Today I wrote a short presentation for our HR team on their role in creating a brand. I realized that the foundation for most brands remains ‘purpose’ which is the meaning behind the direction of the company and the reasons we’re traveling that way.
There are some jobs where almost everyone reports a strong sense of meaning, these are usually referred to a vocational jobs like teaching, the clergy, healing as a doctor or nurse; all of which makes me think that perhaps we’ve moved on from companies having ‘purpose’, and instead our roles require purpose.
The jobs that hold the most meaning therefore tend to be those that are ‘organisation agnostic’. Perhaps we have the millennial generation to thank for this conscious decoupling of our meaningful work from the purposeful company? Certainly labour mobility and unified communications networks now mean that we can all work from anywhere, and often do just that. So the organisation, the location and the products are not as important as the role that you’re able to play within the team.
Why has this shift occurred? Over 30 years ago Steve Jobs (2 SJ mentions in 2 blogs – I promise to stop) was able to trap John Sculley to work for him with the question “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”. I doubt this would work today because people find meaning in their daily work and not in their association with the company.
Real purpose is no longer defined by the company we work for, but instead is defined in the hands of the people who work in the organisation who are able to constantly shape their roles and deliverables in line with their own passions. Whether it’s the sales guy who helps marketers, the surgeon who now teaches, the farmer who develops properties or the travel agent who builds web sites; we’re all following our own shifting priorities to build meaning. Where you work is no longer the major source of purpose and unless HR and marketing teams recognise that purpose is created from the bottom up and no longer from the top down and respond with other motivating factors, soon employers will fade even further into the background in the search for purpose.