How can leaders help their organizations discover their unique purpose before they die?
CH: Organizations are significantly different from individuals in that individuals die and organizations can live forever. Very few do. The Catholic Church is perhaps the longest living, but Mitsui of Japan and Stora of Sweden are over 600 years old. My Oxford College is 650 years old. The interesting thing about organizations is that they can make the assumption that they’re never going to die. And the reason that you stay immortal is you have discovered what’s unique about you. The job of the leader is to work that out. To express it. Very few leaders succeed in doing this. I ask a lot of leaders of organizations what it’s all about. They usually say survival. I say that’s only the first stage. If you’re no use to anyone, you can’t survive. What is it that you uniquely as an organization can contribute to the world? Most don’t know the answer. Why then would you want to devote your life to an organization that can’t give something special to the world? No reason except that you get m
