I was just reading a quote from Peter Drucker. The gist of it is that a business exists for one reason—to create wealth for its customer.

Of course, this is right. And not just ethically, but economically. But it is contrary to the practices and even stated policies of a lot of businesses these days. I was at an event (not surprisingly at the Chamber of Commerce), when a business owner introduced himself as doing “a little of this, a little of that, whatever we can make some money on…cause we’re in business to get rich.”

Shockinglly, that business is still in business. Don’t think they make that much money. Doubt their clients get much value from them. But that’s how it goes.

Al Davis, renegade owner of the Oakland…LA…Oakland Raiders is quoted as saying, “Just win, baby.” Of course, Al Davis is a notorious jerk. And, by the way, his Raiders haven’t done that much winning lately.

Personally, I think cultures win because of their beliefs. Companies that succeed over a long period of time tend to be companies that stand for something more than just making money. GE, for example, has been about systematic invention ever since Thomas Edison started the company. Apple is about being user friendly. Wal-Mart is about continuous improvement in the efficiency of the supply channel. I like Jim Collins’s book, Built to Last, and Guy Kawasaki’s Selling the Dream, because of their positions on beliefs.

I would go so far as to say what you believe defines what winning means to your company. If beliefs don’t matter to you, then neither does winning. If you don’t know what you believe, you can’t know whether you’re succeeding or not.

One advantage of seating a brand really deep in people’s gray matter is it gives you the option of stepping out of character from time to time. Like, when you spend about a thousand years—a thousand years!—establishing all the stuffy, stiff-upper-lip stuff for your monarchy, her majesty can step out and make jokes about her own age, while swapping wit with with W.