"When the dreams don't scare you, then your dreams are too small.” Richard Branson.
My very first senior leadership assignment was to run a packaging company working for an absentee owner, who we will call Steve. Steve visited the offices each month to check in on his favorite people, review the financial results of the prior month, and to ensure we were on track to achieve our financial objectives for the quarter and year.
Steve was fond of asking “What is our purpose?” He expected our response to be: “to make money”. He especially wanted all of us to respond in unison with that one answer.
As a new General Manager at the time, I was unclear about the importance of cultural issues such as core values, or core purpose, but something inside of me told me he was wrong. Even as a young leader, I felt that this would be a fatal flaw for the company. Thankfully I left shortly after for an executive leadership role in a company whose values I was more closely aligned with.
The idea that ‘making money’ as the prime goal or purpose in and of itself is good and worth pursuing has been proven to be humanity’s downfall since Biblical times. (“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” 1 Timothy 6:10 ESV.)
The business of scaling a company is no different. If making money is the only purpose a company has to exist, there will be great difficulties in scaling, and the business will not be sustainable long term.
Purpose has been an important concept companies have focused on in recent years, but, once defined, it has typically remained on the periphery of the activities of the business, lying dormant in most companies.
Not only is company purpose a critically important topic for leaders to understand, develop, and utilize in driving team performance, alignment, employee engagement, and retention, it is now moving ever closer to the center of strategy. Purpose is no longer just a foundation stone or integral part of the DNA your company. Today, purpose is becoming central to strategy.
