Establishing a purpose-driven business requires a systematic intentional focus on three important aspects. People, Knowledge and Business. Businesses that focus on some of these aspects and excludes some become a subject for the failure of that very business in one aspect or another.

For instance, businesses that focus more on the profiting aspects (a very common one) and excludes other aspects such as looking after the people, or preserving knowledge shall inevitably become an unwelcoming environment for the people and devolving environment in terms of evolution and modernization.

Businesses that may focus on the people and forgets a fundamental aspect in terms of operations become less likely to sustain itself and gives a bad example to other businesses that are considering investing more into people to balance the relentless focus on hitting quarter targets.

Let’s discuss these three fundamental priorities in this article:

• The People in terms of sustainability, evolution, and fulfillment
• The Knowledge in terms of purposing, learning, and sharing
• The Business in terms of saving, investing, and profiting

The People

People are at the core of everything. People are the foundation for every other priority. Without people there’s no growth and there’s no business. Here’s my areas of focus on The People as a priority:

Survival

Ensure every individual’s basic needs are met. These basic physical needs include providing proper work environment and tooling, proper compensation, healthcare, assistance, and a fair shot at opportunities to improve one’s current situation for the better, regardless of their background, ethnicity, faith, or any other factor.

Evolution

Ensure systematic, intentional, and continuous investment in the growth of the individuals. Growth includes training, learning, mentoring and guidance. Creating opportunities for experimentation and fostering an environment that celebrates trial and error and accommodates and acknowledges human error.

Evolution also goes beyond the individual into the community/team. It focuses on communications, organization, and knowledge sharing. Additionally, it is important to realize that values such as truthfulness, authenticity and honesty are our only way to evolve and grow into new realms of prosperity.

Fulfillment

Ensuring every individual is happy. This includes embodying values of empathy, care, and support for every individual. Creating social environments where every individual is welcomed, included, and celebrated for their very presence. It also includes entertainment, hopefulness, meaning, positivity, belonging, recognition, and appreciation.

The most important aspect of fulfillment is helping individuals find their purpose. A higher purpose that aims towards contributing to the survival of mankind, it’s evolution and fulfillment.

The Knowledge

Knowledge is power. Generating, gathering, and sharing knowledge is the 2nd highest priority to me. An organization that systematically honors and fostering an environment of learning, training, and sharing knowledge is an organization that learns from the past, makes calculated risks into the future, and brings everyone within it up to speed on the current state of things as rapidly and efficiently as possible.

Generating

Generating knowledge happens through walking into untapped areas of experimentation and development. It is a risk-driven priority aiming towards ensuring our products continues to evolve and withstand a forever-changing industry.

In the core of knowledge generation is finding one their purpose. The purpose is what drives everything else in any given business or activity. Defining that purpose and ensuring everything else supports that very same purpose is a core priority.

Collecting

In a culture of innovation, seeking knowledge and collecting it from subject matter experts is a fundamental aspect of reserving that knowledge and evolving it. This includes mentorship programs, direct customer interactions, demos and hiring the right individuals for the task.

Knowledge sometimes is a muscle memory for some experts that requires close observation and proper documentation. Collecting knowledge will also power-up a healthy environment where evolving communications with others is fundamentals for collecting that knowledge and seeking it.

Sharing

Generating or collecting knowledge without systematically sharing it across the board is as bad as not having it at all. This priority combats patterns such as tribal knowledge, savior models and incomplete outdated documentations that leaves the team in disarray once the “savior” is gone.

This priority focuses on standardizing knowledge sharing processes, simplifying finding that knowledge and creating a culture of inclusion in terms of learning.

The Business

Business is the lifeline of our organization. It is the reason we are all here. It is also the reason we are all able to work together and innovate and push the wheel of evolution forward. But in order for us to run a successful business, we need to fulfill certain aspects of maintaining that very business. These aspects are as follows:

Investing

Investing in new ideas, initiatives and taking our risks for business growth is a fundamental priority. A business today that does what it used to do few years ago is considered dead. Therefore, a priority for me is to continue to systematically invest in new ideas, take risks and reiterate.

Investing also includes generating interest in a business that drives investments from potential partners and selling others on the idea of business evolution.

Saving

This priority is about business optimization. Saving funds is a direct equivalent of opening more doors for newer investments. The frugal aspect of my business priorities is to ensure our investments for business run are spent in right places at the right time. Which will require retrospect about what can we do to optimize our spend while extracting the highest values.

Profiting

The profiting or earning aspect is the lifeline of any business. A business that doesn’t profit will inevitably cease to exist. While the saving aspect of my business priority is focused on ensuring the optimum continuity of the business run, our investment and risk-taking aspect will ensure we hit higher targets every single quarter.

In summary, businesses that are purpose-driven, aiming towards contributing to the survival of the humankind, it’s evolution and fulfillment are more likely to push the wheel of innovation forward for the sake of humanity.

These very same businesses are less likely to invest in products that constitutes environmental disasters or profiteers off of people’s suffering. These businesses also invests in promoting a healthy growth for the individuals and the community, and aspires to building a better future for the rest of humanity.