The Burden of Purpose

The design of the corporate structure in America has worked for so many years forcing employees to fit into a box, toil away for 40 years within the confines of that box, and then retire with a beautiful pension and solid social security to gallivant across the globe. Having worked in corporate america for the better part of a decade now, I can see the remnants of an old system still holding strong in the leadership of these organizations. For the younger generations, the facts are pensions are gone. Social Security is questionable. And most significantly, forget 40 years, it’s rare when I meet someone my age that has been at a job more than 5 years.

Why the lack of loyalty to corporations?

I commonly hear “Oh Millennials are just doing it for the money, blah blah blah.” You tell me a millennial that left a job they found purpose in just to “try something new.” Didn’t think so. The misconception is that we jump jobs for the money, but the reality is we already know we won’t have the lucrative retirements our pension positive parents scored. We’ve come to terms with this. What we feed on is a purpose and a vision, not money. We are a purpose driven generation and need to feel that we are working towards a bigger goal and not just constantly be fed the corporate internal marketing frenzy of buzzwords and optimism. We see straight through it and we need more.

My job is to make awesome theme parks for families to create memories that will build generational nostalgia for millions. I do what I do because I love it but the other thing that Millennials have realized is that we can do something that makes the world a better place and get paid well while we do it. We’ve seen the world fall apart in front of us from the lens of the window in each of our pockets. By history’s standards, this pales in comparison to some of the destruction, deceit, economic recession, and senseless murder we’ve seen in past generations. However, now more than ever social media and citizen journalism has brought every bit of this to our fingertips. We’re saturated in the worlds worst events. We’ve never known more about what’s happening in society, and yet we know nothing with any depth. I believe the byproduct of this unlimited surface level knowledge is a void of purpose. For the generations glued to our phones, that creates a need to find purpose in other ways.

If they are up to the challenge, this puts the burden [and advantage] of purpose on corporations. If they want to maintain relevancy they need to create a work environment that retains quality industry talent through purpose driven roles - and purpose driven goals.

What does a company creating purpose for it’s employees look like? If we listen on both sides, we all get to create that purpose together and hopefully do more to impact the world for the better.