Our Purpose It is an important idea as that as Rotarians and Rotary leaders we understand our primary purpose as an essential strategy for life and leadership. Many who talk about leadership demonstrate the essential need for having a constancy of purpose for both leaders and followers. The precise words of these commentators may be different, but their admonition is consistently the same.
Edward Deming, the man credited with lighting a fire under the movement toward quality and leadership in the early 1980s, listed 14 important points that would move an organization out of chaos and be successful. Deming’s number one of those 14 points was, ‘Create a constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.’ Deming believed it was essential that an organization identify and understand its purpose and constantly strive to fulfill that purpose.
Rotarian Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: “Begin with the end in mind.” In other words, know where you are going before you start the journey or process. It is all too obvious that you can’t hit a target if you aren’t taking aim! And, even if you did accidentally hit the target, how would you know?
For Rotary it should be easily identifiable why so many chickens are consumed and so many hours are spent participating in toward achieving our purpose. When Rotarians are asked to define their purpose, many have trouble articulating what Rotary is all about. They often answer that question with a list of recent service projects. Identifying our essential purpose is much simpler. The purpose of Rotary can be found in The Object of Rotary:
The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
SECOND. High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life;
FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service. ”
A Rotary Club is not required to participate in any specific service project; clubs create their own criteria or list of what they plan to do in order to implement the object of Rotary. But the Object of Rotary makes it clear that we are all supposed to be a part of the task to. “encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise.”