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New Study: Stop Chasing Money. You’ll Be More Successful Pursuing a Big Why

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The Industrial Age factory system designed work around making money. But people who work for a bigger reason are happier and better paid.

A new study, the 2015 Workforce Purpose Index, reveals that 28 percent of people are purpose-oriented, identifying them as “the most valuable and highest potential segment of the workforce, regardless of industry or role.” We call this a Big Why: something that is bigger than making money, that you can never check off as complete.

The 28 percent who express this Big Why approach to life are motivated by two things:

1) Personal fulfillment

2) Serving others

In contrast, the other 72 percent are motivated by

1) Status

2) Advancement

3) Income

Everybody Can Be Purpose Oriented

Some surprising things stand out in the study. The 28 percent don’t make less money than the 72 percent that are money-motivated. They also come from across every industry, every imaginable job type, and every age demographic.

The research says, “By every measure, they have better outcomes than their peers.” They:

– Are much more fulfilled at work

– Do better work and get higher evaluations

– Have much longer tenure in their companies

– Are bigger fans of the company

– Are much more likely to become leaders (and make more money)

The Joy Is in the Pursuit

People in the 72 percent can and do change, but that change usually comes quickly, not over time. A lot of people in midlife seem to wake up and decide they need a bigger reason to be alive than just making money or having a fancy title. The study points to a life principle that too few of us discover. In our business, we say it like this:

The joy is in the pursuit, not in the acquisition.

In grade school, I remember buying a tiny battery-operated beach radio. It was cool for about three months. Then I wanted a bigger one. Over 20 years, I bought a half dozen or more stereos, with increasingly more power, features, and quality. I continue to look at more expensive ones, but I have had a lot more fun pursuing the next one than acquiring it.

A Big Why gives you reasons to do things that you’ll never be able to check off as complete–be a great mother, get involved in a nonprofit, help others get to where they need to be in life. A Big Why isn’t necessarily a huge Why, like solving world hunger (although it can be). Instead it’s a continuous Why–one that will get you out of bed when making money won’t.

Workplace Engagement Is Unrelated

The study also clarified that purpose-orientation is much different than the too-often-used buzz phrase “workplace engagement.” People with a Big Why don’t need anyone to motivate them to be engaged. You really can’t motivate them; all you can do to them is keep them from being engaged at work (they’ll leave if the work environment stifles their purpose.)

Three Reasons to Be Purposeful

In my first book, Making Money Is Killing Your Business, I outlined why purpose-orientation works better than stuff orientation:

1) Making money is not an empowering vision. People who have a bigger reason to work than making money tend to make a lot more of it.

2) A goal realized is no longer motivating. The joy is in the pursuit, not in the acquisition.

3) We are made to be and to do something significant, our whole lives, not just the first two-thirds. There is something for everyone to chase that will get them out of bed every day, that is bigger than making money.

What Does This Mean for Business?

The study recommends that you create partnerships with people, not treat them like “resources.” And employers should measure how work is helping their people in the areas of relationships, personal impact, and growth, not status, advancement, and income.

The bottom line: There is a new war brewing for a very different kind of talent–purpose-oriented people–and companies are scrambling to figure out how to develop hiring mechanisms to find these people.

You could be one of them. This year, intend to be purpose driven. Get a reason to go to work that is much bigger than making money, that is motivating both at work and at home, and that drives you to get out of bed during the tough times. You’ll be more fulfilled, build better relationships, be more likely to advance, and still make as much or more money than someone chasing status, advancement, and income.

The joy is in the pursuit, not in the acquisition. Get your Big Why in 2016, something you can never check off as completed, and run with it.

Article as seen on Inc.com

The Participation Age and the Importance of the Fourth S

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 Day 21 of 21 days with Chuck’s new book, Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea

I sat with the African egg vendor and twenty or so others in a mud brick building with no doors or windows, just openings. The average person in the room made between $30 and $60 a month in U.S. dollars, which was more than a lot of other people there made.

