Working on Purpose

I was thinking the other day about when I first graduated from college and began working in the family business. I am a lifelong student of business with a keen interest in how to drive growth and long-term success. From the very beginning I have dreamt of taking our business to even greater heights, which would be an amazing accomplishment based on how successful my parents have been in founding and establishing our company. Not just so I could reap the rewards and benefits for myself but so that we could build something together that everyone with a stake in the business could take pride in.

I remember back in those early days reading and thinking a lot about writing a Corporate Mission Statement. It was the hot management topic of the day in the business world and was being used to foster growth and ingenuity at a time when business and economic growth was practically guaranteed. The exuberance of the developing world economy and companies with newly defined corporate missions fueled a time of impressive growth and fostered the dreams of a young business grad looking to make his mark on his company and the greater marketplace. It was a dream that lived for over a decade and consumed too much of my time. It propelled me to seek and earn an MBA to add even more business acumen seeking to bring my value and worth forward in new and exciting ways.

Fast forward a few years and here we are in 2011. A lot of business fads have come and gone. So have a lot of businesses. It is a cruel world to own any kind of business these days but whether in times of great gains or great losses, great advances in technologies and efficiencies or great setbacks in ability to secure financing or credit one thing has remained the same and will long after I am gone. Human nature.

We all have deep rooted desires. Many are as different as each individual person, however when it comes to work we all have some basic needs: to be recognized and compensated for our efforts, to learn, to be challenged and to have a feeling that what we do matters. As a business owner I walk a fine line between working in the business versus working on the business. While there are many things I enjoy doing and can easily justify spending my entire day get involved in the minutiae of my business it is imperative for the long-term success of my business that I always have an eye on the future.

About a year ago I started working on a project that quickly grabbed my interest. How could we take our 300 plus year old company and revive and reinvigorate ourselves from the inside out? How do we use the successes of our past as a platform to catapult us to new heights that I have been dreaming about for 25 years? Even in a difficult economy! With a fair investment of time and a little money I have found some answers and we are just beginning to implement some of our findings. The tide has turned, the winds have changed and corporately, we are all uniting together around some common language and purposes.

I look forward to sharing specific ideas and results in upcoming posts but for now here are some of the questions we asked ourselves that I think are worthy for consideration by any individual or corporation aspiring to greater things. Why do we exist? What needs and desires drive us towards our intended outcomes? Who and what do we hope to become? What purpose we were created to fulfill that we can uniquely fill in a way that makes a difference for all of our consumers, customers and stakeholders?

Best wishes for some purposeful contemplation!