The natural desire for success can be a gentle seduction. Even the requirement to secure a living can easily cloud the development of an idea or enterprise. I do not believe that the legitimate purpose of most operating companies to to provide success or a living to it’s producer community or profit to it’s investors. There are exceptions, of course, and that is when providing such success IS the mission and purpose of the enterprise. Most enterprises are formed to DO something. Economics, for them, is an important means to that end but not the end itself.

This true for both profit and non-profit companies. The difference is merely in the tax structure (based on a social covenant) and how any profits are distributed. the purpose of ANY enterprise is profit. What is profit and how it is shared is the difference between one structure an another and one enterprise to another.

For profit enterprises take on a dual purpose: the development and delivery of the product/service for which they are formed and the production and distribution of profit to those who made it possible. Profit is a factor of success - a result of it - not the sole measure of it.

For a for profit enterprise to fail to make a profit is a failure - a sin in the meaning of “miss the mark.” To make a profit by cheating on the rules of the game, by destroying life, by coercion, or by simply compromising the product is also sin - and, in many cases illegal but rarely punshed.

Of course, we have this state religion that the MARKET is supposed to take care of all this. Supposedly, the “best” products/services (and by implication, ethics) will win. An interesting theory only lacking in any demonstration of truth. This theory does not take into account increasing returns, the nature of a knowledge economy and the fact that a million Frenchman can be wrong - at least for a very long time. External feedback loops provided by the market are not, alone, sufficient. there must be internal ones also. In fact, there is a third critical source of feedback necessary, and that is from the system keeper (more about this later). Feedback of a complex kind is required to regulate a complex system. The MISSION (and Charter) of an organization provides the standard - the measure - by which internal feedback functions. The market provides external feedback. Both have to be employed but the internal system has to have heaver weight. This is particularly true when innovation is taking place (and thus, markets being educated or created) our when the nature of the product is such that the integrity of delivery (the case with all professional services, as example) is critical to the success of the product. Organizational INTEGRITY is critical for a healthy system to exist. The buyer, of course, is supposed to beware, and, we have all those regulations. Kinda makes you wonder how over a 100,000 people die every year due to health care mistakes. Of the three kinds of feedback there exist a natural hierarchy driven by the nature of the timing of the feedback. INTERNAL feedback is very fast; External, via market, moderately fast; External via a system keeper is slow and should be. An organization that waits to hear it from the market is in trouble. A market that goes out of wack is a tragedy When this happens and the system keeper is out to lunch, it is a disaster. Lets see... could this ever happen? One might think of the dot.bubble and Enron et.al. A case where integrity and feedback was suppressed in all three circuits for some time.

Kevin Kelly said that “it is not that hard to get a system, it is hard to get the system you want.” It is not that easy to earn a profit, it is even more work - and laudable - to earn a profit doing what you set out to do. At MG Taylor we want our Mission and profit to.