> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Ronn! Blankenship > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 5:41 PM
... > IOW, can medicine be both a 'calling' AND a _business_? If not, > which one > will it actually be? Is there really anything special about medicine in this regard? The same could be asked about religion, which certainly is not supposed to be focused on the financial bottom line... or journalism, which has a purpose in modern democracy that is supposed to transcend the profit motive. Or come at this from the opposite direction. Is there an ethical business that should not be treated as a calling? It's my hope that I help the people in my businesses to have a mission that comes ahead of the bottom line. The only money-driven people I've ever wanted in my organizations are the sales people, but even they have to buy into the organization's mission. Why do business plans typically include a "mission statement," if the mission is always to make money? I think the right answer is that people don't build good companies if they're only in it for the money. I've been directly involved in raising more than $50 million in venture capital, much more indirectly, and I am somewhat happy to report that VCs expect such a mission statement and watch out for people who are too focused on making money. Of course, a lot of that kind of sensitivity got thrown out in the dot-com bubble, but look where that got them... There's some kind of sad irony in the fact that there seems to be a greater sense of mission or higher purpose in privately funded entrepreurial environments than in some of the institutions that traditionally were expected to operate that way, such as medicine and journalism. But maybe those are the new religions, going through the same kind of crisis as the Church 500 years ago, as I often muse. What others might be categorized this way? Where else do organizations seem to be somewhat the opposite of the stereotype? I find the issue fascinating because I believe that the more people have a higher sense of purpose in their homes and work, the healthier a society is. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
