Personality vs. Purpose

In small businesses, it’s been my experience that one person, or sometimes a handful of people, play many different roles for their business that are crucial to its success.  It’s not uncommon, for example, to find a small business owner, who is also the sales manager, the marketing manager, and the bookkeeper, depending on who they’re talking to.  It’s really important, in the beginning stages of organizational development, for these leaders to make a distinction between their organization’s purpose, and their personal identity, or individual personality.  In order to be successful, an organization must have a purpose that transcends individual personality. 

I’ve worked with several new business owners who were skillful, creative, and passionate people with viable business ideas, but who had a real hard time seeing their business as an expression of an invented purpose, as opposed to an extension of their own personality.  Each one of them, of course, understood the distinction right off the bat, but achieved varying degrees of success when it came to building an organization driven by purpose and not personality.

Think of it this way.  Organizations are created to fulfill needs.  There are as many organizations with varied purposes as there are needs we can imagine fulfilling.  Organizations exist to apply a systematic and consistent solution for a specific set of needs.  The purpose of an organization is to fulfill the need for which the organization was created.  Therefore, the systems, processes, and culture of an organization should all support its purpose, or flow toward the fulfillment of its purpose. 

The challenge for alot of small business owners is identifying where their personality is suppressing the fulfillment of their organization’s purpose.  Generally speaking, this is the case wherever and whenever tasks and accountabilities related to operational consistency are flowing toward an organization’s leadership, instead of away from them.  What does that mean?  If you’re a business owner and you find yourself inundated with tasks related to the normal, consistent operation of your business, you can be sure that your business is operating as an extension of your personality, rather than an expression of its own purpose. 

By contrast, the experience of running a business that’s operating as an expression of its invented purpose is this:  As an owner, your time is spent developing the concepts and strategies you believe will result in your business’s success.  You’re dwelling in a creative state of mind.  You have the experience that your will can shape the world around you.  You’re focus is on expanding your organization out into the world, and out into the future.  The tasks and accountabilites that are crucial to the normal, consistent operation of your business are performed reliably, and without your conscious attention.

I’ll be writing more about this, as time goes on.  I’d like to do some specific case studies with different organizations and report the results.  If you’d like to submit your organization as a possible candidate, I invite you to contact me at any time.

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