Noble Purpose: It’s Your Personal North Star
Finding your noble purpose isn’t always easy. Many leaders have trouble finding it because they look for it externally rather than within themselves. And even when they look outside, they primarily focus on what connects them to the organization they work for rather than what binds them to humanity.
Many business smart leaders we know are strategic thinkers and excel at creating vision statements for their organizations. They often say something like this: “We will become the largest and most profitable company in our industry by 2020.” Yet such organizational vision statements are just nicely worded expressions of company goals; they don’t define the leader’s personal goals, let alone higher purpose. And they are often too closely identified with a leader’s personal vision statement.
Functional smart leaders, who are more oriented to tactical decision making, tend to believe that their main task is executing their organization’s strategy while others focus on vision and purpose. They believe in execution more than vision and do not feel a need to have lofty vision statements to guide their personal lives either. In our consulting work, when we ask such executives to define their purpose in life, they usually recite their organization’s vision statement.
Many business smart leaders confuse vision (what we want in our future) and purpose (why we do what we do). They also sometimes confuse purpose and noble purpose. Noble purpose, as we have defined it, is a purpose that transcends personal gain (and ego) and gives meaning and a path to happiness. For example, we worked with a software company executive whose purpose in life was to be rich and famous, so every action he took was about earning money or becoming known. It was only after he lost half his management team that he began to pay more attention to purpose that transcends his own needs and ego.
Money can’t buy happiness, as we all know. But smart leaders can make the mistake of believing that attaining material success is indeed the key to happiness. When you are in the blue zone, you construe physical comfort, pleasures, and material success as true well-being and in that zone, words like vision and purpose are too abstract and don’t make sense. And when you operate in the red zone, you can get caught up with your vision yet rarely ask questions about why you are attached to that vision and what purpose it would serve. When we are in the red zone, nothing ever makes us happy for long.
For Bill Gates, a quintessential business smart leader, satisfaction came when he switched from driving Microsoft to dominance in its industry to helping humanity through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And now he is going further in this direction with the Giving Pledge, a movement developed in partnership with Warren Buffett to encourage wealthy individuals to give 50 percent or more of their fortunes to philanthropy.11 In this way, Gates is continuing to connect deeply to his noble purpose and continuing to mature as a wise leader.
Leaders who struggle to integrate their noble purpose into all their actions have created what we call a compartmentalized noble purpose: they do community or volunteer work in their free time but engage in intensely competitive work during their weekdays. They are following a noble purpose in their spare time but not at work, where they spend most of their time. When you find your noble purpose, you must be prepared to live it because you cannot manage it in your spare time. A noble purpose manages you and shifts your priorities. If this isn’t the case, then you are not truly engaging with and embracing your noble purpose as the guiding principle of your life.
Recently we coached Jane, a successful former chief financial officer of a Silicon Valley company who asked us to help her identify her next career opportunity. Jane was regarded as a very smart leader and was financially secure. Within a few weeks of a job search, she was ready to pick one of three appealing job opportunities.
Our approach was to ask Jane to outline a five-year vision and then an even longer-term vision of her life, including a noble purpose. During that process, she shifted from focusing on what she wanted for her family to what she was seeking from her new employer, which was even more success. Then she began to move in another direction to consider what it might mean to take a more challenging job with little risk to one with a higher risk–to-reward ratio and a noble purpose. As the conversation focused on noble purpose, Jane realized that her ideal was not to serve the company or shareholders but to make a lasting difference to her community. She had experienced a big shift in her perspective and was thrilled to have found her noble purpose. In the end, however, Jane did not immediately pursue her noble purpose. She accepted a position with a large energy company and postponed her journey.
Jane carried her dissatisfaction to the new job and within three months was ready to move again. Although she had found her noble purpose, her red zone personality was not willing to give up the recognition and financial reward that goes with a job in a Fortune 100 company. She was aware of what would bring her happiness but was not convinced to act on it. (Chapter 3 focuses on maintaining the alignment between one’s perspective and one’s action orientation.)
