Two distinguished scholars offer eight steps to help organizations
discover and embrace an authentic higher purpose--something that will
dramatically improve every aspect of any enterprise, including the
bottom line.
What does a lofty notion like purpose have to do with business basics
like the bottom line? Robert E. Quinn and Anjan J. Thakor say pretty
much everything. Leaders and managers are taught that employees are
self-interested and work resistant, so they create systems of control to
combat these expectations. Workers resent these systems, and performance
suffers. To address the performance issues, managers double down on the
coercion, creating a vicious cycle and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But there is a better way. Quinn and Thakor show that when an authentic
higher purpose permeates business strategy and decision-making, the
cycle is broken. Employers and employees see themselves as working
together toward an inspiring goal, not just trying to hit quarterly
targets. They fully engage, become proactive contributors, and,
ironically, easily exceed those quarterly targets.
Based on their widely acclaimed Harvard Business Review article, Quinn
and Thakor offer eight sometimes surprising steps for shifting from a
transaction-oriented mind-set focused on constraints to a
purpose-oriented mind-set focused on possibility. This iconoclastic book
will help any organization discover its authentic purpose and weave it
into the fabric of everything it does, leading to unprecedented levels
of personal satisfaction, service and product innovation, and economic
growth.