We were discussing business-building principles. I had come from America with notes and handouts, but on the first day, I realized they were worthless and gave them to a small school who were thrilled because they were blank on one side.

I had rarely felt this helpless. Usually, you can just give me a business topic, wind me up, and I’ll interact with a group for as long as the beer or snacks last. Here were a couple dozen business owners waiting to hang on every word and I had nothing.

I turned to the egg vendor, explained “net profit”, and asked her how much she makes each month. We figured out it was about $2.00. I asked her what she did with it, and she said, “I take my children to get a special meal.” She was a single mom with three kids.

We then talked about freedom—that wealth is the freedom to choose what to do with your time and money. Net profit represented freedom, the ability to choose. That made her very proud to know she had $2.00 worth of freedom each month, and the other business owners started to get a little excited about the prospect that they, too, might figure out how to get some net profit. We decided right there to call net profit, “Freedom Money,” because it’s the only money in business with which you actually get to make a fully free choice. The rest of it is spoken for in one way or the other.

Then I challenged her and the rest of them to stop eating their Freedom Money and reinvest it in their business instead, so they would have even more freedom later. I drew blank stares, so everyone huddled around my laptop with a dying battery, and I built a quick spreadsheet to show what might happen if, for eighteen months, the egg vendor reinvested her $2.00 of Freedom Money into buying more eggs every month. The next month she would have $2.50 in Freedom Money. Reinvested in more eggs, the end of the third month she would have $3.50 in Freedom Money, and so on. By the end of eighteen months, she could stop reinvesting and would have $60 every month in Freedom Money after that.

I asked her if that would change some things, and she thought it might change her life. I then told her it won’t happen that way. She’ll break eggs, won’t find buyers, will have to hire someone to help, etc. Life is messy and so is business, and her Freedom Money might be $15 a month, not $60. But it would no longer be $2.00. It was a tough thing to challenge a woman not to take her kids for a special meal, but she got on board immediately.

I never saw her again, but I always assume the best, that she built up enough monthly Freedom Money to build a better life for herself and her children. The most powerful thing she got out of the time was that being an owner allowed her to make decisions. She was in charge of her future, not the world around her. I left her with a thought that has been valuable to me over the years, “Circumstances don’t make me who I am. How I respond to them, does.” She left as a proud business owner, looking forward to creating more Freedom Money with her business. Ownership is a very powerful thing.

The Three S’s of the Industrial Age
My mother was born in 1921. She grew up in the Great Depression and entered the workforce in 1943 after nurse’s training and taught me to pursue three things in life, the three Ss of the Industrial Age:

1. Safety—live in the suburbs, don’t live downtown with the icky people.

2. Security—have a big wad of cash in the bank.

3. Stability—every day should look the same, no surprises.

Her strongest encouragement—get a job with a giant corporation; they are the best prepared to give you a life of safety, security and stability with no surprises.

Just about every mother of that generation was teaching their kids the same things. So, it’s no surprise that at the height of the Industrial Age after World War II, the suburbs exploded with cookie-cutter Cap Cods, white picket fences, men working for Giant Corporation, Inc., who all left for work in unison with their white shirts, ties, suits, and briefcases at 7:30 a.m. and got home at 6 p.m., and who lived as predictable a life as possible.

They came home to a manicured wife and 3.6 freshly scrubbed children. Ozzie and Harriet reigned. That may sound great to some, but as we revealed in the introduction to this book, those people were called The Silent Generation and made very little meaning in the world around them with their balanced lives.

Their manic pursuit of safety, security, and stability made them the best extensions of machines in the history of the Industrial Age. It also dehumanized them to the point of silencing their voices, their creativity, and their legacy. (Remember, no presidents and no Supreme Court justices; the only generation without a number of them.)

