Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

kwmccarthy

Purpose Redeems the Past, Part 1

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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

Do you feel like you’ve wasted away so much of your life that you’re now living with regrets?  Where have the days gone?  When did I detour from the dreams and designs of my life and get in a rut?  Have I become a person as Thoreau described – one who is living a life of “quiet desperation”?  Fear and doubt cloud judgment, belief, and confidence. 

Take heart!  Your purpose is an antidote that redeems the past, inspires the present, and directs your future.  What once appeared as a waste of days transforms into a season of preparation.   There’s a full harvest of past life and work lessons that are now readied for gathering.  In due season you plant seeds that bear fruit in the future born from the lessons of the past.

Purpose provides boldness and clarity.   Deliverance from past transgressions may be too hard for you to imagine.  Yet, time and again, miraculous turnarounds begin when the simple act of articulating your purpose takes place.

Gordie Allen, CEO of Leads Plus, Inc., of Killarney, Florida had three brothers scattered across the US.  Since their parents had died the sons drifted apart and seldom spoke to each other.  Gordie attended an On-Purpose® Person workshop in 1994.  There he clarified his purpose and felt compelled to reconnect with his brothers. He devised a simple strategy.  Each Tuesday he would contact one of his brothers in order of birth.  So the first Tuesday he would contact his oldest brother, the second Tuesday his second oldest and so on.  Years would pass.  When Winston, his second oldest brother, died suddenly of a heart attack, Gordie was the only family member who could give a meaningful eulogy because through those years he had followed the routine.  Since the funeral the three remaining brothers have grown closer.

Business Strategy > Corporate Culture > Branding

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Let’s connect the dots today on three aspects of your business as mentioned in the title of this posting.  Over the years, I’ve been amazed at how compartmental I find these "functional areas" are in most businesses.  Let’s break the code on the "functional areas" and put it in terms of people.

  • Business Strategy is code for "Senior Management / Shareholders."
  • Corporate Culture is code for "People" inside the business or "Administration, Operations, and Sales."
  • Branding is code for "Customers" with experience with the company’s service and products. 

Senior Management is responsible for writing business strategy plus creating and supporting a corporate culture to execute the strategy.  In turn, the customer experience is a direct result of the output of the corporate culture.  Alignment of all three "functions" isn’t simply a matter of putting together gears in a wheel.  The physical stuff needs to happen for sure, but that’s the easy part in reality.

Business is all about the people.  The true challenge is getting the people aligned, communicating, similarly motivated, and prepared to perform their jobs with excellence.  Unfortunately, I’ve watched a "Fake it ’til you make it" approach of branding ourselves into the appearance of alignment.  Marketing is asked to fix a world of sins within the company by portraying the company as something it isn’t able to deliver.   This short-lived approach can actually produce results and fool the customers and team into believing they’re something they aren’t – successful.

Eventually, the hypocrisy emerges.  High integrity people realize the problem and attempt to fix it in their functional area of authority.  Unfortunately, the addiction to the quick fix has set in and so begins the battle between the long term thinkers and the short term performers. 

Who wins?  Nobody wins because the house is divided. 

Whose fault is it?  Senior management is ultimately to blame because they set the corporate culture in motion, they have the authority to fund and fix the necessary changes to bring integrity to the system.  This alignment pays dividends and makes the flywheel of success spin effortlessly and profitably.  If management hasn’t done their job then the entire system underperforms.

Sadly, the battle is most often won by the short term, numbers people, who milk every penny out of the system that steadily kills the golden goose. A subtle, but significant series of departure begins.   The people with true integrity battle within their functional area for doing right.  Dependency on short term cash flow builds to such a degree that the situations become so desperate that the "only option" is the short term fix.  In time, the people taking the high integrity approach depart frustrated because they’re unwilling to continually make and fail to keep promises to co-workers and customers.  As the people of low character "win," the company grows disreputable over time and falters.  Like rats on a ship who ate away at the very rigging that holds it together, the rats jump ship in droves to work their "magic" somewhere else.

So what’s the solution?

[Read more…] about Business Strategy > Corporate Culture > Branding

Purpose Causes You to Want to Make a Difference

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There are a variety of opinions about life and purpose.  Let me assure
you: You have a purpose!  You were born with it.  It is your undeniable
spiritual DNA.  Even if you don’t think you have a purpose – you do.
Designed into your life is your purpose.  Life is meaningful… your life
is meaningful and is making a difference.

You have a reason for being here.  Your unique contribution is needed
every day and in every way. You may never know the difference you
make.  You fit into the Grand Design.  Purpose is indifferent to
circumstances because in any situation your Purpose is at play and is
needed.  That means that you are important in a significant way and you
belong on this Planet.  You are making a difference with your life.

