Why You Need to Know Why
One day in late 2024, a friend and I were chatting about Rosewood Marketing. I said, “Five years ago, I never would have dreamed that a third of our team members would work remotely.”
What I heard myself saying shocked me – for good reason.
Over the years, I have heard many experienced business owners say similar things, such as, “Twenty years ago, I never would have dreamed we would be where we are today.” Such statements raise questions: How can it be possible that successful business leaders end up somewhere they never visualized? Isn’t a clear picture of the future important to success? Puzzling, isn’t it?
If their businesses had been failures, I could understand these statements. The failure was merely a foregone conclusion, I’d tell myself. It was a lack of planning, I’d reason. He was aiming at nothing and hit it. Failing to plan is planning to fail. There! All is neat and tidy again, and the world makes sense. But, these were men who led successful companies! They weren’t leadership failures! The riddle is especially impressive because many respected, successful leadership gurus promote writing out a vision statement as a foundational element for success.
Here’s a sampling of such advice: Jim Collins coined the acronym BHAG (pronounced “Bee-hag”) meaning “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.”1 Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, writes, “Begin with the end in mind.”2 Gino Wickman uses the term “Core Purpose,”3 and Simon Sinek wrote a tidy book titled Start with Why.4
Should we ignore these voices? Couldn’t we skip the hoopla about vision and just get to work? Do we really need to know why we go to work every day? Or … is there value in vision statements? As Simon Sinek sets out, “Why start with why?”5
Just as roots provide solidarity and support for a tree and supply nourishment for its life and function, so does a clearly established purpose for a business. That’s why Vision has been one of the three main roots on Rosewood’s Marketing Tree from the beginning. Vision gives us the “Why.” The second root, Mission, tells us the “What.” The third root, Core Values, shows us the “How.” This article will focus primarily on Vision.
Here at Rosewood, we’ve begun to understand purpose as a better word than vision. This understanding helps clear the conundrum shown in the beginning of this article.
First, let’s clarify the difference between purpose (vision), mission, and core values. Each has importance, but they work together to support the business endeavor. In the diagram above, the summit represents the purpose of the expedition—why we are on the business journey in the first place. The vehicle represents the mission—what we use to move toward the summit and the actions that carry us there. The compass represents core values—the guiding principles we use to make decisions in navigating the journey.
Christians use the word mission to describe a specific area of work. Missionaries go to a mission, such as Minneapolis, Nicaragua, or Ukraine. It’s there that they live among the people, provide humanitarian relief, or open bakeries and bookstores, depending on the type of mission endeavor. Whatever and wherever the mission, the purpose is to bring the Good News to people in darkness. In this context, the use of the words mission and purpose align with the way they are being used in this article. Mission is what action we are doing, while purpose is why we are doing it.
Five years ago, Mike hung out his shingle: Mike’s Meats. Mike and his boys energetically made sausage, snack sticks, and a great range of products his customers wanted. Mike went to work early and stayed late during hunting season. And folks were drawn to his enthusiastic approach to life in general and meat in particular. His gratefulness and recognition that life is full of good gifts, coupled with his energetic desire to help others, created many happy repeat customers. His recipes were, in fact, legendary in taste. His careful attention to customers created a good experience.
Mike’s Meats was humming, but Mike wasn’t. One night, while stuffing sausage as the community slept, Mike pondered, “Do I really have more control of my schedule? Seems the butcher shop is running me rather than me running the shop!” His previous job schedule began to look neat and tidy; it had been predictable. And now there was messy debt, too – Will I be able to make the payments this coming February? Cash was usually tight, in part because Mike made extra payments on the debt to relieve the pressure and fear. He began to feel more and more like a slave to the demands of the business. Things didn’t always go so well with the boys, either. Quality control, peaceful relations, and staying on task were all new challenges with the boys, and that took a lot of Mike’s energy – the old arrangement of working for someone else had none of these stressful dimensions.
In time, Mike realized he needed help. It was becoming difficult to be thankful when the stress was high. So Mike placed an SOS call to Uncle Robert. Uncle understood a lot of things: business purpose and mission, business debt, Mike, Mike and debt, boys, and so forth. Uncle Robert listened as Mike described his difficulties. Time management problems. Debt and cash problems. Boy problems. The stresses related to the assurance of quality product. Legal matters. Supply chain issues. Payables. Receivables. Refreshing advertisements. To hire or not to hire. The more Mike talked, and the more Uncle listened, the more clearly Mike articulated his troubles.
Uncle Robert began asking some well-placed and probing questions. “Why did you start the business in the first place?” “Why meats? “Why a butcher shop?” “Why is the seasoning of sausage something stressful?” “Why didn’t you keep your previous job – it paid the bills after all?” “Is selling out an option – why not?”