Where are these three S’s on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? They are at or nearer the bottom. So, why did my mother teach me to chase these things that were at or near the bottom of what we as humans need to make life meaningful? Because having gone through the Great Depression and World War II, she was looking up at the bottom. She didn’t have any of the three, and a life with all three would have seemed like Nirvana to her.

Today’s Millennials Are Searching for the Fourth S—Significance
But Millennials who only grew up in the shadow of the Industrial Age do not understand the language of Safety, Security, and Stability. They are one of the first generations in history, at least in the West, to be born with at a modicum of all three of those things provided for them at birth. They aren’t looking up at the bottom, and are instead reaching for the fourth S of the Participation Age—Significance. Making money is no longer enough. Being an extension of a machine to do so is not attractive, and the idea that everyday should look the same and that life should be predictable and without surprises is not challenging to them. They want more. They want to Make Meaning.

As the cultural influence of the Industrial Age and the Factory System fades behind us, we are all waking up to the need to rehumanize the workplace, reintegrate it back into our lives, and build lives that Make Meaning, not just money. To do so, we must eliminate the arcane business practices that we dragged out of the Industrial Age into the Participation Age—those business practices that turned men and women into machines, and silenced our drive for Significance.

You Have a Choice
Addressing the business diseases of the Industrial Age is not complex, it’s simple. But for those who have built businesses and lives around the inherited constructs of a bygone era, it will be both simple and hard.

We should be grateful that the Industrial Age provided us with the first three S’s— Safety, Security, and Stability—on which to build the fourth S—Significance. But we must also recognize that the practices that brought us those three will not bring us the fourth.

We have a choice to make. Stay with what we know and slowly atrophy as the world moves on without us, or join the Participation Age and start sharing together in building companies that Make Meaning, not just money.

Which do you choose?

This is a summary of a chapter from Chuck’s new book, “Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea (And Other Business Diseases of the Industrial Age)”. Click here to pre-order this new ground breaking book at a discount on IndieGoGo.com until July 28.

The Three S’s Of The Industrial Age

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Safety, Security, and Stability

My mother, who was born in 1921, grew up in the Great Depression and entered the workforce in 1943 after nurse’s training, taught me to pursue three things in life, the three S’s of the Industrial Age:

1) Safety – live in the suburbs, don’t live downtown with the icky people.

2) Security – have a big wad of cash in the bank.

3) Stability – every day should look the same, no surprises. Get a job with a giant corporation; they are the best prepared to give you a life with no surprises.

The Ozzie and Harriet Dream
Just about every mother of that generation was teaching their kids the same things. So it’s no surprise that at the height of the Industrial Age after World War II, the suburbs exploded with cookie cutter Cap Cods, white picket fences, men who all left for work in unison with their white shirts, ties, suits and briefcases at 7:30am and got home at 6pm, working for Giant Corporation, Inc., and living as predictable a life as possible. That cohort is called The Silent Generation.

Their manic pursuit of safety, security and stability made them the best extensions of machines in the history of the Industrial Age. It also dehumanized them to the point of silencing their voices, their creativity, and their legacy (remember, no Presidents and no Supreme Court justices came from this generation; the only generation without a number of them.) But where are these three S’s on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? They are at or nearer the bottom.

The Bottom Looks Pretty Good When It’s Above You
Why did my mother teach me to chase these things that were at or near the bottom of what we as humans need in life? Because having gone through the Great Depression and World War II, she was looking up at the bottom. She didn’t have any of the three, and a life with all three would have been Nirvana for her.

Straight the Fourth S
But Millennials who only grew up in the shadow of the Industrial Age do not understand the language of Safety, Security and Stability. They are one of the first generations in history, at least in the west, to be born with all three of those things provided for them at birth. They aren’t looking up at the bottom, and are instead reaching for the fourth S of the Participation Age, Significance. Making money is no longer enough. Being an extension of a machine to do so is not attractive, and the idea that every day should look the same and that life should be predictable and without surprises is not challenging to them. They want more.

