QOS: Activity 1 – Establish and Communicate the Purpose of the Organization

This is part of a series exploring Quality as an Organizational Strategy (QOS). Read the introduction or explore other activities: Activity 2 – System, Activity 3 – Information, Activity 4 – Planning, and 5 – Managing Improvement.

Why Purpose Matters

Every organization exists to fulfill a need in society. Healthcare organizations provide care. Manufacturers create products. Service organizations solve problems. But too often, organizations lose sight of why they exist beyond generating revenue or meeting operational targets.

A clearly articulated purpose grounds everything an organization does. It guides decisions, focuses improvement efforts, and helps people understand how their daily work connects to something meaningful. Without it, organizations drift, pursuing disconnected initiatives that fail to create lasting value.

The Components of Purpose

An effective purpose statement typically includes three elements:

Mission answers the question: What need does our organization fulfill? It describes the contribution you make to society and the customers you serve. A mission isn’t about what you do—it’s about the fundamental need you address.

Vision answers: Where are we headed? It frames how your organization will evolve to better match the need you serve. Vision provides direction and aspiration, showing what success looks like in the future.

Tenets (sometimes called values or principles) answer: How do we conduct ourselves? These describe expected behaviors for leaders and staff, shaping culture and guiding how work gets done.

From Words to Action

Most organizations have mission statements displayed in lobbies or printed in annual reports. Far fewer actually use their purpose to guide daily decisions, align improvement work, or help people understand priorities.

The difference between displaying purpose and using it becomes clear when you examine how leaders communicate. Do they connect new initiatives to the mission? When making tough choices, do they reference the organization’s tenets? Can frontline staff articulate how their work fulfills the organizational purpose?

Consider Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s purpose statement (table 1). Their mission states they will “improve child health and transform delivery of care through fully integrated, globally recognized research, education and innovation.” This isn’t just about providing pediatric care—it’s about fundamentally improving child health outcomes through the integration of clinical care, research, and education.

Table 1. Purpose statement from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
(Source: The QOS Field Guide, 2025, p.112)

Notice how specific their mission becomes when they define what “best” means for patients: the best medical and quality-of-life outcomes, the best patient and family experience, and the best value. These three dimensions translate the broad mission into concrete commitments that can guide decisions across the organization.

Their vision—”to be the leader in improving child health”—creates aspiration beyond current performance. It pushes the organization to not just provide excellent care, but to lead the field in advancing how child health improves.

The core values (Compassionate, Collaborative, Honest, Impactful, Curious) provide behavioral anchors. When leaders face difficult decisions or staff encounter complex situations, these values offer guidance on how to act while pursuing the mission. “Curious” is particularly noteworthy for a healthcare organization—it signals that learning, innovation, and discovery aren’t peripheral activities but core to who they are.

A purpose statement like this becomes powerful when it moves from the wall to the work. Does the organization actually integrate research, education, and clinical care? Do improvement efforts focus on outcomes, experience, and value? Do leaders model curiosity and collaboration? When the answer is yes, purpose drives strategy. When it’s no, the words are just decoration.

Getting Started with Purpose

If your organization lacks a clear purpose statement, developing one should be your first step in the QOS journey. This work requires thoughtful conversation among leaders about what the organization truly exists to accomplish.

If you already have a purpose statement, pause and reflect:

• Does it capture the fundamental need you fulfill, or is it focused on activities?
• Do leaders use it to guide decisions and communicate priorities?
• Can people throughout the organization explain how their work connects to the purpose?
• Is it more substance than platitudes?

Purpose provides the foundation for everything that follows in QOS. The system map you create, the measures you track, the information you gather, the improvements you pursue—all should connect back to fulfilling your organizational purpose. Without this anchor, improvement efforts become scattered and disconnected from what matters most.

Establishing and communicating purpose is the first core activity of quality as an organizational strategy. When done well, it creates alignment and meaning that energizes the entire system.

Next: In Activity 2, we’ll explore how to view your organization as a system using system maps and vectors of measures.

Sources:

Clifford M. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost, and David M. Williams. Quality as an Organizational Strategy: Building a System of Improvement. (Provident-Heierman Press, Austin, TX). 2024

Clifford M. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost, and David M. Williams. The QOS Field Guide: Guidance, examples, tools, methods, and exercises for using Quality as an Organizational Strategy to build a system of improvement. (Provident-Heierman Press, Austin, TX). 2025

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David M. Williams, Ph.D. works with leaders and improvement teams to learn and apply Improvement Science to achieve results and adopt quality as a strategy. He is coauthor of Quality as an Organizational Strategy and The QOS Field Guide.