The Purpose Effect

Building Meaning In Yourself, Your Role, and Your Organization

Dan Pontefract

• Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781773270562
• eBook ISBN: 9781773270579
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

In The Purpose Effect, author and renowned speaker Dan Pontefract combines years of experience and research on employee engagement, behavior and culture to create a work about the three crucial areas of purpose: personal, organizational and workplace role. When one area is lacking, this three-legged barstool starts to wobble, and the results range from disengagement to bankruptcy. The Purpose Effect is aimed at leaders and employees who wish to achieve a purpose mindset on a personal level, in their role at work and for their organization. A business leader who is committed to purpose will create purpose for their employees. An employee who feels a sense of purpose on the job will contribute to productivity and success. An organization centered on purpose will benefit every stakeholder from employees to society at large. This "sweet spot" of purpose creates a reciprocal relationship between all three areas, and sits at the center of Pontefract's work.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

THE PURPOSE OF PURPOSE

When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.¹

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.²

Anaïs Nin

In their influential book, In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman wrote, “Companies that develop a philosophy and live the philosophy that involves everyone within the organization with the overall success of the company will become better for it.”³ When paired together to enact change, it is the influential open partnership of employees and leaders that will ensure the three categories of purpose can come to fruition.

As we progress through the book, however, we will discover that purpose—be it personal, organizational or role—does not materialize out of thin air. An individual ought not to wait for purpose to magically appear. Purpose is often a partnership between the three intersecting categories of personal, organization and role. While it can deliver the sweet spot for the individual, if everything aligns, the organization also can benefit. But the relationship between employee and leader is key. The quest for purpose in any of the three categories fails miserably if this particular relationship is broken.

In his book, Give and Take, author and academic Adam Grant wrote, “People often end up working on tasks that aren’t perfectly aligned with their interests and skills. A powerful way to give is to help others work on tasks that are more interesting, meaningful, or developmental.”⁴ The Purpose Effect will help leaders recognize the importance of an employee’s sense of personal and role purpose, as well as helping to establish purpose at an organizational level. Purpose is hard work. It takes a team. It takes individual effort. Put simply, purpose is not a one-way street of responsibility.

Take for instance, Paul Bleier. He was working at a large consulting firm, but something began to gnaw at him. Paul sensed he was treating his role merely as a job, simply collecting a paycheck, putting in the hours, performing transactional tasks and not exactly thriving at work. In the consulting role, he learned what he could, but he recognized that his personal sense of purpose was not being fulfilled. Paul self-discovered that his personal purpose included being innovative, sociable and enabling others to grow; attributes that were not being utilized or appreciated at his place of work.

He also learned that his company would not be supportive of those attributes and desires that fueled his personal sense of purpose. Ultimately, there was a misalignment between his workplace role, his personal purpose and the organization’s purpose. The firm that employed him was focused mostly on its profitability and billable hours count. This is not a bad thing, per se, however a higher organizational purpose was missing and it ran counter to Paul’s personal purpose.

When he decided to leave the consulting firm, he eventually joined TELUS as an organizational development consultant, tasked with various aspects of employee engagement. In his role, Paul could be working with teams on collaborative leadership concepts, guiding individuals on career development, or partnering with leaders on various engagement strategies. When he arrived, not only was his sense of relief palpable, but his zeal, energy and creativity were abundant. He was not only productive, his spirit was infectious.

Paul was not just full of purpose in his role, he was glowing, and his stakeholders were happy. His purpose matched that of the organization’s purpose, an organization that was galvanized around a customer-first ethos, an open leadership culture and a spirit of community giving. He was able to match his personal sense of purpose, values and attributes with the organization’s purpose and his consulting role. I know this because Paul reported directly to me when he arrived.

“I have found that the beautiful thing about personal purpose,” Paul informed me one day, “is that it’s fluid and can change over time to align with your career stage and aspirations.” Paul believed that purpose misalignment is difficult for people to handle. He believed if individuals recognize the early warning signs and take initiative to do something about it, it can thwart any potential for personal or workplace blues. “For me, finding a new organization that more closely aligned to my innovative interests while offering more autonomy to practice new ideas and forge deeper relationships was the key. I learned that when you move away from a victim mindset of ‘why is this happening to me’ and instead take the time to really understand what inspires and motivates you at work—both you and the organization will reap the rewards.”

Paul’s view was from the perspective of an employee. He sought out the change himself. He possessed the courage to create and reach the sweet spot. It can be difficult for an organization, however, to attain a purposeful mission or culture by abdicating responsibility for change. Purpose in a role and purpose in the organization both require hard work. It most certainly will not materialize if leaders continue to utilize many of today’s ineffective organizational practices. Paul sought out an organization that aligned with his personal sense of purpose, and he ended up achieving role-based purpose in a matter of months. If an organization does not involve its employees to generate a purposeful culture—does not empower or trust them to “do good” in their role—misalignment will continue and stakeholders will suffer.

Members of the Team

This is not a story of “us versus them,” of employees versus leaders, of Paul pitted against his former company. The Purpose Effect is not the unilateral responsibility of leaders, nor should employees be solely accountable themselves. In fact, whether you lead people or not, employees at any level in the organization are both leaders and followers. Whatever the scenario, all employees are in fact leaders fulfilling personal, role-based and organizational objectives. While each of us has crafted our own personal values, interests, dislikes, priorities and objectives in our life, we all have tasks that are part of our role at work, things we have to get done.