It’s Simple, and Maybe Hard
And as the cultural influence of the Industrial Age and the Factory System fades behind us, we are all waking up to the need to re-humanize the workplace, reintegrate it back into our lives, and build lives to Make Meaning, not just money. To do so we must eliminate the arcane business practices that we dragged out of the Industrial Age into the Participation Age that turned men into machines and silenced our drive for significance. Addressing the business diseases of the Industrial Age is not complex; it’s simple. But for those who have built businesses and lives around the inherited constructs of a bygone era, it will be both simple and hard.

The Will To Chase Significance
If we recognize that we have inherited some of the business diseases of the Industrial Age, all we need is the will to change. But it needs to be a strong and determined will, because our past is a strong magnet and will pull us back in if we lack vigilance.

We should be grateful that the Industrial Age provided us with the first three S’s, Safety, Security, and Stability, on which to build the fourth S, Significance. But we must also recognize that the practices that brought us those three will not bring us the fourth. We have a choice to make. Stay with what we know and slowly atrophy as the world moves on without us, or join the Participation Age and start sharing together in building companies that Make Meaning, not just money.

Which do you choose?

The Short Straw of Failure

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One Simple Thing

For years I’ve been hunting down reasons why people are successful, or why they aren’t. In the last few weeks an over-arching single reason seems to be forming for me.

The Long List of Success Attributes
If you break it down to the smaller reasons, there are so many why people succeed – clarity of vision, solid values/beliefs/principles, speed of execution, commitment (never giving up), discipline, getting back up/bouncing back, taking good risks vs bad risks (& knowing the difference), being organized, optimistic, being flexible, embracing challenge, seeing the big picture, rising above offense, seeing yourself as successful, being willing to be wrong often…

…and so many more.

The One Big Success Attribute
But as I look at the long list of things that make people successful or keep them stuck, they almost all seem to roll up under one simple, over-arching reason. I’ve been testing it against all the other reasons for weeks, and can’t find one that doesn’t fit under the one big one.

The reason we get where we want to go or don’t is simply this:

Short-term vs. long-term decision-making.

Not very glamorous, but absolutely transformative if you embrace it.

People who make their decisions based on what will help in the short-term are almost never successful. People who make decisions based on what will be best in the long run are almost always successful. Is it that simple? Let’s test it and see.

Testing It Out
Take a look at the list of success attributes above (or any of the dozens I haven’t mentioned) and ask yourself which ones are based on short-term gain and which ones are based on the long-term gain. Success attributes are all about the long-term.

In stark contrast, the following reasons for failure all help us address short-term symptoms, but keep us right where we are:
– survival: I have payroll to make
– feelings: I don’t feel like doing that right now
– fear: I’m afraid they won’t like me, or I might fail
– lack of discipline: shiny object syndrome – oooh! – let’s do that, TOO!
– being tired: the #1 reason businesses fail
– lack of learning: we’re too busy DOING to be learning
– inflexibility: change is messy, we’ll just row over the falls
– lack of vision: I’m too busy making chairs for that woo-woo crap

…and on and on. We do them all for one very simple reason. We are short-sighted and not thinking about how we will ever get to where we want to be.

Ask yourself two long-term questions:

1) What would I be doing right now if I weren’t (in survival, afraid, undisciplined, tired, etc – put your own short-term problem here)?
2) Am I making decisions based on where I am, or where I want to be?

Decisions based on what helps me now, create long-term failure. Long-term success is based on a life pattern of making many small, daily decisions, one after another, that stack up to success down the road.

Our VALUES determine our thoughts
Our thoughts determine our actions
Our actions determine our habits
Our habits determine our character
Our character determines our DESTINY.

Do you value being on the treadmill the rest of your life, making decisions that address short-term symptoms but never solve the long-term problems? Or do you value getting off the treadmill and living a life of success and significance?

