Coming
off of our weeks long discussion about Stephen Covey's effectiveness
I thought I would mix it up. This week I want to give you a guest
post. The rest of this post was written by Bill George who is a
professor at the Harvard Business School.
In
my new book, Discover Your True North, I challenge
readers to ask themselves this key question: Are you leading with
purpose or just trying to get ahead?
Do
you actually believe in something larger than your compensation, your
career trajectory or your next success?
I
often tell young leaders, if their work has no meaning or
satisfaction, they are better off quitting and sitting on the beach
until they decide what they want to do.
Many
people's work is completely disconnected from their values and their
purpose. This lack of purpose isn't something to deal with by working
with a nonprofit in your spare time. If you don't take action to
address this disconnect, it can become like an insidious cancer that
eats at your soul. Long-run, a lack of purpose can lead to burnout,
poor decision-making and even moral derailment.
Understanding
Your Purpose
Your
purpose is the genuine deeper meaning in your work. It reflects why
you do what you do.
Understanding
your purpose is essential to becoming a better leader. People who
lead with a sense of purpose that is aligned with their company's
purpose make better long-term decisions and are more authentic.
But
this is not as easy as it sounds. Discerning your purpose takes a
combination of introspection and real-world experiences before you
can determine where you want to devote your energies.
The
first step to knowing your purpose is to understand your life story.
We all face times of crisis, pain or rejection in our lives.
Reflecting on the life you've lived helps you to discover your True
North - the beliefs, values and principles most important to you.
Before
you take on a leadership role, ask yourself: "What motivates me
to lead this organization?" If the honest answers are simply
power, prestige and money, you are at risk of being trapped by
external gratification as your source of fulfillment.
This
never works. Why? Simply, you can never have enough money, fame or
recognition. When you give someone else the power to decide if you're
successful (whether it's the Forbes 400 list or an invitation to
Davos), you lose. If you allow some external force to define your
success, you have essentially abdicated your soul.
There
is a deep voice inside you that yearns to bring your unique gifts to
this world. If you neglect that voice, you create deep misalignments
that eventually will surface.
Purpose
at Work
Ken
Frazier traveled a unique road en route to becoming CEO of Merck, the
leading pharmaceutical research company. Born before the 1863
Emancipation Proclamation, Frazier's grandfather was a slave in South
Carolina. He sent his son, Frazier's father, to live in Philadelphia.
With no formal education, Frazier's father became a janitor, yet
taught himself to read, reading two newspapers a day. In spite of his
limited opportunities, he had a profound influence on Frazier's life.
After
his mother died when he was 12, Frazier and his sisters had to fend
for themselves after school, avoiding the gangs that dominated the
streets outside his house. "I learned very early from my father
that one has to be one's own person and not go along with the crowd,"
Frazier says. His father asked him, "Kenny, how are you going to
carry on your grandfather's narrative of being free and your own
person? You better do what you know is right, and not be fixated on
what other people think of you.”
While
studying at on Penn State scholarship, Frazier decided he wanted "to
become a great lawyer like Thurgood Marshall, affecting social
change." At Harvard Law School, he was acutely aware he wasn't
from the same social class as his classmates. He wryly notes, "Lloyd
Blankfein [CEO of Goldman Sachs] and I were the only students who
'were not of the manor born.”
Shortly
after he joined Merck, Frazier took on the extremely difficult task
of defending Merck from over 40,000 lawsuits filed after the pain
drug Vioxx was withdrawn from the market due to alleged
cardiovascular problems. Frazier did so successfully, catapulting him
into the CEO's chair where he faced a greater challenge: short-term
shareholders pressured him to cut back Merck's research as several of
its competitors were doing. Frazier stayed the course, committing to
spend a minimum of $8 billion per year on research in order to pursue
cures for devastating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.
Reflecting
on his sense of purpose, Frazier explains, "Merck's purpose is
aligned with my personal sense of who I want to be and what I hope to
contribute to the world. At Merck, you have the opportunity to make
tangible contributions to humanity. There's a yearning in all of us
to leave something meaningful behind, because we know we have a short
time on earth. Merck gives me the chance to leave something to people
20, 50 or even 100 years from now because we did the right things
today.”
Asked
what his father would say about his remarkable success, Frazier says
modestly, "He'd say, 'The boy did what he was supposed to do.'”
Turning
Purpose Into Action
Your
leadership purpose is not meaningful until it is applied to solving
problems you encounter in the real world. When you align your
personal purpose with an organization's mission, you unlock the full
potential of people in the organization.
That's
what I tried to do at Medtronic where we connected employees' True
North with the company mission of "restoring health, alleviating
pain and extending life." My successors, especially current CEO
Omar Ishrak, have pursued this mission with vigor, contributing to
the 100 times increase in the company's market value over the past 26
years. More importantly, the number of people each year restored to
full health has grown from 300,000 to 15 million.
As
long as you focus on your True North, understand your purpose
and use it to make a difference in the world, you can leave a legacy
that inspires those who follow.
