The Economics of Higher Purpose Read online

  Then we get educated. If we go to business school, for example, during the first hour of the first day we encounter the culture of knowing. We learn immediately that you always have to be smart, to know the right answer to every question. We spend two years continually posturing, pretending that we know and living with the fear of being exposed. Nothing is dreaded more than the teacher who cold-calls (requests information from students regardless of whether they have their hands in the air). Such a teacher is a constant threat to the ego.

  When we leave business school and enter organizations, we often encounter the same culture of knowing. We hear people speak admiringly of others: “He is really smart!” or “Ask her. She knows everything!” The message is clear: if someone has a position of authority or is on a fast track for promotions, they should know everything regarding their stewardship. This assumption leads to elaborate rituals that emerge to protect powerful people. We should never be in a situation that reveals our ignorance.

  The problem with a culture of knowing is that it prevents the emergence of a culture of learning. When people like Alberto believe they must be the expert, information flows down in the organization. It flows up in highly filtered ways.

  From Exclusive to Inclusive

  The conventional mind-set is ego driven. It assumes that one person acts on the whole and controls it. This assumption ignores the fact that influence flows in every direction. Everyone is shaping everyone else, including the person at the top. The organization is a function of many conversations occurring simultaneously, and the learning is reciprocal. This process is not mechanistic but rather is complex and adaptive. The quality of these conversations has much to do with how the organization performs.

  The conventional mind-set sees the manager as an extension of the culture. Most recognize that the culture exists, but they accept the culture as bigger than they are. They cannot imagine the capacity to create culture. They lack what we call “cultural self-efficacy,” the confidence that they can create culture. When they lack cultural self-efficacy, culture change is seen as the job of someone at the top.

  Leadership requires you to adopt the positive mind-set and have the ability to imagine and create what may be outside the current culture. A leader with a positive mind-set makes assumptions such as the following:

  The Positive Mind-Set

  An organization is a dynamic social system.

  People can become selfless contributors.

  People will sacrifice for a higher purpose.

  People can invest their discretionary energy.

  People can collaborate and co-create.

  People can become inspired and fully engaged.

  People can grow and flourish at work.

  People can exceed expectations.

  The Inclusive Mind-Set

  Alberto made another point that was seemingly insignificant and easy to ignore but turned out to be quite important. Alberto told us that he does not always speak to others the way he was speaking to us. Many of the people he deals with are still embedded in the conventional mind-set. They are, in his terms, “simpleminded.” They remain as blind as he was.

  He said he has to take that into account and adjust how he communicates. He can do it because he was once where they are now. Alberto can still speak the managerial language of control and constraint, but he can also provide the kind of direction that empowers people and enables the organization to grow.

  Because of his deep learning, Alberto can see multiple realities and speak both the conventional language of management and the unconventional language of leadership. He can meet people where they are and work with them in a way that changes the culture. Alberto is operating from a more positive, complex, and dynamic mind-set. He accepts the constraints of convention and the realities of possibility. He is an intelligent optimist. He is living from the positive mind-set and he is able to make more complex assumptions such as the following:

  The Inclusive Mind-Set

  While an organization is a structured hierarchy, it is also a dynamic social system.

  While people are self-interested, they can also be motivated by an organizational higher purpose to subordinate their narrow self-interests for the greater whole.

  While people work for money, they will also sacrifice for a higher purpose and a sense of meaning.

  While people seek to minimize costs and compete for resources, they can also collaborate for the good of the organization and the common higher purpose.

  While people become alienated, they also can become inspired by the organizational higher purpose and become fully engaged.

  While people hold to the status quo, they can also engage with challenges and initiate change.

  While people can stagnate and underperform, they can also overcome agency problems and grow and flourish at work.

  The conventional mind-set is exclusive and based on either/or thinking. The more positive, inclusive mind-set is based not on either/or thinking but on both/and thinking. Taking the inclusive mind-set does not exclude the conventional mind-set. When we acquire the inclusive mind-set, we simply become more cognitively complex. We lose nothing. Like Shauri and like Alberto, we continue to recognize convention, but we can also imagine and do things outside of convention. We can appreciate the past while we conceptualize the future.

  An Inclusive Economics

  We have seen that when you find an authentic higher purpose, you acquire new feelings and thoughts. When you articulate and embrace a higher purpose, you enter a new life path. You discard the assumptions that people maximize expected utility only through their explicit compensation and promotion rewards, that they are always competing for limited resources, and that they want to hold on to the status quo.

  When people pursue an authentic higher purpose, they gain utility that is directly generated by that pursuit, so what they view as being in their own self-interest moves closer to the prosocial higher purpose of the organization. They see intrinsic personal rewards that go beyond the explicit compensation and promotion rewards and that are provided by the pursuit of the higher purpose. They derive less personal utility from denying resources to others in the organization who are also pursuing the same higher purpose. They are less likely to compete and more likely to collaborate.

  As people pursue authentic purpose, they experience deep learning. In the process, they create and discover a new, more dynamic, and empowered self, and they begin to pursue what cannot be imagined or pursued from a conventional perspective. They see the possibility of organizational excellence, networks of people linked to a higher purpose, demonstrations of resilience, engagement in learning, and collaboration as they create patterns of higher performance. In this process, they transcend the conventional mind-set. They take on a more positive, complex, and dynamic mind-set. Contrast this with the standard economic paradigm of organizational behavior, which we turn to in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  STEP 2 Discover the Purpose

  In the introduction to Timeless Wisdom: Passages for Meditation from the World’s Saints and Sages, by Eknath Easwaran, the author begins with a parable. It is a story about an ancient sculptor in India who carves elephants from stone. One day a king visits and asks the man for the secret of his great artistry.

  The sculptor explains that once a large stone is secured, he spends a very long time studying the stone. He does this with complete concentration and will not allow himself to be distracted. At first he sees nothing but the huge rock. Then, over a long period he begins to notice something in the substance of the great stone. His expanding awareness begins with a feeling and turns into a vague impression, a scarcely discernable outline.

  As he continues to ponder with an open eye and an eager heart, the outline intensifies, until the moment when the sculptor sees the elephant inside the rock. At this moment he sees what no other human can see, and only he has the capacity to bring the elephant out of the rock.

  Only when he sees the out
line does the sculptor begin the chiseling. In doing so, he is always obedient to the revealed outline. In the process, he connects with the elephant inside the stone. The experience is emotional and tends to defy conventional logic. He feels the future. He feels called to nurture it into being. With this emotional awareness, the sculptor gains an even more intense singleness of purpose. He chips away every bit of rock that is not the elephant. What remains is the elephant.49

  Michelangelo said something similar: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

  Staring at Rocks

  We know a person who was asked to lead an organization. He had a six-month lead time, and during those six months he spent every spare moment staring at his rock, the organization he was about to lead.

  As he did, he recorded ideas regarding one topic: his vision for the organization. He wrote hundreds of pages, knowing the final product had to be less than a sentence. The process continued through the six months and then three weeks into the new job. Finally, he stated the initial vision and purpose. He captured it in four words, but over the next six months, he made small refinements. For the next two and a half years, he carved away anything that was not elephant. He now reflects on his accomplishments with a sense of awe.

  A leader can make the unusual choice to sit and concentrate on the rock that is their life or the organization that they seek to lead. At first they may see nothing. If they continue, they may notice vague impressions that turn into a barely discernible outline of possibilities. As these intensify, they may begin to see an elephant to be carved. It is likely to be a vision no one else can see.

  From the vision, the leader may find the courage to chisel. If they stay within the outline, they may, like a mother with life in her womb, become emotionally attached to a latent relationship or latent organization that has the potential to exist in the world. As this connection strengthens, their singleness of purpose may further intensify. With all their might, mind, heart, and strength, they may labor to give birth to a new version of self or a new version of their organization.

  Discovering your organization’s higher purpose is a lot like staring at a rock and seeing the elephant in it. It is not easy, but done well, it connects the people in the organization to the reason why the organization does what it does. It converts agents into principals. It reduces moral hazard in the principal–agent model. It emancipates the creative and collaborative energy of the organization.

  Conventional Work

  The work that brings an elephant from a rock is not conventional. At a global oil company, we met with members of a task force who had been charged by the CEO with defining the purpose of the organization. They handed us a document that articulated a purpose, a mission, and a set of values, a document that represented months of work. We told them candidly that their document had no power—their analysis and debate had produced only politically acceptable platitudes. They reacted with anger.

  The members of the task force had been operating from the conventional mind-set. They assumed that creating a collective purpose statement could emerge from conventional, politically grounded, conversations. They had operated from self-interest and conflict avoidance. They used only their heads to invent a higher purpose.

  You do not invent higher purpose. It already exists. It lurks in the great organizational rock known as the workforce. It comes forward only when you care enough to reflect on the human system. You can discover it by scaling empathy, by feeling the deepest needs of the collective. This involves asking provocative questions, and listening and reflecting.

  In the movie Gandhi when Gandhi leaves South Africa and arrives in India, his mentor suggests that he will eventually lead India. Gandhi responds, “I do not know India.”

  The mentor says, “Then go find India.”

  Gandhi buys a third-class train ticket and spends extensive time with the impoverished people of India. With the objective of better understanding their suffering, he inquires, observes, feels, and reflects. As he does this, Gandhi begins to see the elephant that is India.

  Shortly after returning from his extended trip, Gandhi attends a political meeting. In his speech, he first challenges the conventional, self-interested assumptions of the Indian leaders. His shocking challenge captures the attention of the audience. Then Gandhi simply states what India is about: “bread and salt.” He continues to speak with power about the condition of the people and what real leaders must do if the country is to prosper. The audience is overwhelmed and transformed by his understanding and authenticity. Decades later, the image of “bread and salt”—having ownership of and control over your own resources—would be used to inspire the people to finally overthrow the British rule.

  Unlike the executives at the oil company, Gandhi behaved like the sculptor who examines a rock. He went to the people, and he reflected deeply. In doing so, he was practicing generalized empathy, which allowed him to give voice to the soul of India. He was able to articulate an authentic higher purpose. He did not invent it. He discovered it and gave it voice.

  Finding Purpose in a University

  We interviewed Deborah Ball, former dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, who provides another example of finding an organization’s purpose. Like most companies, professional schools experience mission drift. While an organization may have a purpose, that purpose is often lost or displaced, and the goal that emerges is to be in service of the needs to the power elites who run the organization. As a new dean, Ball wanted to clarify her organization’s purpose so she could “enable collective action.”

  To “learn and unlearn the organization,” as she put it, she interviewed every faculty member. She expected to find much diversity of opinion—and she did. But she also found surprising commonality, what she called “an emerging story” about the faculty’s strong desire to have a positive impact on society. The word emerging is important. By listening, she was bringing a new meaning system into existence. Ball wrote up what she learned and shared it with the people she interviewed. She listened to their reactions and continued to refine their story.

  This was not just a listening tour. It was an extended, disciplined, iterative process of organizational learning. Ball said, “You identify gold nuggets, work with them, clarify them, integrate them, and continually feed them back.” She referred to the process as “collective creation.”

  As that work continued, she became convinced that the school had particular strengths to bring about social good. For example, it had the capacity to influence how other institutions around the world trained teachers, it addressed issues of educational affordability, and it served underrepresented populations. Ball concluded that these focal points had the greatest potential to integrate faculty members’ efforts, draw impressive new hires, and attract funding for research, so she highlighted them as crucial elements of the school’s collective identity.

  A Purpose Finder: Helping Others Find Purpose

  We also interviewed Nick Craig, an executive coach who has spent the last decade helping thousands of people find their purpose. His work transforms lives, and Nick loves doing it. He joyfully told us story after story.

  Interestingly, Nick began with an account of personal transformation. He told us of his childhood, and described a period of despair and desperation. One day, as a preteen, he was standing in a bookstore when it suddenly became clear that he had to make a decision: “I could continue to live in the victim mentality or I could live in a mentality of possibility. I began to take accountability for my life. Others chose to remain in the victim mentality, and we have ended up in very different places.”

  Waking Up to Personal Purpose

  “My life mission is to wake you up and have you finally be home,” Nick said. He believes that when people articulate their purpose, they find their most authentic self. They feel like they have finally found home. He is always helping people look for words that help them articulate the greatness that is already ins
ide them.

  Nick has written a book called Leading from Purpose.50 We interviewed him in the middle of his writing, and he could hardly express all the things he was feeling. He told us that individual purpose is already wired in. “If we do not find our purpose, we cannot lead from it. When we find it, we awake, we become conscious and aware. In gaining this awareness, we transform. With a new perspective, we gain a sense of meaning. We take accountability. We feel empowered, and we gain an increased desire to create and contribute.”

  “Purpose leads to action,” Nick said. Once we find our own purpose, we gain clarity of focus and we gain the confidence to move forward into uncertainty. The journey through uncertainty ensures deep learning. As we travel, purpose gives the energy and enthusiasm we need to deal with adversity we inevitably encounter. We become more resilient and we learn things others cannot learn.

  He says that “when we step into our purpose, our roles no longer define us. As we become centered in our purpose, we become internally directed, our power comes from within. We become willing to do hard things.” Nick continually repeated the sentence “When you have purpose, you choose to do the hard, right thing, rather than the easy, wrong thing.”

  Nick told us that when we live in our purpose, we create “good stress.” Instead of living in the threat response, we live in the challenge response. “In the challenge response, we move forward learning and growing as we seek to create. As we do, we take on a paradoxical quality. Purpose gives us the strength to continue in uncertainty, and it gives us vulnerability that comes with doing so. When we are both strong and vulnerable, we find and present our authentic self.”