Module 3
To the self-facilitated team admin: Welcome to workshop 1! You have a very special role to play in your company workshops; you are the leader! In each section of each session, play the videos at the right time, read out and share the text and instructions on screen, lead the activities, and record the outcomes from each. Don’t forget to allocate another team member as timekeeper to stay on track!
What you need
A whiteboard, 3 flip charts, paper, post-its, break out spaces. For online teams, zoom breakouts and chat can be used in place of rooms and post-its.
How much time it takes
This workshop is designed to be undertaken as 3 separate intensive yet fun sessions, with a min. 20-minute break between each to mentally reset.
Change it up
Know how your team works best and customise the workshop for them. Longer breaks? More discussion? More breakouts. Do it!
Watch the video prior to reading the text below.
Welcome to the start of your very first Profit on Purpose workshop! The video you have just watched sets the scene for what we are really doing here today, thinking beyond profit, to what truly drives the success or failure of businesses in the world we actually live in. It’s going to take a bit of work to change our approach, but it’ll all be worth it!
Now get ready, it’s your turn! Over the next three hours, through a series of activities, we’ll ask you to think, share, debate, analyse, and create, and in between, we’ll share some people, place and profit stories (among others) that hopefully help you along your way.
We will move through these activities quicker than you are used to, consider it a bit of a quickfire workshop.
The reason for this is we don’t want to fall into overthinking and over analysing today, we want to dig out what you know, and dive deeper into it later.
Activity: Walk the wall (warm up)
10 minutes
During your pre-work, you did a quick activity called ‘Our reason for being’. We asked you to do that so we could get you thinking early and sharing even earlier. That work will come in handy now.
Instructions:
Everyone take two post-it notes, all the same colours, no different colours for this activity, everyone the same.
On the first post-it, write out what you believe is ‘the reason for being’ for your business.
On the second post-it, write out what is ‘your reason for being here’ in this company, in this job, in this team. There’s every chance you could be making enough money somewhere else, so, why here? Why this?
Once you’ve taken 2 minutes to write your post-its, get up, walk to a spot in the room away from everyone else, and at eye height, stick your company post-it up, then your personal post it under. Sit down until everyone has done the same.
On the way back to your seat, walk the room almost like an art gallery. Take it in. Read, understand, think about what everyone else has said, without necessarily knowing who is who, and why their answers are important in the context of today’s session. Then, as a group, rapid fire list the ideas, phrasing and ‘reasons’ that resonated the most.
Why do we do this? This gets your head in the right place. It immediately takes it beyond the olds ways and thinking only about profit and financial success, and starts us exploring purpose and the role it has to play in both.
Capture some discussion notes.
Activity: Comfortable shoes
“In 2019, I took on the Kokoda Track. It was almost an accident really, not something I’d ever planned for, but something I sort of fell into.
Having not exercised for around 10 years before I started 6 months of hard training, I knew Kokoda would test me and ask me to give everything I had.
As well as my fitness, a strong mind, and good food, the one thing I knew I needed more than anything else (wait for it, if you’ve read the WWU ‘about us’ web page you already know where this is going…) was a pair of comfortable shoes. After all, they are the best way for any of us to get from where we are now to where we want to be. Those shoes, their support and comfort, would be the final piece of the puzzle to help carry me over 100km of mountainous territory in stifling heat, sliding down dangerous, muddy jungle paths.
And just in case you were wondering, they did exactly that. I made it!
Why tell you this? Because it’s the same with culture. Your values, behaviours, and ways of working — these are the shoes that will carry this business through the sometimes undulating and treacherous paths of growth and change to take you from where you are as a business, to where you want to be.
If they’re strong and well-fitted, you’ll move faster and further. If they’re the wrong fit, the journey can get really painful, and your business might just not make it.”
-Write Way Up founder
15 minutes
In this activity, we’re going to look at times when we were getting it right and things were comfortable, and other times, when maybe we made some choices that left us feeling a little blistered and bruised.
Around the room, set up 3 flipcharts and break into 3 small groups. Think about your pre-work, and each group answer one of these questions on your chart:
When was our business at its absolute best? (What were we doing? How? With whom? Why?)
When were we at our absolute worst? (What were we doing? How? With whom? Why?)
What must our business never, ever lose?
Take only 3 minutes each group per chart, then come back together and discuss.
Team admin, please fill in the results in the form below.
Activity: Auction time!
While our headlines are often full of negative stories because that tends to sell newspapers; our world is actually full of amazing stories, you just sometimes have to search a little harder for them.
There was a story doing the rounds on the internet for a few years about 200 farmers, all interested in a piece of good, local land. All the farmers turned up to the auction for the property, only to put down their paddles and stay silent, so a young man could spend his savings to get a piece of his family farm back. Humans can do some pretty amazing things when given the chance!
Now, it’s your turn to do something amazing… we’re going to a silent auction too!
30 minutes
Take a look at the list of values below. As a team, take 10 minutes to select up to 15 that you agree are the most important values to our business. Now each person, take 10 post-its — this is your currency and it’s each one is worth one dollar.
