ANYONE CAN ACHIEVE PURPOSE AT WORK, AND EVERYONE SHOULD TRY, SINCE IT BENEFITS AN EAGER EMPLOYEE AS MUCH AS IT DOES THE BUSINESS.

So true I'd like to say it in person: Click for video

So, What's a Social Intrapreneur Anyway?

Encounters with colleagues from departments outside your own are a huge workplace advantage. There's even a book dedicated to the subject. Wayne Baker, author of Achieving Success through Social Capital, writes: “If you bridge disparate parts of the organization, you can link a problem in one group with a solution for another.”² That kind of perspective could be invaluable to your business. Buying a round at the happy hour post charity event is an excuse to mingle with colleagues you don't normally work with, and could really pay off.

Purpose is not a singular task reserved for the higher-ups. Anyone can achieve purpose at work, and everyone should try, since it benefits an eager employee as much as it does the business.

If your day job doesn't give you the chance to take on leadership positions, stepping up to lead a cause at work will inevitably attract the attention of other leaders. Running the company's volunteer day, you'll likely bump into a few executives, while you budget and seek approvals—at the very least, earning you a thank-you note and name recognition.

Always remember—as we said in the chapter “Purpose 101”—whatever role you have in the business, you make decisions every day and you, as an individual, have the power to use purpose to drive those decisions.

By using purpose as your guide, not only in your work life but in your community and your home life as well, you will be striving to continuously improve and better your environment. A job well done, I'd say!

Want to Reinvent Your Job with Purpose? Build These Traits³

	A learning mindset: Learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, and see everything you do as an opportunity to learn. Remove the stigma from mistakes and errors; they are learning opportunities.
	Trust in yourself: Have a quiet confidence that you can take on whatever may come. Instead of fearing the unknown, develop trust that you can handle whatever challenge might be next.
	Humility: Be open to other opinions, admit your mistakes, spend time in self-reflection, and recognize you can't do everything yourself. Accept blame and share praise. Trust others instead of micromanaging.
	I'd also like to add a few useful traits to the list above: be resilient, be tenacious, and be creative.

Not only will these projects help you find meaning at work, they just might help you move up the ladder. Social capital, the value of gaining influence and respect among peers, is more than just office gossip. In his book, Baker cites studies demonstrating that most people get jobs through existing contacts. Once hired, people with higher social capital are paid more and promoted faster and at younger ages.⁴ Seeking purpose at work will build your skill set, fill out your résumé, and increase your value as an employee.

During the past year, we went in search of such success stories, and we've drawn lessons from some of the best to show you how to succeed at putting purpose into your job. Sometimes that's all it takes—a few good examples to inspire and motivate, or successful case studies that you can use to convince your boss that it's worth permitting you (and your team) to develop an idea or run with a purpose-project. Reminding them that it will help the bottom line doesn't hurt either.

Railway Town: Platform for Social Good

When Nicola Griffiths, an employee of Virgin Trains, came up with the idea of adding pop-up shops to the platform at Crewe Railway Station in Cheshire, England, she had no idea of the impact it would ultimately have. Her idea resulted in a retail hub supporting small local businesses in a country still suffering the aftermath of a triple-dip recession just a few years earlier.

Here is Nicola's story—mostly in her own words:

Crewe Alexandra is the local football team, nicknamed “The Railwaymen.” They made it to Wembley Stadium for the first time in 2012 in the League Two playoff final, where they went on to beat Cheltenham 2-0.

“Apart from being a great railway town, Crewe is also really behind their football team, so in the buildup to the big match, they were really excited,” she says. “We had a big banner up at the station supporting the team, and there were also lots of people along the road with shopping trolleys selling souvenirs, football flags, and scarves.”

On the day of the match, Nicola was working an early shift. During her usual security checks, she found an interloper—one of the merchants who usually set up a cart down the road was trying to sell scarves right on the doorstep of the station.

