The Same Game

The answer: This type of entity is organized and operated to make a profit.

The question: What is a business?

A $200-level Jeopardy! clue, perhaps.

But is it that obvious of a response? In some ways, yes; in others, no. The clue, it seems, is responsive to perspective.

Within a society that communicates value in financial terms, the idea of “profit” is usually about the creation and capture of financial value—and this, indeed, is the goal of a business. But stop for a moment to put those x-ray glasses on and, inside that construct of financial value, you find something that is more fundamental. It’s the basic value of a product or process (a portion of which our system translates into economic value). You might call it “utility,” perhaps simply “value” without any qualifiers, or perhaps something else. In any case, this kind of fundamental value is a currency that flows at a deeper level than the system which gives us the term “profit.”

When faced with this Jeopardy! clue, then, one might hesitate in pushing that button. Aren’t there entities that are not businesses, but which are nevertheless organized and operated to generate a profit?

One would be right to hesitate; there surely are. Their profit is just not of the financial sort.

In this light, it’s ironic that we refer to these organizations as “non-profit,” although it is understandable. The language was born of a markets-centered paradigm and means to say that the organizations don’t create and capture financial value—at least, none that can be distributed to investors. But, of course, these organizations do create value. Lots of it.

I often like to borrow the term “social profit” to describe this type of organization. After all, these organizations aim to maximize the value they create through their products and services, just as businesses do though theirs. Both types of organization face the same central challenge of generating this “profit.” The conceptual distinction is simply that, in the former case, the profit is not necessarily financial and, more importantly, it accrues to society at large.

From this perspective, what is ostensibly my “big career shift” from the for-profit sector into the social profit sector is not such a dramatic one after all—not in content, anyway.

In my current role, I’m helping to strengthen the business, or organizational, side of my organization’s global public health and development work. This means using analytical abilities to examine various aspects of our operations and to determine how we can improve them. It means thinking strategically to help develop and track a set of metrics which will both communicate strategy throughout the organization and help the organization measure progress toward its strategic goals. It means learning how to lead, even from a position without formal authority.

These are the very same types of challenges I would have sought even if I had chosen to pursue a role in the for-profit sector. As it turns out, I simply prefer a role in which my work builds social value rather than private wealth.

For me, it’s almost like business and social profit work are two versions of the same game. Perhaps the rules diverge at times and perhaps you play with different-colored chips, but the central challenge is constant.

In the end, there are many lenses through which to view the world, and each adds its own tint and focus to the view. This is what I see when I look through mine.

So here’s the real question: What’s your response after you push that button?