Meaning Business

My granddad worked as a machinist his whole life. He got up at 4:30 a.m. every weekday, had his coffee and cereal while he read the paper, then went to work. Once there, he clocked in and ran his machine for his shift, taking exactly 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch. Then he clocked out and went home. In the evenings and on weekends, he grew an enormous garden, fixed sewing machines, detailed cars, and fished.

This part I’m making up, but if his supervisor had told him to paint his machine purple, he would have asked where the paint was. He didn’t question the purpose of the work he was asked to do. He didn’t look for meaning or fulfillment in his job. He was grateful to get paid so he could take care of his family. As long as the company paid him and was reasonably good to him, he would stay there and work to the end of his life. And he did.

The employment contract has changed significantly since my granddad’s day. As leaders, we know this to be true but don’t always know how to manage the demands of today’s very different workforce. Libraries could be filled with books written about what has changed in the world, society, and our social constructs. I want to talk about what hasn’t changed.

Human beings are teleological creatures, oriented toward ends, purposes, and the stories we believe we are living. Research supports that when that orientation is absent, we don’t simply idle. We degrade. The effects show up in our bodies, our minds, our behavior, and in the quality of our relationships. We need both a sense of purpose and a sense of mattering or making a difference to others.

Leaders cannot give people meaning. Meaning isn’t a benefit package, a motivational poster, or something you hand someone in a one-on-one meeting. However, what leaders can do is build or destroy the conditions in which meaning becomes possible. Which one we do matters enormously.

Can you answer this question? Why does this work exist? If I can’t tell someone why what we do matters, how the customer on the other end of this transaction is better off, why this organization deserves to exist, I have nothing to offer. Leadership starts there—with my own clarity. A leader who is fuzzy on purpose will lead a team that is fuzzy on purpose.

If I am clear on purpose, my first job is closing the loop between the daily task and the larger story. A machinist making a valve needs to know where it goes. He needs to know that a wellhead in West Texas runs cleaner because his tolerances were tight. He needs to know that somewhere downstream, someone’s job is easier and a family is safer because he did his work well. Most leaders assume people know this; most people don’t. Closing that loop should be a recurring act of leadership.

Meaning is also personal, which means it requires being seen—not celebrated, just known. The leader who knows the names of the people they lead, who understands something about what drives each person, and who notices when someone is off creates something that no program can replicate. People find meaning more readily when they believe they are known. They find it harder when they feel interchangeable.

Autonomy matters too. People rarely invest themselves in work they had no say in. This doesn’t mean every decision requires a vote. It means that wherever possible, people should have some real ownership over how the work gets done. That’s where pride lives. And pride in work is one of the oldest forms of meaning there is. My granddad had it, even without ever asking for it. He ran his machine his way, to his standard, and that mattered to him.

Finally, sometimes the work is genuinely hard to find meaning in. Not every task connects cleanly to a larger story. Not every season is one where people can clearly see the point. Leaders who manufacture meaning in those moments—who reach for forced inspiration when the situation calls for honesty—end up losing more than they gain. The better move is to acknowledge what’s hard, name what’s real, and point to whatever is true without dressing it up. People can endure a lot when they feel respected. They struggle more when they feel managed.

My granddad didn’t need his supervisor to explain the point of his work. He had built his own architecture for meaning outside of work. But the people we lead now are often asking that question of their work. Our job isn’t to answer it for them. Our job is to make sure the environment we build doesn’t prevent them from answering it for themselves—the Bison Way.