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Do Companies Even Know How To Define “Purpose?”
I could probably write about 18K words on this topic, but I won’t do that right now. It’s Sunday late morning, I’m just about to have coffee, and I doubt anyone would read that much of a narrative from my laptop. Rather, just a few thoughts:
- At this point in “future of work” discussions, employees finding purpose is fairly important — but also quite challenging.
- This goes down to the micro-level of how managers interact with their direct reports; most people don’t understand what motivates their employees.
- The idea of empathy and purpose within leadership is pretty basic, but many organizations miss the boat entirely.
This whole discussion comes down to one central idea, really: terms like “purpose” and “empathy” and “engagement” don’t lead to quarterly growth directly, and most organizations — for better or worse, which is a whole different argument — chase the bottom line. It’s not politically correct in an office to say “Your purpose should be making money,” so we try to define it around other concepts. For years, many organizations would have divisions dedicated to outside service (community service, etc.) and that was how they “brought purpose into the picture.”
