This might seem patently obvious, but I'll say it anyway:
People don't want to waste their lives.
Full time employees spend around 40 hours at work every week. Virtually none of them spend that much time in any other single endeavor, maybe not in all their other endeavors put together. So if all they're doing is trading time for a paycheck and waiting for the weekend – well, that sucks out loud.
In the Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki counsels would-be entrepreneurs to ask themselves, "Do I want to make meaning?" He suggests a few meanings of "meanings":
Make the world a better place.
Increase the quality of life.
Right a terrible wrong.
Prevent the end of something good.
Chances are, your business makes meaning in one of these ways. Or in some other important way. But often, the true meaning of the business gets buried under the crush and stress of daily operations.
When our people are focused on their own individual tasks and responsibilities, it's easy for them to get disconnected from the meaning they help make, easy for them to forget their work really matters, easy for them to feel like they're wasting their lives. But leaders can intervene. More later.
Jack's latest book, The Foundation of Management is now available for free from Opus.
