What would the world lose if your company ceased to exist?
This is one of the questions
explored in the book It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven by Purpose
Authors John Spence and Haley Rushing share their experience of working with some of the world’s most successful brands (Southwest, Wal-mart, BMW to name a few) who attribute much of their success to being purpose driven in everything they do. They also share the troubles some brands have had when they have strayed away from their purpose.
This message of this book really resonated with me. I’ve always been more interested in why people do what they do and my favorite customers have always been those who are in business not only to make money but to also serve a greater purpose – trying to make the world a better place for their customers and\or employees. I wish I had read this book a long time ago.
The book is organized into four main parts:
Part 1 – Purpose Principles – Lays the foundation by defining purpose, arguing why you should want one along with tips and advise for discovering and articulating your purpose.
Part 2- Building an Organization that makes a Difference – This section speaks to taking a vision, based on purpose, and using it to serve an unfilled need(s) in the marketplace.
Part 3 – Becoming a Leader of Great Purpose – Discusses purpose based leadership principles and how leaders must be the “stewards of purpose”.
Part 4 – Bringing Your Purpose to the Life in the Marketplace – provides a number of case studies of organizations bringing their purpose to life. Spence shows the wide application of purpose by including examples from for-profit corporations, membership organizations, non-profits, educational institutions, and sports organizations.
I highly recommend this book. I have a handful of books that contain the main ideas I try to use in my business and refer to often. This book is going on the same shelf as those.
