Dave Ulrich

My father used to say that for people to be happy they need something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. He said this long before anyone had invented positive psychology, back when happiness was the domain of philosophers, priests, and maybe pushers, but held little interest for science. But even today I would only add one ingredient to his recipe: something to believe in. We need a sense of meaning, of purpose, of connection with something bigger than ourselves. We need a “why” to go with the how’s and who’s and when’s of our lives.

My husband Dave Ulrich and I wrote The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win (see: www.thewhyofwork.com) because work is a universal setting (like family or community or church) for people to meet our universal need for meaning. Dave specializes in leadership and human resources, I’m a psychologist, and it has been an interesting process for us to write a book together, trying to meld and merge our quite different perspectives on how business leaders can become meaning-makers. I think it is fair to say that Dave and I are both meaning junkies: we get a real high from the work we respectively do and can’t quite imagine what life would be like if we didn’t.

All jobs have elements of dreariness and drudgery, strain and stress, but meaning-making raises us out of the bankruptcy of deficit thinking toward genuine abundance – enough and to spare of what matters the very most, even when our circumstances provide the very least. The uniquely human activity of telling a coherent story – making meaning – is not just a luxury for well-off companies. There is growing evidence that companies that invest in people practices, encourage people to use their strengths, foster good relationships among employees, or earn a reputation as a good place to work end up with better safety records, fewer customer complaints, employee more satisfied with their pay, and even higher profits than their competitors.

It has been said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. A lot of workers in the current economic crises are eager to keep their jobs or their companies afloat, which can look like high engagement at least for a while. But if the search for meaning does not continue to evolve, we foresee new leaks springing in our collective corporate boats, requiring bailouts that are not only more costly but even less effective than the current ones. Helping individuals and corporations find the meaning of their labor is not just a pleasant pastime; it is essential to sustained organizational buoyancy.

In The Why of Work we identify 7 meaning drivers that seem to encompass much of what people report brings them a sense of meaning and abundance at work. They include the opportunity to identify our strengths and use them to strengthen others, a clear sense of direction and purpose, the skills to create great friendships at work, clarity about the type of work we personally find engaging, positive work routines and cultures, the learning that comes through resilience and transformation, and simple civility and delight. We explore how leaders can find meaning through these 7 drivers for themselves, their work teams, and their organizations. As they do they create abundant organizations that meet the needs of customers, fulfill the expectations of investors, and contribute to the best interests of communities and humanity at large.

What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning for you? In either good times or hard times, where do you find meaning? What have good leaders done to help you find that sense of abundance, either sporadically or consistently, in what would otherwise be just a job? As a leader, how do you foster abundance and meaning in other people? Is this an agenda you care about? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for you and for others?

Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., M.B.A., is a psychologist, educator, and founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth. She and her husband Dave Ulrich, Ph.D.,(a professor of business at the University of Michigan, a founding partner of The RBL Group, and a leading management educator) are co-authors of The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win, available June 2010 from McGraw Hill).