure according to a vision and the current state of the world. A structure that is based on systems to serve a type of system in the entirety of all the systems, like how an organ functions with other organs in the entirety of a human body. The structure should add value (have a purpose) to the system to be able to exist and should feed the system, so the entire system is sustainable. In case a structure takes too much from a system, the system will become sick and eventually die off. This works the same in the human body as in the external world. The effects look a bit different, but time rules them all.
NEXT STEPS
When the playing field is set, and it is clear how we expect to win the eternal game, the strategy is finalised. Simplicity is key here. No complicated multitude of slide decks, reports, and vague premisses. A simple overview of the strategy, purpose, mission, vision, values/virtues, strategic anchors, and 3-year goal setting which should answer what the playing field is and how we intend to win. This all should be backed by our internal and external research. Generally, this exercise is followed by the creation of business systems to carry out the business, identify the entire value chain of growing and delivering, value drivers, and responsibilities. This should showcase the exact way of scaling the business. After all this is done, we implement the changes, set the right IT infrastructure, and establish a control panel from where the business is being directed.
Note that we deliberatelyconceal our client’s name and specific details. This content is purely to showcase a case study for educational purposes only and should be seen like that.
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. The unexamined life is not worth living. There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.“
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