To kick off September, I was privileged to join From Day One’s panel on “How Employees Can Embrace the Meaning in Their Work”. Our vision here at Attuned is Intrinsic Motivation to make work more meaningful, so it was an easy topic for me to be passionate about. That’s probably why I had enough intrinsic motivation to wake up at 2:30am Japan time to join the panel!

The discussion was at the forefront of the ongoing conversation about meaningful work and employee engagement. The panels I join in Japan often get stuck at simply explaining and justifying engagement; sophisticated people management is a relatively new topic here, as Japanese HR practices tend to lag behind the West. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I woke up in the middle of the night, worrying how articulate I would be with a brain still half-asleep, to join a panel with such accomplished panelists coming from dedicated roles at large, important institutions, including the US House of Representatives.

Here are some of the highlights from the discussion.

How to Deliver More Meaning to Work

A sense of purpose leads to more creativity

Early in the conversation Kemba shared the insight that creativity flourishes in organizations that have a deep sense of purpose. The fast feedback cycles in the House of Representatives help create a shared sense of purpose that reinforces creativity, as they quickly get to hear and see if their constituents like the proposed polices.

Allison, Head of Diversity and Social Responsibility at an innovative private equity firm, shared the story of President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA for the first time and encountering a janitor in the hallways: When asked by the President “What do you do here?” The janitor replied “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.” Conveying how an organization was able to clearly connect its purpose to even the humblest contributor.

With most of our organizations not being NASA when it’s mission was era-defining and its importance was broadcast by the President, the story prompted a discussion of how we can similarly create this connection to a higher sense of purpose between the individual and our own organizations.

Great leaders tell great stories

Story itself became a theme: Stories can convey emotion, much more than facts. These emotions can bind and convince members of their contribution to the greater goals of the organization. More time and resources should be spent helping develop these skills, as they are needed to have motivating managers, the key link between leaders and front-line staff. If managers can tell great stories, the manager quality increases and the organization comes closer to the individual’s association with the greater good, similarly to what JFK’s NASA story conveyed.

If companies create work that is narrative based it will create “unfair advantages” in employee engagement, motivation, and connecting organizational purpose to the individual. It is a truism that Allison highlighted that we would all do well to remember.  We need to think deeply on how we can create work that is narrative based, share those stories, and embed them in our own organizations.

Transactional jobs and purpose

At this point, a question came from the audience about how you can bring purpose to more transactional jobs. This brought answers such as redrafting the job structure; trying to reshape the job and team to be able to create the whole product, rather than a component; and the, somewhat, provocative idea that organizations should be more democratic and allow transactional-based workers to have more say and autonomy in how their jobs are defined. Agreement coalesced around how all of our organizations need leaders who listen.

Our fantastic moderator, Seth Green, chimed in with the point that Loyola University of Chicago created the Baumhart Scholars MBA, the first MBA to focus on marrying purpose and profit. Something I wasn’t aware of, and very pleased to see that someone had courage to create such a program that presents a different worldview to the typical MBA.
[Btw, if you ever find yourself sitting on a panel with Seth as the moderator, you are in good, good hands. He’s absolutely top class]

Provide meaning to remote teams

Given the times, the conversation moved on to remote work and how to provide meaning to team members you can’t easily see. Dr. Vivian Greentree made the comment that “Work is no longer separate from home.” Extending the idea that organization and leaders who listen, need to remove obstacles blocking members from feeling that they are a part of something bigger, finishing with the importance of acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement and Appreciaton

Acknowledgement. Acknowledgement. Acknowledgement. Seeing, recognizing, and being willing to understand that life is happening to each member in their own way. This is needed for us to build compassion. The importance of this was a point of agreement across all panelists. Acknowledgment and a culture of appreciation, would certainly contribute to a bigger population of happy employees in our companies.

Democracy in the Workplace

As time drew to a close there was impassioned discussion on the role of democracy in the workplace. Should it be called democracy, and all the messiness that implies, or is the word “collaboration” a better articulation? Kemba whose day-to-day is in the heart of American democracy, shared the observation that while the House of Representatives has a lot of messiness, there is a lot of alignment around viewpoints and values in each particular office. Rather, the challenge stems from aligning different generations.

Intrinsic Motivation in the workplace

This was the perfect opportunity to share some motivational data from Attuned: we have not seen any statistical difference in how the different generations are motivated. Research has shown that older generations tend to have higher fulfillment of their intrinsic motivations, but when it comes to what motivates us intrinsically we are all unique flowers. There are 1.7 million combinations of the 11 Intrinsic Motivators we use at Attuned.

This lead to a further opportunity to share the importance of intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic. Which I intrinsically pounced upon.

In Conclusion

Acknowledgement, narrative, intrinsic motivation, the importance of managers in connecting leaders to front-line workers, and democracy (or collaboration?) in the workplace. These were the ideas presented on what makes a good manager and how and to bring purpose to organizations, and thereby delivering more meaning to our team’s work. You must invest in these areas to help change the average manager behavior in your organization and steadily lead to more meaningful work for a greater number members.

From Day One provides a great place to hear and learn about the most innovative and important topics driving HR and how to deepen relationships with employees. I’d highly recommend participating in future events: https://www.fromdayone.co/

Big thanks to my fellow panelists for giving me a wider viewpoint of the current discussion on meaningful work, and accommodating my middle-of-the-night brain.

You can watch a recording of the panel here.

More on company culture

Casey Wahl
Founder and CEO

LinkedIn | Intrinsic Motivator Report