A why is the cause or belief an organisation serves; profit, growth and fame are results of serving it, never the why itself.

The claim

The why of an organisation is the purpose, cause or belief it exists to serve. Profit, growth, market share and fame are results: they measure how well the what is landing, and any organisation in any cause can pursue them, so they cannot distinguish one organisation from another or say what it is for. Naming a result as the why is therefore a category error, not a weak why. A goal is also not a why: a goal is a destination the organisation could reach and be done with, while a cause is a belief about the world that the organisation serves for as long as it exists. This is a distinction of meaning, so it holds by definition; what is open is whether organisations that observe it do better (C-190KAFBAPH, the ordering conjecture).