The DNA of Purpose™ Revealed

The pace of change has stopped being a headline and started being a fact of life.

In Shanghai, two AI systems recently competed against senior doctors on a complex stomach case. The doctors took thirteen minutes. Both AIs produced diagnoses in under two seconds, and the leading system matched the experts’ answer.

In China’s factories, the shift is just as stark. In 2024, China installed around 295,000 industrial robots in a single year, more than all other markets combined. At some automated ports, AI systems now handle logistics in ways that reduce labour requirements by up to sixty per cent.

Trust is wobbling too. Deepfake fraud in North America jumped by more than 1,700 per cent in a single year. Several commercial tools can now clone a convincing voice with about thirty seconds of recorded audio.

Even education is reshaping itself. Australia’s higher-education regulator has warned that detecting AI-assisted cheating in many digital assessments is now “all but impossible,” pushing universities towards oral exams and supervised in-person tests.

These aren’t predictions. This is the new baseline. And here’s the part leaders feel but rarely name:

Acceleration doesn’t just change technology. It breaks meaning.

When an AI diagnoses faster than a specialist, the link between time and expertise snaps. When factories reorganise in months, the link between work and stability snaps. When identity can be faked in seconds, the link between trust and reality snaps. When AI can help pass your exam, the link between effort and proof snaps.

The old maps can’t handle this.

They were built for a slower world, one where change moved gently, in straight lines, and meaning could be pinned to a plan, a role, or a fixed direction.

But acceleration doesn’t do straight lines. It spirals. The future arrives before you’ve finished the story you use to explain it. And all the old ideas about purpose—as a direction, a journey, a hero’s quest—depend on that story holding still.

Stewart Brand’s Pace Layer Model explains the deeper tension. Societies are made of layers that move at different speeds. Fast layers like fashion, commerce and technology shift quickly. Slow layers like governance, culture and nature move carefully. The fast layers innovate. The slow layers stabilise.

When the fast outruns the slow, stress builds. Change arrives faster than people, institutions and stories can absorb it.

When the world won’t stay still, purpose can’t stay still either.

It can’t be a slogan or a north-facing sentence. It has to be something living. Something that adapts, aligns and keeps you coherent while everything else moves.

Nature’s masterclass in adaptive purpose

Luckily, nature has been running a masterclass in adaptive purpose since the beginning of life. DNA, the biological code that stores information, responds to the environment and passes adaptation forward, only knows how to do one thing: survive by adapting.

And the more you look at it, the more you realise purpose follows the same rules. DNA and purpose share some striking similarities.

Both are inherited. DNA gives every organism a starting point, a tiny archive of what came before. But it isn’t a script. It’s a foundation. Purpose behaves the same way. We inherit natural gifts, alongside stories, values and expectations, then spend our lives updating them into something that fits the world we’re moving through.

Both are unique. No two strands of DNA are identical. Purpose has that same individuality. It reflects what we’ve lived, survived, loved, and what we’re determined never to repeat.

Both evolve with the environment. DNA is built for adaptation. Purpose works on the same principle. When life accelerates, a rigid purpose becomes fragile. A living purpose adjusts.

Both carry more than one function at once. DNA doesn’t express every gene all the time. It activates what the organism needs in the moment. We’re no different. We carry multiple purposes inside us: creativity, care, contribution, ambition. Different ones switch on as life changes gear.

Both create a legacy. DNA is a long story told across generations. Purpose is too. Every decision, every act of courage or compassion leaves a trace. Legacy isn’t something we leave behind. It’s something we build in motion.

DNA is the architecture of life. Purpose is the architecture of meaning.

Both inherited. Both unique. Both adaptive. Both multi-layered. Both leaving a trace.

That’s why purpose can’t be a slogan. That’s not how living systems work. Purpose is a dynamic code, something that adapts, aligns and keeps us coherent while the world moves at the speed of change.

