The old mechanistic Fortune 500 belief [is] that the mission of the company is to maximize profits. That’s backward: We don’t run our businesses to make a profit—we make a profit to run our businesses. Great companies have an overriding sense of vision and purpose, a mission that is enabled by profit. For them, profits are a means, not an end. Companies without a seething sense of purpose are no better than machines. Companies with purpose are alive. They last for generations, because they have a reason to last.