How Your Career Fulfillment Affects the Global Economy

Finding and pursuing your passion has some great broader benefits that you might not have thought about. Beyond your personal and professional fulfillment, the benefits of passion expand to the global economy. How? Through policies, strategies, and practices by governments, institutions, and organizations that focus on molding a strengths-based culture in the workplace. That is, emphasizing people’s unique strengths and talents and creating systems, practices, and incentives that encourage employees to fully leverage them. How’s passion related to this? Your passion usually includes your biggest strengths and talents. Even if this is not the case, your passion is all you need to develop the skills you might lack. Such is its power.

How are all of the above related to the economy? When you do what you’re passionate about at work, you’re more productive and engaged at it. Therefore, a passion-based culture applied to a great number of people can have a tremendous impact on local, national, and global productivity and engagement, leading to high global economic growth.

Did you know that the “actively disengaged” employees alone cost the U.S. 450 billion to 550 billion dollars in lost productivity per year? (1)* This number does not include the costs of the “not engaged” employees who are the majority of the American workforce. This means that the real cost can be a few trillion dollars per year!

To get an even better understanding of this impact, you need to be aware of this fact: 85 percent of employees worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. (2)* Here are the words of the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, Jim Clifton, in a 2017 report:

“Global productivity growth is in decline.

GDP per capita—or productivity—is a key metric in global economics. It is the starting point for measuring almost everything having to do with economic growth and human development.

When the world’s productivity is in decline, so is the availability of good jobs with a living wage. Poor productivity stunts societal and economic growth.

My conclusion from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report is that global productivity can be fixed. Executives and a wide variety of team leaders at many different levels could change the world’s productivity quickly.

The Fix

1. Move the whole world to a workplace strategy of 'high development.' The single best activity for any team leader to deliver is not employee satisfaction, but rather employee development.

2. Make every workplace in the world strengths-based. The current practice of management—which attempts to turn weaknesses into strengths—doesn’t work. Moving to strengths-based workplaces will change global productivity and growth overnight.

3. Move the world’s workplace mission from paycheck to purpose. Of course, all employees need fair pay. But they are now driven more than ever by mission and purpose and require a workplace culture that delivers it . . .

According to this report, worldwide employee engagement is only 15%. What if we doubled that? What if we tripled it? Imagine how quickly that would fix global GDP, productivity, and human development.” (3)*

And imagine a world where people are passionate about what they do and where the economy grows exponentially. A world where people are—and will be—both wealthy and passionate about what they do. This is the New World. The world of abundance, both material and spiritual. Let us turn the pandemic crisis into an opportunity. A unique opportunity to build a world where work, wealth, and passion are one and the same. And it’s on its way . . .

Passion and the Future of Work

From the beginning of our human existence until our extinction—should it ever occur—we have and will always carry our passion with us. It’s fiercely fortified, right at the center of our heart, the core of our soul and being. It’s our spiritual oxygen. And as oxygen is necessary for us to survive, our passion is necessary for us to live.

Given its broad and dynamic nature, we have the privilege to express it in many ways. How? Through your “passion expressions.” That is, how exactly do you express and practice your passion? What specific activities do you do to serve it? The ways you help others are your passion expressions, specific activities that put you in a state of flow, and their only limit is your imagination. For example, my passion is to empower and inspire people to find their passion at work. Currently, I am manifesting this passion in various ways, or passion expressions:

? One-on-one career and leadership coaching.

? Designing and developing strengths-based initiatives and strategies for organizations to maximize their people's engagement, performance, and potential.

? Public speaking, online or on-site, by delivering speeches and seminars on career guidance and development to NGOs.

? Blogging.

? Advocating for the value of passion at work in every discussion I have with others.

Now, what if I told you that you can turn your passion expressions into multiple sources of income? Whether they are various roles and contracts or passion-based businesses and passive income sources?

Why is this important to consider? According to the McKinsey Global Institute’s report “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: What the Future of Work Will Mean for Jobs, Skills, and Wages,” up to one-third of work activities could be automated by 2030. (4)*

Furthermore, it’s underlined that by 2030, “major transitions lie ahead that could match or even exceed the scale of historical shifts out of agriculture and manufacturing. Our scenarios suggest that by 2030, 75 million to 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories. Moreover, all workers will need to adapt, as their occupations evolve alongside increasingly capable machines. Some of that adaptation will require higher educational attainment, or spending more time on activities that require social and emotional skills, creativity, high-level cognitive capabilities, and other skills relatively hard to automate.”

Yes, you got it right. Being aware of your passion gives you the privilege and power to adapt in a world that is changing faster than any time in human history. Your passion expressions will be your own unique ways to find a role where you’ll actually be more productive, creative, fulfilled, and successful!

Keep in mind that your ability to adapt in the workplace won’t be a “nice-to-have” skill from now on. It’s a requirement for us to both survive and thrive. Why? Not only because the automation of jobs by AI has already started, but because the pandemic has actually accelerated the automation in a disruptive way.

A survey of 800 international executives in June 2020 found that 67 percent of companies have accelerated automation and AI because of the pandemic. (5)* This means that hundreds of millions of workers will need to pivot to different occupations a few years before 2030. This is less than seven years!

