Purpose – About the meaning and purpose of work

The search for the meaning of life has probably preoccupied people since the time when our ancestors left the African savannah to discover new things. In modern philosophy, this quest for the big picture has now largely been replaced by the question of what drives the individual, or what keeps the individual alive – or at least makes them get out of bed in the morning and dedicate themselves to a task.

So why do you set off for work in the morning? To earn money? To buy a new sofa or book a nice summer vacation? Personally, that’s not enough for me. If that was all there was to it, I would soon stop going to the office with enthusiasm. And you probably wouldn’t either.

Today, it is undisputed that people who follow a purpose are more psychologically stable than those who simply live for themselves. “Those who have a why to live can endure almost any how,” Viktor Frankl, one of the founding fathers of resilience research, once said. A purpose enables people to remain mentally stable in crises – and to live happier lives in other ways too.

It should therefore be of great interest to companies to communicate to their employees the meaning and purpose of their daily work. To do this, however, the company must first of all be clear about its own purpose. For some years now, the term “purpose” has been used repeatedly in this context. In German, purpose means something like purpose, but also intention, destination, goal, function or simply meaning. All of these can resonate in the definition of a company’s purpose. However, a purpose must always answer two questions: “What drives us?” and “What holds us together?”

Of course, I can’t say at this point what such a purpose might be. For the small dairy in Saxony, which we took over a few years ago with conzima food, it is the fact that it helps to preserve regional agriculture. Google sees its purpose as “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Sony has formulated its purpose as follows: “To be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.”

Even if the purpose is highly individual, a framework can be established that I believe is helpful when formulating a corporate purpose: it should be authentic and only reflect what drives the company at its core. Then it should be formulated simply so that it is clear at first glance what it is all about. The purpose should also be a unique selling point, i.e. individual and not easily imitable. And ideally, a company should also be driven by something that provides solutions to social problems. This last factor should not be underestimated. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, for example, has been calling for companies to have a social purpose in his statements for some time now and believes that investors should demand and monitor this more closely.

With this framework in mind, the two general questions from above can also be formulated more precisely: “What do we want to change?”, “How do we act correctly?”, “How do we improve?”, “What quality standard do we want to achieve?” or “What is our influence?”

By the way: Purpose is not only important for employee satisfaction and motivation. Ideally, all stakeholders will be inspired by the purpose.

One final thought leads back to purely economic spheres: Studies have shown that 85 percent of companies with a clearly defined and authentic purpose record above-average growth within their industry.