By David Batchelor
Each day for five or six days a week you come to work. Perhaps you come to work in your own business or maybe you are working for someone else. Either way, you are investing a lot of time and energy helping this business to succeed. Why should it?
I am really asking you if you know the purpose of your business: it’s reason for being? Do not confuse purpose with goals and business strategy. A purpose is long-lasting because it is never fully attainable.
It is something you can work towards reaching and still not get there. Knowing your purpose is not a frivolous issue because research shows that those businesses which last such as 3M, Sony and Hewlett-Packard each have a clearly define purpose that has not changed since the company was founded.
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.
Another is that it may open up opportunities you might not have Otherwise seen.
If the camera company had believed its purpose was to build better still cameras it might have missed expanding into movies. videos and photo CDs. Also, knowing the business’s reason for being gives staff a noble goal to work towards.
Discover the purpose of your business. If everyone in your company knows the purpose, they will be more focused, more motivated and more successful. And so will you.
‘Live life to the full!’ (Jn 10:10) – David
See Also:
- The Frugal Guide to Building Wealth
- Wealth is Only a Decision Away
- Your Beliefs Are Your Destiny
- Useful Tips to Get Your Finances On Track
- Take Control of Your Life
David Batchelor has written numerous articles focusing on Tips, Strategies, Tools and how-to’s for creating the Ultimate Home Based Business.