Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Business

Purpose or Purposes

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You have only one purpose in life.   Once you know that purpose, you are to align your life and make choices consistent with it so you are on your purpose, rather than off your purpose.  That’s the essential message of being on-purpose.

In business, and especially in the church community, many people write about their “purposes.”  Note the use of the plural form, a recent pop culture invention mostly due to Pastor Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life in which he tells people they have five purposes of Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Ministry, and Evangelism.  These are missions of the church, not purposes.  For all the good Pastor Warren’s book is doing, it is ultimately confusing people at the core of their being, but it is getting them engaged in life more profoundly.

You do not have many purposes in life.   You may have multiple visions and missions, but only one purpose.  You may have many reasons for doing something, but only one will to do it. (Read more about the subtle differences between purpose, vision, mission, and values by clicking on this sentence.)

Need further proof of the singular nature of purpose?   The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary doesn’t provide a plural for purpose.  Purpose is inherently singular.

For example, here is an excerpt from a devotional I read today, “God
will provide the necessary circumstances to accomplish His purposes in
your life.” This is incorrect because of the plural use of the word.  God has one purpose for your life, and, yes, he will arrange the circumstances.  To push the point just a bit further, let’s replace purposes with the word will.  This is a more accurate description of the usage.  God has one will, not a plurality of wills.

Reason and purpose are frequently interchanged.  Life purpose is a person’s one reason for being or raison d’etre.  Purpose in lieu of reason is an appropriate, but a less effective word choice.  Purpose is deeply about one’s intention or will.   I appreciate that one can have many reasons for doing something, but there is one intention.  To be otherwise is to be double-minded or confused.  That is the very challenge purpose clarifies for you.  You can’t have purposes or be on-purposes. The logic and semantics don’t support the concept of purpose – plural.

Avoid getting caught up in this sloppiness of use.  Strike the non-word purposes from your vocabulary. Purpose is a truly special and remarkably powerful word as applied to one’s life purpose.  Seek the singleness of strength of being of one mind, body, and spirit and you will be on-purpose.

Your comments are always invited.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

USA: The Off-Purpose Country

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Like many of my fellow US Citizens, I am very frustrated with the state of our "union."  Never before can I remember a President and a Congress having (and deserving) such low confidence ratings. 

Allow me to dip into the political realm for a moment not as a pundit, but as a strategist with an eye for personal and organizational development. 

The US is unraveling from within.  Political party polarization has made sport of our government.  Red and Blue are more like team colors with fan bases than a thoughtful citizenry with a sacred duty and honor to vigorously debate the issues and cast our votes.  The shrillness and empty talk on both sides have taken on an ugliness and unintelligible tone catering more to cheering crowds instead of elevating the electorate to be engaged in making a difference for the cause of freedom with responsibility.   We've entered a season of win-lose politics where power takes precedence over purpose.

We're off-purpose.  Let me tell you why.   

[Read more…] about USA: The Off-Purpose Country

On-Purpose® Radio Interview

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Listen for free to a 23 minute radio interview (MP3) with Kevin W. McCarthy by James Burkhardt on radio station WORL in Orlando.  James asks great questions regarding business matters for small and medium sized companies.  Join James and Kevin on Focus Orlando Radio Show as they talk about marketing, people, financing, target audiences, and business growth.  Learn how to do business on-purpose.

Recorded on May 10, 2008

Your Work View

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Today is Labor Day in the USA.  Ironically, it is a day when many of us have the day off from work and the kids are out of school.  According to Wikipedia, Labor Day began as "a street parade to exhibit to the public ‘the strength and esprit de
corps of the trade and labor organizations,’ followed by a festival for
the workers and their families."

Let’s take the occasion, however, to look at the very nature of our labor and its meaning.  The concept of work is vitally misunderstood in many corners of the economy and culture.

For those of us who view work as an expression of one’s calling and difference making, work conjures positive feelings and robust expression of who we are.  For many others the concept of work elicits harsh bondage and dependence on the whim of their boss.  Still, there are some who would wash away all work and settle for a life of recreation and parties.  So what view of work works?

[Read more…] about Your Work View

Business Purpose – Noble or Not?

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Ask the average person why a business exists (purpose) and the typical response is, "To make money or a profit."  That is a truthful, but incomplete and narrow view based solely on the economist’s perspective.  Economics is but one science or discipline of study touching business and touched by business.  Unfortunately, this popular viewpoint often casts business in a negative manner – seeing the glass half empty.  In fact, business is so much more.

Business is also an institution of society and plays a specific role of service, continuity, scale, and sustainability.  It is through the profit motive that prices actually fall, not rise, and standards of products and services rise.  Business people seek competitive advantage most often on these two fronts.  Who wins?  It is the buyer in the marketplace who wins.

Business is also a free enterprise phenomenon so one must also see it in context of government.  Absent a free market economy supported by a government, the role of business is owned by the ruling power, be it communism or monarchy.   I’m proud to be a capitalist because I understand that capitalism and a free society are interdependent. 

Very simply, a business is an integration of economic, social, and political realities to name but three of the core disciplines at work.

As a huge advocate of the nobility and
creativity of business, let’s embrace a robust understanding of
business rather than a one dimensional economic view only.  The On-Purpose Business perspective says a business exists to serve in both a social and economic role within the context of a government freeing individual pursuits with a system of checks and balances.

Here is a rather heady discussion from a You Tube video on the "nobility of business"
from the World Economic Forum. It is nearly an hour long and has a rich panel discussion.  Enjoy! 

Please feel free to comment.

 

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

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