Something to Hold On To: The Imperative of Purpose in the Modern Workplace
“Give me my goddamn Jack Kramer wood fucking racket / Something I can hold on to…”
This simple, expletive-laden ditty by Dan Bern haunts my mind both at work and at home. Once, while driving teenagers to a basketball game, I earned funny looks as I sang along.
I understand why this song has such a grip, this year. It springs from a universal human need we all seem to be grasping for today: just give me something—anything—to hold on to amidst the noise and the chaos. Show me the spar centering the ship, the goddamn wood racket, even if tennis is not my game.
We are all experiencing everything, everywhere, all at once
Earlier this year, we interviewed 35 Canadian CEOs to understand their concerns and perspectives. What emerged was a complex picture of the CEO mindset in 2024.
They were eager to talk; once we got on their schedules, thirty minutes often turned into 90. They unloaded. The findings were rich, validating, and intriguing.
A universal insight from these conversations was as enlightening as it was wearisome.
"What emerged was not a cohesive vision for the future or even clear barriers to achieving it. Instead, there was a consensus that no single challenge stands before us as it has in the past, like a hard-hitting recession or a global pandemic.
Instead, the hits are coming from all sides: a lagging and disparate national economy, a workforce with evolving needs and expectations, new technologies that have the potential to change everything about how we live and work, and more."
Everything bold, all of the time, means nothing is bold. Mental health and workforce anxiety, the need to innovate, climate change, AI, uncertain economy, productivity, world peace, inflation, polarization, political upheaval, fatigue, notification management, attention deficit, WFH, families with depressed kids, housing, childcare.
Our CEO subjects highlighted the contrast of urgent priorities against managing the hard math of workforce expectations:
“There isn’t that willingness to take on large amounts of hours, including for paid work. I’m not talking about trying to grind every ounce out of people. People coming in are choosing to work fewer hours than the people they’re replacing. It’s a compounding problem.”
A recent study on generational life goals revealed that while Gen X prioritizes milestones like homeownership and marriage, Gen Y and Gen Z focus on happiness, fitness, travel, and contentment.
This all points to a gulf. Amid the noise of life today, there can be canyons of distance between people and their common ground, surrounded by change that feels justifiably overwhelming. What bridges these gaps? What helps?
New Work Culture and Leadership Imperatives
Twenty-five years ago, Robert Putnam wrote “Bowling Alone,” a thesis that Americans (and I posit Canadians too) suffered a society-altering erosion of shared social behaviors starting in the 70s, leading to more time spent alone, without connection.
In what feels like a bookend (though the works are not connected), Tara Isabella Burton’s 2020 “Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World” updates the same thesis. She argues that we have replaced our social rituals, including participating in religion, with new temples and new norms, laying what they convey for the human spirit at the feet of our jobs and work. Burton’s implication is poignant for anyone in business and for any leader.
“People hunger for the same things human beings have always longed for: a sense of meaning in the world and personal purpose within that meaning, a community to share that experience with, and rituals to bring the power of that experience into achievable, everyday life. People are looking to employers and corporations to fill that gap in their lives.”
No wonder we are all tired, CEOs included. Priority overload of systemic problems, wide divisions, contending with ever greater expectations.
Purpose and Meaning
While purpose and meaning aren't a cure-all, they are part of the antidote, and some would say a substantial part. Clarifying why a business exists and what it does for people is a top leadership imperative. It is likely the one thing you can do that helps—even if just a little—with all the other problems.
We forget, at times, that we tell ourselves stories in order to live, and given that the world has gotten more complex, noisy, and shallow, we have to do this more at work. We owe it to ourselves and the people we work with, in person or virtually.
Call it employer brand, narrative, excellent internal communications. Make it come to life in a manifesto or in ways that make sense to your workforce. Enshrine it with values and more important real actions and behaviors in how you work and communicate. Invest in the symbols, rituals and habits that speak to meaning, or the meaning you want to share and achieve.
These are the steps you can take in culture that counter uncertainty, create shared mission, and give people something they can hold on to. When leaders see this need and act on it, and create spaces where others can act on it, they create cultures of storytelling. This opens a connection to meaning, and our litany of challenges receive a context that puts them more into perspective.
When we go the opposite way, we ascribe to people at work the same efficiency and speed that we get from AI tools and automation, and we at worse risk stealing humanity from jobs, careers, and our collective working days. At best, we neuter our ability to create a culture and brand that works well and that employees want to be a part of.
“How the hell can a person / Go to work in the morning / Then come home in the evening / And have nothing to say?”
(John Prine, Angel from Montgomery)
Without meaning at work, this lyric is more likely to be true. Without purpose, there is far less to say.
The mundane isn't much of a story. Leaders have the power to cultivate cultures of purpose, meaning, and fulfillment. By embedding these elements into the fabric of work, we can elevate the daily grind into something worth sharing and talking about.
This is not just a leadership imperative; it’s a human one. By meeting this need and the moment we live in, we give ourselves and our teams something real to hold on to.
References and Works Consulted
Jack Kramer Wood Racket, Dan Bern
“Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” by Robert Putnam
“Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World,” Tara Isabella Burton
“Angel from Montgomery,” John Prine
“The Value of Corporate Purpose”, Witold J. Henisz
"We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live", Joan Didion
Two posts that I’ve written that influenced this post: “AI and the Knowledge Economy,” and “Creating a New Work Culture”.
Originally published on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/something-hold-imperative-purpose-modern-workplace-kevin-mccann-vedse/
