Page 270 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

to keep their founding meaning fresh and growing, invest it
with the energy and skill of established employees, and com-
municate it compellingly to new hires. And many companies
line up somewhere in between on all these dimensions.
In this final chapter we will review why meaning is a
crucial foundation for organization capability in all types of
businesses and how top leaders, human resource profession-
als, and employees can create—returning to our original
definition of abundant organizations—work settings in which
individuals coordinate their aspirations and actions to create
meaning for themselves, value for stakeholders, and hope for
humanity at large.

The Why of Meaning at Work

In either personal therapy or leadership coaching, we gener-
ally start with a “presenting problem.” In personal therapy
the presenting problem might be symptoms of depression or
anxiety, addiction, marital discord, or learning problems. For
business leaders, this presenting problem might be a business
challenge like loss of market or customer share, falling stock
price, the need for more revenues in emerging markets, low
customer service scores, technology changes in the industry,
loss of key talent, or the need to grow through new markets
or innovative products. To adequately address the presenting
problem, one must identify and resolve its underlying causes.
Treating only symptoms delivers only short-term gains that
do not become sustainable solutions.
We believe that the underlying cause of many present-
ing problems in business today is a deficit of meaning. Our
logic:

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