PURPOSE, MEANING AND STORYTELLING
“Can you feel the love tonight? It is where we are; it’s enough for this wide-eyed wonderer that we got this far”. Can you feel the love tonight, Elton John.
Purpose has become a central topic in life of organizations. Having a clear and powerful purpose of what the company wants to do and become seems to be a crucial aspect to drive employees towards performance and success. Also, purpose is becoming more important for younger generations. A good work and salary are not enough; they want a purpose to give sense to their efforts and dreams.
When I talk with partners in law firms across Latin America about purpose or mission many of them seem a bit confused and uncomfortable. They know it is a nice thing to have but they find it hard to articulate something that makes sense. Most fall within common places of paramount values around ethics and justice, or a superb service to clients. It is difficult to relate in direct and tangible ways purpose or mission with the everyday life of the firm. It just becomes something written in a piece of paper.
When organizations seek to articulate a purpose that defines themselves in a genuine way, they are actually searching for meaning of what is happening in the company, and what they are trying to accomplish. Defining purpose is finding who you are and that is why it is difficult to do it right. Making sense of failures and successes; and understanding the underlying forces that push forward and create motivation and performance is a direct way to understand your purpose and identity. This is especially true with lawyers and law firms, where the autonomy and strength of the individual is so predominant. Finding a common purpose and identity for law firms is a gigantic endeavor. General expressions of values and goals might prove inadequate or insufficient to agglutinate all the autonomous minds of lawyers, unless they are tied to concrete experiences and values-in-action. We need to understand it through stories.
In his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”, Yuval Noah Harari explains it very well: “In almost all cases, when people ask about the meaning of life, they expect to be told a story. Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama. This role makes me part of something bigger than myself, and gives meaning to all my experiences and choices”.
During my years of managing partner I used to tell many stories to younger lawyers about the beginning of the firm, our struggles and success, days in which we felt we were going down and others in which it felt we had conquered the world. These stories were filled with details to give context and an appreciation of how it felt in those early days. We were searching for our purpose while working and that search continued when I told the stories to younger generations. It was in those stories that both the young lawyers and myself understood better what we were doing and who we were. It felt awesome to see their faces as they could relate their present roles and activities to those early times. We did in fact find a common purpose.
A skeptical view of lawyers could tell that the effort to find a common ground that could be defined as purpose is a fruitless pursuit, except to comply with the formality of having a declared firm’s purpose. Without denying it’s difficulty, I believe that the conversation about purpose and meaning is very relevant. As true as it is that lawyers put a high value on its autonomy and individual goals, it is also true that they need to feel part of the firm they belong to. Identification (which I mentioned in my last podcast) is a key ingredient of motivation and commitment. Lawyers who feel identified with their firms perform at higher standards and are more committed. But it is difficult to articulate a simple and common purpose that works as glue for a diverse group, especially when firms grow and different generations work under the same roof. The truth is that self is not a uniform and single face, but rather a combination of experiences and evolutions that shades in different colors and tunes. That combination turns into a story that works as a “raconto” of what the firm looks like. Understanding and sharing that “raconto” is a big part of what purpose and identity really mean.
We live in times of constant change and growing uncertainties. Mobility in law firms has become a normal feature of today’s market reality. Too many lawyers just look for exciting work and good money. Not finding purpose and meaning in being part of a firm beyond individual interests is preventing firms from offering the possibility of “being part of something bigger than myself” (Harari sic). Surprisingly, it is that very promise that kicks that additional gear that defines great teams and great firms. There are very few more thrilling experiences than achieving challenging goals together in a team. Each firm has the potential to accomplish that purpose and meaning, not by writing it in a paper but by sharing the stories behind that quest across generations and teams.
As many other things, it all comes down to leadership. It’s this urge to provide for the future of the firm that leaders should take as a vital responsibility sharing their stories about what the firm really means, not only in the glory but also when failure knocked the door. The beautiful lines of Elton John resonated in my mind when I wrote this piece. We will love our firms once we understand where we are and make others share that understanding. It is only then that leaders (the wide-eyed wanderers) will fulfil their duties and be happy that they got this far.
