The Ultimate Purpose

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The notional reason — long buried by screeds of wishful yogababble — why everyone, in any role, in any time or place, shows up for work, with which, for a sainted few, HR’s putative yogababble will be magically congruent: to create value for the owner. Most likely, if you're in HR.

Define “owner” broadly — there will be many: shareholders, the boss, your self, your family, society, our children’s future, Gaia, whatever — and their interests will certainly conflict, but think always in epochal, constant, unshifting terms. If you achieve some value for some boss at some point in your day — achieving self-actualisation through scabrous wiki posts perhaps — then your day hasn't been entirely wasted.

Now your mission statement may well be immeasurable, aspirational, voguish, optional horsefeed — probably will be, if HR or corporate communications had anything to do with it — but even that you can energise by tacking The Ultimate Purpose on the front of it.

“To create value for the owner by ... ” and here, fill in the blank with your marketing department’s chosen vacuity: “ ... connecting the world to bring harmony through the efficient allocation of capital” or something, I don't know — but this way you have a north star that makes some actionable sense.

If we take it as a given that the best concrete articulation of abstract value is folding green stuff, the Ultimate Purpose is, in any case, to start with some money and reliably make more of it.