Creating Purpose in Work
We humans have an insatiable desire for meaning in our lives. We crave purpose, to be part of something that is larger than ourselves, to leave something for posterity. It’s a basic human trait.
Employment as we’ve implemented it customarily achieves quite the opposite. It not only doesn’t add to our life’s meaning, it detracts from it. It gets in the way of living a meaningful life.
What a calamity! It almost makes me weep for the lost potential in the world.
Why is it that the baby boomers can’t wait to retire at 55, even though they’ll likely live for 25 or more years afterwards? If work was meaningful to them, they wouldn’t quit. Many of these early retirees are going into another career that makes them feel more useful. Highly paid technologists are entering the fray of education, becoming low-paid teachers. Retirees volunteer at church or school, Habitat for Humanity, or Greenpeace. Doing so gives them purpose.
For some unfathomable reason we’ve concluded that we must first waste thirty or forty years of our lives before we find a sense of importance. A career is just an exercise in marking time. It is this feeling of meaninglessness that vexes me most—the thinking that work and life are separate. If we found our work meaningful, we wouldn’t feel that way, and all this ‘work-life balance’ nonsense would disappear, and good riddance.
We mostly work for money, but money does not give anyone purpose, nor does it motivate nearly to the level of its reputation. We think it does, but the people we think get meaning from money actually get it from power and social status. A raise can get someone to change jobs, but the motivation afterwards is minimal. Yes, people will work hard for money, but they will not set aside their egos.
Quite the opposite, in fact. No one goes into work excited about making another paycheck; does anyone sound excited when they say, “Another day, another dollar?” No. People get excited about what they feel they will accomplish, about making a difference.
People are emotional creatures. We make decisions based on emotion and rationalize them afterward with facts. Yet we act like work is rational, and based on rational decisions. Nonsense.
In order for work to be meaningful, a company has to stand for something, some principal that has emotional content. I call this the Cause, and Guy Kawasaki of Macintosh fame calls it the Dream.
Let me illustrate with some examples.
Whole Foods was founded in 1978 with $45,000 in capital. In 2005, it had sales of roughly $4.6 billion, profits of $160 million, and a market cap of $8 billion. Whole Food’s motto: Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet.
You’ll notice the motto doesn’t say “A Whole Lotta Moola.” Whole Food’s culture is built around being part of a whole: the food they sell, promoting healthy living, helping those less fortunate, and the profits they make, are inseparable. Their Cause is contained in their name. Many people work there because of that and love what they do, though the day-to-day tasks differ little from those of a Smith’s employee.
The foundation on which Thomas Watson, Jr. built IBM, and the Cause that made it the great company it was under his direction, was “respect for the individual.”
In a 1961 progress report to employees, Watson, Jr. said, “I feel strongly that there are some priceless ingredients in this business which we will never change—things such as our concern for the individual, our sense of fair play and our belief in services. For our fine reputation as a company is based on nothing more and nothing less—than respect for the individual, integrity and personal values of our people. You are, in fact, the IBM Company.” There is no mention of computers, technology or profit.
Defining a Cause is a difficult exercise, an emotional exercise. It all starts with the founder, the heart and soul of the company. What is your cause? Why did you start this business? Typically you’ll find that it isn’t about money, it’s about something else. In my case, I became an entrepreneur to create a grown-up working culture, where we were all adults, rather than the culture from which I came that treated employees like children.
A Cause doesn’t have to have anything to do with the product or service the company provides. It could be creating a family-friendly workplace or helping employees grow as individuals. The Cause is found where your passion lies.
And if you’re not a founder you need to find your own Cause, and find a company that is aligned with that Cause. Or create change from within.
Whatever you do, don’t sit at work and wait for meaning until you turn 55 or 60.
What a waste of a life.