Why old frameworks are breaking down

Most purpose frameworks weren’t built for this moment. They emerged in stable times and assume stable ground. They position purpose as something to discover, claim, or arrive at. A destination at the end of a long search. A fixed north star to guide you home.

They served us well when the world moved slowly. But they’ve become a liability.

When the ground itself is moving, destination thinking becomes dangerous. Waiting for purpose clarity in exponential times means you’re always working with outdated coordinates. By the time you’ve articulated your direction, the landscape has shifted.

We need a framework designed for motion. Not something that assumes stability, but something that works because of instability. Not a map, but an anchor.

So how do we apply this? How does the architecture of adaptive purpose become something we actually use?

The answer is in the structure itself. DNA has two strands and a bridge that holds them together. Purpose works the same way.

Decision. Nexus. Alignment. D.N.A.

These three elements don’t operate in sequence. They inform each other continuously, creating a living system that is alive enough to adapt and stable enough to guide real action.

Decision: The anchor in the storm

Purpose is not destiny. We don’t wait for it. We don’t discover it in a flash of lightning or stumble upon it at the end of a long search.

Purpose is a decision. A daily decision to show up. To claim our worth. To be responsible and accountable for the creation of meaning.

This is the first shift. From passive to active. From waiting to choosing.

Think about COVID. In March 2020, every organisation’s north star became irrelevant overnight. Strategic plans, carefully constructed over months, became useless. You couldn’t see past the storm. No one could.

What mattered wasn’t the direction you’d been heading. What mattered was the choice you made in that moment.

How can we help? How can we heal? How can we build hope?

Some organisations chose to protect their people. Some chose to serve their communities. Some chose to innovate under impossible constraints. The choice itself generated meaning. Not the five-year plan. Not the vision statement. The decision to act, today, with what you had.

This is true in any crisis situation. But it’s also true in the ordinary chaos of daily work.

How am I showing up with my tools, my talent and my time? Do I add more value than I take? That simple question, asked daily, is a decision that generates meaning. Not someday. Today.

And here’s what makes the discovery myth so dangerous right now: it positions you as a seeker rather than an author. In stable times, that might be romantic. In exponential times, it’s paralysing.

While you wait for clarity, the organisation moves. The market moves. Your people move. And you’re left trying to lead with coordinates that expired months ago.

Every leader makes thousands of decisions each week. Most are reactive. Some are strategic. A few are defining. The strand of decision is the through-line that helps you recognise those defining moments. It is the anchor for values, standards and the kind of impact you want to create today, not someday.

Purpose as decision means we stop outsourcing our meaning to the future and start owning it in the present.

Nexus: Where meaning actually lives

Purpose is not a solo mission. It is not a hero’s journey where one brave soul ventures out alone and returns transformed. That story is a myth, and a dangerous one. It suggests meaning lives somewhere out there, waiting to be conquered.

It doesn’t. Purpose can only exist in connection. Connection to who we are. Connection to who we are with. Connection to where we are.

Purpose requires at least two people and a location. Anything you’ve ever built that carried real meaning came from a nexus, the moment where people meet, context matters and something larger than either individual begins to form.

A new business taking shape between a founder and a client over a kitchen table. A leader and a team turning uncertainty into a plan in a boardroom still scented with markers and late nights. A mother and a child learning trust on the living-room floor.

And the location doesn’t need four walls. It might be a Facebook group that becomes a lifeline, a WhatsApp thread that turns into a support network, or a shared Google Doc where strangers turn an idea into a movement.

Whether you’re a philanthropist working with a charity, a parent supporting a child, or a community regrouping in crisis, meaning lives in that intersection, the place where people choose one another and create something that didn’t exist the day before.

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the American south. Homes were destroyed. Communities were shattered. The future looked impossible.

By mid-2025, more than 300 volunteers from groups like The Home Depot Foundation and local charities had gathered in Asheville, North Carolina. They installed kitchens. They renovated therapy rooms. They built walls for future houses. Small acts. Rebuilding lives.

