Organizational WHYs

I often get asked the question about the why in for profit organizations versus.

Not for profit organizations.

So before I answer the question, let me just take a little aside. I hate the term not for profit. I hate the idea that an organization and a group of people are defining their purpose based on what they're not.

We have to stand for something, not against things.

The reality is not for profit is a tax delineation and that's why we use the term and not for profits. Absolutely have an idea of profit, except it's defined differently. In a for profit organization, profit is defined in money. In a not for profit organization, profit is defined by whatever you're trying to accomplish. So for example, if your objective is to rescue kittens out of trees, then you better be profitable. You better be rescuing more kittens out of trees this month than you were last month. Let's call them four impact organizations. So we have for profit organizations and.

We have for impact organizations.

Okay, now back to the question. The why is different. And sometimes how do we compare the.

Whys of for profit versus for impact organizations?

Here's generally what I've seen.

For impact organizations are pretty good at articulating their why. Where they're weak is in their hows, the structures in which they use to advance their cause. I mean, definitions as we've just discussed is one of them. For profit organizations tend to be really.

Good at how and pretty weak in why.

In other words, they're really good at process.

Process.

They're really good at operations.

But the sense of higher purpose and.

Higher cause seems to be lacking. So what both organizations could learn to do is learn from each other. In other words, for impact organizations could learn to bolster operations from for profit. And for profit could learn a little.

Bit about working towards a higher cause.

From for impact organizations.

They should look the same. Remember, it's the definition, it's just the.

Metric that is different. But the organization should feel the same to work there. In other words, we should feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves and it should be a well oiled machine and we should have good metrics to help us feel like we're moving the ball down the playing field. Back to the four impact organizations. Because there were poor metrics and because they do not define themselves as for impact. Unfortunately the metric becomes too much about money and raising money and less about understanding how far we're moving the ball down the field with whatever we're trying to accomplish. So there we go.