Purpose.

Over the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts about the importance of Culture and Trust not only to the long-term success of an organization, but equally its importance to the type of organization I believe people truly want to work in.

As a follow on from this, I believe that it is important to recognize that as humans we are also driven by purpose, an overarching sense of what matters in a person’s life. The idea of having a sense of direction, intention, and understanding that the contribution you’re making is going somewhere and achieving something is critically important, and that having a purpose makes us all feel energized, inspired, and alive.

 “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” ―John F. Kennedy

Purpose is personal, and part of an organization’s role (our role) is to figure out how we enable our employees/people to align their purpose to that of the organization.

A recent piece of research done by McKinsey, showed that 85 percent of people feel they have a purpose but only about 65 percent of them were able to actually articulate that purpose. Almost 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work, and millennials even more so than the rest, are likely to see their work as their life calling. People are looking for opportunities in the work they do day-to-day, to be in some way contributing to what they believe their purpose is.

 Another interesting thing that came out of that research was that nearly seven out of ten employees are reflecting more on their purpose today because of COVID-19 and in light of that, employees who say that they live their purpose at work are six and a half times more likely to report higher resilience. They are four times more likely to report better health, six times more likely to want to stay at the company, and one and a half times more likely to go above and beyond to make their company successful.

 If we agree with the above, then the question we must ask ourselves is, how do we define our purpose, connect it to our vision for the future, ensuring that this is truly authentic and relatable by our people i.e., aligning the organization’s purpose and the individual’s purpose to one another.

So where do we start… We are at a time where there is tremendous change going on in the world and in my opinion, developing a truly authentic organizational purpose is about spending real time reflecting on the impact our company has on our clients, our people and the world around us. It’s not just about nice corporate-social-responsibility contributions and making big statements. It’s actually about engaging and involving with our people on what that impact truly is. Employees who believe that their organization spends real time reflecting on the impact they make on the world are five times more likely to be excited to work for the company.

The time is right, and we have an incredible opportunity to pause and reflect on an individual’s sense of purpose and how that links with our respective organizations and what we are trying to do. Especially at this moment, when there are so many things going on in the world that really demand businesses to make a greater contribution to society and ultimately the world that we live in.

 If we are truly able to do this, we will have an energized, inspired, unbeatable, high performing workforce that will be second to none in the market.

Just some food for thought…

Ken