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To truly succeed, you need a clear purpose, and everyone in your organization must know it. Yet too often a quest for money and short-term success gets in the way. The dangerous practice of focusing on profits instead of purpose has long-lasting, negative ripple effects for your workplace.

 

In August of 2006, three executives at Comverse Technology Inc. failed to learn the lessons of the Enron scandal. They were charged with falsifying and manipulating data to increase their stock options. Also that year, Thomas Coughlin, the former number two executive at Wal-Mart, was sentenced to 27 months of home confinement for felony theft and wire fraud.

 

These high profile people had so much going for them—including plenty of income—but they suffered loss and disgrace because they focused more on money than maintaining a clear, moral purpose.

 

Straying away from a clear purpose happens everywhere. Think about places where managers take credit for ideas generated by co-workers. It’s not long before people stop sharing ideas with them. Or, if we take shortcuts to get ahead, it’s very easy for our reputation to get tarnished. In general, we don’t like doing business with people or organizations when they take shortcuts on integrity.

 

So how does purpose relate to long-term success?

 

Nikos Mourkogiannis, author of the book Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies, outlines four leadership ideals that inspire companies to long-term success. Mourkogiannis calls these ideals “moral purposes.” He writes “Most stories about wealth creation and success are far easier to understand when we recognize the part that moral purpose played.”

 

The four areas of moral purpose as identified by Mourkogiannis are:

 

Altruism: Care for the staff / Care for the customers

Heroism: The drive to win and to achieve

Excellence: The pursuit of quality

Discovery: An attempt to approach each situation freshly

 

Mourkogiannis writes,

“When no clear moral purpose is articulated, a company acquires a de facto amoral purpose: Expediency. It then becomes the kind of company that professes, ‘We are here only to make money.’ This can be very successful in the short run, but companies without a clear moral purpose cannot endure; they do not survive the changes they will face in their markets or business environments.

 

It may seem counterintuitive, but when success for the sake of success becomes our focus, the chances of long-term success are greatly reduced.

 

A friend of mine, Julie Larson, recently founded an Entrepeneur Think-Tank Co-op in Meridian, Idaho. To become a member, one condition is that business owners subscribe to the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success as outlined in Bob Burg’s best-selling book, The Go-Giver.

 

When asked to sum up the Five Laws, Larson replied “business isn’t about you ... it’s about serving other people. When you focus on other people, those people take care of your business. It’s like what Zig Ziglar says. When we’re able to help other people achieve their goals and dreams, it enables us to be able to achieve our goals and dreams.”

 

This principle is usually thought of in terms of serving customers, but Larson says it also has internal application. In other words, for managers and leaders to achieve their long-term goals they need to find out what their team members’ strengths and passions are and capitalize on them. “It’s possible get by without doing that,” she says, “but you won’t ever soar and achieve stratospheric success.”

 

So what’s your company’s purpose? Is it clear? Is it communicated? Is your organization committed to it?

 

When you sit down to clarify your purpose, be specific. It’s gotten to the point where I have to stifle my tendency to shake my head when I see a company’s purpose is to “maximize shareholder value.” First, it’s cliché. Second, it’s non-specific. Third, it focuses on money. And fourth, it focuses only one of the many stakeholders involved in the organization.

 

Your driving purpose should address the whole picture. As W. Edwards Deming said, “The purpose for any organization is for everyone to gain—stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment—over the long term.”

 

Obviously, organizations must be profitable or they won’t survive. But many business owners have discovered that profits are something that follows them if they simply operate with good business practices and a sound, moral purpose.

 

What Julie Larson is doing in Idaho is setting up a co-op in which business owners must have a clear, moral purpose in order to join. With that focus, she’s creating the conditions for them to have better long-term success.

 

Have you identified your clear, moral purpose? It may not result in flash, glitter, and fame, but if you desire long-term success, your adherence to a clear, moral purpose will be the path that takes you there.