The Purpose of a Business

All companies and organizations, for or non-profit, public or private, are created for a purpose; be it to improve people's lives, fulfill a need, dominate a segment, improve on existing products, help humanity, etc.

In the case of businesses, their founders, owners or leaders develop products or services with a business purpose in mind, an ultimate goal and reason for being usually found in their mission statement.  Business strategies are ideally anchored on this ultimate purpose. Employees alike join these companies, attracted to the company's business purposes in addition to their personal and professional goals.

Unless you live under a rock, you must have heard about Toyota's problems and Mr. Toyoda admitting that the company, the epitome of efficiency,  had focused too much on expansion and ended up losing its direction. Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, similarly stated that the coffee chain had grown too big and, therefore, also deviated from its original mission.  It may sound like an excuse, but, there is certainly a lot of truth in their statements. No company can succeed if their strategy is not guided by their main business purpose.

Nikos Mourkogiannis, an strategic consultant to the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Alcatel and Braun and an authority on strategic leadership, speaks of 4 types of business purposes that drive most companies.

Discovery:  Here companies focus on idea creation, innovation, discovery, newness and setting new directions e.g. IBM, Apple, Google.

Excellence:  These are enterprise that strive for excellence and uniqueness, seeking to be at the top and obtain adoration and following e.g. The Economist, BMW.

Altruism:  Here the emphasis is on service, altruism, improving quality of  life and relationships e.g. Pfizer, The Body Shop, Federal Express.

Results:  Here companies fight to be heroes, obtain results, and totally dominate their segment e.g. Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Ford.


Think for a minute:  Who do you work for and what purpose drives your organization?
Another key question here:  Are YOUR personal values in line with those of your organization?

Motivation 3.0

I sometimes forget that the subject of this blog is career crisis and may occasionally drift a bit.  In my last 2 posts,  I touched on how the Costa Rican economy is becoming much more competitive and the issue of employee motivation and retention.  One of the underlying threads here is the importance of what companies do to motivate staff, increase employee satisfaction and, as a result, boost productivity and business results.


Your questioning and doubting your place in your current company may be rooted in you being the object of the wrong kind of motivation.  In light of the recent economy downturn and changes the world is going through, Daniel Pink describes a new theory of motivation 3.0 taking root among renown multinationals.  It  includes 3 key ingredients:  Autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy:   Employees should be encouraged and challenged to work flexibly, engage in individual projects of their liking and contribute beyond their call of duty or what is written in their job description.  This may imply changes in work schedules, sitting arrangements and involvement in task forces or committees all with the purposes of stimulating participation.


Mastery:  Companies that correctly spot, nurture and nourish their staff strengths motivate them to create bigger and better things.  The phrase "train like crazy" is thrown around very often with training programs, rarely hitting the spot and delivered in a cookie cutter, one size fits all manner.  What best motivator than a company caring about the employees' personal and professional growth?

Purpose:  The company does not exist in a vacuum.  Churning out widgets or generating gross profits alone may not be motivating or purposeful enough in today's work environment.  The community now has plenty of choices and communication weapons to favor companies that serve a higher and common  purpose, be it improving and saving lives, helping the environment or any good cause you can think of.

Never before had companies and their staff been under such pressure and faced with such opportunity to consider the importance of the human capital in business. 

 

Is Your Employer Motivating You the Right Way?

"Your salary is your motivation," we were told by our branch manager after a great number of employees complained about the company not doing enough to motivate staff. This was at an education services provider long ago. I remember a pretty upset colleague replying that a salary is the minimum and actually the least required form of "employee motivation."

The manager was partly right, though, as money is one, just one, of the sources of motivation for employees.  Very logical indeed:  You work and you get paid, unless you work voluntarily.  He was also VERY wrong as well simply because not everybody is motivated by financial rewards alone. 

The business world has moved from a purely manufacturing and production driven business model to a more intelligent content and service driven one and so have the needs of employees from a motivation standpoint.  The carrot and stick style of the industrial area is a simplistic view of employee motivation.  Fast forward to now and enter equal opportunity, social networking, CSR, the environment, etc. all having a great impact and why we work.

Ask yourself:
- Is my company environmentally friendly?
- Are we a socially responsible firm?
- What is the company doing to give back to the community around it?

- Does the company internally encourage team work and a sense of family and community?
- Am I being given the opportunity to be creative?
- How much control do I have over my work schedule?
- How's my company contributing to my personal and professional growth?
- Do we all have equal opportunities to be promoted and rewarded?
- Do I have a say in company matters?
- Does the company care about me as an individual?

- How does the company celebrate achievement?
- How does the company deal with underachievement and bad performance?
- How has the company dealt with the economic downturn in terms of staff relations?

A lot of stuff to digest indeed, but a glimpse at other factors, other than compensation, that influence employee motivation.

In my next installment, motivation 3.0.

Change in Motion

On a recently visit to Costa Rica, I noticed that the local business scene has undergone radical changes. Changes that have a great impact on the working professional as well.

