What makes an organization to tick and its employees to stick?

I recently came across a blog from the renowned Cartoonist and Socio-Business commentator, Scot Adams, on what is the quality of work when it gets done for a pay check v/s when it gets done for a purpose.

On reading it got the feeling that most of the Organizations today are busy solving problems of growth and profitability.  Also as a byproduct of their single minded focus on growth and profitability, they also get busy in solving problems of costs, dis-satisfaction, how to get buy-ins, communications, performance and attrition. Significant time and energies are spent in the design of pay checks, complex strategies around cost savings are laid out and communicated. Meanwhile, as a result of this, the day to day actions and work that people do no longer are in sync with solving the problems of “Purpose”, but are rather solving the problems of “profitability”, “growth”, “cost savings”, the does not necessarily correlate with the “Purpose” of the organization and does not confirm to the question “why we do what we do?”. The “Purpose” of the existence of the organization remains an area of neglect

If growth and profitability were the sole and the key objectives of any business, the purpose statement/vision statement would be something like, ”Help me make money and I will give you some”. I would seriously doubt if any organization today would be daring to flaunt such a vision/purpose statement and go about its business. I would seriously doubt if such a company will be able to be successful for extended periods of time, I would seriously doubt if customers want to buy the products and services from such an organization, I would seriously doubt if employees would give their heart and soul for a job in such a company and stick to it. For short term, maybe yes, if the employee wants to make a quick buck or is desperate. But for long term success, it is anyone’s guess.

Neglect of the actual purpose statement is akin to going around with a vision statement like”Help me make money and I will give you some”. And if for all organizations, the twin towers of growth and profitability are sacrosanct, then they are bound to end up with a similar vision/purpose statement. So how does anyone differentiate one company from the other. How are successful brands built?  The answer lies in whether they have created a clear purpose/vision statement and if they have based their strategic and tactical decisions on the basis of the Purpose/Vision statement.

Will purpose statements like “Best in Class”, “Industry Leading”, “Setting Benchmarks” work? Not in my opinion. They are very impersonal and they don’t reflect a shared passion of how you want to be useful to the world in this life.

What abt a Purpose Statement like “Lets Build a Smarter Planet”, “Lets make things better”, “Think Different”, “We Bring Good Things to Life”, “Imagination at Work”,  "Committed to People, Committed to the Future." , "Good Food. Good Life", "The Miracles of Science". In my opinion it works. It echoes a shared passion of how you want to be useful to the world in this life and how you want to leave your legacy behind, thereby attracting employees who wants to work in it for the “purpose” and not necessarily only for the paycheck. So, communicating what is the purpose for the existence of an Organization is Key to how the World Perceives the Organization- Especially how their Employees perceive. But if the vision statement gathers dust, however good it is, it may not work for the organization.

I would like to see a study on assessment of brands based on their vision/purpose statement. I would like to take a bet that companies that have more passion in their purpose/vision statement have collectively fared better than those who did not. What do you think?