“I had a couple of thoughts,” she says. “First: should he be there? And secondly: what a shame we didn't have him on the platform. The shopping trolleys [outside the station] brought such a fantastic atmosphere,” she says, to the otherwise drab commuter journey. “I was left thinking: why couldn't we support this in a different way?”

Nicola adds that it had always frustrated her that there was so much space at Virgin Train stations, yet “we don't do anything with it.” She adds: “I thought it would be good for local businesses to do pop-up shops on the station platform to promote their businesses and showcase what's going on in the local area.”

She wanted commuters to be more than passersby, and to get a feel for the town—perhaps giving it an economic boost on their way through the station.

Small business suffered greatly when the global recession hit in 2008; in the UK, an estimated 200,000 businesses were forced to close their doors and as many as 1.3 million people lost their jobs.⁵ Along many high streets throughout Britain, boarded-up windows became the norm. And so Nicola's brainchild, sparked by an enterprising soccer fanatic, could not have been more timely—not only for local businesses, but also because it brought back a sense of community to areas devastated by the recession.

Getting Local Businesses on Board

As the development manager at Crewe Station, Nicola persuaded local businesses to get on board, pardon the pun. Virgin Trains' station managers have lots of autonomy, so Nicola didn't need to start with a big pitch to the higher-ups. Instead, she was up and running with community buy-in, getting locals involved. The rejuvenated town of Crewe would be all the proof she needed to grow the idea further down the road. And grow it, she would.

No matter where you are in a company, if you're passionate, persistent, and gutsy, you can make waves.

Hitting the phones hard, she convinced area businesses that Crewe Station Platform was the town's next big outdoor market.

58 percent of managers are either very willing or extremely willing to support employees who want to capitalize on a new business opportunity within their company.⁶

“It's a unique way of showcasing their products and getting a wider audience,” Nicola says. “We also started taster days on board our trains. So we get lots of things going on around customer engagement, and there might be samples of a food product or beverage or a service that customers can try and then buy. We've even had a business going through the train offering people hand massages.” Since the inaugural pop-up in 2014, Virgin Trains now runs pop-up shops every year for five consecutive days at 17 West Coast stations across the UK and ad hoc at East Coast stations. For one week, local businesses get massive foot traffic and a new storefront. Virgin Trains even hosted a pop-up for Richard Branson's 65th birthday in 2015. Now, that is buy-in and recognition from the big boss—hosting his birthday party around your business idea.

Nicola and Virgin Trains make sure to foster a larger commitment to local business. Once those five days of pop-up shops are over, “we find ways within our own business to support the small businesses,” Nicola says, pointing to a ceramic designer who recently won a contract with Virgin Trains. “She's redesigned our sugar bowls for our first-class carriages to go with our new crockery.”

A true win-win. And customers love it, too. When the hand masseuse came on board to offer hand massages, Nicola says Virgin Trains “saw Twitter go crazy.”

Even more important than the social media frenzy?

Nicola solved a social problem and rallied a community. Naturally, Virgin Trains supported the plan.

Thanks to the company having faith in Nicola's lightbulb moment, and her persistence to make it a reality, Virgin Trains pop-up shop events along the West Coast Main Line have supported more than 200 businesses in the communities. Business case studies on SMEs who take part in regular pop-up events show that they have enjoyed a 33 percent rise in revenue growth and a 50 percent rise in becoming regular suppliers to other businesses in their region.

You may not be the CEO, but you have your own resources and a sphere of influence that includes your community—not to mention your local football supporters.

Nicola's story shows that no matter where you are in a company, if you're passionate, persistent, and gutsy, you can make waves. You'll find lots of hints and tips in this chapter to make sure you swim—not sink!

To meet the wonderful Nicola (virtually of course!) Click for video

Don't Change Companies— Change the Company You're In

And now on to a socially conscious accountant. Tania Carnegie is the senior manager in the Toronto office of the global accounting firm KPMG. Before heading to rural Kenya to volunteer with WE Charity, Tania steeled herself to confront hopelessness and despair, but her emotional armor proved useless.

