Editor’s Note: Jason Payne is a former Wall Street research analyst and founder of the Groundwar Group – a management consulting firm providing premier corporate advisory services, leadership training solutions, and investment analysis capabilities for business leaders and investors around the world.
Mr. Payne pens this ongoing “Profits & Prophets” series to help our entire Mogul community develop a more profitable mindset about business, investing and life itself.
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From Jason Payne, Management Consultant & Leadership Coach …
What is your mission in this life?
You do have a mission, don’t you? You know, an all-encompassing passion to achieve one singular objective? A “big picture” goal, which consciously (or subconsciously) motivates every decision you make?
Of course you do! After all, everybody is on a mission – whether they know it or not.
Today’s installment of our new “Profits & Prophets” series is designed to help you reevaluate your own personal/professional mission, so you can reinforce certain healthy components and eliminate certain unhealthy motives that may be hindering your pursuit of success.
Because your life is always pursuing some definition of “success” – with every decision you make.
And failure is not an option.
How to Ruin Your Business Career (and Kill Your Team)
“I just can’t understand why we’re always so miserable,” confessed my exasperated consulting client last month.
“When I resigned from my leadership position in Texas, I thought I would be joining a much more vibrant professional team here in New York,” continued the frustrated executive.
“But now I hate my work more than ever – and I suspect all my stakeholders feel the same way about our entire business.”
This businessman had recently arranged a free exploratory consultation with me, hoping to gain “a helpful outside perspective” about the personal and professional dysfunction that increasingly threatened his success.
But after more than an hour of spilling his guts over dinner, the frustrated executive had been unable to articulate exactly what was missing from his life. Although I could see the silver bullet sitting easily within his grasp, it would make no sense for me to supply any firepower to a man who did not understand where to aim it.
If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles... If you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. ~Sun Tzu, The Art of War
To help my new client view his unhealthy professional dynamics through a healthier lens, I asked him the following question …
“How does your personal and professional mission compare to the individual mission of each stakeholder you have described thus far?”
I waited for his response.
And waited.
He was speechless – frozen in his seat, like a deer in headlights. The grown man sitting in front of me had never considered his own life’s mission, much less the mission of anybody else in his sphere of influence.
And it was ruining his life.
“Wh- wh- what do you mean?” he eventually stammered. “What is my mission?”
“That’s right,” I gently repeated, sincerely heartbroken for yet another middle-aged American male who long-ago resigned himself to being nothing more than being the global economy’s consumer of last resort.
“Your mission is the comprehensive objective that guides every area of your entire life. It’s the primary filter through which all information must pass while traveling along the assembly line of your brain’s decision-making process. Everybody has a mission… So what is yours?”
After much thoughtful consideration (and several additional sips of cabernet), the executive sheepishly confessed what I had suspected all along:
“Well, Jason … I never really thought about it before, but I suppose my life’s mission is to become as comfortable as possible.”
Bingo!
The slight nod of my head did little to reflect the explosion of excitement welling-up inside my heart.
“And what about the various stakeholders in your business?” I compassionately inquired. “How does your mission for personal comfort compare to each of their individual missions?”
My client’s eyes wandered around the room as he took another thoughtful sip of wine. Then his gaze quickly returned to meet my own curious stare …
… and I enjoyed the immense privilege of watching a new lightbulb turn on inside his mind (which was beginning to race in an exciting new direction).
It was an Aha! moment for the ages:
“I’ve never asked any of my teammates or stakeholders to explain their own personal missions to me,” he mused. “But I would imagine that most of them are prioritizing their own pursuit of comfort – much like I have been doing in my own personal and professional life …”
“And if that’s the case,” he continued, “then it’s really no surprise that we’re always so miserable – because we’re all trying to accomplish mutually exclusive goals!”
Double bingo!
And thus begins the road to personal and professional success.
This client still has many important realizations on his near-term and long-term horizon, but I can’t wait to see all the fruitful and profitable transformation that will be birthed from his team's new partnership with my consulting group. We are hopeful that their new unified mission can enjoy widespread adoption across the entire healthcare industry – in addition to the encouraging traction it has already gained amongst their organization’s immediate stakeholders.
