Two dozen people sat in a 5th-floor conference room, coffees helping a jet-lagged crew make it through a long day of meetings. We had recently acquired a company with a proud and impressive culture. They set high standards, held one another accountable, and had consistently outworked the competition.
It showed up in their numbers.
Any acquired company wonders how the integration will go. The team is in a liminal space, wondering who they can trust and calculating how long they intend to stick around. While we wanted to talk with them about the business opportunity, our real mission was to build trust and improve the chances that they stuck around for the long haul.
We spent the day talking about relationships and character. We shared a lot about values. Early on, a few of our new partners looked confused– this touchy-feely stuff hadn’t been something they’d paused to consider. They had been heads-down focused on hitting targets, and I sensed they weren’t sure what to make of us.
We exposed them to leaders who shared stories of sacrifice and commitment– leaders who talked about their Why. We engaged them in a discussion about their core purpose and their values. Asked how we could create more opportunity for them and for their teams.
The discussion was lively, and, by the afternoon, I sensed we were making some headway.
In our penultimate session, one of our new teammates asked the question that had been on all of their minds. “All this stuff’s great,” he said. “I mean, I was skeptical at first, but I really like what we’ve talked about, but we’ve been here for seven hours and no one’s mentioned targets. Not once. What about billings? Don’t they matter?”
My boss smiled like he’d been waiting for this question since the moment we sat down.
“Billings?” he repeated.
And then he looked around the room seeming to make eye contact with every one of our new teammates– a perfectly timed pause.
“Billings are the air we breathe.”
What a perfect metaphor. He didn’t have to say anything else. Point made.
A company can be mission driven, it can have the most well-intentioned leaders, it can give back to the community and commit to sustainability and embrace a commendable set of values. But without billings, there’s no oxygen to sustain these efforts.
Profits for the sake of profit feel hollow, but virtuous leadership and values without profits don’t scale.
The best companies recognize that profits fuel their mission. They are the air they breathe.
We should all be asking: Does our organization generate the ‘oxygen’ it needs to grow sustainably, while staying true to its core values?
Would love to hear your thoughts below on how we best balance profit with purpose.
