Creating meaning is one of the most important things that a leader does. But what is “meaning”?
The most eloquent definition of meaning come in Viktor Frankel’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankel ties meaning to the internal purpose for which one lives. I use a much less philosophical definition to provide a framework that leaders can use on a daily basis.
From a leadership perspective, there are three ways to create meaning: impact and change, purpose and connection, and sense making.
Impact and change
The primary contribution a leader makes relative to meaning is creating meaningful results. Meaningful results are those that have significant and/or lasting impact. A leader’s primary focus should be on making a meaningful contribution to his or her organization and people.
Purpose and connection
Leaders creates meaningful results is through their people. Unfortunately, studies consistently show that a large percentage of the workforce is under-utilized and un-engaged. Leaders whose people understand the relationship between their work and the organization’s, the customer’s, or society’s success are more engaged. This notion is probably the closest to Frankel’s definition of meaning.
Sense making
Finally, leaders help their people make an impact through sense making. Leaders help people understand what is happening in their environment. Leaders combine data and facts with their own context and perspective to create meaning.
Leading through meaning
The following six questions will help you focus on creating meaning for your people and your organization.
- What is the business outcome I’m trying to achieve?
- What unique contribution do I make as a leader to that outcome?
- How do I create focus, purpose, and meaning for my people in their work?
- How do I help my people navigate the situation going on around them?
- Am I finding the knowledge that is lost in information and do I seek the wisdom that is lost in knowledge? [based on a quote by T. S. Eliot]
- How do I create a culture of people who seek meaning?
Do you have answers for each? Do you consistently make decisions and take actions based on those answers? If so, you are leading through the creation of meaning.
Brad, your last line in the post , ‘a culture of meaning’ – has a very subtle yet significant difference than ‘a culture of evidence’ – something that is bounced around a lot in our institution.
As you well know, culture of evidence, to some = data. This however is not information, at least until we frame a context for it. Meaning, however seems to come from a higher level, and is a little less cognitive. Am I approaching this correctly, or is there a different viewpoint that I should be taking?
Hey Chris,
I wasn’t sure what you meant by “meaning is a little less cognitive”.
I do think that there is a difference between a culture of meaning and a culture of evidence.
Here’s an example. When I worked at the hospital there was a huge debate over whether we should turn our semi-private rooms into private rooms.
The people who wanted to do this found evidence/data in our patient satisfacion survey. They found some obvious correlations: people in semi-private rooms rated us lower on respect for their privacy, attentiveness, etc. However, what was odd was that they also rated us lower on quality of food, cleanliness, and a bunch of other factors that you might not expect to be tied to whether you are sharing a room.
Thus this evidence became the argument for going to private rooms. The concern was that clearly being in a semi-private room created a negative effect that influenced satisfaction with every aspect of their stay.
Interestingly, they omitted (not sure if this was intentional or not) one item from the satisfaction survey – would they come back. This was the main question that the hospital used for its enterprise-wide goals.
Guess what – there was no difference practically or statistically. The people in semi-private rooms varied by about .05 (on a 100 point scale) than those in private rooms.
Further analysis showed that men in semi-pricate rooms actually rated us higher on that question.
So, the difference between evidence and meaning in mind mind was that evidence provided facts that supported a decision.
However, putting those facts into a broader context by seeing how they tied ot our priorities, our organizational goals, or even how they varied across our clients created meaning.
I jokingly said that instead of creating private rooms (which would be very expensive), that we should change policy and only admint men. That would have the greatest impact on satisfaction scores.
In reality, however, the real meaning that came from all of that had litle to do with semi-private veruses private. In my opinion, the true meaning was that women have very different experiences and perceptions of healthcare (which has been substantiated with evidence in other studies).
A practical response then would be to help our employees learn about the key dissatifiers for woman and respond to them.
Evidence is important. You shouldn’t create meaning based on fantasy. However, evidence that is not put in context is quite dangerous. There was plenty of evidence that suggested that financial companies were going to make incredible profits on the secondary, sub-prime loan market and they did for a while. If people would have approched it from a meaning perspective, they might have stepped back and asked, “Does it really make sense that we’ll be able to make a sustainable profit by doing this”
Chief: where are you? Why have you abandoned your flock? I am lost and starving in a blog desert. Please send your counsel immediately. Or a hotdog.