It’s like a big tsunami coming in to eliminate anything and anyone that happens to stand in its way. Do you have to worry? Of course not. Who told you that you have to “stand” against the tsunami? No one! Can you run away? I really doubt it. It’s like a global ocean of chaos. Can you surf on it? Well, yes, but if you fall, you’re screwed.

But what if you were part of the tsunami itself? What if you were the water? Water has no fixed form. It takes its form based on the surface or object that hosts it. It adapts. Anywhere. Anytime. Who said you can’t do the same? Be like water. This way, not only will the current tsunami, and all the future ones, stop being a threat to you, but they’ll also be a powerful force that blasts you forward.

That’s the value of your passion. It can give you enough creative flexibility and adaptability to both deal with and thrive during any disruption.

What’s even greater is that new, unknown occupations are expected to come to life. But don’t be surprised. You know why? Because the purpose of jobs is not to give you money to survive, but to cover at least one human need. That’s why there will always be jobs that will vanish and new jobs that will take their place.

If you look at our recent history, this is not something new. The same fear of job loss was the same in the Industrial Revolution. Back then, the majority of manual jobs were also replaced by machines and automation. Today, you don’t see hundreds of workers working on an assembly line. Most jobs there became extinct because of automation. Why were they automated? “To reduce the cost and maximize productivity, of course,” you might think. Sure. On the other hand, it’s also wise for us to ask another question: “What are the new emerging opportunities?” Well, there are a few.

First, the extinction of a job opens the door to a new one. Remember: It’s all about covering human needs. This doesn’t mean that a new job is created automatically. But a new opportunity to cover a human need in a different way comes up. Here’s the best part: You can be the creator of a new job.

That’s right. You can leverage this opportunity to create a new job. How? By serving others and fulfilling their needs through your passion—even more precisely, through at least one passion expression of yours that adds more value to others than the old job did. In other words, the post-pandemic reality offers you a great deal of opportunities to explore and discover how your passion expressions can add value to others in areas where automation took or will take place.

“But, Jim. How can I create a role?” you might wonder. If you want to start your own passion-based business, you can easily do that by testing your ideas for passion expressions that solve your ideal clients’ problems. As an employee, you can still do this by suggesting the creation of a new role that could be a better fit for you. Yes, you can actually do that! The only criterion is the role must make sense regarding the problem it solves and the extra value it will bring to the employer that is not delivered by any existing role. In fact, many executives cannot always see the need that you can see for a new role. They are too busy! That’s where you come in.

This is one opportunity from automation. Another one is that automation will actually create more time for humans to do work where they’ll be able to practice their creativity and problem-solving skills more. If you think about it, it makes absolute sense. Your passion is a fundamental expression of your personal growth, and the fact that it can be expressed through manual work doesn’t mean that it should be limited to only this type of work. Quite the contrary.

Your passion needs to expand because it’s dynamic. Automation can complement the dynamic nature of passion by creating more time for us to spend on expanding and following it! It’s a great tool that helps us spend more time doing what we love.

Last but not least, automation can be a way for you to reach financial freedom faster, should you wish. How? By becoming the owner of any machine that can do the work for you. This means having the opportunity to invest in and buy a machine that will serve others as an employee and generate passive income for you. A typical example would be to own a self-driving car and use it as an Uber car. You won’t have to pay it a salary, and it does the work for you!

As a result, you’ll be able to maximize your available time to focus even more on serving others through your passion. This is also exactly the reason why many of the wealthiest people in the world are committed to following their greatest passions and doing fulfilling work until the end of their lives. Warren Buffett, one of wealthiest individuals in the world, is ninety-three and still running one of the most successful hedge fund companies in the world. This brings me to my next point for the future of work.

Work is a unique way to fulfill our highest human needs: self-actualization and transcendence. Gone are the days where the purpose of work was to exclusively cover our need for financial safety, because people have started realizing that there’s more—that work is a unique path to reach your personal, professional, and financial potential. That work is not labor. Work is passion. That in the future, we will have an “International Career Fulfillment Day” to celebrate the shift from “Happy Friday!” to “Happy Monday!” The shift from labor to purpose—from work to passion.

This was an excerpt from the book “Find Your Passion: How to Create a Career with More Success and Fulfillment .”

References:

*(1) Susan Sorenson and Keri Garman, “How to Tackle U.S. Employees’ Stagnating Engagement,” Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/162953/tackle-employees-stagnating-engagement.aspx .

*(2) Jim Clifton, “Declining Global Productivity Growth: The Solution,” Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236330/declining-global-productivity-growth-fix.aspx .

*(3) Jim Clifton, “Declining Global Productivity Growth: The Solution,” Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236330/declining-global-productivity-growth-fix.aspx .

*(4) James Manyika et al., “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: What the Future of Work Will Mean for Jobs, Skills, and Wages,” McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/jobs-lost-jobs-gained-what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages .

*(5) André Dua et al., “What 800 Executives Envision for the Postpandemic Workforce,” McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/what-800-executives-envision-for-the-postpandemic-workforce .