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If you ask people what they consider to have a sense of purpose in life, irrespective of their age, gender, cultural or socio-economic background, you find that they all share the same definition: Purpose is a) the pursuit of specific goals that b) are meaningful, and c) benefit someone else (technically, it is referred to as a beyond-the-self thinking). Let's dig deeper:
Pursuing a goal is the foundation of purpose and purpose cultivation. It means that it is a conscious process, not something that occurred inadvertently without you being aware of. There are three levels of goals that we identify at nextgen.careers that allow us to assess how clear a goal is.
The first level is to know what you do. For companies, it means to have a clear understanding of what solution they offer for whom. This often implies that you understand what problems the customers have.
The second level is to know what outcome I will achieve if I achieve my goal. If you are able to solve a customer's problem, this means that you have changed her world. And if you do this on scale, it means that you will have changed the world in general. Hence, a purpose-driven company knows what positive outcome they want to achieve for their customers and the world.
The third level means to be able to give a reason for why you want to solve the problem in the first place. This is the famous "Why" as popularised by Simon Sinek and which is rooted in the socratic method. The assumption is that we all have intrinsic motivations to do something. Most of us, however, are not able to verbalise it so others can understand our motivation. The same goes for companies. Thus, a purpose-driven company is explicit of a fundamental belief or principle they hold which helped them identify a problem i that is worth solving in the first place.
The corresponding dimension is: 1. Intention
At nextgen.careers, we believe that each individual harbours a unique potential to impact the world. To make the world a better place, then, it is important that everyone is able to find/identify the right work environment that aligns with her own beliefs, motivation, values, and talent so they can flourish while contributing to the general good. This is even more important when it comes to choosing your career and employer since you will spend a substantial amount of your time and energy working for them. [Level 3]
This is why nextgen.careers offers a job board that allows companies display and proof their purpose in a way that is easily understandable and allows talents to search for the employer and mission that best aligns with their own purpose and goals in life. [Level 1]
Companies listed at nextgen.careers are more attractive employers and can find the best talent available to accomplish their mission by proving their purpose. Talent searching for a job know what they are buying into when choosing a new employer and have the tools they need to hold their employers accountable for their stated purpose. In the future, all companies and talents will be able to find each other based on their purpose more quickly and, thus, accelerate the progress of humanity for good.
Having a clear goal is not enough. A crucial element of purpose cultivation is that whatever you do has to be meaningful to you. Being able to give a reason for your motivation to solve a problem in the first place is a good start. Many companies today have fancy why-statements on their websites and brochures. But a source for true meaning in life is determined by the values you adhere. Values are the guardrails you impose on yourself to crate a coherence between your goal (what you do) and the way you want to achieve it (how you do it).
For example, I could state that my goal is to bring about positive change by making home care available to low-income households and achieve this by exploiting cheap labour. This creates a cognitive dissonance and is one of the main reasons why many employees are frustrated although they are working for companies that are supposedly doing good.
This example also illustrates a second condition for true meaning: Purpose and values are only real if they are costly. Sticking to the example above means that I do not exploit cheap labour and, thus, have to put in the extra cognitive, emotional, and physical effort to come up with a creative solution that enables me to stick to my goals and values at the same time.
Last but not least, as human and social beings, we derive meaning from the relationships we have with other people. Companies have to relate to many different stakeholders in order to provide the solution their customers expect. Knowing who these stakeholders are and how you want to relate to them is crucial for aligning your activities with your overall purpose.
The corresponding dimensions are: 2. Values, 3. Commitment, and 4. Stakeholders
To identify our principles, values, and the things that are meaningful to us, we have to look into the rearview mirror and look into our past. Our past experiences are, in the end, what shaped us into who we are today. Purpose, however, looks beyond the past and the present and states who you want to be and how you want to contribute to someone else's life. For a company it means that they have to look at running a economically sustainable business. As Erich Kästner said: "There is no good unless you do it." This, in return, means that if you are doing good there is nothing wrong in being profitable and scale your business to do even more good.
Companies with purpose have a clear understanding of their main Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This ensures that you are not just solving a problem for someone but are able to do it better than anyone else. In addition, companies with purpose and are able to state what feedback they want to receive from their customers and can, then, reverse engineer all their activities to have the desired impact.
The corresponding dimensions are: 5. KPIs, and 6. Impact
The science of purpose cultivation throughout the lifespan indicates that there are strong, positive correlation and even causal relationships between having a sense of purpose in life and longevity, net worth, net income, health, social relationships, resilience, and more. If you work for a company with purpose you are doing the best you could do for yourself and the world!
Research also indicates that companies with purpose outperform their (comparable) competitors by 3% to 8% per year. This does not sound like much at the beginning. But theses effects compound and allow you to leave the competitors behind by a huge margin after several years.
A purpose company is able to give a reason for the goal they pursue and have a clear understanding of the change they want to provoke in their customers' lives and the world in general. It also can operationalise it to align all company activities according to its purpose. Last but not least, it can even demonstrate and proof their state of purpose cultivation, its progress towards achieving their goals, and their contribution to a better world.
