The 2020 movie Working Man is a chronicle of the value of work in our lives. It tells the story of one man's desire to keep his dignity and his life. It also tells the story of why a job is increasingly so much more important than just its paycheck.

Too often, people feel disengaged at work because they fail to see the wider context of what they do – the contribution they are making and why it matters. People get so bogged down in the day-to-day nitty gritty they can't join the dots to see the bigger picture. Giving people a sense of cause helps to change that. If they understand their purpose – the difference they are making, the value they are adding – they are more likely to volunteer more of their effort. It's not just about what's in it for me. It's about being engaged in something more meaningful than just being productive, and yet if you achieve that sense of purpose, you will be more productive. Needing to know what is expected of you is a table stake. Wanting to know how you fit in is an engager.

Nic Marks, a happiness statistician and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation in London, is a renowned speaker on the science of employee engagement. Among his sage advice is the recommendation that companies stop managing through a lens of fear about the future (if something goes wrong). Rather, they need to offer a vision that people can help make a reality – to feel inspired to get involved and give more.

I call this the “What if you could” question. Postpandemic, it's a necessary shift in mindset. When you engage people in a cause (rather than instill a sense of fear of what might happen if they don't deliver), common sense says people respond more positively, they get to imagine the optimism of what could be, rather than the pessimistic of what might be.

The leader's job, then, is to help people see what's possible – and how each individual can make the possible happen.

Causes Count

In an acclaimed TED talk some years ago¹, Nic Marks highlighted five positive actions that help promote well-being in people. They are to connect (foster social relationships); be active (the fastest way out of a bad mood is to get out and move); take notice (of the world around you); keep learning (stay curious); and, finally, give (generosity). All five of these actions have a place at work. They fit seamlessly into our MI-9 tools and HeadsUp. And best of all, they cost very little.

Give is a powerful word. Most people feel happier when they give. In his TED talk, Marks drew on the results of a simple experiment to support this point – that if we do something (like spend money) just for our own benefit, we don't feel nearly as good as when we do it for others or, better still, for a higher purpose. At work, when we are contributing to a greater cause rather than just going through the motions of doing a job for a paycheck, it stands to reason that we will feel a deeper sense of engagement.

Reclaiming Our Sense of Purpose

Unfortunately, for many a sense of purpose has been lost. The business that employs us has become so big, or our role in it seems so small, that it's becoming harder to see why the work we do matters in the grand scheme – it isn't always easy to see what value we add or our special contribution, through the work we do.

Some of this is changing as governments and industry authorities demand more of businesses – for example, by specifying that companies detail their corporate social responsibility (CSR) or ESG commitments as part of their annual financial statements. Such requirements have prompted firms to review their contributions in their local communities and the way that they give back to society. The United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs), also known as the global goals, are also helping cast a light on the business link to purpose. The SDGs were adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.² They are lofty but practical.

We also saw a massive change in 2020, as the frontline heroes of health care, grocery stores, trucking, transit, or manufacturing were applauded for their ability to work each day so that everyone else could stay home and stay safe. Many risked their lives. Some lost their lives. Suddenly, the cause got real. Everyday people were engaged in meaningful, needed work. They saw the concept of “this is bigger than us” come to life.

Repeated surveys show time and again that finding meaning in the work we do ranks very highly in our happiness and motivation in our jobs. A 2016 global survey of 26,000 LinkedIn members found that 74 percent of candidates preferred to work in a job where they feel like their contribution matters.³ In an article published in 2018 by ShiftBoard, a workforce technology company, actively disengaged employees cost the US $483 billion to $605 billion each year in lost productivity.⁴ That's just the disengaged, not including the under-engaged neutrals. Meanwhile, in the UK alone, it is estimated that businesses could increase their combined value by some £130 billion if they were more effectively “organized around clear corporate purposes that unite all stakeholders.” That's according to a 2016 report by the Big Innovation Centre (BIC)⁵. It also emphasizes the importance of the evolution of a company's sense of purpose as conditions change – for instance, as a challenger startup company matures and gains direct competitors all offering a similar proposition. “Purpose is a living narrative,” the report's authors note. It needs to move with the times and move you.

Research suggests that upcoming generations of employees are increasingly seeking purpose from the outset of their careers. An annual survey of millennials (those born after 1982) by Deloitte, among 8,000 respondents from 30 countries, has repeatedly shown that employer loyalty increases where people feel aligned to the company's values and sense of purpose.⁶ No surprise.

Most people want the chance to make a difference. In today's hyperconnected world where communities grow at speed, it is easier to build a sense of conscience, cause, and belonging. Employers can tap into and harness this, not only as an extension of their CSR efforts but as a fair dinkum means of building employees’ sense of contribution and achievement. Doing this formally takes businesses into the realm of employee advocacy (unprompted promotion of a firm's brand and values by people who work there), and if causes and purpose are fair dinkum and employees feel aligned with them, engagement can follow naturally.

