A Job Description for the Business Owner - стр. 12
This is what the Grundfos Corporation says about their main goal: “It is our mission—the basis of our existence—to successfully develop, produce and sell high-quality pumps and pumping systems world-wide, contributing to a better quality of life and a healthy environment.” Do you see? The company aspires to achieve its main goal of “contributing to a better quality of life and a healthy environment” while producing pumps. Certainly if the water-supply and sewage-removal systems in your house work well, then the quality of your life is better. Why, exactly, is Grundfos’s goal worded as it is? Simply because this idea came to the company founder’s mind and he had the authority to make it so. There is no other reason. Why does Apple declare that its goal is “to make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”? Because Steve Jobs decided so. Why does McDonald’s say its goal is “to make every customer in every restaurant smile”? Because Ray Kroc decided so. These main goals are not necessarily unique. Without working hard to achieve them, they would never be a key to a successful company. These goals create long-term meaning for such companies and provide clarity about what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong.
A company's main goal does not need to be absolutely unique. Its purpose is usually more distinctive. Just like Grundfos strives to improve the quality of peoples’ lives, thousands of other companies and organizations seek to achieve a similar goal. This, on its own, does not weaken a company’s employees’ aspirations to reach that goal. While Visotsky Consulting helps to turn businesses around by implementing management tools targeted to improve a company's management culture and enhance its effectiveness, thousands of other consulting and business-training companies seek to achieve this same goal. However, a company’s purpose is always individual.
The Purpose
The second part of a mission statement is to define the company's purpose. Every strong company has its own individual operating style, which determines the actions of that company. For example, Apple’s purpose is to develop both software and hardware to achieve ideal compatibility with one another. Unlike Microsoft’s operating system, Apple’s OS and certain applications were designed to work only on Apple hardware. Apple was a total and self-contained package. In 1995, before Steve Jobs returned to the company, Apple’s management decided to change this purpose and sold the license to manufacture Apple-compatible computers (using Apple’s OS) to a few companies, most notably to Motorola and Power Computing. Apple then had to suffer the consequences. Abolition of third-party manufacturer licensing was one of the first things Jobs did upon his return to the company. If the main goal determines the general orientation of the company’s operations, the purpose determines a specific, particular way of operating that the group is trying to achieve. It may sound complicated, but in essence, it is very simple.