Go Behind the Panel with judges from the Telstra Best of Business Awards for insights on how purpose and impact work together to help fuel long-term business success.
Every business starts from an idea. Often, it’s to solve a problem, fill a gap or help a community. Sometimes it comes from adversity, personal experience or deep curiosity. No matter where the story begins, many founders are driven by a purpose and desire to make a meaningful impact beyond their bottom line.
Revisiting your purpose regularly can help you unlock powerful ways to steer your business towards the impact you’re seeking.
The Telstra Best of Business Awards celebrates small and medium-sized businesses helping build Australia's economic, social and cultural prosperity. In this article, we share judges’ insights on the importance of purpose and how it relates to impact. It’s a theme that shines through in the stories of the most successful businesses.
The judges bring deep experience and insight from diverse industries and leadership backgrounds. They highlight how a clear sense of purpose that’s brought to life across business operations helps set high-performing businesses apart.
It helps you:
The judges observe that the clearer and more embedded a business’s purpose is, the more benefits it’s likely to create.
A strong sense of purpose can help leaders:
Purpose becomes a compass. It keeps your business grounded during uncertainty and helps others understand what you stand for.
So how do you move from purpose as a statement to purpose as something you practise every day? The judges share simple and powerful ways to help bring your purpose to life.
The day-to-day demands of running a business may pull you away from why you started out in the first place. Judges recommend checking in with your purpose regularly to make sure it’s still guiding your decisions.
Anna Goat is a Telstra Best of Business Awards State Judge and Business Director of Rise Project Consulting (Rise). She flags that many small businesses focus on essential and critical work. Their impact can have multiple dimensions.
It’s often the businesses having an impact at a very basic human level – like working in sewage treatment – that hold a rough beauty. We do these hard, often underacknowledged, jobs not for recognition but because we know it’s the right thing to do.
Anna Goat - Business Director, Rise Project Consulting (Rise)
It can be easy to lose sight of why you started your business. Reconnecting with your purpose and the impact you’re aiming for can help as your business evolves.
Anna highlights how “as small businesses, we need to stay relevant because we often don’t have the financial backing of bigger businesses; and it is our purpose that guides and focuses these adaptations.”
Stephanie Harvey, a Telstra Best of Business Awards National Judge and CEO at Community First Development, says many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses define success in terms of community and connection.
Stephanie shares how she regularly takes time to help keep her purpose top of mind.
I make time throughout the year to get out and about. I go to our community partners. I’m not there to talk, I’m there to listen.
Stephanie Harvey – CEO, Community First Development
“The definition of success includes how we lift a community, how we give back through family and community,” she says. She adds that this approach to purpose isn’t new. It’s simply more visible now.
Purpose isn’t something that lives in a slogan or pitch. The judges say it needs to be part of how your business actually works. That includes how you hire talent, where you buy from, and how you treat your team.
Wendy Lundgaard is a Telstra Best of Business Awards State Judge and CEO of workplace and behaviour change consultancy Win-Win Workplace Strategies. She says some of the strongest businesses make purpose a natural part of how they operate every day.
When people are really clear about purpose, it dictates the way they conduct their business. They make sure they have the right people around them. They run ethical processes. They operate as a values-driven business.
Wendy Lundgaard - CEO, Win-Win Workplace Strategies
Wendy also cites examples of leaders who help employees learn how to file taxes or invest in personal growth for their teams as ways they bring purpose to life in their business. These leaders do this not because they have to, but because it reflects who they are.
Some businesses show this by buying from particular suppliers, supporting local artists, or choosing partners across their supply chain that reflect their values and align to their purpose.
Stephanie Harvey highlights how purpose can also connect to how businesses look after the environment and choose materials. Embedding purpose can mean looking at your supply chain, the sourcing of the materials you use, and the impact you’re having on the environment.
Whenever we have to make decisions, we consider the impact on our entire ecosystem. We ask ourselves what is affected? Who is affected? And how long will our impact last?
Stephanie Harvey – CEO, Community First Development
Stephanie highlights how she thinks broadly about impact in her decision-making process:
Purpose matters most when it leads to real results.
The businesses that stand out to the judges are the ones that can show how their work makes a difference with evidence.
A distinguishing feature of those who are most successful is the impact they’re making in their communities.
Wendy Lundgaard - CEO, Win-Win Workplace Strategies
Impact often goes beyond traditional business measures. Stephanie describes how some Indigenous-led businesses use a “seven generations” view when making decisions. She also notes that these businesses create over $42.6 billion in social value each year. This value shows up in cultural renewal, stronger communities, and long-term wellbeing.
Stop telling me, show me. Give me examples. Give me data. Give me evidence.
Anna Goat - Business Director, Rise Project Consulting
Anna advises leaders to be specific about the outcomes, stories, or data that show purpose in action.
A clear purpose helps you make better decisions, support your team, and stay focused when things are hard. When that purpose creates real impact, it helps your business grow stronger over time.
“Most people don’t just want to succeed for success’ sake,” Wendy says. “The leaders we see doing well are those who want to create a legacy and impact that’s felt well beyond revenue or profit.”
The businesses that rise to the top of the Telstra Best of Business Awards don’t just talk about values. They live them, inside and out.
Celebrating the people, purpose and bold moves behind Australia’s best of business.
The Awards give small to medium-sized businesses a platform to celebrate their achievements and stories with peers. Plus, opportunities to learn from Australia's best business minds. Nominate your own or another remarkable business today.