Place under pressure. Community mobilisation. Shared commitment. That’s where meaning lives. Not in the abstract vision of what Asheville could become someday. In the concrete reality of who showed up, where they gathered, and what they built together today.

This is what nexus means. It’s where purpose becomes relational rather than personal. It’s where teams build trust, where cultures form, where leaders translate intention into belonging. In a world of accelerating tools and thinning attention, connection is the resource that keeps people aligned.

What matters before tomorrow is what happens today. That is where meaning lives. Purpose without connection becomes performance. Purpose with connection becomes coherence and that is the kind of purpose that motivates human beings.

This is the second shift. From isolation to integration. From individual quest to collective practice.

Alignment: The body knows first

Purpose is not a strategy. It is not a statement on a wall or a sentence in an annual report. It is not a thought you think or a goal you set.

Purpose is embodied. It is a feeling. An emotion. An inner guidance. An intuition that tells you when something is right and when something is off.

You know alignment when you feel it. The moment your actions match your intention. The moment your decisions sit comfortably inside your values. The moment your people feel the rhythm between the story you tell and the culture you build.

And you know misalignment just as quickly. The tightness in your chest when you say yes but mean no. The fatigue that comes from performing a version of yourself that doesn’t fit. The slow erosion of trust when words and actions drift apart.

Research confirms what leaders already know in their bodies: coherence is fundamental to meaning making. It’s what enables us to construct, interpret, and find significance in our experiences. Coherence isn’t just comprehension. It’s the sense of order, of connectedness, of things holding together in a way that makes sense.

Without coherence, information stays fragmented. Events feel random. Decisions feel disconnected from values. But when coherence is present, when alignment is felt, everything shifts. Friction reduces. Clarity increases. Purpose moves from words into action.

This is why alignment is the conductor. It tells you where you are. And it orchestrates how you move.

Think about the leader who articulates a clear vision but never asks what their team is actually experiencing. The words might be beautiful. The intention might be genuine. But without coherence between what’s said and what’s felt, it becomes performance. People sense the gap. Trust erodes. Meaning dissipates.

Alignment is the bridge. It turns purpose from an idea into a living practice. And it operates through the body, not the mind. You feel it before you can explain it.

This is the third shift. From cognitive to somatic. From thinking about purpose to feeling it in your body.

A living system, not a linear path

Together, these three elements form a system that is alive enough to adapt and stable enough to guide real action. Decision. Nexus. Alignment. Working continuously, informing each other, creating coherence in motion.

But DNA is not only about what is received. It is also about what is transmitted.

Every decision, every connection, every act of alignment shapes the culture others will inherit. Legacy is not a far-off idea. It is the ripple effect of daily practice.

Legacy is what people feel after you leave the room. It is the standards that continue without you. It is the sense of meaning that outlives your presence.

In a world moving this fast, legacy is no longer a retirement chapter. It is an everyday practice. A form of stewardship. A way of keeping progress human.

From theory to practice

This isn’t theory. It’s a practice leaders are already applying in real time.

In how they make decisions under uncertainty without waiting for perfect information. In how they build team coherence despite constant structural change. In how they recognise misalignment before it becomes crisis, trusting the somatic signal that something is off before the data confirms it.

So what is the The DNA of Purpose™?

It is a living system made of what we inherit, what we choose, how we connect and what we pass on. It adapts with pressure. It moves with speed. It sharpens decision making. It deepens trust. It creates coherence in chaos.

Most importantly, it returns purpose to what it has always been. Not a destination. A practice. A way of staying fully human while the world accelerates.

Purpose in motion. Meaning as momentum. Coherence over control.

When leaders learn to work with this system, something powerful happens. They stop trying to outrun the pace and start shaping it. And in that shift, purpose becomes what nature intended.

A force for adaptation. A source of clarity. A way of passing on something stronger than what we inherited.

Keep Meaing In Motion,

Rebecca