I’m a big movie buff. So is my family. We are always throwing quotes from movies back and forth at each other. Lately, one particular movie quote has been jumping up at me a lot: it’s the scene from the movie Raising Arizona, right after Nicolas Cage’s character Hi robs a convenience store for diapers and cash, and is picked up by Edwina (played by Holly Hunter), who says, “Everything’s CHANGED!” with a wild grimace on her face.

The Need for Purpose in Challenging Times

It seems like every time I turn around, I hear Holly Hunter saying “everything’s changed!” We are living in a time of exceedingly rapid change and transformation. I’ve been going deep studying the developments in AI for the past three months, ever since it seemed like ChatGPT started taking over the world. On Saturday mornings, after I finish shopping for the family, I would settle in with a cup of coffee and read articles and watch YouTube videos on the changes in the week. Last weekend, I was at a conference and missed my Saturday ritual. When I took a look at the following week’s developments, I realized that I was way behind; the developments of the previous 10 days were so significant that I felt like I would never catch up.

That’s the world we’re living in now. And trust me, this is just the beginning. If you think the pace of technological development is fast now, buckle your seat belt; it’s only going to get much, much faster. And with all that change, our coworkers and employees will burn out. We’re going to get scared. We’re going to get overwhelmed.

Incorporating Purpose and Values into Company Culture

And with all this change and challenge, things are going to get much, much harder. Everything’s CHANGED, and it’s not going to stop. It sure is an exciting time to be alive, but as my good friend Val Kirilova once said, “when things get hard, leaders need to be able to answer the question; ‘Why am I busting my a*s here?’” And most leaders are failing at providing an answer to that important question. Gartner’s 2021 Hybrid and Return to Work survey reported that the pandemic has made 52% of people question the purpose of their day-to-day jobs.

Yikes. Think about the last time you had to do something hard that you didn’t think was all that important. How motivated were you to overcome the challenge that you faced if it didn’t matter? Well, more than half of our colleagues and employees are in that same predicament. The truth is, this simple arrangement of trading money for time is no longer motivating people the way it used to. So it’s time for leaders to provide an answer to that question, to give the people who work with them a reason to continue busting their a*s. The best way I know how to do that is to provide a compelling purpose.

Purpose in the Hiring Process

In 2008, I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Sinek, well before he was the superstar he is today. His concept of the Golden Circle is that what motivates people the most is being connected not to what they do or how they do it, but why they are doing things. Connecting a group of people to a core purpose provides a powerful answer to the question, “Why should I be busting my a*s here?” It is that sense of purpose that transforms a job into a career, that allows us to see the relevance of our day-to-day struggles and take a step back from those struggles to see what it is that we are working so hard to accomplish. With that sense of perspective, we are given a moment to breathe, recalibrate, and persevere. When leaders fail to provide that perspective, all we are offering our staff is a money-for-time trade. For more than half of those working today, it’s insufficient.

Embedding Purpose and Values in Daily Activities

In this time of rapid change and unexpected challenge, it’s more important than ever that our leaders uncover core purpose and the values needed to achieve that purpose. It’s important that those ideas are woven into the very fabric of our companies: having employees call out their coworkers in daily huddles, pointing out where their colleagues have exhibited those core values. Incorporating values and purpose into evaluations of employees. Tying values and purpose into day-to-day activity, overall strategy, decision making, and problem solving. All of these actions bring purpose and values to the front and center, allowing us to see and experience them.

It’s also critical that we bring our understanding of purpose and values into our hiring process. Too often, we hire based on the need to fulfill urgently needed skills, leaving cultural match as a distant second priority. But when we hire people who share our culture, the work of bringing in those employees into the fold of what we collectively believe becomes much easier.

Purpose as the Driving Force in Challenging Times

We all know, with rapid change comes both opportunity and challenge. How can we best prepare for those challenging times while priming our teams to see the opportunities for transformation that are an inherent part of this time? It’s all about keeping connection to purpose and providing perspective that allows us to maintain focus with an understanding of why we are doing what we are doing, so we are motivated to move through challenges in the service of a brighter future.

In 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, the airline industry was in trouble, and layoffs were the norm. But not at Southwest Airlines. Southwest was one of the few airlines not to lay off staff. They did it by tapping into their purpose of love and connecting people to the folks they love. Leaders asked employees to help identify areas where they could cut costs. Southwest was able to parlay those ideas and innovations into the savings necessary to avoid layoffs. Purpose provided motivation to persevere in the face of challenge.

Conclusion

Core purpose is so much more than a fancy plaque to put on the boardroom wall. It is the greatest tool organizations have in helping people overcome challenge and maintain motivation and focus when it’s hardest to do. Leaders need to remember that culture is a verb, that it’s something that actively needs to be worked on and wrestled with on a day-to-day basis. It is incumbent on leaders to cultivate an environment of significance and meaning that encourages others to connect with that purpose and stay motivated during difficult times.

About the author – Peter Laughter – I walked away from a 25 year entrepreneurial career in the recruiting and staffing industry because recruiting is screwed. I founded True Bearing to reinventing recruiting using purpose, values, and storytelling as the currency companies can use to supercharge referrals and cultivate pipelines of rockstar talent.