The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.
Peter DruckerRead
Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity
Interpretation
Profit serves as a measure of a business's validity rather than its primary goal.
This quote by Peter Drucker emphasizes that the main aim of a business should not solely be to make money, but rather to create value and serve a purpose. Profit should be viewed as an indicator of whether a business is fulfilling its mission effectively, rather than the driving motivation behind its existence.
In practice
This quote can be referenced in a business seminar to inspire entrepreneurs to focus on purpose.
The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.
In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill.
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
The basic economic resource - the means of production -_x000D_ _x000D_ is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor._x000D_ _x000D_ It is and will be knowledge.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
Screw the competition - focus on good customer service.
If one engineer at a startup tries Slack and says, 'I hate it. I am not going to use this,' that's it for us. We won't get evaluated.
It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.
I think any company should compete on the quality of their products, their prices, the novelty they can produce, their services, because that would be fair competition.
You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy.
If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
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