You Are Not a Victim of the Short Straw
In business and in life, the short straw is not a guessing game. Nobody’s fist is hiding it. The long straw and the short straw are both laying on the table right in front of us. If we want to be successful we will see clearly that short-term decision-making is just willingly picking the short straw instead of the long one.

Make one decision today that will make you more successful later. It likely won’t make you any money or save you any time TODAY (short-term). But it just might change your life down the road.

Choose the long straw.

What to Obsess About in a Maturing Business

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Not survival.

You found a viable product or service. Then you grew the business into a stable, healthy profit-generator. Now what?

A company owner approached me a couple months ago to get help with his business. When we talked it was apparent his business had grown to a nice size, providing a good income for him and his employees.

When I asked what he wanted to accomplish in our one2ones he said, “I need a reason to keep going. I’m making good money and the business is doing a few million a year, but I can’t seem to grow it, and don’t seem to have the clarity I need to move forward.”

Make Meaning, Not Money
The Industrial Age taught us the lie that if you got money, that money would naturally give you a great lifestyle. “If I just had a million bucks life would be great.” No, it wouldn’t. Business owners who work to make money rarely make a lot of it because making money is not an empowering vision. Those who chase something bigger than just making money are much more likely to make a lot of it. We call that a Big Why. A Big Why moves you from Survival right through Success to Significance.

Significance Rocks
Startup and growth are about viability and money, sacrificing time and present significance to get there. This was my sixth business (I’ve started another one since). When I started it, I worked seven days a week the first year, then six the second, then five the third. But once we had a viable product and the money was coming in, I wasn’t done. It was now about ensuring that the business created both time and money for me (and others in the business), because it is the combination of these two resources that set us up to create Significance in the world around us.

The Poverty Mindset
Survival is a very strong instinct for starting a business. I’ve got a mortgage to pay. The fascinating thing is that most business owners live in survival throughout their entire 40 year career – poverty mindset – always living at the end of their two main resources – time and money.

They don’t have a Big Why, a reason to grow their business, so if they happen to make money, they just buy a bigger house or more toys to ensure they are completely out of time and money, and then the need to survive kicks back in to help then grow the business to support the new poverty level they’ve set for themselves.

The Big Why Mindset
Business Owners with a Big Why take paying their mortgage as a given, it’s just background noise for getting something done much bigger than making money. A Big Why is so motivating that it makes you want to get out of bed even when you’re not making money, and it drives everything you do.

Another client of mine said, “I knew when I had my Big Why, because it had me.” He went on to explain that once he had something much bigger than just making money to drive him forward, that he found himself making every decision, from buying a copier to opening a new location, based on whether it would get him to his Big Why or not.

The Big Why – something you can never check off as done
A Big Why is a goal you can never check off as completed – being the best parent, solving poverty, giving every month to a charity, making an ongoing impact in the world of technology (Bill Hewlett’s Big Why for starting HP). Those who have made the biggest impacts always do it with a Big Why, not with a desire to make money.

What is Your Big Why
What is your Big Why, that motivator that you can never check off as completed? Every great business owner has one. If you’re wondering why your business is stagnant or that you’re just going through the motions, don’t look “out there”. Look inside and ask yourself, “What is my Big Why”?

If you do that, you’re much more likely to grow a very successful business that leaves a legacy that will endure. If you don’t get Utter Clarity on your Big Why, you’re likely to stagnate and go through the motions.

Run and grow your business with a Big Why. It’s a lot more fun.

Attitude actually ISN’T everything.

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Close, but no cigar.

I’ve heard it all my life. Your attitude determines your altitude, attitude is everything, attitude is a choice, etc. Good luck with that. It sounds like a big fake “grind” to me. And I’m certain it won’t make you successful.

People aren’t successful because they have a good attitude. They have a good attitude because they have something much deeper figured out. Attitude is a RESULT of something much bigger. If we don’t have the bigger thing, ginning up a great attitude is like lipstick on a pig.

