HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose
John Coleman
Harvard Business Review Press (January 2022)
How to craft a life and a career guided, informed, and enriched by purpose
This one of very few single-author volumes in HBR Guide to…. series, most of which are anthologies of articles that first appeared in Harvard Business Review. John Coleman is its author, presumably in collaboration with the superb HBR editors. The material is organized within four sections (more about them in a moment) and twelve chapters. If each of them were viewed as an HBR article, the total cost of them all — if purchased separately as reprints — would be about $100. Amazon now sells a paperbound copy for only $21.95.
That’s not a bargain; that’s a steal, especially when you take into full account the substantial value-added benefit of having all of the material in a single source, one that is potable.
Coleman: “Throughout this book, I have embedded frameworks and exercises for you to complete while reading. [Please note one of the two suggestions I presume to include later.] These exercises will help you reflect on purpose and formulate concrete plans to craft more meaning in your life. The goal, by the end, is to help you not only think differently about purpose but to have a strategy in hand for a more purposeful life.”
As indicated, the articles are organized within four sections and twelve chapters:
Section One: Getting Started with Purpose (Chapters 1 and 2)
Two: Redefining How We Think About Purpose (3-6)
Three: Building Your Purpose (7-10)
Four: Purpose in Your Organization (11 and 12)
These are among the strategic objectives and issues on which Coleman focuses:
o A real-time diagnostic of how you’re processing purpose today (Pages 17-18)
o Table 2-1: A new framework for work-life balance (22)
o Three myths we must confront in how we think about power (32-37)
o Table 4-1: How to mine your personal life for meaning (42)
o Table 4-2: Worksheet for mining the raw materials of your work for meaning (55)
o The Sludge Olympics (56-57)
o Four Critical Ways to Shape Purpose (58-61)
o The LABORS framework for multiple sources of purpose (66-80)
o Navigating changing purpose (87-97)
o Signals It’s Time to Let Go (92-93)
o The Art of Job Crafting (104-115)
o Tips for how to propose changes of the reinvention worksheet (114-115)
o What to Do If Your Boss Says “No” (115-117)
o Crafting corporate purpose (192-206)
o A Guide for Getting Started on Culture Building (204-205)
“How do I find my purpose?” According to the HBR Editors, that’s the wrong question to ask. You don’t find your purpose — [begin italics] you build it. [end italics] HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose explains why and how (a) culture is developed by a never-ending process, (b) the nature and extent of culture between and among organizations vary, and (c) no culture remains the same. Initiatives by individuals as well as by organizations are far more likely to succeed if they are driven by a compelling sense of purpose.
For example, years ago Rod Steiger was asked if young people aspiring to become an actor ever asked him for career advice. “Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. And I always look them right in the eye and ask, ‘Do you want to become an actor or do you HAVE TO BE an actor? The longer it takes for them to answer, the less likely they’ll ever succeed.”
I have two suggestions that can help to increase the value of the information, insights, and counsel that John Coleman provides: underline key passages in each of he four sections, and, have a lined notebook near at hand in which to record comments, questions, and cross-reference as well as to complete the exercises embedded throughput Coleman’s lively and eloquent narrative. These tactics will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key material later.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out three others: Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture (2008); Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012), written with James Allworth and Karen Dillen; and Find Your Why (2017), written by Simon Sinek, with David Mead and Peter Docker.