BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
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Pursuing purpose in your career and life
good sign that you are pursuing your purpose
person’s salary became the main measure of their worth. From the late 1970s, society has lived in a dearth of purpose. But here come the 2020s. From the ashes of rising inequalities and social divisions, a new society is starting to take form. Businesses are repudiating shareholder capitalism and are placing all stakeholders – as well as purpose – back on the agenda. Covid-19 lockdowns have forced people to break away from habits and given them the uncommon luxury of time to reflect. Climate change provides a common enemy to fight against and by the end of 2021, the world was facing the start of The Great Resignation. Could this be the dawn of a new purposeful society? While a good dose of optimism is justified, younger generations should not be naïve in thinking they have tailwinds. Gender equality has long been a priority for most actors in society but we are still nowhere near a satisfactory situation. Much of the power to enact change has historically lain with senior white males at the top of the ladder, siloed by several layers of mostly male executives and managers. In this context, conscious and unconscious bias has made the road to gender equality a terribly frustrating one for hundreds of millions of women to this very day. The road to purpose is likely to face similar barriers. There are decades-long habits and mindsets ingrained in your peers, your more senior colleagues and – depending on your age – they might even be ingrained in you too. People may now be more open to consider alternatives and look more favourably to a diversity
of approaches for individuals to pursue purpose in their own way. But creating new habits will not happen overnight. People showing up less in the office might still be labelled as ‘they care less’. People de-prioritising a fast career trajectory might still be labelled as ‘less ambitious’ or ‘less capable’. All the while, businesses still need to turn profits, with markets pressuring for higher profits and faster growth than the competition. How can you navigate your path to purpose in these choppy waters? The answers are, of course, many and diverse but here are four suggestions: 1. Take time to reflect and gain clarity on the version of yourself that you would be proud to show the world and for the world to know. 2. Get to know your strengths and weaknesses and set a path to purpose that plays to your strengths. 3. Stay open to changing what you do to live up to your purpose. 4. Be consistent with who you want to be even when you’re faced with more complex situations. We have a cunning tendency to create justifications when we take decisions that are at odds with our principles. Now is a great time in history to pursue purpose. However, the pursuit is yours to captain. Marco Dondi is a Strategy Consultant at McKinsey and the author of Outgrowing Capitalism . He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a master’s in management, economics and industrial engineering from Politecnico di Milano.
is that you are proud of who you are and are not afraid of people getting to know you. But what should you do today to be proud of yourself? The range of possible answers today is quite different to those of 100 years ago. A century ago, most people gained pride from their role in the family, namely with men as breadwinners and women as caregivers. Work led to a material increase in living standards for both one’s own family and society at large, and in times of war, it contributed to survival, freedom and national pride. Over the last 50 years, these historical sources of pride – and purpose – have declined in the western world. The fight for survival and freedom has, thankfully, almost disappeared from our day-to-day lives. Raising a family has become insufficient or secondary to finding purpose, as more women have joined the workforce and both men and women have delayed marriage and children. Increases in living standards as a source of pride, meanwhile, started to plateau once the masses reached middle class. And work, that should have strengthened its contribution to purpose, has instead been sullied by a ‘wicked’ turn of capitalism. At the worst possible time, the prevailing narrative among economists and politicians made shareholder profit the sole purpose of a business, and a
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