In the business of consulting, it can be easy to lose yourself in the financial, hard numbers of what we do. So, in 2017 when I became CEO, I took on the task of writing our manifesto, the “why are we here, really?” document. What came to life was how important what we do for clients is. In addition to achieving hugely aspirational objectives, we also enable people to feel they are making a difference to their teams and their business. When we talked about this with our own teams, it became evident how important that was – making a difference to the client leaders, who, in turn, got to make a difference to their business and teams. This provided purpose. We had cracked the nut on our real purpose – to make a difference to people by helping others make a difference to people.

In today's world, many millions of people in the workforce also make significant contributions to their communities’ and families’ well-being, outside of the workplace, from coaches to troop leaders. Add to that the bloggers and social networkers, activists, or hobbyists who make a difference in their worlds, worlds they are totally engaged in. It's how cities get rebuilt after major disasters and how people get on with their lives after catastrophe strikes. We saw it all through 2020 as companies needed people to step up and lead through the COVID-19 crisis. It's through such extracurricular commitments that new policies and bills come into force, that walls come down in communist countries and injustices are resolved. People take action. They help each other. They share and grow their passion in what they believe in. They roll up their sleeves and help others – who in turn inspire and help others.

As employers, leaders, and managers, we need to learn from this. If it is possible to ignite and fan people's passion and sense of contribution and fulfilment outside of work or during crisis, where effort is usually expended for free, surely it should be possible to harness the same momentum at work – if the same sense of engagement and purpose is there. In marketing, they call it B2P: business to people. That's getting close to a better paradigm at work, but shouldn't it simply be P2P: people to people? Your business will move faster when you start with people and ignite their passions. Nothing moves until people are moved.

Volunteering Your Passion

Research confirms that emotions have a strong bearing on engagement, so much so that if someone is emotionally committed rather than or as well as rationally committed to something, it can have up to four times the impact.⁷ Poor emotional buy-in, a clash of values, and other negative influencers such as stress and a feeling of failure can erode people's attitude and commitment to their work. A feeling of connectedness and emotional alignment can have the opposite effect – causing people to give more, because they want to.

While certain things are beyond managers’ control, feelings are a more movable proposition. We may not be able to change what's going on, but we can change how we (and others) respond to it. Could it be that creating emotional commitment is the Holy Grail of engagement? It certainly could, and todays challenges can't be solved by yesterday's underenthused. Our businesses value is in the humans it engages.

Why do people take to the streets for what they believe in, but they find it tough to get out of bed and take to the street that leads them to work? Out in the community, where people are already giving their time and energy freely, there are some good clues about what we need to do to foster the same enthusiasm and drive higher levels of emotional commitment at work. Any one of the national, nonviolent, quiet protests that take place like the Million Women March or Brexit, all show people's ambition to have a voice and rise for a cause. They have something in common: passion.

Where engagement goes, excitement flows. Consider the ways that engagement drives passion:

• There's a story that gets people talking about a cause worth rising for. Usually there will be a point of view that gets people interested and talking to each other. People learn about the cause when it stirs their spirit.
• There's a feeling you need to do something. The story inspires people to consider how they can help – it's a call to action. There is a sense of urgency that something must happen.
• There's a champion who inspires you to get involved. They have information to give you deeper understanding, and they help people connect with the right sources to take action – a resource. They help clear the way to make things happen.
• Those moved to act mobilize each other. They spur each other on by adding to the story, they develop an affiliation, they collaborate, and they share a “together we'll get there faster” attitude.
• There's a trail that's contagious, sparks interest, and inspires people to take action, to go further. There is usually a path that gets other people interested and sparks more action: there is evidence of progress. You see what you are doing is being heard or having an impact.
• You build capability as you experience new things. You learn from others and from your combined experience. New capabilities are developed, new experiences add to your story, you build up your knowledge.
• There's a sensation that your efforts helped someone today. Pretty soon, it feels like a movement, building momentum and instilling a sense of accomplishment. Friends, family, and your network, recognize this, too: people think and say, “Wow, what a difference you have made.”

This is why volunteer-based charities and organizations have a different level of motivation – it's not about the money – people believe in the work and want to make a difference. These three components – motivation, belief, and making a difference – are the key to engaging people's hearts and minds in a way that paid work has typically struggled to match.

The challenge for employers, as these same people who took to the streets take to their salaried jobs the next day, is to engender the same passion and purpose during work hours.

Users Don't Adopt, People Do

How come management gurus still speak of resistance to change and failed digital transformations … yet whole new IT platforms have been rolled out across the globe to billions of people without a memo, a town hall, a training program, an improvement team, or senior leadership support?

