I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose—what gives us meaning lately. Sometimes purpose shows up in the hardest moments, like holding the hand of a loved one at the end of life. Other times, it’s as simple as answering a question at a cocktail party: “So, what do you do?”
In both moments, the answer isn’t really about the job. It’s about identity. It’s about why. When leaders help their teams connect to that deeper sense of purpose, they unlock something extraordinary.
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A Family Decision and a Reminder of Purpose
Two months ago, my younger brother passed away from cancer at age 37. My family gathered in a hospital room with his wife and five medical professionals to make a heartbreaking decision: whether to move from life support to hospice. After ninety painful minutes of discussion, we agreed it was time to let him go.
Afterward, one of the doctors said, “I wish every family was like yours—so thoughtful, so united. You cared for your brother so much, you made our job easier.”
Now – we had a WHY about our WHAT. Our Why was “How can this experience bring our family closer?” And that guided the way we pursued this decision “Should we continue life support or transition to hospice care?”
I thanked them, and then I added something more: “Think of the person who convinced you the medical profession was right for you. Whoever that was—a parent, a teacher, a mentor—please thank them for me and my family. Because they encouraged you to step into this work, you could guide us through this day.”
I watched as several of them wiped away tears. They already had purpose. I just helped make it personal in that moment.
We decided to transition my brother to hospice. He died 3 days later. And all of the tears we shared in that room brought my family closer, and I believe it brought the medical team closer together as well.
Purpose as Identity
One of my closest friends was recently in town, and we found ourselves talking about purpose. As Daniel Goleman points out in Working with Emotional Intelligence, midlife is often when people begin to question their purpose—sometimes even changing careers.
At a cocktail party, people answer “What do you do?” with things like, “I’m a Marine.” or “I’m a firefighter” or “I’m a painter.”
These are not just jobs. They are identities.
Push one step further and ask “Why?” The answers—“to save lives,” “to protect my community,” “to express beauty”—are statements of purpose.
As leaders, our job is to create a shared why for our teams. When personal purpose and team purpose align, people move in the same direction, and results can exceed anything we could imagine.
Shared Identity: Lessons from Pixar and NASA
Pixar models this brilliantly. On their first day, every employee—whether a director or a café barista—sits in the theater where films are screened. They’re told: “Whatever you used to do, you’re a filmmaker now. We need you to help make our films better.”
Even a barista at the Luxo Café is part of the filmmaking process. Their coffee fuels the creativity of directors like Pete Docter or Brad Bird—and their name shows up in the film credits. Pixar creates a powerful shared identity: we are all filmmakers. And they create an environment where every employee can see their participation in the film.
There’s a famous story about President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA. He asked a janitor mopping the floor what he was doing. The janitor replied, “I’m putting a man on the moon, sir.”
That’s purpose. That’s identity connected to something larger.
Bridges, Marines, and Google
I was recently driving across the Throgs Neck Bridge in New York, noticing the thousands of rivets, the suspension cables, the careful engineering. It took hundreds of people—engineers, electricians, steelworkers—all bound together by the same why: to connect the Bronx and Queens.
The Marine Corps frames its purpose in terms of honor, courage, and commitment. Their ethos connects every Marine to something larger than themselves.
Even Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, articulated a clear why: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That why has guided every decision, from building their search engine to acquiring YouTube which they turned into the second largest search engine in the world, second only to Google itsself.
When Purpose is Missing
But when purpose is absent, even the most talented teams falter. I once sat in a meeting with 12 brilliant leaders tasked with fixing a struggling engineering program. No leader was designated, no goals were written down, no why was defined.
We left that meeting with dozens of ideas, but no direction. Everyone ran in different directions. The team never transformed.
As Richard Hackman wrote in Leading Teams, a team must be a bounded, stable group of people interdependent on achieving a shared goal. Without boundaries, stability, or a written shared goal, the group was never truly a team.
The Power of a Written Charter
I pushed hard for a charter in that effort and was surprised at how much resistance I met. Yet history shows the importance of documenting a team’s purpose.
In 1945, Bell Labs initiated the research project that led to the transistor. Bill Gates once said that if he could go back to any day in history, it would be December 7, 1947—the day the transistor came to life. And it all started with a charter.
The project began with a written charter which I have found in their Archives as “Authorization for Work 38139”. It describes the following WHY statement:
“A unified approach to all of our solid-state problems offers great promise. Hence all of the research activity in the area of solids is now being consolidated in order to achieve the unified approach to the theoretical and experimental work of the solid state area.”
This is a little thick of us in the technology age who have the luxury to take the transistor for granted, but this gives the context for the WHAT, the research work they authorized.
Even at Amazon today, projects begin with a written press release and FAQ, forcing clarity on purpose and goals before development begins. They think they invented the idea of a Charter, but it preceeds them. You, too, can rediscover this simple concept in this blog, and bring to your workplace.
Purpose Scales from Big to Small
Whether it’s building a spy plane during the Cold War (story coming soon), developing the transistor at Bell Labs, or making movies at Pixar, the lesson is the same: purpose matters.
When individuals pursue their personal purpose while advancing the team’s shared purpose, something remarkable happens. Leaders don’t just capture minds; they capture hearts. And when hearts and minds align, there is no limit to what we can achieve.
Purpose is identity. As leaders, our work is to help people connect their personal why to the team’s shared why. When hearts and minds align, performance follows.
Articulate the WHY and help people find their purpose in what you do.
