Vision vs. Mission

"42.5" wrote the Business Unit 'head' of the company on the board. 

"Any idea what that number is?" he asked

"Billing rate per employee" 

"No"

"Growth rate of our company"

"I only wish!"

"Average age of the employees" - yes, our company is full of oldies

"Nope"

"Your age"  -- He looked older than that!

"Ha!"

"Salary hike"

"Ok. Stop It!"

"42.5 is the price of the share of our company in USD" he said after the guesses were starting to sound insulting. 

"Our CEO wants that number to be 100".

Yeah right. Like I really care if some hedge fund manager makes money by betting on some stock or a CEO gets his annual bonus by reaching that figure.

A reasonable stock price is important for sustainability but what the suit doesn't understand is that it is not relevant for employees who do not even have stock options!

I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental... You can look around [in the general business world and] see people who are  interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else: to make a product, to give a service—generally to do something which is of value. - David Packard (via Built To Last)

Now, that's something worthwhile to pursue!