by Tony Vidler       

Everyone is busy being busy, but what is the point of it all?

What is the purpose that drives all the business building activity?

Businesses that experience superb growth typically have an owner, or owners, who have clarity of purpose and that purpose sits at the heart of everything they do.

Some years ago I came up with my own litle system of ensuring that I continually kept the pipeline full by consistently managing the inputs.  I called it the  “6P’s of Peak Performance”.  It is a systematic approach to doing the key elements of building a successful business and evening out the revenue or production performance (see The 6 P’s of Sustained peak Performance ), and it worked for me, and others I have taught it to.

But then an excellent adviser and friend, Keith Kerr  added to it when he suggested that “Purpose sits in the middle of the process and the Purpose should guide the decisions in each area”.

Having clarity of purpose is is being able to answer the question “why are we doing this at all?”

He is absolutely right.  Being busy is pointless if all that busy-ness is not taking you closer to where you want to go….what you are trying to achieve?

Purpose brings in another dimension beyond having a clear vision of what the business aims to achieve.  A vision for your business is very useful – highly recommended in fact – and that is a clear picture of how you want the business to work and look and what IT is supposed to achieve.  Having clarity of purpose however brings in the personal dimension: what is actually important to you and why are you doing all this?  Does your business activity reflect, or sit comfortably, with your own values and personal goals?  Will it help you achieve your personal goals and lifestyle objectives?  Does it fulfill you?

Identifying your purpose will help shape the systematic approach to building a business that gives you what you are aiming for as it will help guide decisions and actions in such a way that they feel right as well as energise you.  That clarity of purpose also helps sustain your momentum during tough times and the inevitable business challenges that threaten to demotivate and derail you.

Once you can identify what the point of all this business building activity is,  then getting out and promoting, producing, pitching, processing, perfecting and planning becomes substantially easier – and your success more certain.