Purpose as a Shared North Star
December 2025 | Economics of Mutuality Experts Series
A Conversation with Ruth Wilkinson
Across industries, leaders are feeling an intensifying tension: they must deliver short-term results while knowing that long-term resilience demands a fundamentally different way of operating. In a world shaped by environmental degradation, inequality, and eroding trust in institutions, it is increasingly clear that the systems driving our economy no longer serve the broader wellbeing of people or the planet.
“There is a sense of dissonance: the actions we are taking today are actively driving us towards a world we don’t want,” says Ruth Wilkinson, Strategic Lead for Business and Purpose Transformation at Mutual Value Labs.
This is the context in which the emerging ISO 37011, a governance standard for purpose-driven organizations, is taking shape. It offers new international guidance designed to establish shared understanding, shared language, and a shared north star for what it means to be a genuinely purpose-driven organization.
In this article, Ruth shares why this standard matters, how it came to be, and why purpose can help us align around what it will take to build a future we can all look forward to.
Why We Need a Purpose Standard
Our economic system has been built on flawed assumptions: that financial performance is the best proxy for wellbeing and that acting in self-interest is an acceptable norm for individuals, organizations, and even governments. These assumptions have created a world where, as Ruth explains, “the true costs of our goods and services are passed off onto others, including the planet, including future generations.”
The result is a systemic problem. Companies generate short-term financial success while contributing to long-term social and environmental decline. This is creating an economy that “assumes it creates wellbeing, but actually this is only for a very small number of people, for the short term.”
To shift this trajectory, Ruth argues, we need shared global guidance. A high level standard that provides context and oversight of all the many important initiatives, trends and certifications. “The ISO development is a movement to build global consensus around the future we are trying to navigate towards; what are the very high-level principles that we can hold to collectively shape a better future for everyone.”
Not a Certification, but a Guiding Light
Unlike B Corp or other ESG frameworks, the ISO Standard is not designed to certify organizations through assessment. Instead, it offers meta-level guidance: shared clarity about why businesses exist, what “purpose” truly means, and how governance must evolve to align daily decisions with long-term wellbeing.
As Ruth emphasizes, “this isn’t trying to replace things like B Corp. It's trying to set a higher-level set of guidance that anyone can utilize, entirely complementary to other frameworks and certifications.” This clarity matters because fragmented approaches to sustainability and purpose have often worked in isolation that fade when political or economic pressure rises, and worse – contradict each other.
What It Actually Means to Be a Purpose-Led Organization
According to Ruth, the draft ISO standard defines purpose-driven organizations through three core elements:
A clear organizational purpose – clarity on the specific value generation goals of the organization, in service of long-term wellbeing of all people and planet.
Parameters – ensuring organizations create value, without creating damage elsewhere: harming people, communities, or ecosystems.
A strategy and governance approach that delivers purpose within the parameters – because the real work lies not in statements, but in direction, oversight, accountability, and ownership.
This framework aims to shift the system away from organizations aiming for financial return as a sole outcome, toward creating an economy where financial return is the outcome of innovation in pursuit of long-term wellbeing for people and planet.
“Imagine if the world’s organizations were rewarded for focusing on innovation to solve problems that we face in pursuit of long-term wellbeing of people and the planet. We would solve them. We will solve them.”
A Personal Turning Point
Ruth first encountered the thinking behind the ISO at the Anthropy gathering three years ago, a moment she describes vividly.
Listening to Dr. Victoria Hurth, the technical author of the both the British Standard PAS808 and now the draft ISO standard 37011, she recalls: “She answered so many questions that were unanswered for me… It was the first time I’d ever really had clarity over the very thing that I was trying to change. Because I couldn’t understand how we’d got ourselves in this position in the first place. It was this realization that was essential for my understanding over what still stands in our way.”
That clarity became a catalyst. “I downloaded PAS 808” Ruth shares, “and I spent that Christmas reading it and re-reading it.”
Since then the movement to create an international standard for purpose-driven organizations has begun. Her commitment led her to join the UK mirror committee for the ISO development and integrate the framework deeply into her consulting work at Mutual Value Labs, shaping how organizations think, act, and lead.
Where Organizations Should Begin
While the standard is still at least a year from publication, Ruth is already applying its principles daily through her consulting work at Mutual Value Labs.
The next frontier, as she sees it, is driving shared language across the broader change-maker community so organizations receive coherent, aligned support.
This is where its power lies: in enabling leaders to rethink their worldview, reorient their organization, and contribute to the creation of a wellbeing economy for all.
Learn More and Take Action
You can read and use the BSI standard PAS 808 now, while the ISO is still in draft and not publicly available
You can join the ISO update community via the LinkedIn group here
You can read Purpose Beyond Profit, a new book co-authored by the ISO’s technical author, Dr. Victoria Hurth
If you’d like to explore how these principles could apply to your organization, reach out to Ruth by emailing hello@mutualvaluelabs.com