Most of us can buy online, check in for a flight, go through automated immigration, use online banking, and many have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any number of other accounts, but it's likely none of us received a memo from a CEO to get on board. Instead, there was a story, early users, influencers, and some common elements to all these examples that created movement – they guide you through your learning and practice: they have user friendly technology, coaches spring up from their new followers, people help spread the word by using the technology and helping others use it. There was also a cause no matter how big or small – convenience, connection with long distance family, sharing experiences. It's not about user adoption, it's about community connection. When you master that, you master not just engagement but transformation.

What we forget is that these same people who are using these technologies at home are the people who come to work each day to participate in digital or operational transformation. The difference? Engagement.

So, what if you could bring that same spirit to work? You can.

Start by taking the happy baggage to work with you:

1. First, managers need to discover what it is that will get their people out of bed each day. Having a purpose at work that is greater than the sum of the required tasks is what helps people get up in the morning. When you know you will be operating your machine and acting as coach to a new hire as an example, your sense of fulfilment grows: you have a greater role to play.
2. Creating community around someone's expertise and practices at work builds interest and buy-in. Being seen as a knowledge expert, who can help develop skills in others, reinforces our ability, sense of value, and feeling of contribution to the bigger picture. It also encourages togetherness.
3. Making a difference in the wider community gives additional meaning to people's effort. How your workplace comes together to give back to the community can lead to more varied and challenging work, and boost our sense of purpose and motivation.
4. Helping your community grow by growing your business to grow jobs. The impact on society as people become multipliers.

Starting from Scratch

The good news is that causes can be created. Yet when research spanning Bain & Co, Accenture, and Gallup concurs that up to 60 percent of employees remain at a loss about their company's strategy and purpose, it becomes clear that there is a lot of work to do to give people a higher aim. The bigger the organization, the easier it is for employees to feel disconnected from any higher purpose. Remarkably, these same firms actually have the easiest road to accomplish it. They have budgets and people to work on this.

Gallup is clear that as employees “move beyond the basics of employee engagement and view their contribution to the organization more broadly, they are more likely to stay, take proactive steps to create a safe environment, have higher productivity, and connect with customers to the benefit of the organization.”⁸

So it's not unreasonable that everyone who works for a company should understand its purpose, goals, and intentions for the long, medium, and short term – its vision. But it's more than that. It's the why behind the vision that opens doors. If employees are to engage and buy into it, and give their best to achieve the aims that have been set out, it helps if they understand what they are working toward and why. So what are the do's and don'ts on the why of business?

1. Don't rely on numbers to inspire. The cause cannot be the next cost-saving drive or revenue goal. It also can't be fear based. People don't aspire to do great things because they may lose their jobs or miss out on the next incentive payment. If fear worked, none of us would be overweight and people wouldn't smoke. Even when death is the consequence, it doesn't mean that people will step up and be inspired to do better or different things.
2. Do use plain speak. Using plain speaking is important, so that people understand what the business does and what it is about, in their own terms – in their own context.
3. Show how concepts can become doing words rapidly. Turn vision into verbs, aspiration into action, passion into presence. The vital shift is purpose into plans – demonstrating how our daily activities are connected to our why.

   Telefónica UK (O2) many years ago was already on to purpose. It had a great way of explaining strategy. It started with what it wanted to achieve: “Fandom — to have twice as many customers who are fans as its nearest competitor by 2011.” It then went on to explain this to its people. The then-CEO Ronan Dunne explained: “We're articulating the journey to everyone. We're creating visibility across the entire organization regarding decisions, investments, and choices that will define the path we will travel.”⁹ The company linked the why to the how and showed what they would do to support and align with it, putting money through investment decisions behind specific needs that would reinforce the why.

   Have you outlined your strategy in simple terms for your people? Can you point to how your strategy acts as the compass for your decisions? Can you link people's jobs to the strategy, so that they understand the part they are playing and why it matters? Can you link the organizational why to the personal why?

4. But why? Too often, we ourselves – as managers and leaders – don't fully understand the bigger picture. So it is hardly surprising that we struggle to communicate it well to those who look to us for direction. An early priority should be to go back to basics and make sure the organization's raison d'etre, its purpose, is clear and well understood – from the top down and the bottom up. This should also be refreshed whenever a major shift in the business occurs.

   Someone who places why at the center of leadership strategy is motivational speaker Simon Sinek, the British/American author of Start with Why¹⁰ and Find Your Why¹¹. He goes so far as to argue that it doesn't matter so much what you do, but why you do it.

5. Be mission critical. If the mission is clear from the top, it's much easier for employees to (a) figure out whether their own values and ambitions are well aligned to this, potentially boosting their personal commitment; and (b) understand their role and responsibilities in a new, more meaningful context – which add to their individual sense of value, contribution, and purpose.