Emotionalism is Not a Good Attitude
People with great attitudes that aren’t backed by the bigger thing are usually pretty obvious. They’re convinced that attitude is everything, so they rely on emotionalism and “everything is GREAT!” “live is wonderful” statements on the outside while they’re dying on the inside. And they just hope that “fake it until you make it” will get them through. It won’t.

It impossible to have a good attitude by deciding to have a good attitude. It’s like squinting hard to make a wad of bills appear in front of you. At times I do have to “just decide” to have a good attitude, but I guarantee you I would have no motivation to make the decision if it wasn’t driven by something bigger.

The Fourth “S”
The Industrial Age taught us the “Three S’s” – Safety, Security and Stability. The problem with the three S’s is that they are at the bottom of Masloew’s hierarchy – they are just survival mechanisms. The Three S’s will not give us enough motivation to have a great attitude. The fourth S, the one the Industrial Age couldn’t afford for you to have – Significance – that is the driver of attitude.

Clarity on what you want out of your business and your life is what drives good attitude. If you know where you are going, what you want when you get there, and when you want to be there, it will have a transformational impact on your attitude.

The Big Why
In Crankset Group we talk a lot about “The Big Why.” The Big Why is that one big thing that gets you out of bed every morning that gives you the motivation to create a life of significance. If you have a Big Why, you will rarely have to work on getting your attitude straight, and when you do lose it, it will be much easier to get your good attitude back. It’s not about good attitude, but about having the motivation to have one.

Attitude is a Result, Not a Cause
Focus on Significance, not on attitude. Figure out what is really deeply important and run toward it with everything you’ve got. Use your business to get you there. You’re attitude will follow.

What Do You Want to Be Known For?

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An empowering vision.

What are you building with your business? Do you know? If not, it’s never too late to get this answer. Stop for a moment and get it, because every decision will fall from this one if you have it answered. People who try to make money rarely make very much of it. People who answer this question understand it is where significance begins.

We sometimes confuse what is good for us with what works for big business. We see Giant Corporation, Incorporated focused on return on investment (ROI) to it’s shareholders and think that we should do that. They are a lousy example of what you want to be known for. They have a legal responsibility to focus on making money, we don’t. And I can tell you that people who focus on something bigger than making money always make more of it.

What do you want to be known for?

And it’s even true with a very few Giant Corp. companies. As Raj Sisodia found in his book Firms of Endearment , 28 of the Fortune 500 have declared to their shareholders that they are about something bigger than making money – they want to be know for something else. You would think that might distract them from making money, but you would be wrong.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collin’s identified 11 companies that beat the S&P 500 profit standard by at least 300%. Raj’s 28 Giant Corporations that focused instead on something bigger than making money do 1,072% better than the average S&P 500 company.

This relationship between focusing on something bigger than making money and actually making a lot is even more clear with small businesses. Why?

Making money is not an empowering vision.

People make money for two reasons:

1) Survival – survival is a very strong instinct. It is not surprising that most people make just enough money to pay their bills. And the only way that they can motivate themselves to make more is to constantly increase their lifestyle so they can ensure there is always more money going out than coming in. Staying in this Cycle of Poverty, even when you’re making millions, is a great way to ensure you will always be motivated only by survival.

I have a former client who lives that way. His house is beautiful and his cars are gorgeous, and he doesn’t sleep at night. He is in survival mode all the time. He bought the 80’s lie “He who dies with the most toys wins”, and is a hostage to his business and his lifestyle.

2)Significance – An empowering vision – People who see money as a means to an end that is bigger than the toys it can buy are much more likely to make a lot more of it.

You should have as the objective of your work to move from SURVIVAL right through SUCCESS (the imposter of toys) to SIGNIFICANCE.

What do you want to be known for?

I address this in Making Money Is Killing Your Business. Answer that question and you’re likely to get up tomorrow a lot more motivated regardless of the economic climate. And you’re likely to be a lot more successful because you have committed movement in a purposeful direction.

