Beyond Profit: The Mindset Behind a Mission-Driven Leader

Today I wanted to unpack the question: Why does your organization exist?

The answer to that question might be obvious if you have a clear mission.

But why is that question important? 

Other people might think about the Roman Empire - but I ponder this question much more frequently: 

What is the purpose of a company?

Peter Drucker famously said: 

But is that it? Is it about making a profit? or is it about something else?

We've all encountered leaders who are doing things for selfish purposes or who are purely driven by money. 

And frankly, in some cases, that can be effective. 

For example: If you want to work at Goldman Sachs or a used-car dealership then that will work great. At least in the short term.

But in most places, leaders pretend like they are driven by higher motives when really they aren't. Everyone can see right through it. 

And it means that there is no guiding north star, no mission, no vision, no culture - only whatever makes another dollar that day, and people will sell out to make another dollar. 

They'll sell out their coworkers to get ahead, they'll bury the truth to get ahead, and they'll lie to customers to get ahead. Because money is the north star (even if they don’t want to admit it).

That's why this question is SO important. It anchors us to something more important than just making another dollar. 

{Disclaimer before we keep going} 

Obviously, money is important. I’m not arguing that, but money isn’t the key that unlocks our mission.

Back to: Why do we exist? 

That existential question is a great starting point to figure out what our place in the world is. 

and HOT TAKE: The answer is not to make money. 

Walt Disney once said: "We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”

He went on to say:

We think our work here at Disney is fantastic, and if we ignored the fact that this world’s currency of exchange is money and went about charging nothing for our work, not only would it devalue and disrespect the work we’ve done, and the blood, sweat, and tears that we put into that work, but we’d also have no way of surviving off our work. We would treat our passion of movie-making as a hobby because we’d have full-time jobs elsewhere which we work at trying to make money to feed ourselves and our families. If we didn’t make money, we wouldn’t be able to do what we love full-time. And that’s it, that’s all of it. We don’t do what we love to make money, nope, not at all. We just choose to not hide from the fact that money is a necessity for living.

Wow. 

Maybe for my team at Leadr, it’s as simple as: “We don’t develop Leaders to make money, we make money to develop Leaders.”

See, the question: Why we exist is something that's beyond a job, it's that thing that Walt described:

• It's waking up every day saying - wow, can you believe we get to do this? 

• It's being so wrapped up in your work you lose track of time. 

• It's loving the team, even when you don't always love each team member's uniqueness when it rubs you the wrong way.

I hope you experience those moments frequently and if you don’t, it might be time to reconsider your “why.”

I’ve shared this quote before but it’s too good not to close on it: 

“Our goal at Zappos is for our employees to think of their work not as a job or career, but as a calling” 

-Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. 

And btw, ☝️they sold shoes. 

Thanks for reading,

MT