Two people: comparable professional backgrounds, same job title, similar number of hours invested each week, two different companies.
One of them finds the job interesting and a source of pride but isn’t very motivated, frequently wondering if there’s something “more” out there. The other walks into the office each morning, full of plans and how an impact will be made, loving the role—really a calling.
So why will one person glance at the clock a dozen times during the day while the other can hardly believe another day has whizzed by?
It’s purpose, says Arthur Woods, co-founder of Seattle-based Imperative and keynote speaker at the Business Journal’s Civic 50 recognition event. The B Corp’s 100-plus clients include Irvine-based In-N-Out Burger. Finding purpose on the job is what he’s dedicated his career to. His company, which he co-founded with Chief Executive Aaron Hurst, helps managers bring out the best in their teams by providing real-time measurement of employee engagement and goal achievement, and insight into what creates purpose for each employee.
“Work can be truly meaningful,” he says, “an extension of who we are as people.”
Purpose, Impact
Research by Forbes and others shows that finding purpose at work, no matter at what level, leads to career-building and life-improving benefits, including a sense of doing something larger than oneself; greater job and life satisfaction; and increased motivation. When a person has purpose and sees the importance and impact of what he or she is doing, trivial tasks take on more significance, and all of that leads to a more invested and engaged workforce.
After Woods realized he wasn’t the only one struggling with the issue of workplace dissatisfaction, he started researching the concept of fulfillment at work, discovering that people who reported finding meaning in their careers were also the highest performers. He and Hurst saw in the data a unique opportunity to help both workers and employers.
“We built Imperative based on the latest neuroscience and habit-formation research,” he said. “Our proprietary research on the drivers of purpose in our careers and lives equips managers with the real-time measurement and insights to inspire everyone on their team.”
The workplace is changing, he said. “It used to be that people used their skills and got the job done. But now, people want more than just a job. People measure success differently. They want to be engaged and fulfilled.”
Woods says that what he calls the purpose movement is just getting started.
“It’s not a fuzzy, ephemeral concept … it’s the future of the workplace. Everyone has a responsibility to create fulfillment.”
Seed of a Career
Woods knows from personal experience how vital it is to have purpose at work. The Georgetown University graduate joined Google LLC in 2010. For Woods, who’d grown up in a bucolic small town near Lake Almanor in Northern California, starting a career with Google as an operations strategist for its Google for Work division seemed the culmination of aspirations. Initially, he was thrilled. Here was a place, he recalls thinking, where he could be himself and have a sense of meaning.
“But then the honeymoon period wore off,” he says. “I found myself in a really tough place. I just wasn’t getting the sense of meaning from my job as I thought I would.”
Woods’ initial reaction was to find a job elsewhere. But a mentor dissuaded him, saying, “You choose whether your work is fulfilling. Purpose is a choice.”
So he decided to transform his position, and Google helped. Woods says he’d always been an outgoing person driven to help people, so he shifted to democratizing YouTube content as YouTube Education’s head of operations. It was a much more fulfilling role, he says, yet the whole experience gave him pause.
“I started to realize that if I was struggling at Google, that says volumes about how other people are struggling. I started thinking about how to help other people find their purpose.”
Helping Others
Woods says he’d actually done just that as a college student, though he hadn’t realized it then. Being from a small town, he was overwhelmed by the size of Georgetown when he arrived. “I was challenged by how out of place I felt in Washington, D.C.”
He found himself spending time at a local farmers market, perhaps because it reminded him of home. “I realized that a lot of students were in need of fresh products,” he says.
Woods created his own farmers market delivery service to bring fellow students fresh foods, fulfilling his own need to connect with peers. As he made deliveries, he met many who were just out of high school like he was. They wanted more than just a part-time job, such as Woods had. So in 2009 he and fellow student Neil Shah founded nonprofit group Compass Partners to help students find purpose.
The two won a small grant to build a pilot program at Georgetown, and with a handful of other freshmen developed a youth-led curriculum emphasizing learning by doing.
Woods says there were few programs like Compass then and that it caught on like wildfire. The nonprofit is still in existence with a new name, Social Impact 360, operating from 12 major U.S. universities. It has more than 1,000 alumni across the country. Woods is no longer at the helm but still takes an active interest in it.
Fast forward half a decade: The same young man who’d been overwhelmed is now listed on Forbes’ 2018 “30 Under 30” list. He’s co-founded yet another nonprofit, Out in Tech, to provide resources and mentorship to LGBT youth, and has been a TEDx speaker three times. He’s a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a New York City Venture fellow, and sits on the Georgetown Technology Alliance board. All of that is rooted in his days at Google, when he’d felt true meaning in work was just beyond his reach.
