Moving beyond mission in the purpose-driven economy

Millennials are a derided generation if ever there was one. They’re lazy, entitled, narcissistic, selfish and shallow, apparently. Or, they are resilient, smart and ambitious who were simply dealt a lousy hand by a Boomer generation who took and took from the economy and then used politics to preserve what they had at the expense of millennials’ futures.

Regardless of which side you fall on that particular divide, it doesn’t really matter to the future of work. Because whether or not Gen-X’ers and/or Boomers like to admit it, millennials are now the largest generation in the U.S. workforce. And given the relative youth of that generation (depending on which study you look at, the oldest millennials are about 35 years old at the moment, give or take a few years), their relative importance and sway within the corporate world will only grow in the coming years as they age into middle and upper management at a quickening rate.

So what does that mean for you and the future of your business?

It means you have to begin moving beyond a mission-driven approach to longterm strategy and corporate governance — you must find your purpose and clearly elucidate that purpose to the millennials who you have to recruit and train to lead your company into the future.

How purpose took over business

The reason I brought up millennials to open this story is because they’re the group driving this change in the modern economy. Because they make up the largest group of workers in the U.S., they have the collective power to dictate changes in how businesses operate, even if they’re not doing it intentionally.

You only have to look as far as banking behemoth Morgan Stanley to see these changes in effect — despite notoriously high pay for infamously long hours, even an investment bank is changing the nature of its workplace to accommodate the best and brightest from within the millennial cohort. Uber-selective, high-paying jobs like these used to be able to dictate the terms of corporate engagement. Except now, they’re seeing huge shifts in a workforce who simply won’t capitulate like workers past; workers will simply leave those jobs for proverbially greener pastures elsewhere. These companies are losing their most talented young workers in droves, so much so that they’re having to completely rethink their written and unwritten contracts with their workers.

And one of the primary drivers of that change in workplace culture is millennials’ demand for a purpose-filled life. And purpose isn’t something confined to one’s free time, weekends or hobbies within the millennial cohort. They expect it in every facet of their lives, including and perhaps especially within their careers.

And why not? The average American spends at least 1/3 of his or her adult life at his or her job, so why not do something you can feel both proud of and feed your family?

For the purposes of this shift, it doesn’t really matter if you think millennials are being entitled or spoiled in this demand. They can be wrong and weak as much as you like, but they have the collective bargaining power to change what’s expected out of companies whether we like it or not. So instead of arguing about whether it’s right or wrong, the smarter companies are figuring out how to harness those desires and are playing to their respective recruited audiences in ways that this purpose-driven cohort seeks.

If Morgan Stanley has figured this out, maybe it’s time for the rest of us corporate leaders to do so too?

Mission vs. purpose in business

Once you come to accept millennials are here to stay and the relative clout they have in the modern American economy, you can start to figure out how to motivate and incentivize that cohort in such a way that their need for purpose can benefit your company. But, that’s only if you can clearly identify what your purpose is and why it’s worthy of people getting behind it.

And no, making money isn’t going to cut it with ‘kids these days.’

The first mistake business leaders have made in this new paradigm is conflating mission with purpose. Being mission-driven isn’t enough, and it’s most definitely not the same thing as being purpose-driven.

Your mission is what you’re trying to accomplish; purpose is the why you want to accomplish it.

Bill Damon, author of Path to Purpose defines purpose as “a long-term, forward-looking intention to accomplish aims that are both meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.” Put another way, purposeful leaders attempt to achieve personal meaning through his/her work, while also being socially beneficial in those actions.

A recent Fast Company article sums purpose vs. mission up very well:

As Simon Sinek notes in his bestselling book Start with Why, most people know what an organization does, but few know why they do it. In other words, most purpose-driven leaders can articulate their mission–but many mission-driven leaders cannot articulate their purpose. As a result, our culture is inundated by leaders who do not approach work from a place of purpose, and this can be problematic. Leaders not connected to the reasons behind what they’re trying to accomplish are more likely to get distracted by novel trends, to give up when the going gets tough, to be viewed as opportunistic by customers and employees, and to avoid taking risks that can lead to innovation.

An example close to home

So in my specific context, the what we do is create innovative software solutions for our customers. That could be integrating artificial intelligence into decision-making models within the software we develop, harnessing a new platform or development tool to improve your digital offerings, figuring out how to modernize your legacy systems with minimal downtime or retraining, what have you. It’s easy to tell you what we do.

It should be just as easy to tell you why we do it.

For us, the why we do it is because we believe in entrepreneurs. We believe in the power of businesses to change the world for the better. We believe that given the right tools, people are capable of incredible, good things. And for us, the best way we can help people accomplish good and great things is to help them in the areas in which we’re experts and they’re not.

It’s hard to stay on top of all the emerging trends in technology and development; it’s difficult to master new skills given the rate of change and growth in the digital economy. But we love that stuff. We’re nerds at heart, and we want to put our natural curiosity and nerdiness to work for our partners.

The why we exist is to help ideas people turn their great ideas into great companies or services. We are experts at execution. What we do is build innovative software solutions. Why we do it is because we want to empower great people to do great things by helping them turn those ideas into reality.

What does this mean for you?

Once you come to accept millennials large and growing influence over modern work and life, you will see the writing on the wall. Whether you welcome these shifts or hate them, you have to contend with them to recruit and retain the best and brightest within this cohort. But with a slight reimagining of your company and its public positioning, you can make this purpose-driven trend work for you and your company (and I don’t mean in a manipulative way, but rather a genuine alignment of what you’re doing and why with younger workers).

Quoting from the same Fast Company article, the authors outline four concrete steps business leaders can take to connect with their corporate purpose in ways that resonate with millennial workers.

1. ‘Clarify your purpose’ — it’s exactly what you think it is.
2. ‘Plan time each week, month, or each year to reflect on your why’ — you need to be intimately familiar with why you’re making the decisions you’ve recently made, and only by setting aside consistent time for that reflection can you stay closely aligned with your purpose over an extended period of time.
3. ‘Share your why with your employees’ — it’s all well and good to find your company’s purpose and to reflect on that to ensure you’re adhering to it, but it doesn’t do you any good if your employees don’t feel the same pull and dedication to it. Be open and forthright with your employees so they can share in your collective purpose and show up for more than just a paycheck
4. ‘Connect with your end users or customers’ — The higher you climb within a company, the farther away your end users tend to be. You’re more focused on strategy, staffing, management and the tedium of running the company. Take time to reconnect with the actual end users of your product or service. It will remind you what you do, why you do it, and how you can improve both.

Purpose is the name of the corporate game these days. Take some time to think about what that means for you and your business, and how you can align your company with a purpose millennials will clamor to be a part of. The future of your company could very well depend on it!