Got meaning? Creating a Why to Work

My father used to say that for people to be happy they need something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. He said this long before anyone had invented positive psychology, back when happiness was the domain of philosophers, priests, and maybe pushers, but held little interest for science. My father was not an especially happy man I should point out, but I think he hit a triple with his definition of happiness. Even as a teenager, however, I always thought he came just short of a home run, and after twenty years as a practicing psychologist I haven't changed my mind: To be happy, most people also need to round that last home base: something to believe in. We need a sense of meaning, of purpose, of connection with something bigger than ourselves. We need a "why" to go with the how's and who's and when's of our lives.

My husband Dave Ulrich and I wrote The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win (see thewhyofwork.com) because work is a universal setting (like family or community or church) for people to meet our universal need for meaning. Dave specializes in leadership and human resources, not psychology, and it has been an interesting process for us to write a book together, trying to meld and merge our quite different perspectives on how business leaders and employees alike can become meaning-makers. I think it is fair to say that Dave and I are both meaning junkies: we get a real high from the work we respectively do and can't quite imagine what life would be like if we didn't. I guess with this book we really have become pushers, trying to convince others that meaning is both a high worth pursuing and extremely profitable.

Since most of us spend more time at work than in any other setting, if we don't find meaning in our work, chances are we will feel the pinch. When we don't find meaning at work, our employers will feel the pinch as well. Work that makes sense, it turns out, also makes cents. The world's most admired companies, the ones people most want to work for because of the meaning they make, see almost 4 times the Return On Investment of companies that don't make this list.

For companies that believe the pursuit of meaning is only a prerogative of Fortune 500 companies, we point out that Man's Search for Meaning, the book by Viktor Frankl that has sold well over 10 million copies, emerged from the crucible of a Nazi concentration camp. It would be hard to find work more demeaning, an employer more harsh, or a cause more repugnant. Daniel Siegel's work on neurobiology and attachment (The Developing Mind and Mindsight) underscores the necessity of creating a coherent story of our own lives in helping us heal, thrive, and build the next generation. The uniquely human activity of telling a coherent story - making meaning - is more than a luxury for those with time on their hands and money in the bank; it is an imperative for anyone who wants the legacy of their life to be hope, not despair. All jobs have elements of dreariness and drudgery, strain and stress, but meaning-making raises us out of the bankruptcy of deficit thinking toward genuine abundance - enough and to spare of what matters the very most, even when our circumstances provide the very least.

It has been said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. While the current economic crises has provided an influx of meaning for workers trying with renewed fervor to keep their jobs or their companies afloat, if the search for meaning does not continue to emerge and evolve we foresee new leaks springing in our collective corporate boats, requiring bailouts that are not only more costly but even less effective than those currently being tried. Helping individuals and corporations find the meaning of their labor is not just a pleasant pastime; it is essential to sustained organizational buoyancy.

In The Why of Work we identify 7 meaning drivers that seem to encompass much of what people report brings them a sense of meaning and abundance at work. They include the opportunity to identify our strengths and use them to strengthen others, a clear sense of direction and purpose, the skills to create great friendships at work, clarity about the type of work we personally find engaging, positive work routines and cultures, the learning that comes through resilience and transformation, and simple civility and delight. We explore how leaders can find meaning through these 7 drivers for themselves, their work teams, and their organizations. As they do so they create abundant organizations that meet the needs of customers, fulfill the expectations of investors, and contribute to the best interests of communities and humanity at large.

What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning for you? In either good times or hard times, where do you find meaning? What have good leaders done to help you find that sense of abundance, either sporadically or consistently, in what would otherwise be just a job? As a leader, how do you foster abundance and meaning in other people? Is this an agenda you care about? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for you and for others?