The power of purpose gets lots of bandwidth on the talk show circuit, in book titles, with motivational bloggers on the web. Perhaps it’s because “why” is an easy question to pose. Anyone with young children certainly has heard it often. But answering “why” at the office is not so easy unless you’ve done some good hard thinking about why you show up for work everyday.

The season's first snow beckons -- "Get Outside!"

That brings up a story on the issue of answering  “why” a business exists:

A few years ago a group of us interviewed Sally Jewell, CEO of REI, as part of a leadership project. Sally recalled a management exercise in which groups of executives were asked the reason for REI’s existence.  The input was distilled into a purpose statement you’ll see REI share on the web: “To inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.” But Sally recalled that statement grew from a singular passion: To help people get outside and play. “Get Outside” is an anthem in REI’s advertising, store signage and even in an email I recently received:  “Get outdoors with REI …”

Sally’s words came back to me recently when a colleague in Oregon told me a story about a family road trip through the Northwest. The vacation took an abrupt turn after a stop at the REI flagship store in Seattle, a building as widely known for its spectacular architecture as for its offerings of gear and apparel. After a shopping binge, the family loaded up the car and returned to Oregon. They decided to go camping with their new purchases for the rest of their vacation.

Determining the “why” of your business need not be a tiring existential exercise. There’s power in distilling the answer into a simple memorable phrase. It becomes an anthem for why you do what you do — a simple idea that attaches itself to everyone you meet, every person who works on your behalf.

The “why” keeps working long after you’ve put it into words. That photo above? It was taken on our walk in the woods this week. We welcomed the first snow of season with an inclination to grab our gear and “get outside!”

… could be a blank sheet of paper. It can happen when you’re challenged with a dire business imperative but lack inspiration. Or perhaps you’re inspired to act by a charismatic chief executive but not sure where to bring all that energy back to the day’s work. Momentum comes to a screeching halt.

Going back to the drawing board, per se, is not such a bad idea. Get the right people in the room, ask the right questions, and see what happens.

Bento box - Haruo Iida via Flickr.com

I questioned the relevance of the nutrition claim. And considered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup – my favorite comfort foods – for lunch. My nostalgia for the brand was stronger than the potential benefits of a natural sodium booster.

What makes proof palatable? I vote for a variety of essential ingredients to make a compelling story. Let’s call it the Bento Box Effect.

Making a bento meal, imaginative food displays in sectioned boxes, goes back centuries in Japan.  National contests are held in the craft of creating a colorful box lunch in a container about the size of book. Deciding what colors, textures, flavors to feature must be a big part of the design challenge.

Kenya Hara, who designed the opening and closing ceremonies of the Nagano Winter Olympics, weighed in on the beauty behind bento box lunches.  While the Japanese are known for an aesthetic sense, Hara notes they also have an incapacity to see ugliness:

We have a special ability to focus fully on what’s right in front of our eyes. We tend to ignore what is not an integral part of our personal perspective.

We ignore that our cities are a chaotic mess, filled with ugly architecture and nasty signage. And so you have the situation where a Japanese worker will open a beautiful bento box in a stale conference room or on a horrendous, crowded sidewalk.

Each compartment of a bento box presents a different taste sensation. Collectively, the compartments add up to an alluring and satisfying diversion. A story with the right ingredients has the same appeal for routine business dialogues.

What if you packed a bento box of proof to enliven today’s conversations?  Here are three ingredients sure to bring a richer dimension to an otherwise mundane communication:

• A dose of humanity — Tell a story from the point of view of a real person who matters to your company’s success.

• Genuine differentiation — Share the truth about one thing you’re doing better than your closest competitors.

• Winning practices and principles — Your company is strong. Describe a company practice that makes you proud.

Too often we rely on statistics alone to support marketing and sales messages. Numbers make an impact but they’re difficult to digest quickly. Try packing a bento box of proof that’s real, true and strong. Add the points to your next presentation, conversation or collateral draft. That’s enough to make anyone pause right in the middle of their tuna sandwich.

Ha! Good luck, you may think. Well, with my antennae up for a plausible approach, I’m inspired by people who’ve “been there, done that” in this mission of creating the incredible shrinking story.

An executive from Levi Strauss once shared a parable at the national conference of Business for Social Responsibility, now known as BSR.  Still early in its development, BSR was struggling to define its itself. Though the organization had a singular focus on making the world a better place through sustainable business practices, the needs of its constituency ranged widely. The little guys didn’t necessarily have the same agenda as the big corporations. Hearing a parable about a king who persists in having his messenger cut his life’s story in half, over and over, until it fits on one page was a worthy lesson for the task before the membership. (Years later, it’s interesting to see that BSR references itself only by its acronym — that’s taking shrinking to the extreme!)

And then I found a soulmate in Josh Silverman, President of Skype. He shared his career path in the New York Times article, “Learning in Business by Following the Heart.” Silverman’s first  job on Capitol Hill taught him a lesson or two in leadership communication:

In Washington, no matter how complex the issue, you have to boil it down to one page. That’s an invaluable skill for a leader.

The process of distillation isn’t easy. I recall one CEO telling me to “cut it in half” after presenting a positioning statement that was already half the length of every previous articulation of the company’s value proposition.

Done.  Two sentences. Now, back to those three pages I mentioned earlier.