Purpose Book Summary - Purpose Book explained in key points

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Purpose summary

Name: Purpose
Rating: 4.3 (41 reviews)
Author: Nikos Mourkogiannis

Nikos Mourkogiannis

The Starting Point of Great Companies

4.3 (41 ratings)

18 mins

Topics

Entrepreneurship Success Leadership

Table of Contents

Purpose
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? How philosophical lessons can help your business grow and succeed.

Business gets a raw deal in many people’s minds. Many of us see companies and their leaders as obsessed with money, interested in nothing but the pursuit of profits at all costs. Anything that gets in their way – be it employees, customers or the environment – is ruthlessly pushed aside.

Yet, this isn’t necessarily the case. As these blinks show, no successful business can hope to reach the top if they are just in it for the money. The only way they can get there is by having a set of values, or purposes, that provide them with the will and drive to succeed.

Most of these values come from centuries of philosophical debate and tradition. To save you from having to trawl through the works of Nietzsche and Aristotle, these blinks provide you with the most prominent forms of purpose, and how businesses from Wal-Mart to IBM have used them to succeed.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why Warren Buffett isn’t in it for the money;
why Henry Ford succeeded by acting like a dictator; and
why many of the best leaders’ main goal is the happiness of others.

By developing a set of moral ideas to live and work by, you’ll ensure your company’s long-term success.

Why do some succeed in business, while others don’t? Sure, it has a lot to do with economic brilliance and charisma, but that’s not the whole story. A company’s purpose, the set of moral ideas that guide it, is crucial for lasting success.

Purpose is the moral backbone that we rely on to make decisions, whether it’s in everyday life or when the stakes are much higher. With purpose, we can discern between choices that are right and worthwhile, and those that are easy or technically correct.

Let’s put this into real terms. Do you want to serve your customer, or maximize your returns? This is a question Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton could answer without a second thought.

Driven by altruism and compassion, Walton was dedicated to serving his customers. His sense of purpose reverberated throughout the whole company. From senior managers to store staffers, everyone at Wal-Mart was ready to make customer service a top priority. This gave Wal-Mart an edge over its competitors, which it outperforms time and time again.

The reality is, without purpose, you’ll only make decisions with the short term in mind – strategy simply isn’t enough. Take Enron, a corporation whose collapse was one of America’s biggest corporate bankruptcies.

They had strategies, but lacked purpose. All they were interested in was making money, and were prepared to do anything to do so. This led to poor decision making, which involved dangerous strategies and concealing losses. Unsurprisingly, Enron’s actions caught up with them in the end, a testament to how dangerous a strategy without purpose can be.

Leaders driven by discovery take responsibility for their actions and never stop questioning.

You now know what purpose is, and why it’s important. So how can you acquire it? Well, purpose takes four forms, each of which stems from ethical traditions that have developed through the work of different philosophers from Classical Greece to the modern era. Let’s start with the purpose of discovery.

This purpose is tied to the work of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and the existentialists, and their powerful arguments for the ethic of choice. Kierkegaard asserts that it’s simply not enough to hide behind rules and conventions, and blame them when things go badly. Instead, individuals are responsible for the choices they make.

Lead by excellence and nurture the virtues that will lead you to do the best job you can.

Once you’ve discovered a new and innovative way to do business, you’ll need to execute it to the best of your abilities. Enter our second purpose, excellence. The ethic connected to it is virtue, developed by Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Aristotle concluded that people cultivate virtues as a means to become successful and achieve their desired end: fulfillment. In fact, Aristotle even had a particular word to describe the state of fulfillment, success and flourishing: it was called eudaimonia, and for Aristotle, this was the function of Man.

Altruistic leaders strive to create the greatest possible happiness for the largest number of people.

Scottish historian and philosopher David Hume is renowned for his development of an ethic of compassion. This is connected to the purpose of altruism.

For Hume, the fundamental motivation behind any action is to increase happiness. While this might sound selfish or hedonistic, our happiness is actually a function of how we’re able to make others, as well as ourselves, happy. Hume argued that we have a natural sympathy for others.

Heroistic leaders use their vision to guide us into unknown territory.

Although many of us might find the work of German philosopher Nietzsche to be impenetrable, his ideas contain one of the most useful ethics for business leaders: heroism. This isn’t simply the desire to win, but the will to be bold and dare to do something that nobody else has tried.

Nietzsche believed that only few people are truly free and thus capable of leading. Those who do not have such capabilities choose to follow those who are endowed with leadership skills. But those who do exhibit them will realize that they should exert their influence, and take on the role of leader with ambition.

Purpose can lift morale and make your company a great workplace.

As Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said, physical factors in war are “little more than the wooden hilt, while the morale factors are the precious metal, the real weapon, the finely-honed blade.” The same is true for businesses.

Just as soldiers with high morale are more likely to win a battle, companies in which employees have high morale tend to be more successful. In fact, a 2003 study by insurance company Towers Perrin found a positive correlation between strong employee morale and returns to shareholders.

Purpose shapes and strengthens innovation.

It often seems that the most successful companies are the most innovative ones. But while innovation is indeed a great competitive advantage, it won’t provide lasting success without purpose to back it up.

Global consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton conducted a survey on the top thousand companies with the largest research and development budgets. The survey found that there was, to the surprise of many, no significant correlation between innovation and the success of the companies.

Purpose makes companies great competitors.

We’d all like to know exactly how to beat the competition. Unfortunately, there’s no perfect formula, but one of the best ways for your company to achieve a sustainable advantage in the market is through strategic positioning. This simply means that your company must be at a specific position in the market that others can neither choose, nor copy.

Admittedly, that’s easier said than done – but it is still doable! It starts with developing routines and relationships. By coordinating what people do and how they connect to each other, you’ll be able to unite your company under a powerful, unique strategy.

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What is Purpose about?

Purpose (2006) reveals just how important values are for strong leadership in the 21st century. These blinks explain the four different forms of purpose that will allow you and your business to thrive, from their ethical underpinnings to their successful use by today’s most influential leaders.

Best quote from Purpose

Innovation has become perhaps the most important source of competitive advantage in advanced economies. - Michael Porter

—Nikos Mourkogiannis

Who should read Purpose?

Any executive hoping to become a CEO
Students looking to learn about leadership in the 21st century
Established CEOs and leaders willing to rethink what successful leadership entails

About the Author

Nikos Mourkogiannis is an internationally renowned thought leader and a senior partner at the elite consultancy Panthea, where he has provided expert advice to CEOs from around the world. Mourkogiannis has also held influential positions as the chairman of several world-class companies and was previously Executive Advisor for Leadership at global consultancy group Booz Allen Hamilton.

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