Monday, March 8, 2010

Genuine Purpose Equals Value.

According to today's stock market closing, Apple is worth $200 billion. Sprint is worth $10 billion. I was thinking about these facts as I walked my dogs on the Hopalong Cassidy trail in the Cahuilla hills about 15 miles East of Palm Springs. BTW-You either know who Hopalong is or you do not. No explanation given here. Then as I navigated through the paths on the trail, looked down on the ground. I immediately noticed a flurry of activity. It was a firestorm of brown blurs. Ants.


The flurry was caused by thousands of ants, my estimate of course, scurrying up and down and all around their ant hill. They all seemed to travel with a specific purpose and knew which way to go and what to do. It was a marvel in organization. The queen ant was nestled somewhere in the depths of the ant hill (hole) and busy conserving energy for her job of producing up to 2 million new baby ants a month. It occurred to me that these ants did not take a day off. No vacation. No television. No beers at the local bar. No opera. No college. Yet they seemingly communicated perfectly.


From 6 feet away, it seemed to be a big brown mass of chaos. However, as I bent down for a closer look, their were clear travel lanes, some at very high speed. Some lanes went into the hole and some lanes came out. There as no doubt this was a very sophisticated travel system. It had to be because the flow was smooth and direct. Ants selflessly offered their bodies to act as bridges for other ants. I did not see any ants die, and none seemed to slow down. They had a purpose and they knew it. That is what made them such an efficient organic machine. So what.


Think about it. The market rewards organic ( "growing from within") organizations with a geuine purpose. Consumers do to. They penalize companies with no purpose, or clear purpose in any event. The result? Apple with a purpose is worth 20 times more than Sprint is worth.

Get it. Get a genuine purpose. Get value.

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