What is more, these purposes have talked about some contribution
or value the business was going to provide to the people
living in it’s community.
Sony, for example, has as its purpose to experience the
joy of advancing and applying technology for the benefit
of the public.
Similarly, Hewlett-Packard set out to make technical contributions
for the advancement and welfare of the community and 3M aims
to solve unsolved problems innovatively.
Mary Kay Cosmetics set its sights on giving unlimited opportunity
to women and Henry Ford strove to democratize the automobile.
Sam Walton built Wal-Mart to give ordinary folk the chance
to buy the same things as rich people.
Walt Disney was driven to make people happy. My own company,
works to help people be, do and have all they were created
to be, do and have. And Merck, the drug company, aspires
to preserve and improve human life.
So what drives your company? Why does your business exist?
If you do not already know your purpose, you must discover
it. I say discover because you do not create a purpose, it
exists within the company already. One way of finding your
business’s reason for being is to employ the quality
tool of asking “why” five times. For example, a
camera company may say that its purpose is to build good cameras.
Why? So people can take good photos.
Why do people want good photos? So they can take pictures
of family, friends, places and events that happened in the
past. And, why would they want to do that? To remember.
So the purpose of the camera company might be to make it
easy for people to capture those special moments.
One advantage of knowing your purpose, or put another way,
the value that you create for your customers, is that it helps
you to see your business from your customer’s point of
view. |
