Chapter 24

Growth

A year had gone by, and Josh was as energized and passionate as the day he had come back to work. He looked at the plant in his office and smiled, knowing the seed had become a plant that was growing along with him. Good thing he had an office that could accommodate it. His boss had been promoted, and Josh had been chosen to take his place. Although his new office was larger, he was more comfortable outside of it, rubbing elbows with the rest of his team.

He knew his team cared less about employee parties than they did about having work they loved to do. After all, everyone has a good time at employee parties and gatherings. Everyone is happy when they are playing. It’s how you feel while you are working that counts. It’s about work being meaningful. It’s about work being rewarding. Josh did his best to create a nurturing environment in which all of his team members could plant their own seeds.

As a result of Josh’s approach, the leaders in the company began taking notice of his performance and the performance of his team. At leadership meetings, they would put the spotlight on him and talk about the great work he was doing. Josh had come to realize that once you begin to seek out opportunities to make others’ lives better, your purpose starts to move through you, and you accomplish amazing things. The key is to have a driving force in your life. For him, it was his faith and his purpose. He didn’t talk about it—he lived it.

Ideas about purpose being the driving force for individuals and organizations started to brew in his mind and heart. He researched organizations that were focused on their purpose and found great companies that had a powerful driving force behind them. One of his favorites was an organic dairy company. He spoke to its leaders on the phone and found that they didn’t have “sales number goals.” Rather, they were extremely focused on their purpose. Of course, they had to forecast numbers, and they measured numbers, but they did so with the belief that numbers were just an indicator or a by-product of how well they were living and sharing their purpose.

Instead of number goals, the company focused on providing opportunities for farmers to make a living. It focused on the sustainability of the land. It focused on providing families with healthy dairy products that were free of hormones and antibiotics. The vice president of marketing told Josh that if they focused on numbers and didn’t hit those numbers, then their employees would feel like failures, and morale and engagement would plummet. It’s great to focus on numbers when the numbers are always going up, Josh thought. But if the numbers go down and everyone gets depressed, that’s not good for business.

He learned that when a company focuses on its purpose instead of numbers, everyone is passionate and energized and this energy fuels performance and enhances the bottom line. Interestingly enough, by focusing on its purpose, the organic dairy company’s numbers and profits soared every year. Employees measured numbers, but it just wasn’t their main focus. Purpose was their focus, and it drove the numbers way up.

Josh realized that it’s not the numbers that drive people, it’s your people and purpose that drive the numbers. He wondered whether this would work at his company, and he was getting the feeling that he could do bigger things with these ideas. When he would take action on these ideas, he didn’t know. He just had a feeling these ideas were part of his future. As the farmer had told him, ideas, events, and situations would present themselves for his growth. He was in the growth phase. That meant he would experience conditions for growth. However, it meant he would face obstacles, too.