The relative merits of short- and long-term approaches to running companies have been argued over for many years. Which is best: to focus on operational effectiveness and immediate financial returns or on longer-term strategic positioning? Neither, says consultant and author Nikos Mourkogiannis, in Purpose.

What really matters is the even longer-term quality of purpose, which "is like your moral DNA. It's what you believe without having to think . . . purpose becomes the moral engine of a company, the source of its energy."