The bigger the vision, the smaller it can make people feel - an essay for the FCA
This essay - subtitled ‘why corporate purpose is empty without meaningful work’ - was originally featured in the Financial Conduct Authority’s Discussion Paper on Purpose alongside perspectives from CEO’s, Academics and Industry Leaders. My thanks to the FCA for continuing to champion behavioural science, and for leading such a meaningful discussion on transforming workplace culture.
A few years ago, I was invited to a conference for the customer operations division of one of the largest financial institutions in the UK. I’ve been to more of these events than I care to remember but this felt a little different. The audience was not the industry's stereotypical demographic, and there was a buzz in the air. Some big news had just been announced and they were eager to hear what it meant.
After everyone settled into their seats, the CEO took to the stage. His bespoke suit jarred with his Britney Spears entrance music, but that could be forgiven. He was here to talk about the new vision, nay, the new purpose of the organisation.
A new ambition was set forth, but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting: he told the audience that a more astronomical sum of money would be ‘under management’ than had ever been ‘under management’ before. How you ask? lt would all be made possible by the ‘macro-trend of financial disintermediation in a technology-driven world’. And no, wait, it wasn’t boring or irrelevant to the thousands of front-line colleagues in the audience. They were compelled to think of the millions of UK families behind those figures; and a tad more excitedly, of the expanding economic responsibility under the organisation’s control.
A gulf opened between the CEO and his audience, and his words seemed to echo around an empty room. The experience highlighted a paradoxical risk at the heart of corporate purpose: The bigger the vision, the smaller it can make people feel.
This article intends to resolve that paradox:
1. Distinguishing between the social impact of an organisation and the psychological construct of meaningful work.
2. Uniting those aims through a person-centred framework.
3. Outlining a way to make it happen.
Corporate purpose and meaningful work.
If the difference between corporate purpose and meaningful work sounds self-evident, you probably aren’t an avid reader of the business press. Here, the ‘power of purpose’ is pitched as omnipotent: inspiring your employees to higher performance and your customers to new depths in their pockets, all while solving the world’s greatest challenges.
I’m not knocking the aspiration. I’m saying that the social value of an organisation is an insufficient driver for meaningful work, and if leaders believe otherwise, millions of employees will be left behind on our search for ‘a new kind of capitalism’. My reasons for this position are simple: corporate purpose feels empty if you have no understanding or control over your contribution. It will not stem the misery of developmental stasis; nor of objectives that overwhelm you or that you could achieve in your sleep. It will not replace your need for close human connection: knowing that you matter to the people around you and that they matter to you.
Moving from an organisation to a person-centric framework.
If you’re rolling your eyes and dreaming of financial disintermediation, bear with me. The above paragraph is informed by a macro-theory of motivation, showing that our ability to fulfil our basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and belonging is a powerful predictor of our performance and job satisfaction.
I won’t expand on that claim, other than to direct you to this summary of twenty years of research: Self-Determination Theory in Work Organisations: The State of a Science. For a glimpse into its commercial significance, consider this finding from Harvard Business School alongside the chance to optimise the c.£45bn spent on performance-related pay every year:
“As long as workplace rewards bring employees satisfaction and fulfil their psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness, rewards of any type— cash or non-cash, tangible or intangible—can fuel employees’ functioning, and foster contribution and loyalty.”
So - design a culture that helps people meet their psychological needs and they will aim higher and feel better about their work. Seen through this person-centric lens, corporate purpose is a final piece in a very human puzzle: a way to promote belonging among colleagues across functions and geographies. It’s not how you would pitch your social impact to shareholders or customers, but it should change the way you bring it to your employees.
Making it happen – an introduction to Thinking Small.
While our psychological needs are shared, they are met in radically different ways. What autonomy means to a CFO will be different to a Branch Manager, and what competence means to Shreena in Croydon is not the same for Bryan in Stoke. This insight leads to a guiding principle:
“Our task isn’t to convince people of the meaning in their work, but to create the conditions for them to discover it for themselves.”
We’re experimenting with this idea at Nationwide Building Society, where we’ve partnered with academics to offer 60 teams and 500 people some insight on their sense of autonomy, competence and belonging. Our reports were not intended as a measure but a spotlight. We followed up with a self-guided, team experience that encouraged people to explore their strengths, and to identify one or two precise opportunities to change for the better.
The diversity of the ideas was extreme. For one team, ‘competence’ became the creation of an impact assessment for internal change requests, so they could prioritise their workload with greater intent. For another, it became an informal database where people are teaming up to learn new skills and pursue shared career aspirations. Perhaps, in the future, teams that focus on ‘belonging’ may settle on a quarterly trip to a branch to re-connect with the purpose of the organisation. But if so, it will be an action designed on their terms and to meet their needs.
This is how culture changes: not in an ivory tower but rooted in the everyday; and not with a big bang but from small fires that grow over time. This idea – of ThinkSmall - is an approach underpinned by behavioural insight, and it lives and breathes in Google’s ‘Roofshot Manifesto’, Netflix’s ‘Research Culture’ and Jeff Bezos’ declaration that Amazon’s success is a function of ‘how many experiments we run per year, per month, per week, per day’.
A systematic approach to cultural development can’t be cut short with a glamorous narrative about social impact. In fact, it opposes that top-down approach in almost all its forms. It is grounded in pragmatism, owned at team level, and powered by an iterative, experimental, evidence-hungry change engine we call TestLearnAdapt. Together those principles of everyday change and experimentation form the foundation of applied behavioural science.
Let’s put them to work.
Our Nationwide experiment was in process at the time of writing, but has now concluded with great results - you can read about them here. Many of my references are embedded above, but the core ideas come from the below papers. My thanks to the Center for Self Determination Theory for their support:
Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-determination theory in work organizations: The state of a science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 19-43.
Thibault Landry, A., & Whillans, A. (2018). The Power of Workplace Rewards: Using Self-Determination Theory to Understand Why Reward Satisfaction Matters for Workers Around the World. Compensation & Benefits Review, 50(3), 123-148.