Profit, or Value?

What we measure tends to drive our behavior.

If we’re in business purely to make profit, then reducing costs, cutting waste, limiting employee benefits, constantly negotiating down our supply chain vendors, will all improve the bottom line.  Profit becomes our master, because that is the measurement we have chosen to define our “success.”

Value, on the other hand, is a very different standard.  

Value is created 

by crafting self-actualizing work (both in ourselves and for our employees), 

by investing in acts of integrity, 

by engaging in meaningful (not just profitable) acts, 

by contributing to the community/society, 

by putting service before profit, 

by thinking in terms of relationship-building rather than transactional exchanges.

We can make money (and a living) either way.

Life is better when we focus on adding value.