"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." Garrison Keillor

I get a lot of abuse for teaching business beyond the "those that can't do, teach" teasing.  A lot of this bad feeling about business is due to the often accurate perception that business people are just greedy and unethical.  I know that a lot of people are like that, but are more of them in business?  I don't know, but for a long time in business schools "agency theory" has been used to describe the purpose of the corporation.  Simply stated, agency theory maintains that the purpose of the firm and its employees, i.e., the agents of the shareholders, is to realize the objectives of those shareholders, which typically is profit dominated.  While "shareholders" have been expanded to "stakeholders," (including exployees, consumers, society, etc.), and objectives broadened beyond shareholder profit, there is the perception and in many cases fact that businesses, especially their executives, go to great pains to maximize their own welfare.

Yet business schools, and hopefully increasing numbers of businesses, are evolving to consider the purpose of the firm as providing value.  In other words, businesses should have a larger purpose than just making money.  Yes, a business needs to make money to remain a business, but it is not the source of greater value, the passion that drives those in business.  That sense of higher purpose, that desire to achieve, is beyond the profit motive.  That value, that higher purpose, that achievement and contribution, may take many forms, and is often embodied by a firm's mission statement.

The question is, do you have a "mission statement," an idea of higher purpose to give meaning and motivation to your life?  As George Bernard Shaw wrote in the dedication to Man and Superman,

"This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."