Jobs with Purpose — The Millennial/GenZ Trap

Ever since the millennials entered the job market starting in the early 2000s, the debate about purpose in our work life has been become more and more vocal. Generation X and the remnants of the Baby Boomers have been struggling ever since and a good thing, too. For what worked for them – or far more interestingly perhaps, what they thought would work for them – does not work for subsequent generations like the millennials and GenZ. This is not restricted to how we work but also what we are working for. And that gets is to purpose. 

Purpose is a Key Motivator

Mindless work is detrimental to mental well-being and it dehumanizes us. Purpose is one of the three key motivators for skilled workers in addition to autonomy and mastery. However, those lucky enough to work for a company with a clear purpose and in a role which clearly supports this purpose, can easily find themselves short-changed. You have found an organization with a purpose but you have not found your own purpose.
If you run a Google search for purpose, the AI quickly generates the following summary: The purpose of being, or life's purpose, is a deeply personal and often evolving concept. It encompasses the reasons why an individual exists and what they find meaningful and fulfilling. While there's no single, universally agreed-upon purpose, it's generally understood to involve finding a sense of direction, meaning, and contribution in life. 

Doing vs. Being

Let’s unpack. The first important distinction to make is the difference between “doing” and “being”. We can easily find purpose in “doing”. Hence the anecdote about U.S. President Kennedy’s visit to NASA. During that visit he reportedly asked a janitor what he was doing, to which the janitor replied, "I'm helping put a man on the moon." Anyone with less big thoughts may have responded, “I am making sure the bathrooms are clean,” while someone with no purpose may have felt he or she was not doing anything worthwhile at all for what they clean today will just be as dirty tomorrow again.
Had the director of NASA given this kind of response, I doubt it would have made it into the annals of alleged interactions between Kennedy and other people. Why? Because we attach more importance to bigger roles and people in these bigger roles. We would have easily assumed the director’s purpose consisted of actions crucial to bringing a man (it wasn’t a woman in those days) to the moon and preferably back again.
Our action is an outcome of our being. In our example, both, the director’s and the janitor’s actions were the result of their roles. They “were being” a director and a janitor with the associated tasks they did. However, this is limiting. For starters, they were helping to achieve NASA’s purpose at the time and they associated themselves with that purpose. But was it their life’s purpose? I believe we run the danger of sidestepping the real quest for purpose when we either look for it in the purpose of the organization we work for (fight poverty for example) or bemoan the lack of such worthy purpose in our current employer. It is an easy temptation to fall into because someone else has done all the work for us including the mission the vision statement.

Hand-me-down Purpose

Unfortunately, there is no short-cut to getting around the hard work of finding out what this deeply personal “thing” is for us. This is perhaps the single most important journey we embark on. Finding purpose in our “being” rather than our “doing” is something which cannot be taken away from us – at least not as easily as our job or title to which we latched on as an “ersatz” purpose.
To emphasize again, purpose in our job is crucially important to keep us motivated. Every management research book, coach and psychologist will agree on that. They also agree this purpose needs to be bigger than just a large number representing the bottom line. And in order to achieve this purpose, employees need to have agency, i.e. they need some form of ownership and autonomy in their work. But what do you do when the next round of redundancies hits you? Or when your role changes? Or when you retire? What does that mean for your purpose? 

Improving Working Conditions

I wonder whether the question of purpose is actually closing the loop. The onset of the industrial revolution brought with it unbelievable hardship and exploitation. The later industrial barons thought to address this and countries like Germany and the UK introduced safety and labor laws. Industrial tycoons like Krupp introduced housing colonies and social clubs for their workers. Trade unions fought for reduced working hours. 
Now we have well-being and mental health. Somehow purpose crept into this. In the context of labor, this is a recent development. For thousands of years, work (hunting and gathering, farming, etc.) had only one purpose – to bring food on the table (if you had one). It appears more and more people with the luxury of being able to think about the purpose of their organizations, appear to struggle. I wonder whether that is because even if the organization has a purpose, it really won’t be our own purpose of being. We need something deeper.
It is the manager’s job to align every product, service and function with the organization’s purpose, including branding and marketing activities and for example hiring efforts. It is not the manager’s or organization’s job to provide employees with a purpose for their lives. Neither should you expect it from either one. It is an important component, but it is not necessary for us to lead a fulfilled life. Take it from Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy focusing on helping individuals find meaning and purpose in their lives, even amidst suffering. Frankl’s best-known work is Man’s Search for Meaning which he wrote right after surviving the holocaust. He concluded, those with meaning in their lives had far better chances to make it through the horrors of the concentration camps compared to the ones with no meaningful existence.

If You Want Purpose You have to Make it Your Own

This extreme example is to bring some perspective to the struggles we often have at our workplace. I have no intention of minimizing the tremendously negative impact of a toxic work environment or the way a meaningless task can de-humanize work for us. Rather, it is a call to action. It is your job to figure out your own purpose as opposed to simply grab a second-hand one. First, acknowledge the difference between your organization’s purpose and/or the purpose of your role (“action”) and your own existence (“being”). Second, develop a curiosity about what that means for you and go into self-reflection. Third, be patient. Even “aha” moments are usually the culmination of a process which can take a while. Fourth, there is no need to do this on your own. Involve friends and/or coaches because friends know you and coaches are trained to ask the right questions. It is rewarding work but it is work. 
Through individual or group sessions, a well-trained coach can provide the space for you to explore by asking questions and help you develop insights to make sense of your quest. It will be the journey of your own search for meaning. 
The reward is something you can take into any organization or circumstances. Personally, I view my purpose as “to be” a teacher in the broadest sense. I “do” this literally with my students at college. However, I aim to not teaching people how to think. My mission is to try and make people curious about what to think about. No matter where I am, I can decide “to be” such a teacher. At my job, in my family or church, among my friends.