(By the way, I friggin’ love my job!)
Not Just Any Mission, A Healthy Mission!
You see, it is not good enough to simply have a “mission statement” for your life, as if any ol' mission would suffice. As mentioned earlier, every human has a mission – whether they know it or not – and pretending otherwise is as dangerous as pretending that my 87 year-old grandfather can breakdance.
Instead, rather than being content with a mere articulation of your life’s current mission (which can be conjured easily enough through a few minutes of introspection and a few sips of cabernet), you should strive to pursue the healthiest mission possible. And if your current mission has unhealthy components, then you should do whatever is necessary to make the proper adjustments.
Otherwise, you may reach the end of your life and realize that you have successfully accomplished the wrong mission – like a misguided football player who perseveres through great adversity only to reach the wrong endzone.
This type of pyrrhic victory is also quite similar to the tragic mistake of an investor who allocates his valuable capital into the wrong sort of “profitable” investments, as described in my recent lesson about How to Waste Your Money (and Your Life).
Accordingly, it seems wise to use the remainder of today’s lesson for clarifying one of the defining characteristics of a healthy, fruitful and profitable mission for your life.
Due to various constraints of time, space and money, I cannot adequately use these final paragraphs to define all the components of a comprehensively ideal life mission …
… but I can certainly introduce one of the major requirements (as confirmed by history’s wisest philosophers and most successful leaders).
One Primary Ingredient for a Healthy Mission
One of the primary components of an ideal mission is selflessness – the ability to prioritize other people’s concerns above your own.
Any business leader or investor with a selfless mission is intently curious about “What’s in it for others?”, standing in stark contrast to the vast majority of people who are selfishly preoccupied with “What’s in it for me?”
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This is why selfless executives find themselves leading the best teams.
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And this is why selfless investors find themselves attracting the most capital.
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And this is why selfless landlords find themselves housing the most cooperative tenants.
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And this is why selfless renovators find themselves collaborating with the most reliable contractors.
In the case of my aforementioned consulting client, much of the professional dysfunction plaguing his organization could be traced to his own selfish leadership (which prioritized the executive’s own personal comfort above all else) and a selfish culture that was allowed to thrive each day (under the selfish leader’s implicit blessing).
You see, when selfish people are forced to coexist in a professional environment – often shackled to one another through legally-binding contracts – the resulting dysfunction (and financial inefficiency) is often uglier than Flavor Flav’s gold teeth. Selfish people cannot agree to prioritize a common goal amongst themselves, because selfishness is divisive by nature.
But when one man commits his life to a selfless mission, this single act of “dying to yourself” opens a beautiful door for profitable unity and fruitful teamwork with others – not to mention healthy joy and a thriving sense of purpose within one’s own heart.
I think this is a small part of what Steve Jobs had in mind during the early 1980s when he composed the following mission statement for his ragtag team of misfits at Apple Computer:
“To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”
And I think this is a small part of what Jesus had in mind when he shared the following observation with his own team of Galilean misfits approximately 2,000 years earlier:
“Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
In both of these famous examples, two of history’s most respectable and captivating personalities explained their personal missions in terms of selfless service to others …
… and both of their missions generated beautiful combinations of profitability, fruitfulness and relational synergy that continue to reverberate around the globe, even to this day.
I hope and pray that my consulting clients can enjoy this same sort of selfless success in their own personal and professional missions – including you.
Identify – Identify the comprehensive mission currently driving every aspect of your personal and professional life.
Consider – Consider whether your current mission is a healthy and profitable mission, which will result in a healthy and profitable type of success at the end of your life.
Adjust – If you suspect your life’s overarching mission is not as healthy and profitable as it could be, don’t hesitate to thoughtfully adjust your mission to maximize your success.
Serve & Love Selflessly – Be sure to build your life’s mission to incorporate maximum selflessness, thereby allowing you to serve/love others with the same vigor that most people use to serve/love themselves.