sa Earle McLeod
Leading with Noble Purpose
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Earle McLeod. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Introduction: Why Work Matters
What if your work mattered so much to you that – on your deathbed – you found yourself wishing for one more day at the office?
While I was writing this book, my father died. In the months before his death, I had time to reminisce with him about his life's high points, among them, his job.
My father worked in banking. At the height of his career he was Director of Mergers and Acquisitions for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, the FSLIC, which later merged into the FDIC. During the S&L crisis of the 1980s he ran a team whose purpose was to merge failing banks with solvent banks, so taxpayers wouldn't have to foot the bill if an S&L went under.
In his office, my father kept a flipchart tracking how much money his department saved the U.S. taxpayers. He updated that chart weekly and shared it with anyone who walked into his office. Financial experts estimated that my father and his team saved the taxpayers billions of dollars. The stakes were high. The work was difficult, but his team was passionate about it because they knew it mattered.
We've all heard the adage: No one on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more time at the office. I think that adage is misunderstood. It belittles the role that meaningful work plays in our lives. A 2005 study of terminal cancer patients found that, once the patients finished talking about their families, some of their most meaningful experiences involved doing work that mattered with people they cared about.
That study mirrors what I experienced with my father. My father loved his family. By the standards of the day, he spent significantly more time with his kids than most men. He changed diapers, coached, did home projects, camped. He even learned how to score gymnastics to help my high school team.
But he also loved his job. When my father had fallen ill, reading notes from his former colleagues was a high point for him. He loved talking about the good times, and the bad, the obstacles they'd faced, the deals that had gone well, and the deals that hadn't. My father swelled with pride as he talked about his team and the impact they'd had on the banking system.
It's easy to say family is the most important thing. Yet, watching my father reflect upon his life, it's obvious to me – work matters. We spend most of our waking hours at work, so those hours ought to mean something.
Viktor Frankl once said, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Human beings are hardwired for purpose. Once you get beyond food, shelter, air, and water, human beings have two core needs: connection and meaning. We want to make a difference. We want our lives to count for something. This emotional need transcends sex, race, age, and culture. If we don't satisfy that core need, we die – first emotionally, then physically.
Unfortunately, many people see their work as devoid of higher purpose. Instead, they view it as a grind – as an endless series of meaningless tasks.
A May 2014 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Why You Hate Work,”1 was the most emailed article for a week. That piece revealed that, in a 2013 Harvard study of white-collar workers, over half failed to feel any connection to the company's mission, nor any level of workplace meaning and significance.
We know the Gallup numbers; lack of employee engagement has reached epidemic proportions. Gallup's latest research reveals that 51 percent of people are not engaged in their work, and an additional 17 percent are actively disengaged.
When I talk about these figures during a speech, I say to the audience, “Look at the person sitting next to you. At least one of you hates your job.” It always gets a laugh. They laugh, not because it's funny, but because it's true.
These are more than business statistics. These are real live human beings who spend the majority of their waking hours doing something they don't care about.
It's not work itself that kills our spirit. It's meaningless work. I often hear leaders lamenting that employees “just don't care anymore.” Maybe the reason for this employee malaise is that leadership hasn't given them anything meaningful to care about. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. In fact, they're desperate for it.
Employee engagement is not the root problem. It's a symptom. The real problem is lack of workplace meaning.
How did we get here?
It's simple: We put profit before purpose, and in doing so, eroded the very thing that makes a business great.
We've made some faulty assumptions about work, and those assumptions are killing us. We've allowed the money story to replace the meaning story. The narrative of earnings and bonuses that was supposed to improve employee performance has had the opposite effect. It has stripped the joy and meaning from work in ways that have a chilling effect on morale, performance, service, and ultimately profit itself.
It's time to face reality. Money is not a sustainable motivator. People want money; they also want meaning. Without a higher