There are a couple ways to go about discovering your Big Audacious Meaning. I wrote about one of these approaches in a recent post. Here are the two methods.

The leadership team Big Audacious Meaning work session

This is an abbreviated exercise. It's using the collective wisdom of your leadership team to arrive at the Big Audacious Meaning through debate and discussion. This is a valuable process that creates a brand purpose. But it must be validated and refined. It is the collective perspective of only one group. It hasn't benefited from a more inclusive study – one that takes into account all the forces that form a brand purpose.

Adding the investigation of the four forces

The second method includes the leadership team work session. But it is coupled with study of the four forces that impact a brand purpose. This reveals the influence of everything from your history to the aspirations of your team members and more. Here are those four forces as described in that recent post:

• The Environment – A Big Audacious Meaning isn’t created in isolation. It doesn’t live in an ivory tower. It must be relevant in the world around us. The workings of our world help inform it. We judge its relevance by how naturally it complements our way of life. At the same time, a Big Audacious Meaning is not driven by fads and trends. And it’s not so esoteric that it only appeals to a segment of our potential believers. It is timeless and universal.
• The Industry – What is it that makes our Big Audacious Meaning distinct? There has to be something that makes it stand out among all the choices in the industry. If it mimics a peer company’s brand purpose, it could cause confusion. Although our Big Audacious Meaning should not be driven by simply differentiating from our peers, it is a factor in helping us understand why it will be unique in the world.
• The Organization – What is it that aligns our Big Audacious Meaning with our organization? As we develop our brand purpose, we need to ask this question. We can’t manufacture a meaning. It has to spring from who we are. It has to be authentic. This requires digging into our past to rediscover where we came from. It means understanding who we are today - across the entire organization. And it means aligning with a vision of who we want to be tomorrow.
• The Believers – Ultimately, a Big Audacious Meaning must be irresistible to our potential believers. These are the people that our brand purpose serves. They are the ones we aspire to help and to inspire. We need to know how they have evolved over time. Is it their motivations? How about their expectations? We need to understand what inspires them. And what would motivate them to become an evangelist for our brand purpose?

With this study and the insight of the leadership team, a Big Audacious Meaning emerges that the organization can feel confident will resonate with everyone that the organization serves. That's something that everyone can get behind.