Purposeful leadership: A new series for a changing world

Some returns are simply a matter of geography. Others represent something deeper, a transformation that changes not just where you have been, but who you have become and what you now have to offer. Mine is the latter.

Many readers of the Daily FT will know me from my years working in and around Sri Lanka’s corporate landscape. I began my career at John Keells Holdings, moving from Marketing Manager to Director of Keells Food Products and Keells Super a formative decade that taught me what ambition felt like when it was the only compass you had. What followed was a career that took me across thirty countries as a leadership development consultant, then to Bangladesh as CEO of Rahimafrooz Superstores and Director of Strategy at Apollo Hospitals, and most recently to the United Kingdom, where I served as Director of Organisational Development at Unisnacks Europe.

I returned to Sri Lanka last year. But I did not return the same person who left.

During my time in the UK, I completed my Doctor of Philosophy at Hult Ashridge Executive Education, one of the world’s most respected business schools. My thesis, titled Living Purposefully: An Inquiry into the Life of a Leadership Development Practitioner, was not merely an academic exercise. It was a rigorous, deeply personal investigation into a question I have spent the better part of twenty-five years exploring: what does it truly mean to live and lead with purpose?

The answer, I have come to believe, cannot be reduced to a motivational slogan or a strategic framework. Purposefulness is a mindset, a moral orientation, that guides how we think, decide, and act in every dimension of life. It asks us to conduct our lives with decent human values and to measure our success not only by what we achieve, but by what we contribute to the flourishing of those around us: our families, our teams, our organisations, and our world.

On returning home, I established Purposeful Leadership (Pvt) Ltd., a company dedicated to catalysing this transformation in individuals, teams, and organisations across Sri Lanka and beyond. It is not merely a consulting firm. It is, I believe, a response to a moment that demands a different kind of leadership. The more I look at what is happening around the world, in geopolitics, global organisations, governments, businesses, and sports and cultural organisations, the more I am convinced that ‘purposefulness’ is an essential mindset to heal the world.

Because the world has changed. “The organisations that thrived on the old model, built on command-and-control structures, vision statements that inspired nobody, and targets that eclipsed the human beings behind them, are struggling, and taking with them the environment that nourishes us all.” Leaders everywhere are confronting the consequences of workplaces built for compliance rather than meaning. And in Sri Lanka, having navigated years of economic turbulence and social upheaval, the need for a more purposeful approach to leadership has never been more urgent or more visible.

This is why I am launching this series in the Daily FT.

Over the coming months, I will explore what I call the three branches of Purposeful Leadership, a framework that grew from my doctoral research and decades of practice. The first branch is purposeful self-leadership: the inner work of aligning who we are with how we lead. The second is purposeful people leadership: the relational work of helping those around us discover their own purpose and contribute from a place of genuine meaning. The third is purposeful organisational leadership: the systemic work of building enterprises where purpose is not a CSR project or a banner on the wall but the organising principle of every decision, every policy, and every conversation.

I want to be clear from the outset about what purposefulness is not. It is not a substitute for strategy, performance, or accountability. It is not idealism dressed in corporate language. And it is certainly not the exclusive domain of leaders who have already achieved a measure of success. Purposefulness is, at its core, a daily practice, available to anyone willing to ask the harder questions about why they do what they do, and whether the way they are leading is truly contributing to the flourishing of those in their care.

I speak from experience on all of this, including the experience of getting it wrong. There was a time, early in my career, when I was climbing fast and living poorly. I was a Director at JKH subsidiaries in my late twenties, working weekends, neglecting my health and my family, driven by achievement and hollow at the centre. It was the encounter with purposefulness, and the slow, sometimes uncomfortable practice of living by it, that changed everything. Not overnight, and not without difficulty. But lastingly.

That personal transformation eventually became the foundation of my professional life. And it is that same invitation, to lead from the inside out, grounded in values, guided by a genuine sense of purpose, that I extend to the readers of this column.

Over forty years in business, across roles in marketing, general management, healthcare, retail, organisational development, and executive education, I have seen what happens when leaders are purposeful and when they are not. The difference is not marginal. It is the difference between organisations that merely function and those that genuinely flourish.

My purpose statement, refined over many years of reflection, reads simply: to sow the seeds of purposefulness in the hearts and minds of people, to make this world better, with the grace of God.

This series is one way of doing exactly that. I look forward to the conversation.

(The author is the Managing Director and Chief Catalyst of Purposeful Leadership Ltd. He holds a PhD from Hult Ashridge, an MBA from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and is a Fellow and Gold Medallist of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK. He can be reached at www.ranjandesilva.com, www.ranjandesilva.blog and www.purposefulleadershipco.com)