Finding Meaning (at Work?)

Charles Botha @chris stout Grat article and great book from Viktor Frankl. As I wrote it here, filling life with meaning is what we have to do: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/meaning-work-pablo-lacasia?trk=mp-author-card

Excellent!!! Achievable in the current corporate environment??? Doubt it :(

Thanks Chris, Frankl certainly showed an excellent understanding of human motivation and the effect that meaning has on our motivation to survive. Humans typically create an artificial delineation between animals and ourselves - seeing ourselves as "special snowflakes", when in fact we are part of nature, and thus natural phenomena will affect how we think about and interact with the world. However, one of the few areas where I believe we fundamentally differ from the rest of the natural world is our need to find meaning and purpose in our lives, although new research into consciousness and self-awareness might yet prove even this distinction to be false. I don’t believe that a cat needs to contemplate whether hunting mice is a meaningful existence, it merely hunts to survive. Your article addressed a very important topic, which I feel is where the 20th century carrot and stick motivation approaches will ultimately be replaced by 21st century understanding of what drives human motivation. If employees don’t see the bigger picture and understand why their work is meaningful, any motivation will be short lived and transactional – “How can I perform the least work for the most pay (carrot), while doing the bare minimum required to avoid punishment (the stick)”

Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl illustrates the importance of meaning in our lives. The 20th century was one in which the desire for productivity and the implementation of Taylorist philosophies stripped the workplace of our ability to find meaning in our work. Unfortunately, while this may have temporarily improved productivity (it's easy to become very good at tightening bolts on a wheel if that is all you do), eventually this philosophy met the brick wall of humanity. We don't like being treated like machines. A machine is perfectly happy to tighten the same bolts day in an day out but humans eventually need to understand why it is important to do so or they begin to become disengaged. Unfortunately many organisations' response to this disengagement has been to increase surveillance - to watch people to make sure that they are tightening the bolts correctly, but unless leadership possesses a Pan Opticon prison, it's impossible to watch all of the people, all of the time. This distrust and further dehumanising of employees then further exacerbates disengagement. Sometimes employers think that they are being smart and respond with incentives (carrots) to go along with the punishment (sticks), but this is still places motivation and meaning in under the illusionary control of the "other" (external locus of control). Sustainable motivation is driven through meaning and is intrinsic. You can only create an enabling environment (water), but you cannot make an employee (horse) drink it.

Great read and inspirational as we look at upping our communications game in the office. The phases of life, total dependence, independence and the final and often elusive step, interdependence represent self awareness development. To find meaning in life we have to make the jump to interdependence. We need to see the world as a interconnected group supporting individual success. No I cant save the world but those within my realm of influence are people I can serve. My growth is dependent on their growth. Sometimes its a one way street and exhaustive but the ability to serve within the group is where meaning is found. My observational theory is that many of the folks today are hung up in independence. I find meaning in helping them see that the world of personal success involves a vison of interdependence.