No 9: Finding your purpose and living your life with it can unleash tremendous potential
Waking up at 6 AM on Sunday morning, taking cup of coffee, opening laptop and starting to write blog text with a lot of energy and passion. How does this happen? It’s obviously about the inner motivation and factors discussed earlier (Blog No 7), but most importantly, it is about finding your own “Big Why” and Purpose (“Finding your big WHY” article). It feels like an enlightenment that goes through your whole body and unleashes tremendous amount of energy.
There is a big difference whether you set up your alarm clock to wake you up at 6 AM and force yourself to start working on the obligations given to you, or that you wake up with full of energy and driven by your own Purpose.
Helping individuals to find their “Why” that links to organization’s Purpose
We all have experienced the two different “6 AM moments” in our lives. Hence, it’s easy to imagine the big difference in our contribution and value creation.
“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested”, E.M. Forster
So, if we want to make our companies and organizations really thrive and shine, we shall look at ways of enabling the individuals to find and work with their own Passion as part of the organizations overall Purpose. This is not easy at all but when the golden sweet-spot of individual’s Passion + organization’s Purpose is found, miracles start to happen without too much effort.
In the traditional Command / Predict & Control (blog No 5) world reaching this sweet-spot is not really even possible. But the new management paradigm creates an environment where the sweet-spot can be achieved with right kind of leadership. Leaders shall be really good at understanding the whole system and sensing different individual’s interests and inspirations. Good leaders can be the catalysts in helping the individuals to find their own “Why” and same time shaping the environment so that the individual’s “Why” fits the overall system.
In our own organization we have succeeded in enabling certain individuals to crystallize their own “Why” and master their own work so that they are strongly contributing to the overall organization and system by just living their own “Why”. The situations, when you see this happening, are probably the most rewarding moments one can reach.
Working with your “Why” generates different results
When having a chance to work with your passion and Why, the motivation is on a different level leading into substantially higher results.
In the world of increasing complexity, most of the work and value is created in interaction with other people. When you work with your Passion and Why, your communication becomes different. It gives you the calm confidence and energy that will be felt by the people you interact and work with. Other people brains’ limbic and emotional systems are triggered positively and the mood travels through the organization because of the open loop nature of the brain’s limbic system. And the results will follow.
What is in it for me
Time flies when getting shuffled into different roles in organizations. One day we might start wondering what we have really done. Many people at their 60s start to look back and ask themselves: “When am I going to live the best of my life, make a difference?”
There is research saying that people living their purpose and passion report higher satisfaction and well-being.
Working hard for something you don’t believe = stress
Working hard for something you believe = passion
On the other hand, being very passionate can also become a problem if you get off balanced. There are always many other important things in your life and hence, it’s important to keep the balance and harmony instead of pure, obsessive passion. That will also keep the passion alive.
Summer is here and it’s a great time for sensing and reflecting. Have a relaxed summer and good luck on the quest for your Passion and Big Why.
With passion and humility,
Jaakko Hartikainen & Mikko Virtanen
Contact:
Jaakko: LinkedIn, Twitter
Mikko: LinkedIn, Twitter
Our blog series:
No 0: Call for Paradigm Shift in Management
No 1: Magnitude of Change when Shifting Management Paradigm
No 2: Why do so many companies manage people like machines and why is it one of the biggest problems of our times?
No 3: How to drive paradigm level change? — Our learnings and one crucial breakthrough innovation
No 4: Incredible India and breaking the hierarchy
No 5: Management paradigms in a nutshell, inspired by Frederic Laloux book Reinventing Organizations
No 6: Vår oförglömliga resa till tillit, transparens och framgång (Guest Blog)
No 6: Our unforgettable journey to trust, transparency and eventually success (Guest Blog)
No 7: We all know that “Carrot and Stick” model is outdated — Why is it so damn hard to implement new ways?
No 8: The Power of Purpose
No 9: Finding your purpose and living your life with it can unleash tremendous potential
No 10: Organization as living organism and complex adaptive system
