Purpose — a tale of cruise ships and airplanes
A topic I’m concerned with these days is meaning. The meaning everybody looks out for when doing something. A meaning given to the duties we fulfill during our lifetime. Currently, I’m reading the meaning revolution, a book about leading by purpose. It provides answers to questions our current economy is too afraid to ask. Questions like “what happens when we need to bond our employees to our company once all financial incentives have been distributed?” It takes an approach of having people understand that the only important accountability in any role is to help the complete team win. That’s nothing one could achieve by creating personal KPIs.
Let’s take a quick look at an example from the book: When you have a soccer team and tell the defense they get measured by preventing the enemy to score goals and the offense that they get measured by scoring goals, you create two separate teams with separate KPIs. It’s better for the offense’s KPIs to lose 4:5 than to win 1:0. It’s better for the defense’s KPIs to lose 0:1 than to win 5:4. Therefore, each part of your team will work on what’s best for them but not best for the team. Companies might ask the question why departments and people don’t work together like they should. But the easy answer is that most corporate cultures created an environment in which personal and departmental achievements are valued higher by the employees than an overall success. Without KPIs, our defense might join the offense to score two goals for a 2:1 win instead of clapping their shoulders for having the enemy only scoring one goal. Maybe it leads to a 5:4 win in the end, making their own KPIs crappy but helping the complete team win. What then? The team has won.
“Helping the team win” is an attitude that works best if there is a greater mission in place. A purpose that unites all team members in asking the question “what can we do to get closer to achieving this purpose?” Hand in hand with this question goes the search for meaning. If a company has a purpose, something it thinks will bring a greater good to people or improve their lives, recruiting can focus on people that identify with this purpose. These people might even add this purpose as a part of their own and personal meaning in life.
It’s not as if people are bad or disengaged from birth. It’s culture that educates them in a way they will eventually identify with. A monetary driven corporate culture will eventually provide employees with a paycheck. But when we look at the money, it won’t give us meaning. Compare it to oxygen. You will need it to survive and live a good life. But it won’t add any meaning to your life. It keeps you breathing but it won’t help you express yourself or contribute your own creativity to anything. A happy employee — or human being in general — will always need something to be engaged with. Some meaning in what they do and some purpose why what they do has a meaning anyway.
Let’s take another example to get a better understanding of what is purpose and what is not. Let’s compare airplanes with cruise ships. Both of them are some of the worst that has ever happened to our climate. And here comes the but:
Cruise ships are a solely monetary driven means of economies of scale. The main questions is how to lock a maximum of people into a huge steel tub and have them spend as much time and money as possible there. Casting anchor at a couple of endangered places to overrun small villages and trample natural habitats without giving something back to the residents and their environment just doesn’t make sense. Cruise ship tourists will stay in their booths in their closed ecosystems and enter foreign places in closed groups mostly too large for any place to really cope with. The only driver: money. The results: crowded cities, broke residents, destroyed nature, and a ton of toxic emissions. The irony: shipping companies talking about CO2 neutral cruises while having their passengers trample corals all over the world. Their purpose: none.
Airplanes on the other hand are probably as bad as cruise ships for the environment. But they at least serve a purpose. They connect people and the world in a way no other means of transportation has before. They help people reach countries and cultures they haven’t been able to see before. They help to enlighten minds in extending cultural exchange and awareness. They support people in meaningful travel, helping to get to know the world and the people and the nature. Similarly to the internet, airplanes are a means of connecting the world. In my personal opinion, I think that works perfectly. As a result of a society in which traveling to far cultures and countries is possible for nearly everyone, we see young generations denouncing what’s wrong with our world and finally asking the question why everything is shareholder-driven. Because there is no purpose in getting rich. It might be a result in following the right purpose and meaning but never the only driver.
I’m glad a generation is emerging with a broader understanding of this. I hope we’re on the verge of a more holistic understanding of the world. A world not only shaped by rational economic growth but by understanding complex systems with all variables. I hope I can be part of this movement and be a pioneer that helps people, companies or any other form of organization in achieving a meaningful purpose and state of existence.
