What’s purposeful work? Pursuit of purposeful work…

Malcolm Gladwell, one of the best authors in the world, defined meaningful work as follows:

Autonomy:

• Being in control of our own choices

Complexity: 

• Being able to master new skills and improve

Direct connection between effort and reward: 

• Seeing the payoff - whether financial, spiritual, or other - of your work

The meaningful work definition above is generally received especially by the high-tech community, millennials & gen X, and intra/entrepreneurs. 

With purposeful work, it’s the blending of meaningful work plus another dimension which is value-based. Value-based in this case is a mesh of beliefs, grounds, and causes in motion. For example, companies volunteer to build houses for low-income families through Habitat for Humanity. The opportunity serves many purposes -

1. Volunteers get to experience how fortunate they’re so appreciating their work more afterwards.

2. Volunteers get to perform teamwork with folks they haven’t partner before from work or get a chance to build deeper relationships with ones they are working with through a common cause.

3. Volunteers get to give back to the community and families in need so it’s another form of payoff.

At Humbition Consulting, we aimed to provide all HumBees (builders at Humbition) with purposeful work that promotes our collective creativity. This comes down to meaningful work plus working with clients that share our core belief system -

• Be gritty

• Come as you are

• Think forward

• Foster diversity and inclusion

• Win together

We found that most people would pick meaningful + purposeful work over more money any day.  It’s a different kind of payoff when you’re working with people that cares for you and supports the outcome that satisfies your core belief system.

Pursuit of purposeful work comes in many forms –

1. You can keep your day job while volunteering (pro-bono, on-demand consultation, tactical functions) for entities that serve your core belief system – local minority businesses, non-profit organizations, churches, etc. For example, coaching a summer sports camp serving inner-city kids.
   

2. You can find projects at work that align with your core by either proposing new projects with your current organization or transfer to another organization (Ex: Accessibility org, Social Sustainability programs, AI for Betterment, etc.)
   

3. Last option is something that you would need to plan ahead a bit is quitting your current job then pursue a new career or job which is a major life decision for many of us. This is a process which can take upward of 6 to 12 plus months. First step is defining what kind of work and environment/culture would fuel you (happiness, purpose, and core). Second, test out the kind of work you like by putting #1 and #2 in action. If you passed #1 and #2 then wanted more, that’s when you know you should plan for option 3 which is making a career or job change.

Before concluding, let’s touch on disruption from AI (Artificial Intelligence) and business automation on future work. Yes, what we do today will significantly be different two or three years from now as the rate of change is so much greater today versus 10 years ago. However, what we know is if you’re true to yourself and focus on work that aligns to your core belief system, one would always find purposeful work that would endure changes from digitalization. 

If you want to connect on purposeful work, feel free to contact me at ssun@humbitionconsulting.com to share ideas.