Daily life in the remote, marginalized community was undeniably hard, but she witnessed none of the resentment or self-pity she had anticipated. Instead, the locals were filled with the mirth of family and the joy of community. “This caused me to reflect on my values, my definition of success,” she told us.

On a flat red rock overlooking the Great Rift Valley, the very “Cradle of Civilization,” Tania came to ask herself some fundamental questions: What did these people have that she didn't fully understand? What does success really mean? What did she want her legacy to be? Her soul-searching led to a life-changing conclusion: she should quit her job and take up development work full-time. She and her husband, Christopher, discussed moving to Africa to apply their skills to the many challenges they'd seen on their trip. Back home on the verge of quitting her career and uprooting her life, Tania had many difficult conversations with friends and family as her suppressed fears surfaced. It's one thing to fantasize about running away to Africa as a single, recent graduate looking for perspective before real life sets in, it's another to leap when you have so much to lose. Craig offered valuable, and perhaps surprising, perspective. He told Carnegie: “You can uproot your life to switch careers and find a nonprofit. Or you can use the credibility, the resources, and the expertise of a massive company like KPMG.”

Back home, with a new perspective, Tania began to imagine a different future for herself at KPMG, one that would also transform the company. At the time, her idea seemed as absurd as it was revolutionary. Simply put, she hoped to tie salaries and advancement at one of the largest accounting firms in the world to an employee's volunteer efforts outside the company.

KPMG is certainly a progressive company—the international accounting firm is committed to environmental sustainability and was among the first professional service organizations in Canada to sponsor a volunteer day. But Tania's plan envisioned an even more engaged form of corporate social responsibility. Bill Thomas, the firm's incoming Canadian CEO at the time and now KPMG's Global Chairman, asked many tough questions, but Tania had accounted for that (because she's an accountant . . . get it?). She told him it would not require more money. An investment of strategy and leadership alone would produce more engaged employees with deeper connections to their communities. And Tania agreed to run the program. The CEO was supportive, and named Tania KPMG's first National Executive Director of Community Leadership (which means she basically invented, pitched, and won her title). She gave herself a promotion!

“Social intrapreneurs are quickly becoming the most valuable employees at many companies because they are good for the bottom line, good for the brand, and good for staff morale.”

—Ashoka editorial in Forbes magazine. (Ashoka is the largest network of social entrepreneurs worldwide, with nearly 3,000 Fellows in 70 countries)

Tania's plan, rolled out in the fall of 2009, made community involvement one of the four pillars of KPMG's business strategy in Canada. Volunteering became part of every job description; employees would be accountable in their annual performance reviews for what they had done in their communities, alongside client satisfaction ratings and income generation numbers. As Tania told us, with typical understatement: “This was not what was traditionally associated with a job at an accounting firm.”

The program is mutually beneficial for both the community and the company. Nonprofit groups have gained budgeting, tax, and governance expertise provided by KPMG volunteers. Volunteers gain professional development opportunities and new contacts (oh, and the satisfaction of helping others). Accounting firms are nothing without their reputations—KPMG's employees are also acting as do-good brand ambassadors. Meanwhile, employee surveys show the program has boosted staff morale. More than 90 percent of KPMG employees regard the firm as a responsible corporate citizen. The program is also used to lure talent, an enticing part of the recruitment process. Tania has since taken the program global as Chief Impact Officer and Leader.

In the WEconomy, employees can help invent new products, break into new markets, and even get promoted, while bringing about social change, all within the safety net of their current employer.

You can even change the rules of how one gets promoted, like Tania did in the stodgy accounting industry at an established firm. She effectively created her own position to marry her passions with her business ambitions.

So there you have it—you can do good by changing your industry from within, and at the same time help your company differentiate its offerings. These are just two examples of the many thousands of intrapreneurs changing their companies from within (just put intrapreneur in your search engine and you'll find many, many more). Read their stories, and apply the lessons learned to your own companies—their successes are hard to ignore.

Enjoying time with our great people who work for Virgin Trains.