Digging into Purpose: the 'why' of work..
And why there's more to it than a fancy 'mission'
I talked last week about what motivates us for work and, in an attempt to make myself look vaguely learned, I referred to Self Determination Theory and it’s spin off: Daniel Pink’s book Drive.
One of the big themes is this is about ‘purpose’, and if you follow / read anything by Simon Sinek - he’s very big on the whole Why of work.
I’ve been looking into this in a bit more detail though - I think there’s more to how we connect with a company’s purpose than just a well packaged mission statement. And it affects both the product work we get to do, and how we feel about it.
Meaningless missions
When people talk about ‘Purpose’ it often gets boiled down to ‘Mission’. But I don’t think I’ve ever read a mission statement that I haven’t found some way motivating.
Let’s take three sectors that will often give people the ick (yes,it’s Love Island time and my vocab has been affected as a result). Tobacco, Oil and Arms. No judgement here, if that’s where you work - they’re all legitimate businesses.
This is British American' Tobacco’s mission
Our purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™ with a vision to Build a Smokeless world – one where smokers have migrated from cigarettes to smokeless alternatives.
OK - I find it a bit awful that they’ve trade marked the phrase ‘A better tomorrow’ (like they own the idea of progress) - but I could probably get behind that. I mean moving people away from cigarettes is a massive win.
And then there’s Shell..talking about their mission of ‘Powering Progress’
Powering Progress sets out our strategy to generate value for our shareholders, our customers and wider society. It supports our purpose of providing more and cleaner energy solutions, with the aim of profitably transforming Shell into a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050. Our approach includes powering lives and respecting nature, while our core values lie at the heart of how we do business.
OK, who isn’t going to be buy into helping society, cleaner energy solutions and respecting nature?
How about arms manufacturing? This is the mission statement of the market leader, Lockheed Martin
We specialize in defense tech, solving complex challenges, advancing scientific discovery and delivering innovative solutions that help our customers keep people safe.
Keeping people safe! Advancing scientific discovery! Sign me up now!
The point is creating a ‘mission’ has become such a game of Orwellian doublespeak that pretty much any business seems to be able to conjure one up for themselves.
A more cynical person than myself might say you should probably try and find a company that hasn’t found the need to come up with a pithy mission statement and is just honest about the fact that they’re trying to get rich by solving valuable problems for customers.
However, I’m not that cynical! I think it’s a good indicator of (to slip into Love Island parlance again) ‘where their head’s at’. But it’s worth balancing against two very real things: what it’s like to work there, and how they actually make money, which brings us to..
Culture: the reality of work
Execs and CEOs; often do their best to create a culture. But the culture they perceive often isn’t the culture that actually exists. Real culture is the lived experience of being in a business.
Speficially real culture shines through at crunch times..
how you feel after you’ve been in a meeting with your boss/ the CEO and presented something they don’t buy into
how you’re treated when you’re getting some challenging feedback
how quickly decisions get made and how many people need to get involved
how you hear about and experience change
attitudes to flexible working and childcare.
Money - like actual salary and bonuses and equity - can and does compensate for culture (Hell, the City was built on that exact deal). So can having colleagues/ fellow sufferers that you actually like.
But all the free snacks, sushi and beautifully furnished breakout areas in the world can’t make up for that stuff being awful.
The converse is also true. When all of the above are good - details like the quality of the coffee machine become irrelevant.
Product culture
That ‘lived experience’ of work can be different in different functions and different teams. We talk about the type of ‘product culture’ as if this can be bundled up into a single phrase like ‘empowered’ / ‘feature factory’, being ‘product led’.
You can put whatever badge you want on it - the truth is you either find the way that the company does product is motivating you, or is leaving you feeling like a frazzled husk of a human being.
Simple advice - if you’re interviewing for a company: always speak to one of your future peers (either formally through the interview process or dig them out on LinkedIn). Find out what they like and don’t like about where they work - read between the lines. What they experience, will be what you experience. Don’t think you can change it.
Incidentally: the very best description I got of Amazon’s culture was from a senior leader there with 10+ years experience who said: ‘We are the world’s most customer centric company, but we’re not always the world’s most employee-centric company’.
Subtext: if you stick around here you’re going to do some amazing stuff, but you’re not going to love it every day. And that pretty much summed up my five years’ experience. (I should add - particularly with hindsight, I wouldn’t have swapped it for anything…).
There’s a bit overlap here with a specific aspect of culture: Autonomy - which I’ll focus on next week!
The real Business model
The final thing is about how you feel about how the business actually makes money. Because this is something you need to be comfortable with.
From a product perspective…if you don’t buy into how the business actually makes money, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for you to do your job - which 9 times out of 10 is going to be helping them to do precisely that more effectively.
Again, I’m not going to judge. We all have our red lines. The examples I gave above are pretty simple category issues. You work for a fossil fuel company or arms manufacturer - you know what you’re getting into.
But there are aspects of financial services, media, ad tech, e-commerce, social media to name but a few, that both vary from one company to the next, and might be fine for one person but totally not ok for another.
Broadly it’s about integrity and how we treat customers data and money: Bending the rules on privacy, dark UX patterns (often about subscriptions and renewals), or just customers paying for products that they don’t need or use - can be an issue for some, not for others.
If you are reading this and thinking : ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here’. Good for you. You have freedom to get even better at your job and deliver results
But if you’re thinking ‘yes, that’s why I’m not totally loving my job..’, or ‘this matters to me in my next move’ - then make sure you do your diligence!
And finally..
Being clear about what’s really important to you - and how that might change over time - is a big part of working out how to navigate your product career. I’m finding this is one area where I can really help as a coach. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want a bit of help.
I’ll also let you sign up for a course I’m doing on this in a couple of weeks..