Position the 15 values around the room, take 10 minutes to think carefully, chat, debate, and each person can ‘bid’ in the private auction. Your aim is to identify the top 5 values that you agree will drive your business into the future.
Bid by walking around and placing your ‘dollars’ under the values you think are most important for the company. You can put as many of your dollars under each value as you like, up to 10 dollars total. Your values are those 4 – 6 that end up with the most dollars bid on them.
Once they are selected, as a group, discuss the outcome and determine if you have some consensus, and if not, where the debate lies (record this below).
(Note, don’t write on the ‘dollar’ post-its, then you can re-use them in later activities).
Some key questions to ask yourself:
Would we hire or fire someone based on this value?
Would this value hold true even when it costs us time, money, or effort?
Can we make sure this value shows up in how we actually behave, not just in posters or words?
Do we want our customers or community to recognise this value in us?
Will this value help guide us through change and growth over the next 3–5 years?
Team admin: please add your five final values in order of most bids, to the form below, and any notes.
Note, you can re-word the values into catchy phrases later if you choose.
Activity: Postcard from the future
“A few years ago, I was cleaning out a box of old travel keepsakes and I found a postcard I’d written to myself from the airport at the end of a 12-month backpacking trip. The end of that trip, was the start of my ‘responsible, grown-up’ life. I’d forgotten all about it.
Reading it back, what struck me wasn’t just the places I’d been — it was how I’d changed from that trip, what I was proud of, what I wanted to do next. More than anything it was where I thought I’d be 5 and 10 and 20 years down the track and what my life would look like.
It’s funny how much a simple postcard can tell you — about where you’ve been, and where you’re going.”
-Write Way Up founder
30 minutes
As a team, step into the future to when your business has achieved everything you want it to. We don’t mean it’s number 1 among competitors or it’s made billions, but more than that, it’s had the impact you want it to have.
Write a postcard back to yourselves that says what has been achieved, what people are saying about the business, and most importantly, how the world (your community or the actual world!) has changed because of the impact and success of your company.
Key questions to ask yourself are below. In 5-10 years:
Activity: Mission possible
There’s a story we love about a film set in Hollywood where the director noticed an older man sweeping the floor every day, rain, hail or shine.
One morning, the director asked him: ‘What do you do here?’
Without missing a beat, the man replied: ‘I help the film crew make great movies that make people happy.’
What’s so great about this story is this guy knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he doesn’t just sweep floors, that his contribution is integral to enabling everyone else to do their job well, and as a result, HE is integral to great movies being made, and the resulting happiness people feel.
This guy probably doesn’t ‘LOVE’ sweeping as such, but it sounds like the happiness he can help build and share is what gets him up, out of bed and back to work every day.
30 minutes
Write three headings across the board: What we do, Who we serve, Why it matters.
Each team member takes three post its and answers the questions below (one on each) and then puts each in the correct place on the board.
What do we do (core business, really describe it)?
Who do we serve (customers, community, others –> really describe them in detail)?
Why does it matter (what change or impact do we want to make)?
As a team, review and discuss the contributions then draft up a statement in this model:
This is the foundation of your mission, and though you might choose to make it more punchy or catchy later, this is what it means.
Activity: There’s no winning without goals
Most of us don’t stop to think about this, but in sport, goals aren’t just how you score. They’re the clear micro steps your team takes on the way to achieving its mission: winning the match. And each match is a micro step towards winning the season.
It’s the same in business. We’re out to achieve our mission — to win this season — and ultimately reach our vision: to become the most successful team on our own terms (success is defined differently for every business), and we do that by scoring agreed goals in set periods of time.
But here’s the thing: if you don’t know what a goal looks like, or how to score one, how can you ever win?
That’s what we’re going to work on now, defining the goals that will help us win, and the ones that will really matter along the way.
40 minutes
Split into 3 groups — People, Place, Profit — yes, we’re all taking a corner on the big triangle.
Each group brainstorms 3–5 goals business goals, underpinned by TBL thinking, for their focus area.
Think about People, Profit and Place goals in areas like:
Financial (for example, decrease overheads)
Sales and marketing
HR and culture (for example, increase employee retention)
Operations and delivery (for example, minimise excess waste caused by xyz)
Innovation and product development
Social and environmental impact
Now, as one big team, come back together and discuss and prioritise your business goals for the year, and specifically for the first 2 or 3 quarters you roll out your new 3P growth strategy.
For now, the goals will likely be quite general and even high-level. That’s ok, it’s exactly what we are looking for! Right now, we just need some general direction to guide our thinking over the coming month —to help us know what we are aiming for — and your company vision and these high-level goals you have been working on give us exactly that.
We will revisit later, adding detail and building in SMART objectives to support the goals.
10 minutes
And that’s it for session 3 in Workshop 1! Congratulations on completing your first workshop and sharing so openly and honestly! To close out, go around the room and tell each other how you feel now about the future direction of the business, compared to when you walked in. Be really honest; maybe you feel better, maybe worse. Why?
What’s next? The Executive Session, keep an eye out for your pre-work!
