The word gets used so often it stops meaning anything. Here’s what it actually means to Eric Cecava.
The Word Gets Misused
“Purpose” in leadership contexts usually means one of two things. Either it’s shorthand for a mission statement nobody reads, or it’s a way of saying that work should feel meaningful, which is true but not actionable. Neither version is what Eric Cecava means when he uses the word.
He means something more specific: that the people doing operational work can connect the decision they’re making right now to the reason the organization exists. Not in an abstract way. In a way that changes how they make the decision.
That’s a harder standard to meet. It requires that the organizational purpose actually be legible at the operational level, not just at the board level. And it requires that leaders spend time making the connection explicit, which most organizations skip.
Purpose as a Filter
The practical use of purpose in operations is as a filter for decisions that don’t have a clear right answer. When two options both seem defensible on financial grounds, or when a resource constraint forces a trade-off, the question “what are we actually here to do?” cuts through a lot of analysis.
At McLaren Port Huron, Eric Cecava and his team served a regional market where patients didn’t have many alternatives. A specialty service line that was marginally unprofitable still served a population that would otherwise drive 60 miles to Detroit for care. The financial model said one thing. The purpose said something else. Having a clear answer to the purpose question didn’t make those decisions easy. It made them honest.
Without that filter, organizations optimize for the metric that’s easiest to measure. That’s usually revenue or cost. Neither one is wrong. But neither one is sufficient to explain why an organization should exist.
What Changes When the Team Understands the Why
Eric Cecava noticed a consistent pattern across different operational contexts: teams that understood why a process existed were better at fixing it when something went wrong. Teams that only knew the steps were more likely to follow the process off a cliff.
This is not a soft observation. It has direct operational consequences. A nurse who understands why a particular handoff protocol exists will adapt it appropriately when a patient’s situation doesn’t fit the standard case. A nurse who only knows the steps will follow the steps, even when the steps produce the wrong outcome.
Building operational purpose into how an organization trains, communicates, and measures is one of the highest-impact things a leader can do. It’s also one of the slower ones. It doesn’t show up in a quarter’s results. It shows up in how the organization handles the situations nobody planned for.
Where It Makes the Difference
The clearest examples are crisis situations: a sudden capacity constraint, a staffing shortage, an unexpected regulatory event. Organizations with strong operational purpose respond faster and with less dysfunction than those without it, because people know what they’re optimizing for when the normal rules don’t apply.
Eric Cecava ran a system where the hospital, the skilled nursing facility, and the medical group all had different cultures and different primary metrics. Getting them to function as one organization under pressure required that each team understood what the larger system was trying to do. That understanding didn’t happen automatically. It had to be built deliberately, over time, through repetition and example.
“Operating with purpose” is what he calls that work. It’s not a slogan. It’s the operational discipline of making sure that the people doing the work know why the work matters and can use that knowledge when it counts.