Framing Insight

Sensemaking is not neutral. It is shaped by what the organisation is trying to achieve.

If the purpose is unclear, sensemaking will optimise the wrong outcome.

What’s Going On

Organisations operate in environments where:

• cause and effect are not fully knowable,
• decisions must be made under uncertainty,
• and trade-offs are unavoidable.

In these conditions, sensemaking determines action.

But sensemaking is always influenced by:

• implicit priorities,
• performance pressures,
• and underlying assumptions about what success looks like.

When purpose is weak or reduced to short-term outcomes:

• efficiency dominates,
• risk is externalised,
• only the interests of ‘key’ stakeholders are considered,
• and long-term consequences are ignored.

The organisation appears aligned — but becomes progressively fragile. Over time, the environment within which the organisation operates may also become compromised.

This is the world of the Traditional Response and the ‘quick fix’ discussed in detail in Adapt, Survive and Flourish (Malcolm, 2025).

The Pattern

Purpose is not a statement.
It is a constraint on action.

In Adapt, Survive and Flourish, purpose emerges through:

• Stakeholder Engagement,
• Shared Vision,
• And the alignment of human and social capital.

This aligns with the later work of Ikujiro Nonaka, where knowledge creation is directed toward the common good, not just organisational performance.

A Practical Expression

Using John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line as a starting point, Purpose can be understood as a balance (Elkington, 2020):

• Planet — ecological sustainability
• People — human and social wellbeing
• Prosperity — economic viability

Not as competing priorities,
but as a shared constraint on decision-making.

Organisational Implication

Without clear purpose:

• Framing becomes biased.
• Optimisation replaces judgement.
• Politics replaces alignment.
• Myopia, tunnel vision, and blind spots narrow direction.

With purpose:

• trade-offs are made consciously based on cross stakeholder dialogue,
• decisions remain coherent under uncertainty,
• and adaptive capacity is sustained over time.

Purpose provides the orientation against which meaning is interpreted, and action is taken.

Practitioner Note

Purpose should be tested, not declared.

Ask:

• What do we prioritise when trade-offs are real?
• Who benefits—and who bears the cost?
• What would we refuse to do, even if it improves performance?

If these questions cannot be answered:
👉 purpose is not yet operational.

Closing Insight

Purpose does not predict the future.
It defines what matters when it arrives.

Elkington, J. (2020). Green swans: the coming boom in regenerative capitalism: Greenleaf Book Group.

Malcolm, R. (2025). Adapt, Survive and Flourish. Adelaide, South Australia: Green Hill Publishing.