Deep Purpose by Ranjay Gulati

Author:Ranjay Gulati
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Lessons for Leaders

You might shudder at the thought of conversing intimately with your colleagues about personal purpose, identity, and values. It feels too “mushy,” too far removed from the business of your company. Contending with competitive and volatile markets, you lack the time or energy to spend on getting to know people and indulging their individuality. Everyone would be better off if employees and managers just focused on performing well at the tasks before them rather than focusing on themselves.

A traditional, no-nonsense approach to culture can certainly work: witness the success of the New England Patriots, which under coach Bill Belichick have employed exactly that approach under the mantra “Do your job.”56 But a more humanistic approach oriented toward the needs of individual team members can work too, far more effectively than many might think. Microsoft, the Seahawks, Ovia Health, Livongo, and KPMG all realized important gains by building cultures of “me.” By changing their basic assumptions about people and their psychological needs, they managed to unlock human potential.

Between 2014 and 2020, Microsoft’s revenues rose from $86.8 billion to $143 billion.57 Its valuation surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in what one commentator called a “Nadellaissance.”58 Leaders at the company regard cultural transformation as integral to these results, with one noting that the alignment of personal and organizational purpose “drove a wave of engagement. People started giving us more of their discretionary free time than ever before.”59 Likewise, Pete Carroll compiled an impressive 145–94 record and one Super Bowl win during his NFL coaching career, leading the Seahawks to the playoffs in nine out of his eleven seasons with the team and sparking speculation that he was on track for election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.60 As for KPMG, we’ve already described the great success of the company’s 10,000 Stories Challenge campaign.

Connecting organizational purpose with the individual’s own, personal purpose isn’t easy. You might balk at allowing individuals to “be themselves,” worrying that you’re ceding too much control and that performance will suffer. That fear is not unfounded: a member of Carroll’s staff relates that the team environment at the Seahawks resembles a “controlled chaos” at times given the liberty team members feel to express their individuality. The paradox, though, is that by ceding control over individuals, you ultimately unlock individual performance. You obtain that high performance not by compelling or incenting team members, but by firing up intrinsic motivation. As an important additional benefit, you create an environment more welcoming to diverse employees, one that enables them to feel included and valued.

This doesn’t mean there’s no room for a more authoritative stance. Previous chapters have explored the pursuit of deep purpose as a primarily top-down process of injecting more soul, meaning, values, and community into the company and the experience of work. In giving employees a voice, you must continue to show strong leadership by defining, promoting, and activating a transcendent purpose around which the organization can rally. Apple University Dean Joel Podolny observes that people

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