   Of course, many people often end up in jobs by accident, without any grand plan. When this happens, we are unlikely to take the time to understand what the job really is. I became a management consultant over three decades ago because I saw an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald for what appeared to be a cool job. It turned out it really was – so much so that I made the profession my career – but I had no inkling of that as I boarded the plane to start work in Mount Isa Mines in far northwestern Queensland, Australia, back in 1987. I didn't even know what a consultant was, let alone what one did or why!

6. A picture paints a great strategy. Thankfully, there are some good, solid tools you can use to routinely give employees a consistent message and understanding of your business. I personally swear by Discovery Maps from a company called Paradigm Learning. Finding your why can come from these creative solutions.

   A nice touch is that they build on the influence of the immediate manager, using them to roll out the message through the maps to their teams. This is a smart move – taking advantage of and reinforcing the line manager relationship – something most businesses can learn from. We often hire illustrators to simply visualize the messages.

   Context Creates Clarity

7. A job description is not a call for purpose. You could be forgiven for thinking that as a hands-on manager you already have all of these important bases covered: “I've given my team their job descriptions; they get a performance review each year; I pin up the weekly numbers and email them fairly regular updates; I've explained how what they do is tracked by the big bosses upstairs, and how their work affects company profitability and customer satisfaction. Surely that's enough?” Well, no, unfortunately – it isn't.
8. What's the prize? People want to know how they help win the prize, no matter where they sit in their company. If they can help share in that prize (even if not directly, but through a sense of shared achievement), then engagement builds. You've heard the old story of the maintenance man at NASA helping put the man on the moon. It was updated with complete sincerity during the COVID-19 pandemic, as everyday hospital cleaners and workers could point to how they were saving lives. If you don't link people's contribution, how will they?
9. Reduce noise. If work's context and purpose has got lost along the way, this needs to be addressed with simple, direct messaging. Perhaps there is just too much information and complexity. In which case, it's probably time for a good old-fashioned clearout.

   What about People in Boring Jobs? How Can They Get Engaged?

10. Level with people about what you're doing and why. Businesses often launch improvement programs yet fail to get people excited because they haven't understood what this means for them. This is one of those common sense isn't always common, points: Once people appreciate the need for change and have a clear picture of what difference it will make, they're more likely to get behind it. We've known this for a very long time, and yet, my experience with clients shows that we still often miss this step and forget to help people connect the dots. Sometimes it's simply about a compare and contrast exercise – showing people the difference between where you are and where you want to be.

    Channeling Grassroots Success

11. Beware isolation: people crave connection. A big trigger for disengagement is when people become isolated at work, perhaps because of their office setup/working hours, an absence of peers in similar roles, or a global pandemic that removed the ability for regular face to face contact to get work done. Of course, it's fantastic if people have more flexibility in how and where they work, or that we trust them not to need constant supervision, but if connections weaken, people can lose their sense of community, direction, and, importantly, their purpose. Without people on hand to witness or discuss their achievements, their commitment to excelling may be slowly eroded. People like working with people, and enthusiasm is catching. But enthusiasm only works if we can see and be inspired by what each other is doing. We all need validation, others to bounce ideas off, examples and role models of what to aim for. A visible reason to keep going. We learned this throughout 2020. Once the novelty of our great work from home experiment wore off, our need for connection greater than the job being done at our kitchen tables, rose.

There Is No Cause Too Small

A great many businesses and their leaders feel that unless they're actually making a difference in the world on a grand scale (finding a cure for cancer, eradicating poverty), they're unable to help their people connect to a cause. This is untrue. While some firms do have the opportunity to easily make such profound world-changing links, real causes that turn people on at work can be found in everyday work life. You just need to look. The feeling of helping a customer or a colleague to be all he or she can be can have meaningful resonance for those inspired by helping others achieve. Think about it, in the early days of recycling, having recycle bins available at work was a great way of aligning corporate values with employee ethics. We wouldn't dream of not having them today. While each small step may not achieve something monumental in isolation, they all have an impact on employee engagement and help to set the right tone. They send a message.

As the world spins ever more precariously forward, and our world changes ever more rapidly, it's worth revisiting your vision, your purpose, and your plans. Are you translating your vision into the verbs needed for today's world – articulating the company macro vision into your team micro vision? Then take the time to revisit your purpose – does it need to change? And do you have a plan to stay true to your vision and purpose that is clearly understood? Do people know how what they do each day contributes to those plans? Does how they spend their time support them?

We must lead by example – regenerating our own enthusiasm and sense of purpose. Role modeling. Remember that you are the one who moves people to do remarkable things; you’re the passion prophet (rather than the passion police); you are the one who must find ways to create passion in others so they want to do remarkable things. Be the leader your people want you to be.