- Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland
"Those people that find higher purpose to business than earning money are the ones making all the damn money." - Greg Glassman, Founder and CEO of CrossFit
Mission statements were not part of MBA dogma when I was an student in the 90s. Instead, Wharton taught about the overarching purpose of creating shareholder value. We debated the perils of straying from the primacy of wealth-creation. I was left wondering why the legendary Dilbert Mission Statement Generator (sadly no longer online) didn’t just repeatedly spit out the one-size-fits-all mission, “Make Money.”
However, I've found purpose to be one of my absolute favorites in the leadership toolkit. Used wisely, it creates shareholder value and provides some benefit to society.
You might think of mission as the ball. Share price or market share or another more traditional method of