Captain’s log, stardate 20210130
Yesterday, I shared more than a hundred of your replies to my question:
What is the purpose of a business? (NOTE: Not YOUR business, but businesses in general.)
While all of your replies were unique, there were some recurring themes:
The purpose of a business is to...
A few observations that I found interesting:
Businesses need profit like people need air. Without it, you’re dead.
I agree that it is absolutely critical that a business makes a profit. In fact, I think profitability is only growth metric that matters.
However, I think saying “the purpose of a business is to make a profit” is like saying “the purpose of a human is to find oxygen” - i.e., a requirement of survival, but NOT a reason for being.
So what IS the purpose of a business?
Everyone is going to have a different answer to this question, but I think good answers must include a reference to delivering some kind of satisfaction (e.g., profit, ROI, value, etc) to some kind of buyer (e.g., customer, client, student, etc).
This is why I don’t find Milton Friedman’s famous quote particularly useful. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a blurb I found online:
In a now-famous 1970 Times magazine article, the economist Milton Friedman argued that businesses’ sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders.
I have two problems with this statement:
In fairness to Friedman, he was arguing against social responsibility for corporations and was probably not trying to articulate the canonical purpose of a business.
That said, lots of people share Friedman’s quote as if it were the canonical purpose of a business.
This is unfortunate because believing that the sole purpose of your business is to make a “profit for shareholders” (i.e., you, the owner) gives you no direction.
It’s like, “Okay, great... The purpose of my business is to make a profit. BUT HOW?!?!”
Tomorrow, I’ll share a quote about the purpose of a business that I think is much more useful.
Stay tuned!
Yours,
—J