Is it possible for an organization to be operationally effective if they have a low level of belief? 

Absolutely not. Let me put it to you this way. 

OK. 

Let's take it on the individual level. I can be highly operationally effective, and not believe in anything you're doing as an organization. As long as I'm getting what I want out of your organization, I could care less what your purpose is. Now understand that you see this with great salespeople sometimes. They're making tons of money, but they really could care less about what happens after the sale. 

Would you agree that if the intentionality of the enterprise or the organization is to provide an amazing, remarkable experience for their consumer or their community, and someone has that short-term thinking-- but they're your best sales person. That's where people sometimes find themselves, as an enterprise, in a little bit of a problem. How do I get rid of my absolute best performing person when it's a train wreck for everything else? 

Right. 

And no one likes him. 

It's a short-term game. 

Short-term game. So here's-- can an enterprise work for a period of time without having a clear-defined higher level purpose? Absolutely. 

Remember, there's four kinds of businesses. You have the grinder business. You have the professor business. You have the friend business. And then you have, what I call, the advocate business. 

This is the work we've done with Dr. [INAUDIBLE] in dentistry, to try to identify the different environments in which we have to help operate it. Now the professor business-- you have it in audiology, you have it in any specialty business-- that's where the person performing the work is the smartest person in the world, and they're going to take their time to explain to you every granular detail of exactly why they're doing what they're doing, and you should just respect that and work with them because they're the absolute best. 

And we've all encountered people like that. I've encountered chefs like that. I've encountered doctors like that. I've encountered-- you call it, I've encountered it, OK? 

A grinder business is, I'm just spinning it out as fast as I can and anybody that's willing to pay me any amount, I'll just do it, right? And you've encountered grinder businesses, right? Where it's like, you're just churning and burning, babe. 

You're just a cog-- you're just another spoke in the tire, man. They don't even look you in the eye. They don't care. They're just-- you're in, you're out, you're fine. 

Then you have the friend business, which just feels really good. And you can get away with having not such a great business by being a friend business. So if you go to the local restaurant, you don't have the best chef. In fact, maybe you don't have a very good chef. Maybe the place isn't the cleanest. 

But you're treated so wonderfully. The wait staff loves you. They treat you like family. The owner comes out and hugs you and sits with you and gets you anything you want. Even if the glass is a little dirty, you might just clean it yourself and go, whatever, this person's amazing. 

So that's a friend business. You can get away with a lot in a friend business. But you can't grow in scale, a friend business, because not everybody that's going to work for you is going to see that sloppiness as-- the reason we can get away with this is because we're just going to love people to death. 

They'll come in and take a job, and they'll still treat people poorly. And the service-- if what you do is poor, eventually it's going to catch up the larger you get. The only way a friend business works is when you're fairly small. 

But an advocate business says, I need-- if I have a higher purpose, I need to have structure, I need to have intentionality, I need to align my team. I need to be able to have absolute clarity of what it is I want to attain, and how to get everyone working together for the attainment of that goal. That's an advocate business. 

So when you ask me, can someone have a high level of operational effectiveness without sharing in the belief about what can be done for an enterprise, or can an enterprise succeed without having a high level of belief, certainly. But then the question is, what is the belief?

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