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CONNECT JOBS TO THE LARGER MISSION
There’s Always a Why
The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.
—JOHN DEWEY
Do you bolt out of bed before your alarm rings and skip off to work bursting with enthusiasm? Excellent! Be sure to turn to your neighbor and share your secrets. If you hit the snooze button twice, down two cups of coffee, and are still dragging your feet wondering, Do I matter? Does what I do make a difference? Does anyone care?—well, then this chapter is for you (and your boss).
We are not hardwired to pursue money. In “The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First,” James Pfeffer reviews studies across dozens of industries and concludes that companies offering challenging and meaningful work made more money than organizations that treated employees as cogs in a production machine. Money can’t buy meaning, but work can offer it. Connecting our jobs to a higher purpose makes a meaningful difference in recruitment and productivity. McKinsey Co. reported that highly sought-after talent opted to work for companies with an inspiring mission. Bain Consultancy’s study of 300 companies worldwide demonstrated it would take 2.25 satisfied employees to generate the same output as one inspired worker.
And here’s where it gets tricky. Employees at a mission-driven organization may find that the demands of their daily grind leave them detached from the loftiest of goals while workers performing mundane roles may feel inspired by the impact of their work on their end users. Yes, a factory laborer making the piping that allows people to have reliable indoor sanitation can have more bounce in their step than the social worker approving affordable housing requests.
In Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do, Daniel Cable explains that, when stimulated, dopamine (the feel-good chemical released when we have pleasurable experiences) can transform employees into a volunteer army. Since dopamine regulates our perception of time, when we are activated, the minutes fly by. Unfortunately, organizational processes that focus on flawless repeatability often stamp out the flow of invigorating hormones. Remove the monotony by making work real.
Wharton professor Adam Grant reports that radiologists who received a file with the patient’s photo wrote 29 percent longer reports and achieved 46 percent greater diagnostic accuracy. Seeing themselves as the first-line protectors of a patient’s health connected professionals toiling away in a darkened, often solitary room, to the people they served. Wellington Nogueira, founder of Doctors of Joy, relates a similar experience when hospital kitchen workers received visits from children in a Brazilian pediatric oncology unit. Suddenly, the crew preparing meals were part of the treatment team ensuring the nutritional complements to cancer care. Fewer errors and faster work ensued.
Exposure to the beneficiaries of one’s work has been found to be more effective than listening to a leaders’ inspirational speech. That’s good news. We don’t have to wait for the boss to boost our motivational meter, but we do need to look for ways to connect with our clients and customers—to literally go out and meet them.
We also need a break from being automatons to reflect on our accomplishments, to share stories about the times we made an impact. Studies show that meaningfulness is rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect when people can see their completed work. When given the chance, garbage collectors recognize the significance of their work after they finish cleaning a street and look back at the pristine block. Gardeners stopping by to see the flowers blooming in their customers’ backyards and adorning the dinner table feel like artists rather than muddy-booted men and women with their hands in the dirt. Connecting first as people, and then to the mission, is a renewable source of institutional energy.
THIS IS FOR YOU IF
• You feel like a bricklayer, but in fact you are building a cathedral.
• The paycheck doesn’t justify the blood, sweat, and tears your team is shedding to make things happen.
• Money is low but passion used to be high, and lately we’ve all forgotten why we are doing this sometimes dreadful work.
• My friends have sexier jobs. What’s wrong with me?
TAKE ACTION
Construct positive identities. When introducing others, contextualize their jobs, illustrating the importance of their efforts in achieving larger objectives. Don’t just say, “This is Meg, our night manager.” Try “Meet Meg. She’s the reason why our hotel has the highest number of bookings from travelers arriving after 9 p.m.” Or, “Let me introduce you to Teri who oversees repairs at our taxi depot, making sure your cab gets you to work without injury.”
Offer to edit a colleague’s bio. Chances are your version will be less modest, and you’ll be able to identify your coworker’s contribution to the organization’s larger mission.
Consider holding a workshop where your team members take turns interviewing each other about their accomplishments and then writing one another’s website blurb. Your colleagues are bound to stand just a bit taller each time they read about themselves, for an extra dose of validation.
Reference yourself publicly in a way that sets a positive tone for the entire team. Are you heading business-to-business marketing for movie theater vending machines? Try introducing yourself as an agent of entertainment and your team as the people who make sure the audience has an amusing and yummy night out.
Help the people introducing you. Be sure they have the right facts and emphasis for the occasion. Are you a proud employer of veterans? Do you have three or more women on your public board? This isn’t just about your ego. It’s a way of reminding your team members who are also in the audience that they are part of a company that’s driving change. If the person teeing you up didn’t hit the right notes, don’t despair. Be ready to add a few lines of your own, “I am delighted to be speaking on behalf of all the physical therapists our department has trained. We literally have your back, and are proud that 50 percent more of our patients this year returned to full functioning within three months of visiting our clinic.”
Whenever possible, introduce the people or teams in the room and the role they play in accomplishing your organization’s why.
Take a field trip. Are you raising money to provide glasses to impoverished communities? If so, set up a time to meet and hear about how the restored ability to see has enabled the women to make money as seamstresses—and buy fresh food for their families. Try to meet the kids and learn about the changes in their lives since their parents’ eyesight improved.
Allocate time during your company meetings to share a moment of impact—relieving the tension of a fearful customer, ensuring that emergency medicine was delivered, or catching an error in a product moments before distribution. Be sure to model examples until people get the hang of it.
Hit the brakes, and reflect on what you have built and the good it does for your fellow humans.
KEEP IN MIND
• Research shows that meaningful moments at work are not created by leaders. However, poor management is the top destroyer of meaningfulness.
• Posting a mission statement in your office lobby isn’t enough. Help employees make the personal link to why their work is important.