Our culture is one of immediate gratification; but that’s not the way
real life typically works.  Not necessarily knowing the difference we
make is a bit of a raw deal, isn’t it?  Here we are doing these good
deeds on the job and in life, and we don’t get noticed and recognized.
But as mothers have reminded us for centuries, “A job well done is its
own reward.”

[Read more…] about Purpose Causes You to Want to Make a Difference

The Sling Shot and The Goal Met

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My earlier post told of catching up with Glenn at Daytona Beach.  As Paul Harvey would say, “And now the rest of the story.”

It was just about this spot where Glenn took my photo with the rainbow in my hand.  The other end of the rainbow (in the middle of the shot).  That’s not why this photo matters, however.

Look to the right on the photo and you’ll see two red and white “cranes” protruding into the air with a small black dot suspended in mid-air between them.  That, my friends, is The Sling Shot.

Glenn said to me, “One time in my life, I would like to do something like that before I die.”  Oh my gosh, that’s all I needed to hear.  “Let’s do it then, Glenn,” I said.  It is like the movie, The Bucket List, grab opportunities when you can.  And so on June 24, 2008 around 7:30 PM, Glenn scratched one item off of his “Bucket List.”  What a privilege to be able to participate in such a simple request.

What about you?  Do you have a bucket list – a list of things you would like to do, see, achieve before you die?  Who do you know that has a dream that you can contribute to making it happen?  Seize the moment and give it your best shot!

On the continuation of this blog, check out our shot in the air.

Rainbow Magic & On-Purpose Pals

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June 24th I invested the afternoon catching up with my friend Glenn Hettinger from Ponte Vedra, FL.  I’ve known Glenn for twenty-five years and we’ve always had an honest and engaging friendship bouncing ideas, family matters, and business ideas off of one another.

Daytona Beach has proven to be a great mid-point for us to rendezvous about once a year.  While we were walking the beach a rainbow appeared so Glenn snapped this picture of me holding it.  I thought it was a fun shot.

Who in your life are you missing?
Who speaks candidly into your spirit?
Who marks the years with you?

Call, write, or email whoever came to your mind as I was asking these questions.  They haven’t heard from you in a while and now is the perfect time to set up a time to invest some time together.

The Purpose of Business

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Ask the average person why a business exists and they will tell you "to make a profit."  Ask the typical business person about the purpose of a business organization and my non-scientific surveys at my speaking engagements tell me just over half the people in the room will say the same as the general public.  But are they right?

Yes and no, mostly no!  In the pure terms of the science of economics, yes, the purpose of business is to make a profit.  This narrow, limiting view of business is one dimensional and ignores the essential role business plays in society.  It is much like saying the reason teams play baseball is to obtain the highest score.  It is a truthful statement, but a woefully inadequate explanation.  It misses the larger context of relationships, play, exercise, learning, and self-understanding.  There is so much more to business than simply making a profit. 

Business is a political, social, economic entity essential to the progress of a society.  A society with a thriving business community is one of higher living standards across the population.  If a few are being enriched at the expense of others, then the living standards of the society are relatively diminished, e.g. see dictatorships and the communist system.   The great industrialist Henry Ford understood this as he paid the highest of wages in his day so Ford Motor Company workers could afford to drive what they built. 

The role of business in society is more than pure economics.  The profit motive enables the creation of wealth and the lowering of costs.  Any salesperson will tell you a lower price is a significant advantage to making the sale.  Business is actually in the business of lowering costs to society and raising the benefits and standards of living.  Business improves living conditions because goods and services become more affordable for more people.

For example, the computing power of my Apple MacBook Pro sitting on my lap as I type this puts at my fingertips more capacity than NASA had to launch the Apollo rockets that went to the moon and back.  Their cost was in the hundreds of millions of dollars and their equipment occupied rooms that were supported by massive cooling systems.  My laptop cost under $2,500 and weighs less than seven pounds and merely warms my thighs. 

Business lowers the costs of medicines, durable goods, technologies, arts, services, utilities, food, and so forth because businesses seek a pricing advantage over their competitors.  Businesses also provide jobs, places of lifelong learning, creative expression to ideas, and service to mankind.  The confluence of all these elements is riddled with risk and complexity.  It isn’t easy to succeed in business.  The failure rate of businesses is ample evidence.

For all the good business does, there are still a few bad apples (not the computers) that spoil it for the rest of us who are making a difference.  So what is the purpose of a business organization?  "To make a profit,"
is the naive, yet most popular response.  The correct answer: business
exists to serve.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

 

Making A Difference?

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“I wish I could believe that one person could make a difference.”
Tracey Ullman
Comedic Actress

“If you feel rooted in your home and family, if you’re active in your community, there’s nothing more empowering. The best way to make a difference in the world is to start by making a difference in your own life.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Comedic Actress

“One person can make a difference. In fact, it’s not only possible for one person to make a difference, it’s essential that one person makes a difference. And believe it or not, that person is you.”

Robert A. “Bob” Riley
66th Governor of Alabama