Purpose is more than a poster on the wall

Start with "Why"...but don't stop there

Corporate purpose is more than a poster on the wall

Starting roughly with the publication of Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, corporate America seemed to awaken to the idea that companies should have a mission or purpose that can unify them. As Sinek rightly notes, employees and customers care at least as much about why you do something as what you do. And corporate purpose is a core component of creating a great culture, which researchers like Alex Edmans and Scott Keller have demonstrated leads to outsized commercial success.

But at many companies, this concept has been embraced only superficially. Advertising agencies are brought in to focus group and articulate a mission or purpose that ends up on posters and company slide presentations but not in peoples’ hearts. And leaders confuse having a corporate purpose with having a purpose-driven culture.

I believe the core of the latter is creating an environment at work that enables human flourishing—that encourages each individual employee to live a whole and purposeful life. Great companies do this not only because it’s good for commercial success (though it is) but because a core mission of every leader or organization should to free its people to craft meaningful, fulfilling lives. This isn’t accomplished by a focus-grouped statement emblazoned on company swag but by an authentic effort to articulate a meaningful corporate purpose while also offering employees agency to build meaning into their own day-to-day lives.

Here are four core ways leaders and companies can make companies thriving environments for purposeful employees.

1.     Empowering employees to craft purpose at work

Individuals don’t find their purpose, they build it. And a core element of connecting with a deeper sense of meaning at work is job-crafting. Now a concept well-articulated in the management literature, job crafting involves taking the job you have an making it the job you want—tweaking it in small ways that emphasize those things you find enjoyable and meaningful.

Unfortunately, there are two great obstacles to job crafting. The first is that individuals often neglect the opportunity to reimagine and recreate their work. The second is that companies and managers often operate so rigidly that they discourage this kind of job crafting or, worse, punish it.

So, what can your organization do to encourage this practice? How can managers proactively engage employees in reimagining their work so that they accomplish as much (or more) but do so in a way that better fits their unique skills and passions? Companies must be comfortable trusting employees to shape their jobs to achieve desired outcomes in innovative and personalized ways. Managers should be rewarded for enabling this kind of job-crafting and fostering collaboration among a team to allow for it. And employees who engage in the practice and reshape their work successfully should be highlighted and celebrated.

A flexible workplace that encourages job crafting is the bedrock of employee engagement.

2.     Helping employees connect their work to service

Almost nothing in the world gives us a greater sense of meaning in our lives than service to others. The good news is that each of us, in our day jobs, have almost innumerable opportunities to serve others well. But it’s often challenging for employees to see those opportunities and for companies to emphasize them well.

But almost any organization has an opportunity to help its people connect more deeply to service if they help them reconceive of the different groups of people they serve every day—groups I recall with the moniker “4C2P”:

§  Clients—those people every organization lives to serve, and whom companies need to connect their employees to as deeply as possible.

§  Colleagues—the people we work with every day, with whom deep, positive relationships can create flourishing workplaces.

§  Community—the place every person and organization exists, and service to which most people find deeply meaningful.

§  Capital—those shareholders who benefit from the company’s success, whether the pension plans and 401ks that own most public companies or the families (hopefully dedicated to good) who sometimes direct private firms.

§  Partners—the vendors, collaborators, and consultants with whom most corporate employees work each day and who benefit greatly when they are treated with respect and support.

§  People you love—the people each of us work for, whether spouses and kids or friends and communities, and who benefit so deeply from our professional dedication.

Elsewhere, I articulate this framework much more fully, but if each person in a company can find meaning in serving individuals within each of those six groups, the company’s culture will be transformed.

3.     Enabling employees to pursue the multiple sources of meaning in their lives

Job flexibility isn’t just about leisure time. It’s about enabling employees to craft meaningful lives away from work. Things like flex time, hybrid work, solid maternity and paternity leave policies, and “unlimited” vacation policies allow people to better pour into their communities, families, friends, and avocations in a way that leaves them more energized and alive at work. Companies that look for ways not to interfere with employees’ activities away from work but to make space for them create happier, more dedicated people.

This is, of course, a two-way street. Where a company leans into this kind of enablement, employees must be conscious not to abuse these policies but instead to lean into the mission of their work and engage in a way that encourages trust by colleagues and the firm that these kinds of arrangements won’t be abused. But where that two-way dedication exists—to the success of the individual and the success of the company—trust and meaning can flourish.

4.     Building a core purpose, values, and satellite sources of purpose for the organization

Finally, corporate purpose does matter very deeply. It is the north star for an organization—that orienting feature that keeps everyone rowing in the same direction. It must be authentic, well-understood, and shared by the people of a company. It must be inspiring and different. But when done well, it’s a powerful articulation of the reason an organization exists.

It should also be accompanied by a set of values—the principles each organization abides by and asks all employees to share—and what I call satellite sources of purpose. These are the littler opportunities throughout an organization that help employees connect with purpose on a more local level. They can be identity groups—women’s groups or religious employee resource groups, for example—that some colleagues may be passionate about organizing. They can be community initiatives or corporate projects. But they are aligned with the core mission of the company while making it more local and actionable for employees.

Purpose-driven companies have more than a mission statement posted on their walls. They have cultures dedicated to flourishing, purpose-driven people. Leaders who embrace the complexity of this can build differentiated and inspiring workplaces that serve their people and other stakeholders extraordinarily well. And they can rest well knowing they are contributing to enriching the lives of all those they serve at work.