Finding One’s Noble Purpose
We believe there are a number of ways to consciously and intentionally identify one’s noble purpose. The journey can start by learning to pay attention to the limits of perception. Allianz Global Investors, a global asset management company, operates a unique training center at its Munich headquarters, where senior managers from Allianz as well as client companies take part in leadership development programs facilitated by trainers with disabilities. Visually impaired trainers conduct workshops in total darkness—appropriately called Dialogue in the Dark—and hearing-impaired trainers facilitate workshops called Dialogue in Silence by communicating only through gesture.12
The goal of these experiential learning programs is to shift leaders’ perspective by making them aware of their own limitations and increase their empathy for others. For instance, in total darkness, the sudden withdrawal of eyesight challenges these leaders to rely on other senses. In this new context, blind people become the “sighted” ones and can demonstrate their capabilities better than the sighted participants. This role reversal fosters reflection, confers a sense of humility, and increases empathy. In this dark environment, managers are given team-building exercises, like assembling a railway track of single pieces in total darkness, that force them to adapt quickly and learn to communicate and cooperate effectively with other participants in order to complete the exercise.
Such emotionally challenging experience provides managers with a potent tool to reflect on their own limits and respect for others, while reinforcing a collaborative mind-set and cultivating emotional intelligence. Most important, a new sense of vulnerability helps cultivate humility and a willingness to “receive,” the first steps toward overcoming self-centeredness and finding a higher purpose. Managers who have attended Allianz’s workshops report that these sessions have helped improve their leadership skills by increasing their capacity to adapt to and learn from adversity, communicate more effectively, and cultivate empathy and openness toward colleagues.13
Another technique for connecting with one’s noble purpose is coaching, of the sort we did with an employee named Michelle Kelley at Airco, an aerospace company (we have changed its name here). Kelley was helping to design and implement employee development programs at the company. When we first met her, she had just joined her department and needed to select a project that would maximize her contribution. She knew that technical employees at Airco needed more risk-taking ability if Airco was to keep its creative edge in the marketplace, but she didn’t know how to go about helping the organization take risks.
While talking with us, Kelley described the need for more innovation at Airco, which led to an invitation for us to speak with the technical staff. We urged them to move outside their comfort zone, take risks, and tap into their own creativity. Participants responded to our call, and each of them identified a project that they would work on for the next three months. As she listened to us, Kelley identified her own noble purpose: to ignite the genius within others by fostering innovation at Airco.
She took the risk herself, even though she did not know yet how to go about developing an action project designed to make Airco’s technical workforce more innovative. “My vision was to have at least 5 percent of the technical workforce think outside the box in five years and influence our products and services at Airco,” she told us. We ended up working with her closely for the next three years, and soon she was on her way to realizing her vision, with about 3.5 percent of the technical workforce of some seventeen thousand people in the program. For her, coaching and mentoring helped her remove her remaining mental blocks and became the pathway to live her noble purpose.
Gaining clarity and awareness of one’s noble purpose in life is only the first step. We then need to act on the self-awareness we’ve achieved: wise leadership is grounded in action. Unless we act, the moral courage that accompanies our noble purpose will quickly dissipate, and the insights fade as we slide back into our old comfort zone. Once we revert to habitual mental patterns, tunnel vision and risk aversion tend to take over for some functional smart leaders, and overconfidence and impatience tend to take over business smart leaders. Both types of leaders have difficulty taking the leap of faith required to fulfill our purpose in life.
Kelley acted on her North Star to bring a shift in her perspective and develop new capabilities to help others discover their own noble purpose. Action is critical for perspective to stay changed; otherwise, our autopilot responses will pull us back to the red or blue zone quickly.
Steven Milovich is currently a senior vice president of global human resources, talent, and workforce diversity for Disney ABC Television Group. When we worked with him, he was a rising star at Disney after having a very successful career in PepsiCo and other companies before. Milovich is a talented business smart leader who sees opportunities faster than others do and had big visions and goals for himself and the company. During our coaching engagement, he began to work on his North Star and discovered that it is about helping others become successful: his “destiny” is to be a kingmaker, not a king, and to do great work through others.