To Mike’s surprise, he discovered some hot embers deep in his soul under all the smothering stresses. As he and his uncle blew on the coals with “why” questions, the fire began to glow. Explaining the why behind it all sharpened Mike’s focus and inspiration to the point where a fledgling statement of purpose began to emerge: “Relishing memories and God’s good gifts.” He wanted to help others savor their moments by memorable meals and snacks made from their game and livestock. He imagined his clients’ pleasure of picking up the full array of products made from their home-raised hog or fat doe harvested one memorable Saturday morning in October. As he thought about the “why” behind all the work, a spring returned to his step.
What Mike learned is that while his mission was pretty clear, what he was doing, he hadn’t defined his purpose so well, why he was doing it. Finding and distilling the purpose of Mike’s Meats became relevant to keeping the inspiration and satisfaction high for Mike, his boys, and his clients.
After a number of sessions with Uncle Robert and many scratch pad papers later, Mike and his boys agreed on a short purpose statement: Bringing happy memories to the family table.
This new purpose statement united the family around a common goal. It helped them make better decisions–decisions that kept the focus off themselves and on the people they were serving.
For your business purpose to be strong and sustaining, it needs to bear five different qualities. The deeper each one of the qualities is, the better.
- The purpose is worth sacrificing for. Mike didn’t mind extended hours during the hunting season. That was his time to join his clients in their experience and solidify those memories with pleasurable products from his shop.
- The purpose is communicated clearly. Mike’s purpose had to do with happiness, memories, and eating food with significance. There is no doubt what is in focus.
- The purpose resonates with others and draws them in. The boys are more energetic about working hard and delivering high-quality products because they are inspired by a vision. This vision included happy customers reliving the memories of the hunt or the pig chase.
- The purpose impacts others beyond the transaction. When Mike thought of an ideal customer, it went far beyond “someone with a pulse and a credit card,” as described by one businessman. Mike cared about how his effort enriched their lives. He cared, too, about how the interaction with him made people feel. With each interaction, Mike aimed to fill their bucket in a personal, encouraging way.
- The purpose aligns with God’s purposes for people. As a Christian, Mike wanted his business to be salt and light to his community by encouraging family connections in a fractured world.
You might be asking, “Isn’t the purpose of a business to make money?” Yes and no. The business does need to turn a profit to continue to serve its customers and fulfill its purpose. However, all the people involved in the business need and want a reason to come to work that is beyond themselves. I often hear a dad say, “I started this business because I wanted to work with my boys.” That is a good reason for Dad, but it isn’t a good reason for the boys. They need a purpose outside of themselves to focus their energy on serving others.
At Rosewood, our purpose is “To inspire others to grow God’s way.” This is the mountain summit we are driving towards. Most marketing is focused on the pockets of the shareholders without regard to the impact on the consumer. We want to make sure the consumer is truly served first, and then the business owner’s needs are met. We want our interactions to inspire people to live by biblical principles.
Do you have a clear purpose for your business? Have you identified the “why” of its existence? If you don’t have a strong purpose that extends beyond simply serving yourself, you will either plateau or give up when difficulties come. A clear purpose provides compelling motivation for the challenges of operating a business.
Back to those mysterious business leaders and myself, who ended up at a place unforeseen…
For years, I had envisioned someday opening Rosewood offices in other locations. Our customers are scattered across various states; therefore, offices in other areas would expand our hiring possibilities while providing our customers with more localized service. But COVID reframed all that in 2020. Both our team members and our clients were forced to do business differently—remotely. Gradually, we realized that it would be reasonable to have remote team members and clients anywhere in the country, even if we didn’t have a brick-and-mortar location in their area. One by one we hired more remote staff and took on more clients in other states.
Advances in technology and the cultural shifts brought on by COVID changed what was possible. Outside forces, over which I had no control, changed how Rosewood developed toward our purpose. We simply responded to the external changes in our day-to-day decision-making.
But what didn’t change was the reason Rosewood exists, our purpose, our “Why?” Inspiring Others to Grow God’s Way was there all the time to energize and guide us all. Our mission–the vehicle used to take action and move us toward the summit–changed significantly in ways we couldn’t have controlled and envisioned. It produced unanticipated methods of doing business.
Without a clear purpose, we would have been less effective in responding to the external changes. Without a defined purpose, we would have been like an octopus on roller skates, and just as overwhelmed and tangled.
Do you have a powerful purpose for why your business exists? Use this simple tool to gauge how powerful your purpose is. Evaluate each of these components of powerful purpose by assigning them a number between 1 and 10, with 10 being the strongest. Add the five scores and multiply by 2. How close do you get to 100%?
What a business does and how it does it can change and sometimes even must change. But while mission changes, purpose roots us to why the business exists in the first place. Knowing “why” results in solidarity. Then, both the light in your eyes and the open sign stay well-lit.
Notes
1. http://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/bhag.html
2. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Published by Free Press
3. Gino Wickman, Traction, Published by BenBella Books
4. Simon Sinek, Start with Why, Published by Portfolio
5. Ibid.