More and more multinationals are opening shop in the country, creating very high demand for educated bilingual and highly qualified professionals.  The quality of costumer service evolved from the take-it-or-leave treatment given especially at government entities (banks, hospitals, etc.)  to a costumer is king type of mentally rarely seen before.  It was nice to get quick friendly efficient service at a state bank (unbelievable!), a humble bank physically a stone's throw away from giants like HSBC and Citibank.   I remember being told off by a moody clerk at a state bank once many years ago for not speaking loudly enough. Without a doubt, competition is the biggest incentive for improvement.
 
Slowly, but surely, more government run services like telecommunications are due to become open to private providers; a slow death for the bureaucrats that kept the golden goose in a cage, but a blessing to the consumer.  There is even talk of decentralizing the health care system, state owed, managed and supported by taxpayers just like Canada and the UK to allow private clinics and all kinds of health care providers to offer services and get paid with the same funds.  Waiting for 3-6 months to get a liver scan will hopefully be thing of the past.

The aim of the government is to become a little Singapore-like state where the government takes a regulatory stand while businesses compete for a piece of the pie in their respective industries. All the changes, positive overall, though controversial for some, pose both challenges and opportunities for local professionals who will be feeling the pressure to get better to stay competitive. Businesses alike face fierce competition for talent acquisition and retention as well as to improve their service offering. 

And speaking of retention, on my next entry, a glimpse at what your company is doing (or otherwise) to keep you motivated.

AQ: Adaptability Quotient

Much has been said of IQ, intelligence quotient, and EQ emotional quotient or emotional intelligence. In this day and age of battered economies, corporate bankruptcies, recalls, deflation and debt, AQ or Adaptability Quotient becomes one of the key traits to professional success.  Developing your ability to embrace and adapt to change is now a key professional must.

Stuart Parkin in his Ad Age article What Makes you Employable in 2010? states that, as important as raw intelligence and personality traits are, now more than ever, being able to adapt to change will profoundly determine your ability to survive in the current job market or get re-employed if you are in a transitional period.


Has your employer changed strategies?  Are you expected to do more with less, be it staff, budget or other resources? Are you expected to work less or more hours?  Has your office moved to a less desirable location? Will you need to acquire new skills? What skills will you need to transfer to remain in your current post or adapt to a new one? All these questions relate to adaptability. 

Parkin also states that willingly seeking and promoting change can help you succeed.  Resisting changes that your organization enforces to ensure commercial and operational success will not viewed positively in the current economic environment. The new economy requires employees that seek, promote and embrace change.

Take a Needed Break

I just came back from a 3-week visit home that really helped me take care of personal matters, rest and, most importantly, clear the mind to re-evaluate my next career step, my next step in life. 

I had never seen so much of my country as I did in the last 3 weeks, traveling north to south and east to west and traveling to places that draw foreign tourists like bees to honey and that I was too lazy or too uninterested to consider visiting in the past.  While visiting one of the most impressive rain forest reserves in the world, Monteverde Cloud Forest, and marveling at the beauty of the hundreds of moss-covered 10-meter-plus tall trees there, I arrived the the following conclusion:  Nothing clears the mind and the spirit like a holiday.

I don't know about you, but solo-traveling and purposeful solitude did it for me.  I do not think I had been so relaxed, especially in the last 6 years as when horse back riding in the humid plains of the tropical north east.  I found the Pacific beach sunsets, full moons over the valley and the sounds of the green jungle truly humbling. 

I cannot confidently say I defined what my next step will be, but I did conclude the following:
- It is in my power to decide and take the necessary steps to achieve my goals.
- I am a fighter with the track record and results to prove it and further advance professionally.
- This transition I am going through is just that, a temporary situation that will lead to better and bigger challenges.
- Work, in whatever shape or form, be it viewed as monotonous, prestigious or complex, gives one the chance to shine.
- Work is what you make of it:  It is in our power to transform our work to give our very best regardless of the activity.

It sounds like a cliche, but a holiday does help clear the mind.

The Role of Adaptability and Reinvention

A few years back, an engineer at SONY predicted that music CDs would eventually disappear, rendering the SONY Discman unusable. This was due to the rapid advancements in the internet and information storage and transmission. This is commonplace now, but imagine 10 years ago.

Word has it, the engineer suggested a switch to a device that would store and reproduce music, rather than a device that would depend on external means of storing data like discs and the like. SONY executives ignored him claiming that the switch would be too costly and that it went against Morita-san's original vision of the Walkman. Poor guy. And then came the Ipod and the rest is history....

The point here is that adaptability, reinvention, innovation and vision should be at the core of a company's development. I think the same of our career lives. Adapt and grow or risk stagnation. 

I previously mentioned the Adverting Age article Reinvention, Not Just for the New Year by Darryl Ohrt.  Darryl suggests innovating and revisiting various aspects of the company quarterly or biannually.  I suggest regularly revisiting the following points to avoid career stagnation:

Your brand: How are you seen by others or portray yourself within the organization?
Your operations: How can you innovate in your day-to-day activities to further improve?
Your role in the organization:  What other roles can you play to further contribute?
Your network:  How solid and updated is your professional network?


What can you adapt or re-invent to spice up your work?