The Purpose of having a Purpose

In one of my previous assignments, one day I was told that I am getting a new team member. It seems nobody wanted him in their teams. Not because he was not good at what he does. He was very good at what he does. And because of that, he was often given critical pieces of work too. His problem was, he will suddenly disappear, switch off his phone, do not complete his work on time, or take unplanned leaves with no explanation. I decided to give it a try and see if could turn him around. There was this new project I was working on and there was this safety critical high value item which needed to be designed and developed. The existing part, which the new part will be replacing, was facing serious and safety issues. ?Here is what I did not tell him to do. I did not tell him to do a 3D model. I did not tell him to make 2 D drawings. I did not tell him how much flatness he must maintain for good weld quality. I did not tell him the concentricity or parallelism that he should put in the drawing.

?I told him that his job is to design a part that is safe, robust, shall have no quality issues in mass production, affordable and interoperable across various platforms. Now he had a purpose. And that purpose was not to make a 3D model or a 2D drawing. He was now part of something important, something big. He started with benchmarking, visiting existing suppliers, studying the existing process, quality issues and issues faced by operators in the manufacturing line, field failure data, visited the tool room, studied issues with existing tool before started studying how to design a product which wouldn’t have all these issues. And no, I did not tell him to do any of these activities. ?To make a long story short, he ended up designing and developing a part that had the lowest quality issues in the history of similar parts in the organization. My colleagues asked me what magic did I perform on him because he had ‘transformed’ from an ‘irresponsible’ person ?who used to go AWOL and switch off his phone to someone who started putting extra efforts. I said I did not do anything. I just gave him purpose.

Psychologists say that purpose is an abiding intention to achieve a long-term goal that is both personally meaningful and makes a positive mark on the world.

Having a purpose is about finding meaning in what you do and what motivates you to do what you do. It is something that defines or influences a person’s actions or behavior. And this is significant to corporate or professional world as much as it is important to personal lives. We would be discussing about having a purpose in the professional world.

Purpose is usually personal, or a personal purpose which is aligned with the professional task or goal. And, it does not necessarily need to be something big or larger than life. It can be as simple as making a good engineering drawing for some part which will go into a vehicle that is cleaner and affordable, for example.

Why you are doing what you are doing matters. It gives direction, motivation, meaning to what you are trying to do. In the previous example I mentioned above, the drawing is for developing a part which will help make a cleaner and affordable. So, the person working on the drawing will do whatever is possible from her side, to make the part cleaner, lighter, cost effective and probably inventing or innovating something in the process, which will be good for the society and the world as a whole. The draftsperson or the designer who is designing the part will give her 100% and go that extra mile because she will feel proud and important to be part of something that is making a positive impact on the society.

Managers often do not share the entire picture to their team or do not make the purpose clear to them. When the purpose of what you are doing is not clear, you don’t feel like you belong, you do not know why you are doing what you are doing.

Well, now you know that there is a purpose for having a purpose!