Diane Brady: So let’s start, Naina, with you. Purpose is a term that is tossed around quite a bit. Define it in this context. What’s individual purpose?

Naina Dhingra: When we think about this idea of individual purpose, the way we think about it is it’s an overarching sense of what matters in a person’s life. I like to use the term “North Star”—this idea of having a sense of direction, intention, and understanding that the contribution you’re making is going somewhere. Now, that’s a technical definition but I think we all intuitively know what it feels like to be on purpose. It’s when you feel energized and inspired and alive.

And it turns out, actually, in some of our research about 85 percent of people feel they have a purpose. But only about 65 percent of them believe they can actually articulate that purpose—which we thought was really interesting.

Diane Brady: Bill, it feels almost like an existential problem, our sense of purpose. Can you root it in the context of organizational health?

Bill Schaninger: You know, I think one of the things that’s been really challenging during the pandemic was a bifurcation. There were people who were frontline or customer-facing or critical workers, who had to go to work in a time when livelihoods took a back seat to lives. It felt risky.

And that really brought front and center the idea of “my primary purpose at this point is I have to work, and I’d like to make it home without getting sick.” But for a significant other portion, people were removed from the workplace while still having to do work.

We had this unbelievable smashing together of two worlds: the home world and the work world. I think it’s really brought to the fore “Well, what exactly does work mean to me? What do I have to get out of it? Is it merely a check that facilitates the rest of my life or is it something more purposeful?”—using that word quite explicitly.

Can we put a finer point on starting with the person and leaving behind the arrogance that the organization thinks it dictates to people what their purpose is? That is just nonsense. Individuals decide what their purpose is. It’s the organization’s role and opportunity to figure out how to help people bring that purpose to a finer point of what matters to them and to figure out whether or not they can create a role or an experience within the organization that helps meet that. So a big portion of this was, one, starting with the idea that the person was in the prime role and, two, the organization was in a facilitative role, not in front.

Defining one’s purpose through work

Diane Brady: Naina, I’d love to unpack purpose a bit more because, to Bill’s point, I often think about it at the corporate level. It is something that usually speaks to higher values or a higher mission. On an individual level, can you give me some examples of how people define their purpose?

Naina Dhingra: When we think about employees themselves and how they think about their own sense of purpose, one of the things that we were surprised to find in the research is that about 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work. And, actually, millennials, even more so, are likely to see their work as their life calling. So what that means is that people are looking for opportunities in the work they do day-to-day to be actually contributing to what they believe their purpose is.

One of the things that we were surprised to find in the research is that about 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work. And, actually, millennials, even more so, are likely to see their work as their life calling.

Diane Brady: You know, I hear “life calling” and I can’t help but think that’s a little bit sad. Bill, maybe I’m just biased here. Is work our life calling right now because we don’t have a lot else to do but be on our Zoom calls and work? Is this a good thing?

Bill Schaninger: Well, yeah, I’ll tell you, as someone who’s been trapped in a home that was supposed to be a weekend retreat, I’ve basically not left here in 14 months. I can see how we’d land at that idea. Let me take a slightly different take on it. I think what the millennials are saying to us is “Anything I do, I’m going to do with gusto. Time is zero sum. There are only so many hours in the day. If I’m going to do something, it has to work for me. And part of it having to work for me is that it has to work for others.”

I think there’s something admirable about that. I’m 51, so I’m a product of the ’80s and, you know, Gordon Gekko, ¹ who was presented to us as a nemesis and ended up becoming a folk hero.