Creating meaning may be the most important managerial task of the future.
Companies must find ways to harness soul-searching on the job, not just gloss over or merely avoid it.
— Martha Nichols, former associate editor of Harvard Business Review
For some artists, writers, musicians, physicians and clergy, the meaning of life lies entirely in their work–in their creations, in their patients, and in their congregation. Many corporate executives, politicians, and government officials seek meaning through manipulation, power and control. Still others work only because it enables them to accumulate vast wealth and material possessions.
But for millions of people, work is a necessary evil engaged in primarily to support themselves and their families. For them, work is not a source of pleasure but rather a boring, repetitive and unchallenging way of making a living. The number of people who enjoy their work and find it truly meaningful are a minority of the population.
Is it any wonder that so many Americans find themselves alienated from their meaningless jobs? Today they work longer and harder for wages that buy less and in jobs that provide poorer health insurance, fewer fringe benefits, more risk and less job security than was the case a decade ago.
In our factories, corporate offices, government bureaus and shopping malls, there is a widespread feeling of detachment and disconnectedness–a longing for community. We are haunted by the yearning for connectedness, an irresistible need for communication, engagement, and friendship with other human beings in the workplace.
When AT&T–the fifth largest industrial company in the U.S. with sales of $75 billion–split into three companies, its chairman, Robert E. Allen said, “The complexity of trying to manage these different businesses began to overwhelm the advantages of integration. AT&T had to separate into smaller and more focused businesses.” Long before the breakup of AT&T, hundreds of large American companies were splitting off divisions and reducing the size of their workforces. There is an increasing realization that bigger may no longer be better. If output continues to grow for a firm, there is some point beyond which additional increments in production result in reduced efficiency, higher costs and lower profits. As the size of a company increases, problems of separation, alienation and meaninglessness become more important. Motivation, coordination, communications and control offer new challenges.
Since 1979, 43 million jobs have been eliminated in the United States through corporate restructuring and downsizing. During this same period 27 million new jobs were created, many of which were high-risk, low-wage jobs with no health insurance or other fringe benefits.
Those who are alienated from their work are often detached from their bosses, their peers, their families, their friends, their community, their government, their basic beliefs and eventually themselves. Drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, suicide, crime and violence are all rooted in meaninglessness. So, too, are absenteeism, declining productivity, and reduced competitiveness.
Meaningful work is a form of intentional activity freely given by an individual who decides, possibly in collaboration with others, what is to be done, how to do it, when it is to be done, with whom to do it, and for whom the benefits are intended. One of life’s greatest challenges is finding affordable meaningful work.
While espousing a philosophy of individualism, democracy and freedom of choice, most American companies do everything possible to silence dissent and quell behavior which differs significantly from the norm. There are no rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press or due process. One can be fired on the spot, at the whim of one’s supervisor, without any legal recourse whatsoever. Chief executive officers are the high priests of the corporate faith and enforcers of sacred business dogmas. Conformity and compliance are the twin pillars on which Corporate America rests.
But how can you take charge of your life, if you are always marching to the beat of another drummer who tells you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it? How is it possible to be a free person if you owe your soul to the company store? Today over 15 million Americans–13 percent of the workforce–are self-employed. Many fantasize about the possibility of starting their own business. Few actually do so. Fewer yet succeed at it.
If one is unable to start one’s own business, then going to work for an employee-owned company may provide a second best alternative. Over 14 million employees in 10,000 enterprises now own a stake in the company for which they work, the best known of which are Avis, United Airlines and United Parcel Service. “Owned by its 26,000 managers and managed by its owners,” the $20 billion UPS is the largest, most successful employee-owned company in America. A generous bonus plan and an employee stock option plan have enabled some former UPS truck drivers to retire as millionaires. It is not by chance alone that UPS drivers run to your front door.
More important than having a financial stake in one’s work is having a psychological stake through some form of workplace participation. Twenty percent of the American workforce is involved in some form of power sharing, self-managed teams, shop-floor participation, joint task forces and other communitarian management practices. The field is led by AT&T, Federal Express, General Electric and Xerox.
If self-employment is not an option, one may seek an organization possessing values, ethical principles and a sense of social responsibility consistent with one’s own. There are an increasing number of firms that profess–and indeed practice–socially responsible values. Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop and Tom’s of Maine have a high degree of environmental integrity, engage in participatory management practices, and maintain a high level of social consciousness–and in some cases social activism.
Martha Nichols, a former associate editor of Harvard Business Review and now editor of Women Review of Books at Wellesley College, has described New Age companies which include “flat organization charts, social responsibility, and good, clean entrepreneurial fun.” These companies “feel like a family or a friendly village, where everyone has flexible schedules to accommodate their personal lives.”
The search for meaning in the workplace combines a spiritual journey inward with an outward quest in pursuit of human connectedness. Finding meaning in our work is no easy task, if life beyond the workplace has no meaning. Likewise, if most of each day is spent in meaningless work, then finding meaning outside of work may be equally elusive.
Even though no cosmic source of the meaning of work has been revealed to us, we are drawn to the notion that the purpose of life is to die happy. But how can we die happy, if we spend most of our life engaged in utterly meaningless work?
