A Job Description for the Business Owner - стр. 16

Second, in formulating a purpose, you must consider whether it is possible to make the purpose generate large-scale activity. For example, you have a talented craftsman who can create amazing leather bindings for books. A good book with a leather binding could be a wonderful present for any serious reader. You could sell this product all over the world. But there is the question of whether it is possible to create a whole army of such craftsmen and whether it is possible to teach a number of people to create such bindings with the same degree of skill. Also, is there equipment that would allow you to produce the bindings in sufficient quantity? Hamburgers and fries are not difficult to make, yet Ray Kroc still had to open Hamburger University so that those operating his franchisees could do a quality job. IKEA is another great example. That company’s purpose becomes clear if you read a book about its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, entitled Leading by Design: The Ikea Story. I remember one story from the book in which Ingvar was in one of Ikea’s competitor’s stores and saw a drinking glass that was in high demand at the time. He went to his purchasing manager and asked whether it was possible to get the same glasses for a significantly lower price. The manager collected the necessary information and later replied that it was possible to get it much cheaper, but Ikea would have to sell over a million of such glasses. Ingvar gladly accepted the deal and, as a result, the glass was a best-seller, bringing the company good revenues.

Usually we say that a business’s purpose is successful if it allows the company to expand significantly. Expansion requires energy—that is, money—and you can only get a lot of this energy if you provide customers with high volumes of your product. For this reason, companies that make their expertise available to only a limited number of customers never become large and thriving businesses. For example, I like to educate business owners on the subject of strategy, but I do not know how to teach other consultants to do it with the same success. Because I cannot put this product on a “production line,” I would not start a company with the purpose of providing customers with these particular consulting services.

Third, the purpose must provide a company with an advantage over its competitors. For example, McDonald’s purpose is “fast customer service,” which is why, even with relatively low prices, the restaurants can afford to be located in buildings and shops in the most highly trafficked areas, have good-quality kitchen equipment, and still retain their high profit margin. Starbucks’s purpose is to provide the highest-quality coffee; it started as a coffee supplier to various coffee shops and restaurants. Now there are more than seventeen thousand stores operating under the Starbucks name. Starbucks is active in preserving its purpose, which I personally witnessed while visiting their stores in various countries. Without such a purpose, the company would never have been able to retain its quality standards and would not have gained the well-deserved recognition of its customers.