What's Your Purpose? (adapted from Purpose: The Starting Point for Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis)

The author of Purpose: The Starting Point for Great Companies has distilled and encapsulated so many intriguing thoughts into this book.  We’ll just scratch the surface of these thoughts in this Weekly Insight, but what little ground we cover here may cause you to ask, “What is my Purpose?”

I was being interviewed for a full-time teaching position at a university recently and at one point in the interview, one of the university’s Vice Presidents asked me this question:

“Keith, why do you believe God created you and put you on planet Earth?”

Now that’s a sobering question.  But it’s a valid question—for each of us—and for any business that God has created through us.  What is the Purpose?

The author suggests that Purpose is critical for all truly successful enterprises.  Of course there are numerous examples of companies where the overwhelming purpose of the leaders has been to make as much money as possible or to be recognized for their power.  But Purpose is bigger than ambition or greed.  Purpose is bigger than tactics (the “how”) and Purpose is bigger than strategy (the “means”).  Strategies cannot be an end in themselves.  An end is a reason—a Purpose.

A successful Purpose will “incorporate a deeply felt awareness of yourself, your circumstances, and your potential calling.  It calls upon everything that you are, everything you’ve experienced, and everything you believe.  Purpose is your moral DNA.  It’s what you believe without even having to think.”

The above is not a popular notion.  In fact, Gil Schwartz, chief of public relations at CBS, has this to say about a book that guts the importance of Purpose in human affairs—Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince:

Masquerading as a philosophical treatise in support of a strong senior executive, this book is actually a road map for ruthless narcissists—the kind that does very well because their primary concern at all times is Numero Uno.  Machiavelli discovered a central truth that leads to business success: Moral concerns have very little utility in the day-to-day conduct of successful management.  A firm grasp of his tenets creates a business etiquette that is at once cool, polite, thoughtful, strategic and brutal.

But moral concerns are imperative in business.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “business is divine activity.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Mr. Mourkogiannis believes that Purpose is the quality that CEOs most need in order to do their jobs well.  He goes on to say that Purpose—not money, not status—is what people want most from work.  Sure, they want compensation.  But even more than money they want their lives to mean something; they want their lives to have a reason.   

Define Your Purpose

And so, how would you answer the question that was posed to me?  “_________,

why do you believe God created you and put you on planet Earth?” 

Your Company’s Purpose

This question is for all the business owners who read these Weekly Insights:

“Why did God allow you to create and/or lead ______________ (your business)?” 

Another question for business leaders:

How well do you articulate your company’s Purpose with clarity and eloquence?  How do you make sure the message of Purpose reaches every employee and every critical outside constituency?   

A Message for the Masses

This message is meant for a multi-generational audience.  Someone from the Baby Boomer generation wrote: “My generation has spent (much time) enhancing our own employability—becoming increasingly skilled mercenaries interested in getting paid and promoted, changing firms or building new ones in the chase for ‘success.’  It hasn’t been very satisfying.  We’re disillusioned by pure material gain.” 

Purpose matters because it makes work meaningful and integrates it into your life; it enables you to feel pride in what you do and liberates you to do it better. 

What a blessing to grasp this concept of Purpose as a young man or young woman in the marketplace.  To understand the power and joy of “doing the right things for the right reasons.” 

“For what does it profit a man to ________________ and lose his own soul?” 

“But what does God require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” 

There is nothing wrong with striving for the mountain top and working hard to get there.  Just make sure you’re on the right mountain. 

Keith 

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