In our roles, we each serve the interests (and requirements) of the organization, too. Thus, we are leading our lives, and performing our roles, in concert with the organization that employs us. Paul Bleier contributed to the purpose of TELUS and created a purpose mindset in his role at work, fulfilling part of his personal sense of purpose. The same can be said for Bas van Abel of Fairphone. Both of these gentlemen and their organizations are operating in the “sweet spot.”

As followers, employees who join a firm become part of and influence an existing system of organizational processes, decisions and personalities. We all have a boss of some sort. My trip to San Francisco and the accompanying expense report have to be approved by someone. The CEO reports into the board who in turn possesses the responsibility to hire or fire that same organization’s most senior leader. A politician is often elected by constituents, whom she ultimately serves. A call center agent leads her customers to answers and solves many problems while reporting to a team manager. So, too, we must follow rules and processes inside and outside our places of work. There are rules to follow in order to earn a driver’s license, just as there are rules to drive the car itself. For The Purpose Effect to be enacted, all people at whatever level of the organizational chart must accept they are both followers and leaders at work, and in life.

For the remainder of the book, I will refer to such people using the term team member rather than employee, which I find somewhat derogatory, and, in fact, even dehumanizing. Employee is suggestive of a head to be counted, another asset to be logged on a spreadsheet. The notion of a team member is something I have learned while working at TELUS. The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Darren Entwistle, does not refer to himself as CEO but instead as a “member of the TELUS team.” Like me, Darren is a team member.

It is the same for everyone. We are all part of the team. Be it private, not-for-profit or public sector—whether full-time or part-time—I believe everyone has the right to feel as though they are an important part of the team. I believe the term is far more inclusive, more engaging. Such a term unites us. Team member also removes the impersonality and subjugation implied by employee. Perhaps most importantly, team member recognizes the potential we all carry within us to both lead and follow, looking past the formality of hierarchical structures and job titles.

As team members, we should begin to think of ourselves as both leader and follower. So, too, we ought to be both a dreamer and a doer. We must dream about an idea or an outcome, but we must also make it happen. Therefore, all of us are leaders and followers; dreamers and doers. Omnificent. On purpose. We are all team members.

A question, then, for all team members to ponder is whether any of us should continue waiting for purpose to magically happen. We might dream of a higher calling or purpose, but we must possess the courage to achieve it, too. The Purpose Effect requires bilateral action. It requires a new way of thinking about the relationship between an individual and an organizational definition of purpose. The resulting manner in which team members perform in their roles is understood in the context of this relationship. It also requires, however, a definitive course of action to ensure the sweet spot is achieved.

We should become what Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard referred to as a continual fluid process. “An existing individual is constantly in the process of becoming; the actual existing subjective thinker constantly reproduces the existential situation in his thoughts and translates all his thinking into terms of process.”⁵ But too often, we remain static, forever solely the dreamer or the follower. It remains a “what might have been” mindset whether as individuals or for the organization as a whole.

As psychotherapist Carl Rogers put it, “To some it appears that to be what one is, is to remain static. They see such a purpose or value as synonymous with being fixed or unchanging.”⁶ But Rogers, like Kierkegaard, believed humans ought to be both the leader and the follower; the dreamer and the doer. “To be what one is,” he wrote, “is to enter fully into being a process. Change is facilitated, probably maximized, when one is willing to be what he truly is. It is only as he can become more of himself, can be more of what he has denied in himself, that there is any prospect of change.”⁷ Therefore, for purpose to manifest in ourselves, our organizations and in our roles, we must heed Kierkegaard’s advice, which is, “To be that self which one truly is.”⁸

This book encourages individuals to become a fluid process of insight and action in the quest to create the “sweet spot.” The Purpose Effect is possible, but it requires a different way of both thinking and acting, especially in the three areas that make up The Purpose Effect: personal, organizational and role.

Personal Purpose

An individual who seeks a personal sense of purpose in life will be one who is constantly developing, defining and deciding their values, priorities, attributes and general ways of conducting themselves in their activities. It is a perpetual cycle of self-discovery. For personal purpose to be identified—to reach their why—the questions of what, who and how ought to be continually asked by the individual. For someone to reach “their” personal purpose, they first must ask themselves how they plan to develop, define and decide their purpose in life. Consider these questions for each:

•Develop. What is the individual doing to grow and establish their personal values, priorities and attributes?

•Define. Who is the individual trying to become in life?

•Decide. How will the individual operate when balancing the realities of life with the opportunity for growth?

As these questions are repeatedly explored and answered throughout one’s life, clarity of self comes into focus. If the answers can align with an individual’s role at work and in parallel with the organization where they are employed, the individual is potentially on a path toward their own sweet spot of The Purpose Effect.

Organizational Purpose

Roger L. Martin is the Academic Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In his book, Fixing the Game, he outlines a series of issues preventing the organization from truly benefiting society. Roger argues that organizations should be placing “customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them.”⁹

I am extending Roger’s argument to introduce a model that organizations could follow to achieve such a state, called the Good DEEDS. I argue that the purpose of an organization ought to be to “provide service to benefit all intended stakeholde...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Early praise for The Purpose Effect
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Desiderata
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Acknowledgments
• References
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright