What’s your purpose?

It’s a question companies should ask employees more often, according to a Harvard Business Review piece by Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, and Isaac H. Smith of Brigham Young University.

Sure, companies have their own missions, Kouchaki and Smith write, but the real magic happens when employee and organizational purpose are distinct but aligned. This state, which they call “purpose congruence,” allows both workers and firms to thrive.

As Kouchaki and Smith put it, “[t]o achieve purpose congruence, employees should be allowed to make the company purpose their own—to have a say in how they weave it into their daily tasks and integrate it with their individual purpose. But they should also feel supported in pursuing their own personal purpose, without the broad company purpose being a hindrance.”

Achieving purpose congruence

So, how can companies get closer to purpose congruence? Kouchaki and Smith suggest that recruitment and onboarding are ideal times to start the conversation with workers.

“During interviews, you might spend some time discussing what they want to get out of their job—but dig deeper to get past their rehearsed responses,” they write. “In initial training exercises, you might give them time to reflect on how their particular job can provide a personal sense of purpose in their lives.”

Later, managers can use this information to identify projects that both advance the company’s goals and speak to the employee’s deeper motivations. For example, a worker driven by building interpersonal connections could be the perfect fit to lead a new employee resource group, while one who seeks to overcome challenges might be tasked with handling a particularly tough client.

You can read the rest of Kouchaki and Smith’s advice about purpose congruence here.

Finding your purpose

If all this talk about purpose has you feeling uncertain about your own, never fear! In a 2019 episode of The Insightful Leader podcast, we talked to Nicholas Pearce, a clinical professor of management and organizations and the author of The Purpose Path: A Guide to Pursuing Your Authentic Life’s Work.

Some of us know what matters most to us in our careers right away. For others, it’s a process of discovery. Pearce suggests that people struggling to pin down their purpose ask themselves a series of questions, including “What is success to me? And, given that, am I running the right race?” Trusted friends and mentors can also help you identify your biggest strengths—which may be different than you think.

This process helped Pearce, who holds a PhD from Kellogg, realize that the expected path for someone with his degree—a tenure-track job in academia—wasn’t for him. Instead, he crafted a career that blends teaching, consulting, and preaching, the three things he finds most meaningful.

And it’s OK, even common, for your purpose to change over the course of your working life. Finding your true calling (or callings!) “is a journey that you have to revisit again and again,” Pearce says. “But ultimately, there can be a very deep sense of knowing that you are truly in the right place, in the right role, at the right time.”

You can listen to the whole episode here.

Talking point

The U.S. is feeling the heat, with average temperatures rising substantially over the last century and especially since the 1980s. So what might the rising mercury mean for the economy? A new study of the U.S. manufacturing sector by associate professor of finance Jacopo Ponticelli finds that temperature shocks hurt small firms more than large ones. In the short term, small firms face higher costs and decreased worker productivity; in the long term, they may close altogether. This trend, Ponticelli finds, appears to drive greater concentration in the sector, as workers from smaller firms are absorbed by larger ones.

See you next week!

Susie Allen, senior research editor
Kellogg Insight