Do We Make Choices Really, Or Did Circumstances Get Us Here?
I have heard a lot of talk recently about the choices people make between meaning and money. At one end of the career spectrum the conversations have been from people waking up to the fact that they have not led the life they envisioned for themselves.And at the beginning of a career, with survival a paramount concern, the choice for many seems to be a luxury they cannot afford – it has to be money first.
This Is Not The Life I Envisioned
A recent example of this is not the life I envisioned was from a lunch meeting with an investment banker referred to me as someone who could use some coaching. He confessed that after 35 years in banking all he had to show for his life's work was money, and the experience he had wasted his life. "I could have stopped accumulating money 20 years ago and I'd have been just fine".He complained that somewhere along the way he was not making choices about what he wanted his life to be about, he was just reacting to day-to-day circumstances and was experiencing being adrift looking for some way to put meaning into his life.
What About Starting Out?
Starting out most young people are idealists, if resignation and disappointment hasn't gotten to them first, they want to change the world. A few are actually doing it. Hugh Evans and Simon Moss the founders of the Global Poverty Project, or Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise are just two of many inspiring examples. These activist/idealists attract lots of like minded supporters who make a conscious choice of a life of meaning over money. The myth that those working for social causes, and those who support them, live with is that you can't have both meaningful work and money. But that's a topic for another day.
In a recent article a friend of mine wrote, "I recently attended the Social Enterprise Alliance Regional Conference in Los Angeles, and I heard a lot of talk about young people and their growing desire to find meaningful and purposeful work. It was a theme that came up in many of the sessions I intended. Or at least it was something for which I was listening. When I asked Adlai Wertman, USC Marshall School of Business—Society and Business Lab, what percentage of students he thought were leaning in this direction, the answer was suddenly qualified. What happens, he explained, is that when corporate recruiters come on campus and begin offering large signing bonuses amidst the specter of $10,000s and perhaps $100,000s of student loans, a palpable reality emerges, and in that instance, finding work that is meaningful and purposeful becomes less of a defining quality." [Ron Schultz: Adjacent Opportunities: The Emergent Choice E:CO Issue Vol. 14 No. 3 2012]
So do young people, choose a career so as to pay for college and, in the US at least pursues the illusion of the American Dream, which is making a ton of money? I say, "illusion" simply based on the small percentage of people who actually make it.
And What About Mid-Career?
If I were to generalize from my experience of the thousands of executives I have worked with over the years, as colleagues when I was an executive myself, and as my clients as an executive coach, I would have to say the majority are working for money and status. Or more recently, money and the fear of losing the money source – their jobs.
Too few organizations are purpose-driven beyond making their numbers, and doing more of what they have always been doing, that is. Too few people, in my experience, see their work as forwarding some purpose, some mission, some set of principles or values. That is often the argument made for paying people high salaries – if it weren't for the money they would not want to do the work – "Would I sit in front of these screens all day in this pressure cooker environment if it weren't for the money? Are you kidding me!" was one traders response to my question about how he saw the purpose of his work.
Has The Financial Crisis Caused a Rethink About Money And Meaning?
A rethink about money and meaning? For some inevitably, especially those who have lost jobs, and in many cases their net worth too. But what about any signs of a more systemic shift in our relationship between money and meaning. Do we get any sign in the media that a shift is under way, or that our basic assumptions about money and worth/contribution/meaning is under way?
I don't see the possibility of a life with too much meaning – that sounds like bliss. But how much money is enough, beyond which it is too much? We seem to be fascinated with millionaires and billionaires, but why? Is accumulating money what our society values really, the only thing we value and acknowledge people for, really? Is the implicit message if you have not amassed a fortune then you have not had a meaningful life? Or is there an alternative narrative emerging?
I detect that inquiry is underway.
2 comments:
Very topical Peter. I know a lot of people whose primary motive wasn't money, but the
Challenge on creating something that solved complex problems which made a huge
difference in the Quality and Standard of Living, for example the staff at Bell Labs and
NASA.
The implied expectation for them perhaps was that they were respected for their
work and "decent" money followed. Somewhere along the line, money became a
driving and leading motive for ALL work (with the exception of perhaps non-profits) -
simply look at the R&D budget allocation trend in the last 25 years.
I think if we dig deep, we will be able to see how this happened and that this really was the
beginning of the end. If you looked at the composition of the companies that have stalled
in growth or are struggling continuously and did an analysis on the background and career
journey of the executives at these companies, you will see that most of them are Financial
types or are past engineers that have lost their sense of Production (and I don't include
financial engineering in that definition of Production.)
A neighbor of mine went thru months of executive coaching and Corporate-sponsored therapy
at a retreat as he was struggling to move up and didn't. What he shared with me was that
this therapy was making him look deep within.
Sure enough, a year later when he moved on to a different CXO job, he jumped right into the same
behavior and it was all MONEY.
Money corrupts.
Anonymous,
There has been a trend for at least the last 30 years to focus on returns to share owners as the main purpose/responsibility of business. A myth propagated by the Chicago School and bought into by stock holding executives and the investors they serve.
So we have designed organizations to incentivize executives to maximize returns to stockholders - which includes themselves. So making money became the implicit prime purpose of many executives/businesses.
In the process there has been a focus on cutting costs, so as to increase returns – R&D, marketing and many other cost centers were squeezed. Wages and salaries were squeezed at the same time demands for productivity increased.
Those making money seemed to lose focus on any other form of meaning for their work – it's all about the money stupid. Those being squeezed who begin to realize they are not going to get on the money train, begin to question the meaning of struggling for what? And have started looking for meaning elsewhere – usually outside of work.
But your friend's example is not unique. We have created a society in which how much money people make is the measure of their worth to society. So even those thrown out of work in the recession who decide to do something "meaningful" with their lives jump straight back in at the first chance – just like your friend.
But I am detecting a shift in that model. Maybe it is waking up to the myth of the American Dream. Did the 99% conversation play a part? Did the fact that many of us have woken up to the fact that "stuff" and debt didn't buy us the satisfying life we thought we were buying?
Whatever the genesis I see more people in the inquiry: money or meaning?
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