Leadership Thought #322 – It Has To Be About More Than Just Money
The most successful business owners I know are focused on building great companies and fulfilling a vital mission rather than just making money. Financial success should be the result, not the driving force behind it. This principle becomes especially apparent after the business experiences some economic success. Instead of becoming greedy and short-term focused, these leaders often double down and invest surplus resources to continue growing the business and its people. They genuinely appreciate the importance and responsibility of positively impacting others and adding real value to their marketplace.
Self-satisfaction comes from a sense of doing something worthwhile, difficult, and significant. I have always believed that what motivates you matters. You must have something apart from money that motivates you to get up and do your best. Material rewards lose their allure faster than you think, and the lust for more is never satisfied. There are only so many things you can buy, privileges you can experience, or vacations you can take before they begin to lose their luster. Just look at the professions where people become rich too quickly to see the evidence of how self-destructive and ego-driven many of these individuals can become.
While most of our management decisions happen in the present tense, leadership is about looking to the future. Once you get to a certain size, you must be careful about putting your own economic needs above what’s best for the company. It’s unnerving how something that can take a lifetime to build can crumble under the weight of a few bad decisions and selfish thinking. Moreover, passion is a critical variable in success, and its manifestation only happens when individuals are inspired by a higher purpose that is rarely just personal wealth. When pursuing money and power solely dominates business, it leads to questionable ethics that now pervade Wall Street and our political process.
Direct your leadership energies towards building, creating, innovating, problem-solving, empowering, and inspiring others to achieve a meaningful and worthwhile objective; as a result, positive outcomes are likely to follow!
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