Get out of my way. I have somewhere I have to be.

It’s a lot more motivating than, “I made 6% more this year.”

What do you want to be known for?

The Problem of Big

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I’m a Smallist.

In 2009 our economy was rated by the National Security Agency as a higher threat to our national security than terrorism. One side blamed big government and the other blamed big business and big banks. But virtually no one was angry with local business or local government. This is very instructive as to where the problem is and where the solution lies.

It is universally accepted that “too big to fail” businesses that are cozy with big government who will bail them out are the cause of recessions, and small business brings us out of them with no assistance whatsoever. Yet both sides patronize and ignore small business and are committed to big business or big government getting even bigger.

The issue is not with capitalism, free markets, government systems or bureaucrats; the issue is simply “the problem of big”.

Macro-Decisions for Micro-Problems

One problem with “big” is that both giant corporations and massive federal government make macro-decisions (national) to solve micro-problems (local), and every time they do it, somebody gets left out, hurt or dismissed as decisions are made to benefit the 80% and ignore the 20%.

The other problem with big is that Macro-capitalism results in the accumulation of wealth and decision-making in the hands of a very few people in business, and macro-government results in the accumulation of power and decision-making in the hands of a very few politicians. And as we’ve seen throughout political history, the reality is that these two “bigs” have a parasitic relationship that both sides use regularly to preserve and grow their own centralization of wealth and power, all to the detriment of local business and local government.

Local Business and Local Government

Does small always work better than big? No. It is easy to find both local businesses and local government that make self-preserving decisions that aren’t in the best interest of their employees or customers. But the negative affects are not as damaging and are always more apparent. And removing that local politician or shunning that local business is a lot easier.

Micro-solutions for Micro-problems

Even with the best of intentions it is simply too big a task to ask macro-entities to solve local problems. The problem isn’t government or business, but simply the size, massive reach and slow-grinding gears of both.

We need to return to local government and local business for answers to our local problems, and push as many decisions down the food chain as possible. This is difficult for both national politicians and big business leaders because they lose control over their own macro-wealth or macro-power. There is a place for both big business and big government, but I believe we would be better off and safer as a nation with less of both.

Big is Still the Problem

Neither government or business is inherently good or bad, but the bigger any system gets the more difficult it becomes for it to truly serve those in the system. Our economy would flourish with more and smaller competition, and societal problems would find much better solutions closer to home than in D.C. This is why I’m such a fan of local businesses and local government and am so committed to seeing them both flourish.

My focus is to take local businesses from survival, through success to significance. The better we do this the more partners we will have to solve local problems and create great local communities everywhere.

Abundance and Significance – Making More Money in the Participation Age.

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For almost 200 years we were in the Industrial Age, followed by four “Ages” in less than 40 years: The Post-Industrial/Service Age. The Technology Age, the very short 5-10 year Information Age, and what some including me are now calling the Participation Age.

The hallmark of the Participation Age is “Sharing”. Shared technologies, shared information, shared resources, and shared participation in developing new products. But most of all the Participation Age is identified by the re-development of the concept of community – people living and working together toward a common goal.

Linux, Druple communities, interactive media, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook are all examples of shared community. Independent programmers are meeting for a weekend and developing an application in just a few hours together.

The results? A big one is that we are now in the age of Two-Way Marketing. You can no longer afford to have a one-way “push” message. You must be listening as much or more than talking, asking more questions than you answer, and participating with your community in the development of your brand, not telling people what your brand is.

The Age of Participation – Social Entrepreneurship

An even bigger result is that the best companies will be focused on creating abundance and significance for the owner, the employees and the world around them. They will be returning to what we were taught in kindergarten, to re-learn how to share and participate with others in building a better world.

Besides two-way marketing, alert companies will understand that they can no longer afford to be interesting, but that they now must be interested – finding ways to promote the interests of their customers and their community to increase their profits.

