We avoid this question all the time, and it costs us.
Don’t put kerosene in an electric car. It won’t work. Don’t give your dog dark chocolate, it’ll make him sick.
And yet, we often hesitate to be honest about what gets us moving.
What puts something at the top of your priority list, or pushes you to put in extra effort? What challenges or rewards do you keep coming back to, gig after gig, job after job?
Here are few to get you started:
Extinguishing emergencies
Going a little faster than the person next to you
Pleasing the boss
Undermining the boss (class clown)
Establishing a web of safety
Running away from safety
Earning trust
Getting your way
Feeling safe
Feeling alive
Feeling vindicated
Showing the skeptics that we’re right
Staying out of the spotlight
Someone who is free climbing at Yosemite probably has different fuel than the person on the treadmill at the gym. The emergency room doctor is not the same as someone working in public health.
The structure, shared measurements and near universal recognition of a quest for an Olympic medal can capture an athlete’s life for ten years–but then, once they retire from this special condition, it’s possible that they’ll never again find this sort of motivation.
“How are you?” is a benign question, but the honest answer might reveal which fuel we’re focusing on, helping us see what we’re drawn to–and it’s rarely universal. That’s part of the hiding. We’d like to believe that anyone else facing the same choices we have would use the same fuel and demand the same priorities we do. Look around. Fuel isn’t universal.
If the fuel you’ve chosen is helping you get to where you want to go, that’s fabulous. For most of us, though, it might be worth a pause to consider whether it’s what we really need to fill our days or create the change we seek.
Organizations invest to create an audience that sticks with them, either because they have no choice or because of an emotional connection.
When this occurs, most then take profits. They decrease service, increase pricing and generally seek payback for the work they did to get to this position.
But there’s another path.
Every change creates tension. And if you’ve got lock in and loyalty, you can create that tension without losing too many customers.
What if you use that tension to persistently and markedly improve the experience? Not to make it more convenient, but to make it worth the effort to learn to do better?
On a good day, that’s what companies like Apple do.
Most of the time, the MBAs push for the short-term profit taking we’re all used to (and tired of).
But if you get the chance, perhaps you can help people get to where they seek to go, even if the journey requires effort for you and for them.
The last of the series! Thanks to everyone who was part of it.
Danny Meyer has changed the way we think about hospitality and what it’s like to eat out. His new book comes out in a few days, and it was a great excuse for two friends to sit down and talk about solving problems.
Your turn. Go host your own KnotChat. Thanks for reading and for leading.
Jennifer is a marketer, project manager and impresario. We’ve worked together on projects, and it’s always a delight. She and I sat down to talk about the hard work of what’s next.
I don’t believe we’re each born with a purpose. We have more freedom than that, the freedom to choose the impact we’ll make.
Our work, though, does have a purpose. The change we seek to make. The people we’re here to make it for.
When we commit to work with purpose, it transforms us as well as the people we’re engaging with.
Who’s it for, what’s it for… if we can continue to return to the purpose of this product, this meeting, this ad–then we can find a common language and coordinate our efforts to make a difference.
Resistance pushes us in many ways. It pushes us to imagine that our work isn’t for us, we’re just biding time until we get to the real stuff. It pushes us to deny responsibility or to blame the system. And mostly, it pushes us to refuse to name the purpose of how we’re spending our time.
Stuck is just another word for being conflicted about our purpose. The knot holds us back because we’ve become entangled in goals that are mutually exclusive.
