I dive in today with a sense of purpose, to describe an odd coincidence and a book I will probably never read much more of, in spite of it being one of the best books ever written on the subject.

Sekhnet occasionally brings home books she thinks I might be interested in, or that might be useful to me.  Most she finds at work, where publishers send them in hopes of getting the author on TV for some invaluable free major network publicity.  

The ones that reach Sekhnet no longer have such hopes, having found their way into the crew room, where they are largely ignored by technicians who come in to check email or fall asleep, open-mouthed, in front of the constantly droning TV mounted on the wall.  One such book was The Story Of Purpose: The Path to Creating A Brighter Brand, A Greater Company and A Lasting Legacy.   Since I am trying to get a purpose-driven business off the ground, she thought I might find it interesting.

I read three paragraphs into the introduction before I made my first bracket in the margin:

Purpose is both a financial and a humanitarian force.  Purpose-driven organizations create more good in the world, which begets greater profit, which allows them to then create even more good.  It’s a virtuous, never-ending circle. 

Leading this virtuous, never-ending circle of more and more good in the world, it turns out a few pages later, his close friends the executives at McDonald’s (improving the world one Happy Meal at a time), Procter & Gamble, a major bank or two and several other hugely successful highly profitable organizations dedicated to greater good and greater profit. 

I turned to the back flap for the author bio, after reading this description of Henry Kissinger, who one of the author’s CEO friends calls “the ultimate win-win guy” before describing the “epic meeting between Kissinger and Zhou-Enlai in which the statesman Kissinger tells the premier, ‘let’s not shake the world, let’s build it.'”   Kissinger might be the ultimate win-win guy to the no-nonsense CEO of a Fortune 500 company that is deforesting the Amazon rainforest to make delicious burgers for happy kids, but to many of us, Kissinger’s the ultimate scumbag war-criminal winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Could they not have exhumed the stinking carcass of Hermann Goring and given his rotting cadar the prize this year instead?” thought the ghosts of hundreds of Cambodian children murdered under Win-Win Kissinger’s policies during an illegal, secret bombing campaign on non-combatants in a country the US was not at war with.

But as is often noted, one man’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is another man’s Hall of Fame War Criminal.  It all depends on your perspective, really.  Morality is a fluid thing in our world of Purpose-Inspired Leadership.  One man’s genius pioneer of branding and marketing (Josef Goebbels) is another man’s Nazi bastard.  You know, you just have to pick the right heroes, choose the purpose that best drives your particular vision of a world-improving business.

Reading the back flap I learn that the author, Joey Reiman, is:

Founder and CEO of the global consultancy, BrightHouse, a company whose mission is to  bring purpose to the world of business.   Reiman has emerged as the leading expert in the area of purpose-inspired leadership, marketing, and innovation.  His breakthrough purpose methodology and frameworks have been adopted by top firms, including Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s, Nestle, MetLife, SunTrust, Michelin and many more Fortune 500 Companies… 

I shake my head, close the book, put it back on the tank behind me and flush.  I decide that writing a few words about it some day is probably in order.

A few months pass, I am standing on a hill, next to the headstone I had chiseled with my parents’ epitaphs.  My uncle is being laid to rest on a cold day in Peekskill.  After the small funeral, Sekhnet and I go to a diner with two cousins I see only at such occasions.  Sadly, I’ve lost track of them, both lovely women I always enjoyed spending time with over the years.  I have only dim, distant memories of their several children, their grandchildren.  The family has moved around the country, I have a hard time recalling all the names in my head.

Over lunch one cousin is recounting a recent birthday party, a milestone of some kind, where the kids flew in from all over to celebrate her.  One of her children, her son Justin, a very successful copywriter, with a great job in marketing in Atlanta, had trouble getting a flight.   Joey Reiman had him flown up to the party in the private jet.  Justin had an important purpose in getting to his mother’s party, it was only fair that the guru of purpose-driven things would make sure he got there to read the clever lines he’d composed in mid-air.

“Joey’s a great guy,” said Sheila.

I’m sure he is, I thought, smiling broadly for what probably appeared to be no good reason.