It’s not a foo-foo idea anymore; it is becoming a staple of business. Social entrepreneurship is not a fad. It’s a result of living in the age of participation and the information sharing that is possible as a result. And those companies that put the interests of their customers and community first will make more money.

Selling a product or service doesn’t cut it anymore. Last year Wired Magazine ran a cover story on the need for people to reconnect with the concept of “meaning”. In the eighties the bumper sticker was “He who dies with the most toys wins” and in the nineties we got to try it and found it wanting. In the last ten years we have begun to reconnect with the idea that it’s not “He who dies with the most toys wins”, but “He who lives with the most significant goals wins.”

Great companies in the 21st century will move from Survival, through Success to Significance. And they will do so by changing the business mindset from one of scarcity – “I need to get mine first because there is only so much to go around”; to a mindset of abundance – “I will get mine as I help others get theirs.”

Use your business to do more than make money; you’ll make more money if you do. All the best businesses are growing as they give back. It creates the right leadership mindset for a business to grow.

You either live in a world of abundance or a world of scarcity. Whichever one you choose effects every decision you make.

Have a great finish to 2009 and an abundant and significant start to 2010!

The Four Cornerstones of Business Success & Significance

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The Four Cornerstones of Success and Significance are A Big Motivator and Three Bosses.

  1. The Big Motivator – or The Big Why – Lifetime Goals

  2. Boss #1 – A simple Strategic Plan that runs my daily business

  3. Boss #2 – Process Maps and Process Descriptions to create freedom and a reproduceable business (and make it worth a lot more money)

  4. Boss #3 – Outside Eyes on my Business to catch the blindspots and bring balance and completeness to my leadership.

1) The Big Motivator

Why? Why is the least asked question in business and is the most important at every level, from buying a shiny object (Why?) to the reason you do what you do (Why are you in business – what’s the end game?)

Businesses that create success and significance for the owners and in the world around them have all answered why and are driven forward by that Big Motivator. What are your Lifetime Goals, and how are you building your business to get you there? Business should have a purpose – what’s yours?

2) Boss #1

Where and When? – I use a Two-Page Strategic Plan to run every aspect of my business. I know exactly WHERE I want to go and WHEN I want to be there. The second least asked question in business is “When?”

I know exactly what my business looks like at maturity and I have a Business Maturity Date – Feb. 18, 2001, 10am. We all know exactly where we are going on vacation and when we want to be there, and that informs us what we need to do before hand, and how and what to pack. We go blissfully through 30 years of business ownership blindly packing the car of our business day after day with no idea where we are going or when we want to be there. How in the world can we make a decision about today if that decision lives in a vacuum? Is it any wonder most businesses never grow up? Do you have a simple Strategic Plan and a Business Maturity Date?

3) Boss # 2 How?

Process Mapping is that route to freedom for the small business owner. It gets all the processes out of their head on to paper so they can create quality clones of themselves who will produce as well as they do, so they can stop being control freaks and get a life.

A business owner who wants to create success for themselves and significance in the world around them with their business has others doing the production so they can focus on the Important things while others take care of the Urgent things. Do you have your processes mapped on a simple graph with some descriptions of each step? Business freedom is not within your grasp if it’s all in your head.

4) Boss #3

Outside Eyes on your business. None of us can figure it all out, and we’re too subjective about and too close to our own businesses to see the potholes.

The business owners who are intent on using their businesses to create success and significance all have peer advisors, mentors, advisory groups, or others who can speak to their business. Who are you allowing to see behind the curtain who can help you build success and significance?

Summary

Do you have your Big Motivator and your Three Bosses? I know, you don’t have time to do this, which is why you’re still on the treadmill. There is no such thing as lack of time, there are only priorities. If getting off the treadmill is a priority, you’ll find the time to not just make money, but build a business that makes money for you, so you can turn your attention to creating success and significance, not just revenue.