At first he had difficulty accepting what felt right to him, and he kept going on his path full speed with red filters. Along the way he developed the ability to reflect and spend time better understanding how he could be more effective and more centered. That allowed him to rethink his priorities. He said, “Fundamentally I needed to put some distance between me and my work without becoming disengaged. I had become preoccupied with my goals that were too narrowly set at the time. I needed to reframe my approach and the North Star I developed suddenly made perfect sense.”
Milovich started a meditation practice and daily exercise routine. Slowly things began to change, and that process accelerated as he focused on developing next-generation leaders. “My personal transformation over time helped me to bring about an organizational transformation” said Milovich. He worked on various projects, and some of them required persuading his company to make a multimillion-dollar investment in projects aimed at helping employees learn, grow, and develop on the job. It was effortless for him to direct his red zone smartness to make wise decisions for the company. Milovich was so inspired by the process that he now spends more of his time formally coaching executives to improve their personal and their organizations’ effectiveness. He also completed additional training as an executive coach and visualizes himself now serving as a full-time kingmaker no matter what role he is playing in the company.14
Finding Your North Star
For this exercise in finding your North Star, write down on sticky notes as many memorable moments from your life as you can think of. Identify them by looking back over your friendships and family, career, school, and leisure-time activities—and stick the note to a wall. Then step back and pay attention to feelings and emotions that the collage evokes. Look for patterns—familiar ones and ones you never picked up before. Ask yourself:
- What makes me come alive? Think of specific activities, people, places, behaviors, memories, books, music, or something else that energizes you and uplifts your spirit.
- What do I see in this collage that represents my authentic self? What, where, and when do I operate from my authentic self?
- What values, beliefs, and behaviors indicate I’m operating from my authentic self?
- If there were to be a noble purpose to my life, what would it be? Look for cues not just in explicit words but also in images, sounds, and music that may pop up.
- Where do I find joy and lose myself? What activities engage me completely without any external motivation or compensation?
- What do I need to unlearn and let go to be true to myself?
- What conditioned responses, autopilot behaviors, and past experiences get in the way of my discovering and consistently following my North Star (my noble purpose)?
Finding your North Star is an iterative process; you might have to go through three or more rounds of reflection and introspection before you find your deeper purpose. Whenever you feel you have identified your North Star, express it briefly in writing, in a phrase or sentence—for example: “Help young people in my city realize their full potential,” “Build inclusive and sustainable communities in Rwanda,” or “Develop 100 social entrepreneurs in my country in the next ten years.” Put this statement to the test by asking yourself three questions:
If the answer is no to any of the three questions, dig deeper. If you are satisfied with your answers, explore whether your values, decisions, and actions are all aligned with your North Star (chapters 3 and 4 will show you how to keep your actions and decisions centered on your North Star).
Noble Purpose in Action: Dr. V’s Story
Govindappa Venkataswamy, an ophthalmologist known as Dr. V, acted on his noble purpose by creating an institution that has brought a revolutionary new approach to eye care in India and other countries. In 1976, after his retirement from government service, Dr. V started the Aravind Eye Care System. He didn’t have a real business plan or much money or resources, except for the equity in his family home in Madurai, India. But he did have an innovative idea for how to enact his noble purpose: to provide high-quality eye care for all and eliminate curable blindness.
To tackle the problem in a country like India, Dr. V knew he had to develop highly efficient, scalable, repeatable processes to treat eye diseases on a massive scale. So he studied McDonald’s and its model of fast food service at low prices. “If McDonald’s can do it for hamburgers, why can’t we do it for eye care?” he is quoted as saying in Infinite Vision, a book that delves into the Aravind story.15 This perspective shift resulted in a process by which Aravind surgeons undertake more than five times the number of cataract surgeries annually than are done by the average Indian eye surgeon (and ten times the U.S. average). Eye care services are broken down into a series of discrete processes that organize patients in operating rooms so that nurses and doctors can quickly move the operating microscope from one patient to another and effortlessly start a surgery (nurses help in surgeries wherever doctors are not essential and are huge contributors to the efficiency of the system).16 Aravind runs all its hospitals with remarkable discipline and standardized processes, just like McDonald’s does.
