Massive Transformative Purpose — The Heartbeat of Every ExO

An MTP is a new paradigm bigger than just a mission statement. It’s a highly aspirational tagline that tries to solve a global issue.

We have entered a new era in business where an individual can make a massive impact in ways that we never before imagined, let alone achieved.

Google was created by two guys with laptops. Another two guys with laptops created Facebook. It hardly sounds like a formula for business success, yet in less than a decade they transformed how humanity accesses and shares information, and how we connect and socialize.

What was their secret? How did a small group of individuals create the kind of impact previously only achieved by large government organizations or corporate labs armed with thousands of employees and huge amounts of funding?

I wanted to know the answer, so I began studying organizations like Google and Facebook that are creating 10 times more impact than their peers. I called this new breed of organizations exponential organizations, or ExOs for short.

MTP: It’s more than just a mission statement

The founders of Google and Facebook were able to transform the world through their organizations, not because there was anything magical about their laptops, but because they began with a massive transformational purpose (MTP).

An MTP is a new paradigm bigger than just a mission statement. It’s a highly aspirational tagline that tries to solve a global issue. Here are some examples of strong MTPs from ExOs:

These MTPs are more than just inspirational taglines framed up on office walls. They provide an organization with the focus and direction. Below are a few case studies illustrating how MTPs enable ExOs to rapidly scale and massively impact the world.

MTPs provide focus to enable exponential growth

A strong MTP forces your mind to break all the old models about how to achieve a task. It inspires innovation. And it gives you permission to think outside your own constraints and create a new model to support exponential growth.

Take TED as an example. If Chris Anderson had gone the traditional route of presenting to his team a traditional 5-year business plan outlining how TEDx would organize 10,000 events in 5 years, he would have lost the whole team. They would have said it’s insane; it’s impossible. And they probably would have walked out.

However, Anderson took a different route. Driven by their MTP, “Ideas worth spreading,” Anderson wasn’t trying to create a detailed business plan on how to execute and finance 10,000 events. He was simply focused on inspiring and enabling others to share “ideas worth spreading.”

Through this, Anderson ideated a new model where anyone in the world can use TED’s community. He made the TED model available on their website for anyone to access, leverage, and freely organize a TEDx event. Thus, opening the possibilities for exponential growth.