People innately need a purpose in both life and work

“We have a gym, ping pong, video games, and a cafeteria open 24/7,” was the sales pitch from the guy showing me around campus. “It’s like a big family here and every enjoys the amenities although we work hard.” It sounds like a dream come true. You can work in a place with an atmosphere similar to a resort while doing the work you love.

“This place is amazing,” I replied, “I only have one question.”

“What’s the most meaningful work you’ve done while here?”

As amazing as some places can be, the novelty always wears off. When you boil things down to what really matters, purpose or meaning never evaporates with the amenities. We need meaning in our lives and it’s no different in our profession. Viktor Frankl may explore it best in his memoir about his time at Auschwitz¹. Dr. Frankl developed a new branch of psychoanalysis supported by his observations in the Nazi death camp. His main thesis was our desire to find meaning is essential to the human experience.

While the circumstances in a concentration camp are far worse than being in a meaningless job, the principle universally governs human life. Thankfully, the millennial generation may be realizing this truth and working to bring a change to current company thinking.

A successful approach to this topic should assess meaningful work from two perspectives. The first perspective answers the question of “What is meaningful work?” The second answers “How can we enable meaningful work at our own company with our own team?”

Defining Meaningful Work

Maybe you’re familiar with the well known quote:

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two.”

Unfortunately, this is just as meaningless in our search for meaningful work as it is in Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy². People’s definition of meaningful work varies as much as the people themselves do. You never see two people just alike. But if you begin trying to place people into groups based on similarities, you end up with just a few categories depending on the criteria used. The same is true when attempting to understand what is meaningful to others.

While your mind may conjure images of solving world hunger or bringing peace to the world as solid definitions of meaningful work, that’s not exactly how things work. Yes, those are worthwhile causes, but not everyone is going to directly be able to contribute to those altruistic ends through their profession.

I’ve met people who are convinced they perform meaningful work. Some are software developers, some are business owners, some are in restaurants or retail. So, empirical evidence suggests meaningful work exists in many industries, perhaps all industries. How can that be?

After interviewing people about their work and how it impacts their lives and the lives of others, I’ve come to believe something becomes meaningful when the person working on it is fully invested into it. They behave in a way that relates ownership of the result and an understanding of its significance. This doesn’t mean creating an app is on the same utopian level as ensuring everyone on the planet has enough food. But it does suggest purpose is derived from more than just the few world changing concepts we can all agree upon.

What’s your purpose? Bettering the lives of 1000 people through improved fitness? Offering the best cup of coffee to keep the world moving and add a little pep to its step? Or creating content that motivates others to pursue their dreams, lead their teams better, or just lead better lives?

The definition of meaningful work is anything — that you feel ownership over and can proudly stand behind, that you can understand and embrace its results and vision, that generally contributes in some way to the betterment of someone else. When a person’s perception of their work meets these criteria, it creates a sense of purpose and meaning.

Since any type of work can be meaningful, how can we enable meaningful work within our organization? I’m glad you asked.

Enabling Meaningful Work

We as leaders need to focus on fostering and allowing meaningful work. Work that is perceived as meaningful usually has two components: employee empowerment and transparency. These aren’t difficult concepts. Unfortunately, they are difficult to find in today’s marketplace. I’m not sure why the inevitable course of companies as they grow is to turn from the things that caused its success through cultivating strong employee led decisions about their services or products along with leadership being transparent with the entire company. But companies generally outgrow these core tenants of meaningful work.

Empower Your Employees

I don’t know if Steve Jobs really said it, but if you trust the internet then he did. The statement is true regardless of its origin.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” — Steve Jobs

If you’ve hired the right people, your employees are smart. They are innovative. Most likely a large portion of your company’s success is due to the core employees that have been with you for a long time. You trusted them over the years and gave them room to make decisions for the company. These decisions paid off.

Whether you realized it or not, the way you empowered your employees created meaning in their work. They were treated as trusted decision makers. Being empowered to make decisions that directly contribute to the core business creates a feeling of ownership. It’s a form of investment into the company. It’s the pride that comes with accepting direct responsibility for a service or product. This level of commitment will never come from a role who’s tasked with only executing the decisions of upper management.

When we feel the pride of ownership over something, we innately derive meaning from it. It’s the closest an employee will ever get to feeling the same commitment and passion about a company as the owner of the company. No, even this version of meaning isn’t the exact same as the owner possesses, but it can come close. This is the kind of meaningful work people seek.

Do you possess the capacity to empower your employees in a way that will allow them to feel the passion and commitment that result in meaningful work?

Be Transparent with Your Employees

Many corporate leaders preach transparency, but end up making all decisions behind closed doors. In the worst of circumstances, instructions for work are given without context around the reason for the work or the benefits resulting from the work. This places employees in dark caverns where their actions are merely monotonous labor with no higher purpose than their monthly paycheck.

Instead of pretending to lead people, step up and be transparent. Share the reasons behind decisions, the envisioned benefits from the work, and even the mistakes that have been made from the top execs with the whole company. The unity that results from this insight creates a powerful sense of purpose throughout the whole company. The result is an amazingly productive group of people all rowing the boat in the same direction.

The outcome of true transparency is two fold. The first cultural result is teamwork like you have never seen. Everyone is on the same page. Everyone understands the reasons behind the decisions and assigned work. Everyone knows what the expected results are. And according to Andrew Carnegie,

“[Teamwork] is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

What company doesn’t want that kind of team driving their business? In many ways the resulting teamwork is enough of a goal to cause intelligent leaders to embrace transparency. But, wait, there’s more. In addition to teamwork, transparency imbues purpose into the employees. With a full vision and the associated full trust from executive leadership, the work now bursts with meaning.

Bringing it home…

You may think I’m wearing the rose colored glasses of meaningful work, but give it a try and prove it to yourself. People seek meaningful lives and a direct result is the search for meaningful work. Thankfully, most people will never have to find the importance of meaning through a concentration camp, like Viktor Frankl. But, we can apply the lessons he learned to our own lives and our work. You innately search for meaning. There’s really no escaping the desire for it. So, instead of trying to find a way to make meaningless work tolerable, lead your company or your team into meaningful work and watch them flourish.

¹ Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

² Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams