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court dimon: allright, everybody. thank you for coming. i want to welcome you to thisauthors@google presentation with our guestaaron hurst today. my name is courtdimon, and i'm very proud to welcomeaaron to google today to talk about his new book,"the purpose economy." i had the pleasure ofmeeting aaron in 2005, when i joined thetaproot foundation,
which, aaron, i believeyou started in 2001. and for those ofyou who don't know, the taproot foundationis a wonderful nonprofit organization that reallywas at the vanguard, and continues to be a leader,in the pro bono service market. and if you're interestedin volunteering for things beyondgeneral cleanup or supporting soup kitchensand things of that like and you want to donate yourprofessional experience,
i highly recommend you checkout the taproot foundation, their site,taprootfoundation.org. but when i met aaronin 2005, it was sort of an electrical moment. you meet him, and you justsense this high level of energy from aaron. he's incredibly bright, verywarm, and very friendly. but the thing that stoodout the most for me was that aaron isa frenetic thinker.
and i mean that in allsenses of the word frenetic. it's rapid fire. you get into aconversation with him. and the topics seem to veerleft, right, and center. they touch on all sortsof different things. and you're kind of leftreeling for a moment, wondering where ishe going with this, how is he getting from pointa, to b, to c, to d, so fast. and what i endedup finding out was,
you know, an hour, or aday, or a week later, he'd come back to you and have aconversation about that topic, or he'd give apresentation on something. and what you'drealize is that he was busy connectingall of these dots. he was making connections,and dissecting relationships, and rebuilding relationships. and he'd come at you with thisvery clear, on-point, concise presentation of an expositionon what you were talking about.
and it was just amazing. it's amazing to see. and it's that attributeof aaron's that allowed him to foresee thepro bono service market and kind of lay the foundationfor that with the taproot foundation. and again, he's done somethingamazing, using that skill set, by dissecting the differencebetween cause and purpose as well as identifyingthat we're now
entering this new economicstage-- the fourth economy stage, if we could call it thatafter the information economy-- one that's driven by purpose. and what he's here to talk abouttoday is the purpose economy, how he came to this realizationand what it means for us, and how we, asindividual googlers, and together as google,can participate and help drive this newpurposeful economy. so give it up for mr. aaronhurst and "the purpose
economy." [applause] aaron hurst: thank you, court. and thanks, cliff, forputting this together. i'm going to goback and forth here. but it's great to beback in this room. i think i was here maybe fiveyears ago talking about taproot and excited to be heretalking about my new book and new venture, imperative.
but before i begin, i wantto explain a little bit about the backgroundof writing this book. because i think it speaksto what you just mentioned, which is, i wrote thisbook in a couple months and was about to publishit and then decided, you know what, i don'tlike this book enough. because it's toomuch of my book. i want to be in our book. and i got the publisher toagree to print 2,000 copies
and send them to 2,000people in my network. on every page, imarked it up, saying, like, do you havea better example, do you have any otherdata, et cetera, and sent it out all aroundthe world-- in china, india, all around theworld-- to friends and got back just, like,reams and reams of feedback. and the book that you see todayis actually only about 20% the book that wasbased on my thinking.
80% of it came fromgetting all of this input from people around the world. but one of thepieces of feedback, which i was reallychallenging, was, one guy said, why are youwriting a book no one reads? and i struggled withwhat to do about that. and it's like developing acar for people who don't drive or a phone for people whodon't talk, et cetera. and the solution camein hiring a cartoonist.
you'll see, in the book,before each section, there's a cartoon the laysout sort of the summary. so you don't actuallyhave to read the book. because i wanted to berealistic about the fact that most people don't read. apparently, thebusiness books, only 20% of those even purchasedever get read. so hopefully, at a minimum,you can read the cartoons. and that's me as a cartoon.
you'll notice one thingthat's anatomically incorrect. can anybody guess what it is? seth? seth: fingers. aaron hurst: fingers. i actually onlyhave two fingers. and there, you'llsee, i have four. audience: [inaudible]. aaron hurst: so court wassaying, i spent a lot of time
over the last fiveyears trying to look at different patterns,different relationships, different trends, differentinnovations, to try to figure out what was goingon overall in our economy, as i saw taproot taking off andsaw so much change happening, from even five or10 years ago, when i used to work insilicon valley, and trying to understand whatwas the fundamental underlying trend of what we saw.
and i came across myuncle's 1978 dissertation when he was aneconomist at stanford and coined the term"information economy." and he had thisnine-volume dissertation, which i honestly havenot read, because i think you have togo to dc and find it in the library of congressto actually read it. but i was lucky enoughto find a synopsis of it. and it was reallyinteresting to see
what he had started to seehappening 50 years ago, which was a fundamentalevolution in our economy. and the best way to understandis to go back to biology. and you think about how westarted off as apes, right? is there anyone herewho disagrees with that? ok, so you got one. what was it, guy? we started off as dolphins, or-- audience: god made us.
aaron hurst: god made us. there it is. so god made us, or westarted off as apes. and over millions of years, weevolved from apes to humans. it took millions andmillions of years. but one thing that defineswho we are as humans is we're impatient bastards, right? we're incredibly impatient. we're never going towait for anything.
and as part ofthat, we were really frustrated by howslow evolution works. we didn't want to wait another20 million years to evolve. we wanted to take sort of ourown destiny into our own hands. and we started withthe agrarian economy, using the land, animals, toincrease our life expectancy, increase our quality of life. but again, we grew impatient. and after a fewthousand years, we
created the industrialeconomy, where we started learning how tobe stronger than evolution would have everallowed us to be. we started to beable to manipulate large amounts ofrock and machines, to become incredibly strong. but that wasn'tgood enough, either. and what my uncle saw was thestart of another era, where we said, we want tohack evolution again.
we want to hack it tobecome smarter and be able to access andmanipulate more information, to have relationshipswith more people, to be able to accesscontent from more places. and the information economyarose in the late '60s, to become the dominant driverof the american gross domestic product. so we've had this evolutionthat took millions of years. and then we got better at it.
and we started takingjust thousands of years, hundreds of years, andthen more recently, well less than 100 years. if you take nothingelse away from today, and you think nothing isay makes any sense to you, the one thing i'd reallychallenge you with is a question, which is,is information economy the last stop in our processof hacking evolution? are we done?
if you look at the trendhere, it's very unlikely. it is very likelythat we're done. it's more likelythat there is going to be a fourth,fifth, sixth, seventh. we will continue to evolve, andto hack evolution, and to make it better meet ourneeds as human beings. and it's likely gettingshorter and shorter. just like with moore'slaw around computing, we're finding thateach of these eras
is getting shorter and shorter. and if you look atthat on a trend line, it basically means, inthe next 10 to 20 years, we're likely to seeanother economy become the dominant economy, notthe information economy. are any of youentrepreneurs or consider yourselves entrepreneurial? so a few of you. so i think, as anentrepreneur, it's
one of the most excitingquestions, which is-- we've seen so muchdisruption in the last 50 years. in the last 50 years, we'veseen almost everything change. we are probably 10to 20 years away from another change of thatorder of magnitude happening, and we don't yet havea clear path on it. and it's an opportunity forthe next set of entrepreneurs to really remakeevery industry, based
on whatever thisnext economy is. so i think it's justan important thing to wrap your mindaround-- is there going to be another economy? and, if so, based on whatyou see in the world, what do you think it's going to be? as i looked around and triedto understand the changes i saw happening all around theworld-- as i traveled in china, traveled in europe, throughoutthe us, south america-- what
was going on? what were the little signs ofevolution that were happening? not just rare,one-off anomalies, but where did you seereal trends happening? and the best way i could cometo explain this in a clear way was going back to psychology 101and maslow's hierarchy of needs and looking at the fact that,over time, what we've basically been doing is trying tohack each of these levels to become able to be sortof masters of our domain,
where we first really focusedon biological and physiological needs. and we started moving upto safety needs, et cetera. and as we moved upthis, we actually started focusingon the next one. and as we look at themillennial generation, and you look at what drivesthe millennial generation, millennials aroundthe world-- and this is not true of everysocial economic class
but those that are really atthe forefront of innovation-- they're no longer scaredof where is my next bed, where is my next meal,how am i going to survive. the fear is, am i going tohave a life that matters? am i going to havea life with meaning? does my work matter? it's a fundamentalfear of not mattering, of not having made an impact. this is the thing that we'rehearing over and over again.
and we're seeing innovationaround people wanting and being scared of a lifewithout meaning. and it's changing labor. it's changing products. it's changing retail. this fundamental desire tohave a life that matters is a thing that isdefining this generation. so that, along with alot of other variables which i won't bore you with, hasreally led me to the conclusion
that this next economy,this fourth economy, is going to be one drivenby man's quest for purpose. now that we've hacked and becomefaster, stronger, and smarter, we're now hacking evolutionto become human beings again and to bring meaningand human nature back to who we are and hacking allof these great tools we've built so that they can actuallyimprove our quality of life on a much more meaningful level. so, as court said, i foundedthe taproot foundation in 2001,
with the goal of making surethat every nonprofit has access to the marketing,technology, hr, strategy support theyneed to be successful. because i had workedin the nonprofit sector and knew that theseorganizations, without those resources,are not set up for success. and so many corporatevolunteer programs were not focused on meetingthem with what they needed. they were just doing thethings that were easy,
not the stuff thatactually made an impact. and over 12 years, we scaled theorganization around the world, working with dozens ofcompanies and really focusing on buildinga marketplace for this new form ofphilanthropy, parallel to cash, a marketplace for pro bonoservices, for human capital, to meet these core needs. i mean, imagine googleif you had no technology, hr, or marketingdepartment, right?
it would be prettyhard to survive. we built this out to the pointwhere, when i left taproot, it was a $15 billionmarketplace for pro bono services around the us, andthen global markets around it, from schools, tocompanies, et cetera. but ultimately, i leftbecause of exactly what you mentioned earlier. i started seeing a bigger trendemerging, and a more important one, which was,that when we talked
to people who didpro bono work, this is consistently what we heard. i find pro bono workso much more rewarding than my paycheck job. and at first, we were,like, hot damn, we did it. ha! we created disneyland for work. we created the ultimate,funnest, awesomest, most rewarding formof work there is.
but then we took a step back andrealized we had done just that. we had created a disneyland. we had created a place that yougo and have an amazing time, but when you come back, it'snot even anything remotely close to disneyland and that,ultimately, the question is not how to create disneyland. it's how do you make surewhat you're doing 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a weekfundamentally feels more like pro bono work and meetsour needs as human beings.
we can't continue to takesupplements to make up for work that no longermeets the needs that we have as human beings. so my new goal,of my new company, is no longer howdo we make pro bono accessible to every nonprofit. it's a much scarier goal,which is much more exciting, which is, how do we make allwork feel like pro bono work? how can we radicallyredesign work
so that all work feelslike pro bono work? so this sort of raisesthe question, overall, of, like, what is purpose? what is meaning? and does anyone have an answer? what is the meaningof life, anyone? audience: [inaudible] 42? aaron hurst: 42. that's the answer igot from, i think,
it was actually someonefrom google in dublin a couple weeks ago. so clearly, "thehitchhiker's guide" is doing well inthe google culture. so this is a tough question. and if you lookthroughout history, back in the day,when i was a caveman, we used to stay up late atnight, looking at the stars, wondering what themeaning of life was.
i was raised buddhist. and it's one ofmany religions that spends its time contemplatingwhat is the meaning of life, why are we here,what are we doing. the great philosophersspent most of their time wonderingwhat is the meaning of life. and today, talk showhosts, like oprah, spend a lot of time ponderingwhat is the meaning of life. and i have great news foryou, which is i have no clue.
that is not what i'mtalking about today. what i am going to share withyou is that, in the last 5 to 10 years, scientistshave been able to determine, to a large degree, what is itthat actually defines meaning and purpose whenit comes to work. not the rest of your life, butat least when it comes to work, what drives purpose,what drives meaning. and it's been amazing. and it's basically aset of researchers,
from penn, theuniversity of michigan, and yale, have been behindincredible breakthroughs in this work. i mean, i think of itas like when we first were able tocommercialize the internet and what that enabledin terms of change in the economy andchange in society. this new research isjust as break-through in my mind in terms of enablingus to understand finally
what actually generatespurpose at work. and i'm going toshare with you some of those highlights,because i think that's really criticalto the future. and as court said, ithink the first thing i struggled with was that ihad been practicing malpractice for about 12 years andgiving terrible advice to professionals all around theworld about how to find purpose and meaning at work.
and it wasn't until i saw theresearch that i was, like, uh, duh, i totallymissed the point here. and it was really,really profound for me and i want to share with you,before i define what generates purpose, to helpyou understand some of these myths about purposethat i had been holding and had been giving as badadvice for about a decade. the most important is the myththat purpose and cause are the same thing or thatthey are even connected.
like when a 22-year-oldcomes to me and says, i want more meaningin my work, but i can't figure outwhat my cause is. is it kittens? is it dogs? is it health care? is it wells in africa? like, i haven't been ableto find out my cause. and we tend tothink that cause is
the thing we need to havea career rich in purpose. this is incredibly prevalent. and the reality is,much like this lady from the upper eastside in new york, many people have many causesin their lives and no purpose. does anybody know anybodywho has a lot of causes, like they go onfacebook or linkedin, and they check offall of their causes, but they don't reallyhave any purpose?
anyone? some nods? a couple. but similarly, doyou guys know anybody who has tremendouspurpose in their work but doesn't have a singlecause that you could name? these things are not connected. and we can't continue to relyon causes as the way in which we connect with people of purpose.
and as i've talked toexecutives at large companies around the world,i think they're starting to realize thatcause marketing, like all of these thingswe've been doing, aren't actually addressingwhat the core need is. and they tend to be fads. they tend to come and go. people can findpurpose in many causes. and having worked withthe nonprofit sector,
many people at largenonprofits actually do pro bono work atsmall nonprofits, because they don't findany purpose working at a large nonprofit. it's really fascinatingthat nonprofits don't generate necessarily anymore purpose than a company. it's a completemisunderstanding of the nature of how purpose works. the other two myths are thatpurpose is a revelation.
and this one soundsridiculous at first. but i'm guessingmost of you have this myth in your head,which is that purpose is going to find you. you're going to open up "thenew york times sunday magazine" and read an articleand find purpose, or that you're goingto go to africa and see someonestruggling and be, like, i have foundmy purpose, right?
it's amazing how much we thinkpurpose is something that happens to us and comesto us by revelation. i was at oxford acouple weeks ago, talking to a bunchof graduate students. it was a wonderful discussion. i shared this research. and they all lookedincredibly depressed. and i thought, ok, what'sgoing on here, guys? this was people fromall around the world.
and they said, withoutexception, every one of them had gone to graduateschool, because they thought they would have arevelation about purpose and that they would graduatewith a revelation about what their purpose intheir career was. and they had sort ofcome to the realization through this, that,wow, like, i'm probably not going tograduate with a revelation. and i think somany of us are sort
of waiting for that revelation,instead of realizing purpose is within us and thatwe have to make purpose. we have to createit in our lives, not wait for it to happen tous, not go $150,000 in debt to get an mba that wethink will give us purpose, when, in fact, it's not howwe're going to find purpose. and the third myth isthat purpose is a luxury. we tend to thinkthat purpose is only for those who can afford it.
it's only once you haveearned enough money or if you have acertain level privilege or you're middle-class thatyou're allowed to have purpose. and this myth is most commonamong middle and upper-class folks, because theyproject onto people who are of lessereconomic status and say, how could youpossibly have purpose if you're poor, right? and it's not meantto be patronizing.
it's not meant to be insulting. but it's a lackof understanding. i would argue, often thepeople with the least means have the most purpose. most of the senior execsi know have less purpose than the folks who are at theentry level in most companies. i had the mostpurpose in my career when i was probably22, when i was actually able to have authenticrelationships,
do coding myself, dothings that actually created a sense of progress. and it's interesting. we were over atlinkedin, and we were talking to them the other day. and they were saying how oneof their most senior folks just demoted himself threelevels, because he was, like, i get so much more purposefrom working as a manager than i did as a vp.
and if you think aboutuniversities, among academics, it's considered a demotionto make dean, right? like, everyone fightsto not be the dean. and yet, incompanies, everyone's fighting to be the dean andnot realizing, actually, it's much better to be theprofessor than to be the dean. we tend to move ourselves outof purpose and into these higher roles that are much harderto generate purpose in. the best, i think, example ofthe fact that purpose is not
a luxury is viktor frankl. how many of youknow viktor frankl? so he's one of the most sort offamous writers about meaning. and he found thatit was purpose that enabled him to survive being aslave in a concentration camp during world war ii. it was finding purposeevery day as a slave. so i tend to think, unlessyour work environment is worse than being a slave ina concentration camp,
there is really no excuse. it's really on you, ifhe was able to do that. and it really points to the factyou don't have to have a yacht, you don't have tohave a private plane, you don't evenhave to own a home to have purpose in your work. so the next questioni looked at, sort of coming frommy taproom lens, trying to get my head aroundwhat is purpose actually,
were these two scenarios. these are two women whohave the exact same job. and the cartoonist added a cat. i'm not sure why. but even the cat is muchhappier in the second picture. so one is miserableand has no purpose. the other one hastremendous purpose. but they're doingthe exact same job. it doesn't make any sense.
it shouldn't be possiblethat two people, in the exact same job, oneexperiences tremendous purpose, the other one doesn't. what's going on here? the second one is my man, dr.pickle, who is in brooklyn. he's a local pickle merchant. he makes pickles,and he sells pickles, and he smells like pickles. this guy's job sucks, right?
and he has so muchpurpose and is so happy. so my question was,what's wrong with him? how can this guy havepurpose and be happy, probably making not that muchmoney, smelling like vinegar and hawking picklesall day, right? again, what's going on here? what do we actually understandabout the science of purpose? this guy doesn't work at google. like, how could hebe happy, right?
the research reallyshows that there are three wayspeople look at work. and this is animportant distinction i want to make sure is clear. and it's not like every day. it has to do with if somewhatinterviewed you and said, what is the purposeof work itself? people tend to fall intoone of three categories around how they have a mentalconstruct in their head,
that they carry usuallythroughout their entire lives about what the rule of workis, that largely comes out of their childhood andadolescence when it's formed. the first is job. i work so that i can afford tohave a life outside of work. it's a necessary evil. these people tendto be coin-operated. they tend to be people whowork as a necessary evil. they just do it for the money.
it's an ability togenerate resources. and that's the contract. what is work for? it pays the bills. the second one is career. these people tie work to ego. they tie it to their identity. like, when they go back totheir high school reunion, they want to be able tosay, i worked at google,
i am a doctor, i amwhatever it is, and know that they'll be thought of well. they want their mommy and daddyto be able to be proud of them. and that's the story. it's tied to identity. and the third is calling, whichare people who fundamentally see work as something thatadds value to the world. they see the act of workitself to be something of value and somethingof purpose and meaning.
it's sort of the easiestway to understand this. does that make sense? so what's fascinating aboutthis is, first of all, the researchers findthat those with a calling have higher satisfactionwith their lives and with their work. and in most regards,they're better employees. they're more loyal. they're more collaborative,dot, dot, dot.
so this is not necessarilylike diversity. oh, isn't it wonderful,we have some people here that were into jobs,some were into career, some were into calling. calling is a better placeto be as an individual and for a company to haveemployees of this mindset. what's fascinatingis, in the research they've done so far, in theunited states, roughly a third of americans seetheir work as a job.
a third see it as a career. and a third see it as a calling. it breaks down roughly toa third, a third, a third. but what's more interestingis that it doesn't really matter what the job is. so for doctors, roughly a thirdof doctors see it as a job. it's really good, regular pay. it pays well. it's stable.
like, i know i'm going tobe set for life by just being able to be a doctor. mommy and daddy are soproud that i'm a doctor. i'm going to go toa cocktail party. i'm a doctor. no one's going to belike, oh, sorry to hear that, such a failure. and they actually seethe act of medicine and doing the workas fundamental,
like adding valueto the world is the primary driverof what they do. but the same thing is trueof this guy depicted here, who is an executive assistant. a third of executiveassistants see work as a job, a third as a career, anda third as a calling. so it's fascinating,and it leads only to one strong conclusion,which is, purpose is a choice. if you can havethe exact same job,
like those twowomen with the cat, and have one that has tremendouspurpose and one who doesn't, the only conclusionyou can really draw is it's a choice, especiallyif it doesn't really depend what thecareer is, et cetera. and i guess an incrediblyimportant thing to understand as individuals. as we tend to externalizeour need for purpose, we tend to look forothers to give us
permission to have purpose,for others to hand us purpose, when, in fact, the onlyconclusion you can really draw is that it's up to you. that doesn't mean certain jobsaren't a better fit for you. it doesn't mean certainjobs don't give you more purpose than others. but at the end ofthe day, at the core is whether or not yousee work fundamentally as about adding value, andhow do you optimize that?
so what is purpose? purpose is relationships. it's about workingwith other people. you can generate purpose on yourown, but not for a long, right? purpose is something that we getfrom working with other people, interacting with otherpeople, serving other people. it's about doing somethinggreater than yourself. but that doesn'tmean it's a cause. you don't have to have a cause.
it could just behelping a friend. it could be helping a co-worker. it could be workingon a product that makes a few people'slives a little bit easier. it doesn't have to bethis grandiose vision. it's fundamentallyjust about doing something that'snot just about you. and the third is personalgrowth and challenge, right? we get purpose when wegrow, when we stretch,
when we lean into our fear. that is something thatgenerates purpose for us. these are the three thingsthat general purpose. and it is fascinating. we're doing this whole projectaround what's the next silicon valley? because silicon valley hasbeen the hub of the information economy, just like detroit wasfor the industrial economy. and as silicon valleypotentially becomes more
like detroit, anothersilicon valley will likely emergearound this new economy, if you look athistoric trending. so we have been goingaround the world helping cities thinkabout how can you become this hub ofthe new economy. and last week, wewere in dallas. and we went out and, on thestreet, just interviewed 200 random people--taxi drivers,
policemen, bankers,across the board-- and asked them, whenwas the last thing that you remember that yougot purpose in your lives around, right? and this was a warm-up exercisefor the people involved in this conference we did. and it was fascinating,just to hear, everything fit into thesethree categories yet again. and no matter what the diversitywas, what part of world
they came from, purposeis driven and created out of these three things. so how do you act on this? how do you, as an individual,build purpose into your work? but also, how do you, as acompany, organization manager, help others generate purpose? and i think this isan early-day science. this is like the web back wheni worked in technology in 1997, where it was just static images.
this was like the early days. but here is what weunderstand about how to generate purposefor yourself. all of the researchpoints to self-awareness as being the mostcritical first step. you need to understand whatgenerates purpose for you. because not everyone getspurpose from the same things. and that's why the firstthing we did at imperative, my company, was createthe first-ever purpose
diagnostic that, inabout 15 minutes, can help you determine whichof sort of 24 different purpose types you are, so you canstart to actually become more self-aware about what actuallygenerates purpose for you. because not everyone's the same. the second one isto craft your job around what gives you purpose. and i think google is oneof the great companies when it comes to this.
not to say it's perfect--it's never perfect-- but i think you guys areoften cited in this way. and i'll talk more about this. but we often thinkabout jobs like we do clothes, where you go andyou just buy stuff off the rack. you don't necessarily tailorit to actually fit you well. and i think the samething with jobs. we tend to take thejob description, but we don't tailorit to actually fit us.
we think of thejob description as, like, the final productinstead of the start of the conversation,that needs to be tailored to meet our ownindividual purpose needs to make that work. the third is to connectpersonal purpose to organizational purpose. so we're working right nowwith a large company that has 10,000 new employeesstarting in september.
and what we're doingwith them is making sure every employee, when theystart at that company, has an understanding of whatgenerates purpose for them but then also a translationof their personal purpose into the organization'spurpose, so they can understand how theyare generating purpose at that organization andconnect those dots, which is so critical to understandthe context in which you work. the fourth is to celebrateand connect around purpose.
most companies celebrate thejobs mentality and the career mentality, right? our company just made ourquarterly earnings report. we just got featured in"the new york times." like, these are the things thatare about ego and resources. they're not about purpose. cultures that actually celebratethe generation of purpose are much more likely to thenbuild a culture and support people around purpose.
we're also doing someincredible experimentation around the role of purposein social networks. and what we'vedone internally is we asked people on ourteam to identify someone in our database who has theexact same purpose type as them but has a job that they wouldnever want and thinks sucks. like, pick someone overthere who was doing something that you would never want to do. and shoot them anemail, and say, hey,
can we get together and talkabout what you do for a living? i'm really curiousto hear how you generate purpose in that job. and two thingsconsistently happen. the first is theybecome immediate bffs. they're, like, oh, my god. me, too. i totally love that, right? because they're ofthe same purpose type,
and they connect on a totallydifferent level than they do with other people. the second thingwe've heard almost always is, that soundslike such an awesome job. i would totallylove to do that job. this is a job thatthey decided and they picked because they thoughtit would suck, right? and the reason this is, is,one, our social networks today don't connect us basedon the things that matter.
they connect usaround universities. they connect is aroundjobs, gender, ethnicity. they don't connect us on whowe are as human beings, right? so social networks areincredibly shallow. the second thingis, we tend to get career advice fromthe wrong people. we get careeradvice from someone who is of a differentpurpose type, and they describewhat that job is
like for someone oftheir purpose type. they don't describe it fromthe perspective of someone who shares a purposetype and therefore looks at it through the same lens. so when we talk to our parents,coworkers, our parents' friends, someone wemeet at a conference, we're getting it throughthe filter of how they find purpose, not howyou find purpose. and therefore, it's incrediblymisleading data, right?
it's bad data. and this, we're finding, isan incredibly powerful way to change the way wedo social networking. so i want to talk a little bitabout this job crafting, which has been studied, again, bythose three universities. and i think it's reallyimportant in understanding how work needs to change. and work is going to change. i mean, by the end of thisdecade, 40% of the work force
is going to be freelancers, 40%. the average job tenurenow is two years. people are workingin portfolio careers. like, work isradically different than i knew it wheni came out of college and insanely radicallydifferent than my parents. job crafting, to me, is likethe most promising sort of wave approaching this. and i mentioned it earlier.
so i wanted to go through alittle bit of the case study and what the researchers saw. this is a hospital orderlyor cleaning person. does anyone know anyonewho is in that profession? not one. so i can make up completelies, and none of you will know any different. awesome. so this is one of the worstjobs out there for two reasons.
you're literallycleaning up shit, and you're treated like shit. so these peopleliterally are having to clean up after dead bodies,people who have just thrown up everywhere, people whohave, like, wounds. i mean, they'reliterally doing, like, fundamentally dirty work, right? secondly, nurses and doctors--and in reading this research, like, i came to tearsseveral times-- treat
these people worsethan any career i've ever heard, in terms oftreating them as subhuman-- and that language isliterally used-- treating them like furniture, disrespectingthem in so many different ways. and the next time you'reat a hospital, watch. you'll see how they're noteven thought of as human beings and how they're treatedaround the hospital. but again, a third of thesepeople roughly love their jobs and find them incrediblyfull of purpose.
so the questionbecame, what the hell was wrong with these people? how dare they like their jobs,given how awful they are, right? what were they doingto make this viable? and what was interestingwas, when the doctors and nurses weren't looking,they were singing to patients. they were dancing with patients. and many of them weretelling jokes, not
part of their job description. they were crafting itin a different way. they described their workas, as important as doctors and nurses. and if you askedthem, what's your job, they take care of patients. they don't see patients solelyas someone to clean up after. they actually saw it thatway, even though that was not and the most moving thing iread was, in a long-term care
facility, they actuallymove art around so that patients wouldn'thave to look at the same art. they frequently weredoing things, way more than doctors or nurses, to helppeople's family and friends connect with them and to helpprovide emotional support to them, because doctorsand nurses were too busy and didn't care. they were often like thefront-line social workers. they were the ones helping toprovide connections for folks.
they had made themselvesinto a vital part of the caringinstitution, not just someone who cleansup a mess, right? they had not changed their job. none of them stopped cleaning. none of them stoppeddoing their job. but they changed that 10%to 20% that fundamentally went from being a badjob into a great job, because they crafted it, theytailored it to their needs
and their need for purpose. they did this aroundthree things, the tasks that they actuallydid-- so it was not one of their tasks to sing. it was not in theirjob description. no one tested themwhen they took the job to see what jokes theycould tell-- relationships-- they changed fundamentally therelationship with a patient from someone who makes amess to someone i care for--
and they changed perception. their job was not just cleaning. their job was to bethe human being that's connecting with these patients,because doctors and nurses were most often not actinglike human beings, right? they had crafted the jobto make it rich in purpose. and again, if they cando this in a job that's that dirty andthat disrespected, again, there'svery little excuse
for how we can't, in anyjob we have in this room, figure out how we can do theequivalent of singing, dancing, and telling jokes, caring forfamilies, moving art around. there is so much more wecan do to optimize purpose. and i think this isthe key for managers-- it's the key for, like,the next generation of hr-- to try to help us alldo that 10% to 20% crafting to really make it ours,instead of just taking a job description asoff-the-rack clothing
that just kind of fits, right? i saw this happen somewherethat i would least expect it. i went into this company,cornerstone capital, in midtown in new york. and it's all people wearingblack suits, investment bankers. and i was, like,finally, i found a place where there's no chance thereis purpose in this place, right? there's no way, right?
and i walk in thedoor, and, like, you could literallyfeel waves of purpose coming out of the office. and i was, like, what thehell is going on here? this is not right. how dare there be purposein midtown, right? so i went and met with theceo, and i asked her, like, what's going on? your culture is insane.
it's so awesome. these folks are,like, so incredible. what is your secret recipe? and what i found out was,that, without technology, without academics,without anything, she had naturally,organically, created a culture of job crafting,of exactly what i had just described. and she did it in a reallysimple but profound way.
she asked people regularly,hey, how are you doing? how many of you askthat of other people? and how many of youactually mean it? so i'm one of those peoplewho usually doesn't. i'm usually, hey, what's up? it's like you'rejust in passing. hey, what's going on? they're like, hey,good to see you, right? she actually asks,and she really
wants to know the answer. and if someone says, oh i'mhaving a good day, she says, that's not good enough. you need to tell me whattoday made it a good day. what was that purpose moment? what was that moment thatmade it a good day, right? and she asks this over acouple weeks or a month. and she starts tosee patterns emerge. and based on that, shestarts to change their jobs.
she starts to find them projectsthat she knows would likely create those moments she saw. she crafts their jobs aroundwho they are as human beings, based on a process of jobcrafting in real time. and this is somethingthat we can all do for each other, right,just by asking each other, how was your day, and askingfor moments that matter to them, and helping them recognizemoments of purpose, and finding ways, when we comeacross our product, to say,
hey, that looks like a greatproject for this person, because i know these are thekind of things that are going to generate purpose for them. you don't have to be a ceo. you don't even haveto be the manager. you can do this forco-workers, by simply helping them become awareof what's generating purpose for them, and helpingpush them, and helping them get to accessthese other things.
from my point of view, andwhat i've seen and heard reinforced as i've traveledacross the world talking about this book andthe work at imperative, is that the purposeeconomy is coming. in the next 10 to20 years, we're likely to see a majorshift in every industry. and we're already seeing it inretail, finance, health care. we're seeing radical changesthat are all around humanizing industry again, bringingit back to purpose.
and there are reallytwo choices you have. you can bust out an umbrella,or you can bust out a surfboard. and if you bust outa surfboard, you have a much greater chance ofnot only surviving but also having a great timein the process. and that's my coremessage, which is, this change is happening. how can you anticipateit, grab your surfboard and enjoy it, andmake the most of it?
because i think it's going tobe an incredibly thrilling time. it's going to be a time ofgreat innovation and innovation that's fundamentally aboutour needs as human beings. you know, i thinkit's interesting, as google-- becauseyou guys are, you know, an 800-poundgorilla in the information economy right now--to think about, how does this companycontinue to thrive that way but, at the same time,prepare for the next economy
and not do whatdetroit did, which was assume that whatgot them there was going to be what keepsthem there, right? that was detroit's hubris. and the question is,will silicon valley have the same hubris ofthinking-- the information economy is the last stopon the train-- or will they fundamentally see whetheror not this is just one step and a need to constantlyevolve and not just
rest on what worked in the past. so with that, i want toopen it up for discussion. i also wanted to sharemy email address. it's really important tome to always be accessible. as you saw in writing mybook, all the work i do is done by a community. and i'm reallyexcited to have you guys as part of that community,helping me to identify, as court said, these differenttrends that are going on
and opportunitiesin this new economy so that we can really,together, build an economy that'sbuilt for human beings. so with that, ifthere's any questions, i would love to open it up. audience: so thepurpose diagnostic you mentioned, is thatavailable to the public, anyone can go on your site and take it? aaron hurst: yeah,yeah, it's a free tool
that we built on the websiteas sort of our first step in the building out of ourplatform, which is really going to be about helpingyou discover purpose and then connect to people,jobs, opportunities, projects that willgenerate a purpose for you based on who you are. audience: ok, great. that's terrific. aaron hurst: yeah.
so yeah, check it out. the price is right. [laughter] aaron hurst: yeah? audience: earlier you mentionedthe three different areas, whether it's calling orcareer, and you said something like it's kind of instilledearly on and how you're raised. do you have any besttactics to maybe fight against if you think youmight have been raised
one way or your parentswere kind of on one side but you feel like thecalling purpose is really what's going to elevatehow you do your daily work and everything? aaron hurst: yeah,there hasn't been a lot of research onhow to actually shift it once it's set inyour adolescence. so i think the firstthing i would say-- is anyone a parent inthis room, anyone aspiring
to be a parent at somepoint in their lives-- i think it's soimportant as a parent to understand what roleyou play in imprinting this on your kids, especiallyin their adolescence, around how do youmodel for them. it doesn't haveto be what you do, but it's what theyperceive, right? so even if you, deepdown, really are this job, but you recognize for your kidto be better to be calling,
see if you can trick them. they need to perceiveyou as thinking about work as somethingthat adds value and not practicing cominghome from work complaining about work and how awful itis, instead bringing home the questions and seeingwork as an integrated part of your life. so that's the mostimportant thing, is just to be parents whomodel this the right way.
i think if you haven'tbeen raised that way and you're trying tofigure out how do you change that, my sense ofit, from what i've read, is that the first step is youhave to let go of that story. because we each walkaround with stories that make our life workable. they're the things thathelp explain our behavior, explain the way the world works. and it's incredibly scaryto let go of those things,
because those arethe things that make us feel comfortableoperating in the world. so before you can builda new perspective, you have to, to somedegree, let go and tear down that old model. and that's a really hardand scary thing to do. and i think it'sprobably something that requires somethinglike a boot camp to get yourself tojust let go of that
and to feel like you're stillok naked without that story. and then starting tobecome self-aware-- and i think the bestpractice is just daily journaling of nothinglonger than a tweet, like just a sentence or two,of what was a moment today that brought you purpose--and starting to build self-awarenessabout the fact that purpose is inyour job already. it's all around you.
but you have to build up anappreciation, a consciousness of it and not just takethat all for granted. we had someone take thispurpose diagnostic on our site. and he emailed us and said,shit, i just quit my job. and i just realized, bytaking this diagnostic, i shouldn't have quit my job. i was getting so muchpurpose, but i was taking it for granted and just assumedyou could get that in any job. and i realize now how much ilove the people i worked with,
how i was doing somethinggreater than myself, and how much opportunityi had for growth. but it just sort of was always,like, the grass was always greener. so it's so importantjust to take stock of what you already have. audience: so itsounds really great, if the purposeeconomy is coming. but why do you have such arosy forecast for the future?
because i think,you know, there's plenty of kind of cynicism anddehumanization in the world and in all of thefuture forecasts. audience: so why areyou so optimistic that that will change? aaron hurst: i'm an optimist. so i'll start with that. like, if this was aa, i'dbe, like, my name is aaron, and i'm an optimist.
i have found that, first ofall, optimism tends to breed results, whereaspessimism doesn't. so in building this case,building this story, building a communityof people around it, it's infinitely morelikely to happen. so first of all. i think, second of all, is ilook at, again, health care. i look at finance. i look at retail.
i look at education. and i look at where theinnovation's happening. and there are a lot ofthings we have to overcome. but i look at wherethe innovation is. there's a lot ofreason for hope. and i think thereare a lot of trends that are happening aroundthe world around us that point to purpose and point tothese innovations as what's happening.
and i see in themillennial generation the greatest reason for hope. and i think the millennialgeneration values purpose more than any previous generation. because, again, it'sa generation that's about relationships, it'sabout doing something greater than themselves, and it'sabout personal growth. so i feel like, withthis generation, there is so much reason forhope and to clean up so many
of the messes that have beenmade by previous generations, to be candid. and i think that thatgeneration in and of itself is probably the one that givesme the greatest hope for this. you know, i'm ajewish new yorker, and i can paint you a reallyhorrible picture the world. and i can, right now,tell you the perfect case for why i don't even thinkthe human race will be here in five years, if youwanted to go down that path
and think about adoomsday scenario. but i think there's a lotmore reason for optimism than pessimism right now. and every time i meetwith a millennial, and every time i meet withone of these companies or nonprofits orgovernments that's innovating in thisspace, it's hard to not walk away incredibly optimistic. audience: so is this sortof another way of saying,
purpose-drivenpeople and companies out-compete otherpeople in companies, and so they're going togain market mindshare in the world over the next year? so this is what ithink will happen. i'm already seeingthis in the data. from a workforce pointof view, employers that aren't ableto provide purpose to their employees andindividual employees who
are not purpose-orientedare going to find that the market isnot as responsive to them. so it is going to becomeeconomically in your best interests to be purpose-drivenas an individual and as an organizationto be able to create the place thosepeople want to work. because it's going tobe increasingly obvious, those are the people youwant in your company. so that's sort of one,which goes to that data.
and you see that, by the way. like, all the majorconsulting firms now, they lead almostentirely with purpose as what they're selling. and, in fact, theirbig conference is around marketing purpose. like, that's whatconsulting firms are now having to sell to get thebest talent into their firms and not just about pro bono.
and i think the other bigpiece is around retail, right? and you see what'shappening with retail and the fundamental shifts. and you see that inthe maker economy. you see it in thesharing economy, across all thesedifferent innovations. more and more ofthese industries are being disruptedby disintermediated, purpose-oriented businesses.
and that's going toalso create that change. so you have it bothfrom the workplace and from a retail perspectiveseeing that change. is it guaranteed? no. i would guaranteethat there will be another economyafter this one. i think it's goingto be purpose. i, again, very sincerely say,to a group of very smart people,
think about it, and tell me whatyou think the next economy is, if you think it'ssomething else. audience: do you see this asa us phenomenon or global? or how is it indifferent countries? aaron hurst: good to see you. i have experienced it globallyas i have travelled around the world. and i haven't traveledto every country. i haven't even traveledto every state.
i think it will evolvein different ways. and i'm strugglingsomewhat, honestly, with this question becausethe sort of one narrative is, each country and culturehas to go through this rise from agrarian,industrial, information, and purpose, right? and there are some economiesthat are still agrarian. so you could just say, from aninnovation curve standpoint, they're going to have to gothrough those different steps.
to be able to get to thepoint where their economy is fundamentally drivenby purpose, they're going to need to have theindustrial infrastructure, then the information economyinfrastructure, then they'll get there. and i've alreadyseen it in china. i've seen it throughout europe. purpose economy businesses aredisrupting the marketplace. and china's one of themost fascinating examples.
because there, you've gotan incredible challenge-- when i was talking to businessstudents there-- at one hand, they've got capitalism,an incredible excitement of capitalism. but they all were raised ona belief in a collective good and trying to figure outhow to reconcile those two things, and looking tothe us for examples, largely in europe, of howdo you create businesses, how do you createapproaches that
can reconcile thosetwo sets of beliefs. and i think a lot of the ideasbehind this really resonate with the next generationof entrepreneurs in china, around how do we createthings that both represent the old values of china andthe new values of china. the piece i struggle with is,i think purpose is universal. and i think, obviously,people experience purpose in every culture,in every country, no matter what the poverty is,what the economic reality is.
but in terms of beingan economic driver, i don't think it likelywill emerge as dominant until companies have gonethrough these other economic stages. audience: i'm wondering if youcan talk more about guidance you would give toparents in the room. and then, the otherquestion i have is, can you cite some examplesof this where it's happening? i mean, i can think of a few,like teach for america, ngos,
and other things like this. even open-source softwareis, i think, another one. so guidance for parents of youngkids and more examples, please. aaron hurst: so i'll startwith the parents piece. and i'll tell you alittle bit about what i do as sort ofthe best example. i don't like to giveadvice i don't take myself, because that's cheap. i think one is just the way youtalk to your kids about work
and the role of work in yourlife is really important. and actually, thelast time i was here, when my kids' book cameout, "mommy and daddy do it pro bono," whichi wrote with my wife, which is all about the impact ofwork in different professions. and i just find it soimportant to talk to our kids about why we work. why is it we're away fromthem for 50 hours a week? what are we doing?
what value are we creating? and it's also reallyimportant to bring your kids to work regularly. so i think that's another thingthat the research has started pointing to, is how importantit is for them not to see work as this black box that you go tobut actually be able to relate to and understand work as areal thing with real people and understand why you love itand enjoy it and why you work. the other thing iwould say, which
i do as best i can-- but oneof your googlers, actually, was the key researcher on thiswhen she was at michigan-- really points to thefact that mothers matter a whole hell ofa lot more than fathers when it comes tothis imprinting. and they haven't done researchyet on same-sex couples. they haven't done iton single parents. but in the context of,like, a quote, unquote, "traditional family," ifyou have a good relationship
with your mother,there's almost no chance you will grow up witha jobs orientation. in that research,i don't believe, they didn't find asingle person who had a jobs mentality, who sawwork only as about money, who also had a good relationshipwith their mother, which is pretty interesting, right? so there's clearly somethingabout the role of mothers in a family setting that'sincredibly important.
and i've writtena lot about this, just how important it is forworkplaces to really embrace mothers bringingtheir kids to work. and traditionally,what i've seen, for myself, is when ibring my kids to work or i bring themon speaking tours like this-- which ido as often as i can-- everyone's like, that's soawesome, you love your kids, you're incorporatingthem into work,
it's so great to seea dad doing that. but if my wife didthe same thing, it would more likelybe a story of, like, why can't youget your act together? why can't you control your kids? why do you need tobring your kids to work? couldn't you find childcare? we tend to have a doublestandard around people bringing kids to work.
so i think it's really importantto embrace and encourage mothers to bringtheir kids to work. and then, the secondquestion was around examples. so, you know, ithink, in real estate, seeing the rise of shared officespace-- like in new york now, there are so manyshared office spaces, where people are working asfreelancers amongst each other in these more collectiveenvironments instead of just being, like, in monolithiccorporate cultures--
and you see just sort ofthis whole sharing economy overall hittingworkspace in a big way. and i saw it allaround europe, as well. in retail, you seecompanies like etsy, that you're enablingindividual makers to find a marketfor their goods. i just did a call theother day with ikea. and ikea actuallyruns whole malls in europe and in asia, notjust the standalone stores.
and they're trying to figureout what does a shopping mall in the purposeeconomy look like. and they're sort of seeing itas this mash-up between an ikea and an etsy studio in oneplace, environments for makers. and that's reallysort of like how a lot of these large developersare thinking about the shopping malls of the future, as ifthey're actually places where you're making, notjust buying, right? so that's a fundamental shift.
in health care, you lookat kaiser permanente. it's one of the biggesthealth care providers. they're trying to returnto an old model, which is, it used to be-- andi thought this was, like, thousands of years ago-- buteven, like, 50 years ago, the majority of times you sawa doctor were in your home. they came to you, which rightnow sounds fricking crazy, like, that would never happen. but if you thinkabout it rationally,
who's the sick one,you or the doctor? like, do you ask thesick person to get out of bed or the healthy personto get out of bed, right? we go and spend abunch of time when we're sick-- getting out ofbed, getting to a hospital room or a doctor's roomfull of other sick people-- to see a doctorfor a few minutes. it's not the right model. and we need to have itfundamentally where,
when you're sick or you needattention, it comes do you. and kaiser has madeit their 10-year goal, to flip that wholemodel on it's head, to make relationship-based,human-centered health care the norm in its model. so that's sort ofanother example. in education, yousee a major shift toward customized,personalized education and away from an industrialeducation model.
the fastest-growing segment ofthe us educational population right now is homeschooling,not because homeschooling is the model but because peopleare realizing that they need to be able tocustomize education. and homeschooling'sproducing much better results than classrooms, right? we're starting to seewhere we can actually innovate to make this work. those are some examples.
i can go on forever. audience: aaron-- what's up? audience: first off,thank you for the talk. aaron hurst: yeah, of course. audience: it was reallyinspiring and eye-opening. but i had a question. can purpose change? or what are your views onpurpose as an individual
and from a cultural perspective? and, if so, how wouldwe adapt to that? aaron hurst: in terms ofwhat generates purpose for us individually? so i have not seena longitudinal study overall of that question. i can only speak to havingworked with thousands of professionals attaproot and other places. and i have never seen a change.
what i have seenis people becoming more and more self-aware. so they start off withthinking purpose is here. but as they work in the worldand become more self-aware, they start to peellayers of the onion, getting closer and closer towho they are at their core. so that's what i've seen. every time i've seeit, it's actually been a manifestationof them simply
becoming more self-awareand more awake, and not just taking whatthey see from their friends. most of younger peopleearly in their career, where their sense ofpurpose comes from, they often perceiveit as being about what they see on the web, what theysee on tv, what they read, what their friends are doing. like, everyone's intowater all of a sudden, and they think that'swhat's purpose for them.
it's much more ofa social construct. and then, i think,as you get older, you start to getrid of those things and start realizingwho you actually are, not what your socialenvironment says you are. and therefore, itappears to change. but actually, you're justbecoming more self-aware. audience: cool. thank you.
audience: thank you. it's such a very interesting,fundamental concept that you present, job,career, and calling. i just wonder whetheryou have historical data to show in the past thatthis makes changes over time? are we at the lowpoint of calling, or are we at the high pointof calling [inaudible] future? aaron hurst: yeah, yeah,and that's a great question. so all of thisresearch is so new.
so your question wouldbe, like, how fast was the internet in the 1960s? it wasn't, right? so i think the challengeis this research is so new, there hasn't been a longitudinallook at, like, 10, 20, or 30 years ago. and it's also beenus-centric, right? so, i mean, oneof the areas where i would love to seeadditional research investment
is in longitudinal butthen also going and seeing, in different countries,how does this change with different cultures, right,to see how that plays out, and across differentgenerations. like, do boomers tend tohave a different distribution than gen x ormillennials, right? again, we're just at thetip of this research, right? there are so manyawesome questions, which is the perfecttime for somebody
like me to get involved. because you can stilllook smart asking really simple basicquestions, because we're not yet at those littleminutia questions, where we are with alot of other places. you can still askreally simple questions, and no one's answered them. and it's a chance to goout there and really make an impact.
so keep on asking the question. and i know google does a lotof great research on work and has the largest,most robust team looking at the analytics andresearch of work. i think these are thequestions that we collectively need to answer. court dimon: thankyou very much, aaron. great speech. aaron hurst: yeah, thank you.
it was great. thank you, guys.