“Lots of organizations have invested in articulating what they stand for. Far fewer give each person the chance to figure what matters to them, and what they could do with it.”
—Jon Duschinsky
Key Insight: Organizational alignment becomes more powerful when people can see how their work contributes to something they personally care about.
Food for Thought:
State of Purpose Governance in Canada
Employee Engagement: When What Matters to Your People Matters to the Business
There is a term for the alignment of individual and organizational purpose: purpose congruence.
Rather grand terminology for something quite human.
It describes the point where what matters to someone working for an organization intersects with what that organization is trying to achieve.
The reason that matters is that if you come to work feeling like you’re contributing to something important to you, as well as to your bosses, you have a stronger reason to bring your A-game.
It can give people room to be more creative, innovative and passionate—and a reason to stay with the organization for longer.
And all of that matters to productivity, performance and impact for the employer.
And all of that translates into productivity, performance and impact for the employer.
Sounds pretty simple.
But it’s not.
Lots of organizations have invested in articulating what they stand for. Across boardrooms in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, leaders understand the value of giving customers, donors, supporters and fans something meaningful to connect with.
But in my experience, the same level of understanding does not exist around the importance of giving each person in the organization the chance to articulate what they stand for – and crucially, then helping them figure out how that connects to the work.
I know, a lot of this can sound rather conceptual. Here’s a true story to illustrate it.
Sophie works in marketing and sales at a travel company whose purpose is to bring fun and adventure into people’s lives. She’s in her mid-20s and enjoys the job. The people she works with are generally fun and she gets to take at least one big trip every year.
Sophie likes her work, she’s generally happy, but she isn’t overly passionate about what she does. It’s a good job, it’s fun but if she got a better offer to work at a competitor she’d not feel too compelled to stay.
The company then invests in giving Sophie a chance to explore what matters to her personally.
Through a coaching and development process, the kind of work we do in our Purpose-Driven Leadership Journey, she understands that what truly lights her up is teaching and inspiring kids, helping them build self-belief.
Sophie’s boss invites her to spend some time with the teams that develop new tours in Asia. Together, they explore how her interest in helping children might connect with the company’s work creating fun and adventure.
Sophie is given a few hours each week to explore and pursue this. Within a few months, the team have developed a series of tours that engage with local educational NGOs and support projects working with kids.
When these tours are launched, they turn out to be some of the best selling products the company has ever run.
When the CEO looks at the numbers he finds that Sophie and the small group of the sales team that work with her are responsible for almost all those sales.
He pops by her desk to find out more and learns that her passion for these projects and for the impact they are creating has inspired others around her. The way Sophie and her friends at work talk about these projects to future clients on the phone is so compelling and authentic that they are selling them like hot cakes.
Fast forward to today, Sophie leads a team that creates social impact travel programs at this company. She has no intention of ever finding another job – at least not any time soon. And the programs that her team creates remain among the highest performing of the company.
What this story illustrates is the power of connecting something an employee genuinely cares about with an opportunity the business can develop.
Sophie’s manager gave her time, support and somewhere to take the idea. That part matters.
Employee engagement needs more than understanding what lights people up. People need a chance to do something useful with it.
That is where meaningful work, innovation and business performance begin to connect.
Find your centre.
If leadership feels heavier than it should, there is usually something underneath it.
Let’s uncover what is getting in the way and create conditions where people can move with more clarity, trust, and ownership.
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Here at centrepoint, we call this unique space where the two overlap the Zone of Leadership Excellence (ZLE), because it is where each of us can make our greatest contribution.
Now, what is fascinating is that most of us do not spend the majority of our time in our ZLE.
After observing and working with hundreds and hundreds of leaders and team members, we think that the percentage of time most employees spend in their ZLE is closer to 25%, sometimes less.
Now, if you pause to think about this for a moment, it’s quite baffling.
You have someone working for you whose strengths, energy and personal commitment really come together for only a quarter of their working week.
That doesn’t mean the rest of their work has no value. But it does raise a rather important question: how much of their potential contribution are you leaving unexplored?
You’re paying for the whole person. It seems worth finding out what they could bring.
When finding and keeping good people is among the things keeping CEOs awake at night, it astounds me that we spend so little time exploring this connection.
We work hard to recruit talented people, then often give them limited room to contribute beyond the job description.
This is why connecting what matters to your people with what the business is trying to achieve matters.
In my experience you’ll never get to 100% of time spent in a Zone of Leadership Excellence. Every job has things that simply need doing.
But could you move closer to 50%, or even 70%?
Sophie’s story shows what can happen when someone gets more room to work in that space. Look at the impact on her, her colleagues and the business.
Imagine if you could create more of those opportunities across your team.
And then think about how this could inform your recruitment strategy.
Alongside assessing someone’s skills and experience against the job description, explore what brings them pride and meaning. Where might that connect with what the business needs?
You may discover a contribution you hadn’t thought to recruit for.
Having a workforce that feels lit up by its contribution demands more than a perfectly worded statement on the wall.
It means investing in your people, helping them understand what matters to them and giving them opportunities to bring that into their work.
The result can be like found money.
If you’re intrigued and want to explore where those opportunities might be in your own team, drop us a line. We’d be happy to jump on a call.