Aravind has grown dramatically and continues to flourish and stay true to its mission six years after Dr. V’s passing. In 2012 around 2.7 million patients were treated, making it the largest eye care provider in the world. Most of these patients were treated for free or at steeply subsidized rates: the financial model is built around the idea that those who can pay subsidize those who cannot (for each paying patient, Aravind takes care of one and a half nonpaying patients). Aravind is a nonprofit hospital but does not apply for grant money or donations as many other nonprofits do; it supports its own growth based on the services it provides and the income it generates.
According to Pavithra Mehta and Thulasiraj Ravilla, close relatives of Dr. V and executives of Aravind, Dr. V’s commitment to spiritual practice, based on the principles of Aurobindo Ghose, an Indian philosopher, yogi, and poet of the early twentieth century, led him to develop his noble purpose. His spiritual practice included daily readings of Aurobindo’s works and introspection (using journal writing as a reflective practice) and the compassionate practice of offering his services selflessly to others whether they could pay or not.17
Although he was driven by a noble purpose, Dr. V was not just a thinker: he was oriented toward action and was pragmatic in his actions. He started small and enrolled many of his relatives and friends to join and support the cause. Once he started acting on his broader perspective, the opportunities for expanding Aravind were limitless. He set bold targets for himself and always encouraged the staff to exceed them. For example, when intraocular lenses (IOLs), an artificial lens used in cataract treatment, were introduced in the West in the early 1980s, many health professionals regarded these devices as a luxury. Dr. V thought otherwise. Recognizing the value of IOLs, he encouraged his nephew Balakrishnan, who was living in Michigan at the time, to return home in the 1980s to start manufacturing them in India (this was long before India had become a mecca for outsourcing). Dr. V’s nephew set up Aurolab, Aravind Eye Care System’s manufacturing unit, to mass-produce high-quality IOLs priced at $10 (in 1992), a fraction of their $150 cost in Western countries. Today Aurolab accounts for 7 percent of global IOL implants.
Dr. V was relentless in his efforts to influence others and bring the best out of them. He inspired confidence in others, like Balakrishnan, a mechanical engineer who did not have any knowledge of or interest in eye care but was convinced by Dr. V to return to India to create Aurolab. Dr. V also focused on what works for others while serving his noble purpose. He paid attention to the context he was in and tried to shape the solution to fit the problem. When patients refused free eye care, he wanted to know why, and then he systematically addressed whatever issues were necessary to make eye care available, whether it was transportation or accommodations.
Dr. V consistently acted and led with wisdom and was guided by a noble purpose—with which he worked daily to maintain contact. His purpose gave him both inspiring and concrete work to do each day (“provide high-quality eye care for all”) and a goal that would never let him be complacent (“eliminate curable blindness”). He constantly expanded his worldview and was open to learning from everybody he met along the way. As a result, he created one of the most highly efficient health care systems in the world and reduced the number of people suffering from blindness and eye diseases.
Reflecting on the remarkable journey of Dr. V, we see that discovering a noble purpose is the first step, and acting on it constantly to move steadily into wise leadership is the second. Finally, Dr. V went one step further by establishing an institutionalized structure and framework for his noble purpose. This is how you can create a legacy or purpose that can thrive beyond your leadership.
According to Kris Gopalakrishnan, cofounder and co-executive chairman of Infosys, a global information technology consultancy, shifting one’s perspective cannot stop with finding one’s North Star or pursuing it independent of one’s core work. Rather, Gopalakrishnan believes that corporate leaders need to emulate Dr. V by finding ways to integrate their noble purpose into their core business as part of their wise leadership journey. As he points out, “Many corporate leaders strive to serve a larger social purpose through their company’s corporate social responsibility initiative, and yet their core for-profit business continues to focus on maximizing shareholder value. Rather than viewing these activities as separate, leaders should ask themselves: ‘How can we combine social consciousness and business performance? How do we redefine the key performance indicators for business to shift its focus beyond shareholder value and serve a larger purpose?’ ”18