We’d like to tell you about our new book, The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations to Deliver Value for Customers, Investors, and Communities.
Work takes the lion’s share of our time and energy. Most of us spend more time at work than at play, at family gatherings, at religious meetings, or at hobbies. The organizations in which we labor are thus a primary setting not only for accomplishing assignments butalso for finding an abiding sense of meaning in life. Work is a universal setting in which to pursue our universal search for meaning.
Our book is about both the why and the how of meaning at work. The why refers to the human search for meaning that finds its way into our offices and factories, a search that motivates, inspires, and defines us. The how gets us into the practicalities of how leaders facilitate that search personally and among their employees. In our book, we offer many specific tools and principles to help leaders put meaning to work not only to build personal meaning but also to help companies succeed in the marketplace of human endeavor.
The search for meaning adds value in two senses of the word. First, humans are meaning-making machines who find inherent value in making sense out of life. The meaning we make of an experience determines its impact on us and can turn disaster into opportunity, loss into hope, failure into learning, boredom into reflection. The meaning we create can make life feel rich and full regardless of our external circumstances or give us the courage to change our external circumstances.
When we find meaning in our work, we find meaning in life. In addition to inherent value, meaning has market value. Meaningful work solves real problems, contributes real benefits, and thus adds real value to customers and investors. Employees who find meaning in their work are more satisfied, more engaged, and in turn more productive. They work harder, smarter, more passionately and creatively. They learn and adapt. They are more connected to customer needs. And they stick around. Leaders invest in meaning making not only because it is noble but also because it is profitable. Making sense can also make cents.
This post has been excerpted from The Why of Work published by McGraw Hill, June 2010.
For more information visit, http://thewhyofwork.com/ or email Dave and Wendy at rblmail@rbl.net
Dave Ulrich is a professor of business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and co-founder of The RBL Group. He has written 23 books, including Human Resource Champions, Results Based Leadership, and Leadership Brand.
Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., has been a psychologist in private practice for over twenty years and is the author of two previous books, Weakness is Not Sin, and Forgiving Ourselves.
