We all die eventually. This isn’t morbid; it’s clarifying. When you accept the finite nature of our time, you’re forced to ask harder questions about how you spend it. And since most of our waking hours are spent at work, the question is simply: Is this work worth my life?
Dan Pink’s book Drive identifies three components of job satisfaction: mastery, autonomy, and purpose. You need to keep learning and developing your skills. You need freedom to do your work without being micromanaged. And you need to believe your work matters.
For me, that last element - purpose - has grown to dominate the others. I’ve come to believe that purpose isn’t just about working on interesting problems. It’s about doing good in the world. Making things just a little bit better. Contributing something meaningful to society and humanity.
What does ‘doing good’ mean in practice? It exists on a spectrum. For some, it may be working to fight climate change. For others, it’s building software that genuinely helps small businesses stay organized, or working at a hospital improving patient care systems, or teaching at a school in an underserved community. It could be as local as making sure your company treats employees fairly and pays living wages. The key is that your work creates value beyond shareholder returns. It makes someone’s life better, solves a real problem, or contributes to a healthier society.
This wasn’t always a radical idea. There was a time when American businesses understood they had multiple stakeholders. Companies balanced the needs of shareholders, yes, but also employees and the communities where they operated. They made choices to benefit all three.
Then came Milton Friedman. His doctrine became gospel: companies exist solely to maximize shareholder profits. That’s the only thing that matters. The only thing they should be measured on.
We’re living with the consequences of that shift. Most large companies that used to be good employers now care only about making profits. They don’t have real values anymore or rather, they have values they state publicly, yet abandon them the moment those values conflict with the bottom line. Even where large companies have well-intentioned initiatives, they are constantly fighting a system that measures them on one thing alone: profit
We’ve seen this pattern throughout history. Companies abandoning their stated principles when it becomes economically convenient. We’re witnessing it again as major corporations capitulate to political pressure to protect their revenues. This creates enormous pressure on society: violence increases, language becomes more hateful, trust erodes.
Large companies with billions in revenue and market caps in the hundreds of billions face a particular challenge: their CEOs are often unwilling to take stands. They don’t want to rock the boat. They worry that any position might impact future revenue, and they’re not willing to take risks that could lead to even a small reduction in that revenue.
This isn’t about individual moral failure. It’s structural. When your only obligation is to shareholders, and when markets punish any deviation from profit maximization, doing good becomes nearly impossible at scale.
Smaller companies have a distinct advantage here. There’s simply not as much at stake. It’s much easier for them to identify values they believe in, align the company around those values, and actually live them; not just state them in marketing materials.
Patagonia exemplifies this approach. Founded by Yvon Chouinard with the mission “We’re in business to save our home planet.” In 2022, Chouinard transferred ownership of the entire company to a trust and nonprofit organization, ensuring that all profits - an estimated $100 million annually - go toward fighting climate change.
As Chouinard explained: “Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source.”
The company calls this making “Earth our only shareholder”. This is a direct repudiation of Friedman’s shareholder-only doctrine. And it works. Patagonia is profitable, attracts talented employees, and commands great customer loyalty. Purpose and profit aren’t in conflict; the profit serves the purpose.
I want to be direct about something: making these choices is a question of privilege. Basic needs come before everything else. People need to make enough money to provide housing, food and healthcare for their families; to provide education for their children. Not everybody has the luxury to make radical choices about where they work.
But I also believe that within the spectrum of choices available to us, we can make decisions that lead to happier, more fulfilled work lives. As Pink articulated, mastery, autonomy, and purpose contribute to fulfillment. Purpose - the need to do good - will ultimately lead to people being much happier.
If you are in a situation where you can’t make immediate changes, you can still optimize your decisions over time. You can create opportunities to find work where you can do good. The path may be longer, but the direction matters.
This individual search for meaning is not just a personal quest; it has profound implications for how we lead and manage others. Managers have a responsibility here - one that connects directly to the themes I’ve written about before: self-awareness, psychological safety, and trust.
Einstein wrote: “All that is valuable in human society depends on the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.” As managers, we are the ones creating or constraining those opportunities. When we help employees find meaning in their work, we’re enabling the development that leads to more fulfilled individuals and, ultimately, a healthier society.
Work with your employees to figure out where they can find meaning in their current jobs. Can you make local choices that improve wellbeing because people feel their work has more meaning? Can you help them see the connection between their daily tasks and a larger purpose?
Be honest about value alignment. If someone’s personal values are completely misaligned with the values of the company, that creates constant tension. It’s exhausting. It leads to burnout. Sometimes the most helpful thing a manager can do is support someone in finding a place where the value alignment is stronger.
This isn’t just altruism, it’s also practical. Employees who feel their work does good are more engaged, more creative, more resilient. They surface problems early because they care about the mission, not just the paycheck. This is how you build healthy and well-executing teams.
Find opportunities to do good in the world.
If you’re an employee considering your next move, think carefully about whether your work aligns with your values. Life is short. The years pass quickly. Do you want to spend them maximizing someone else’s profits, or contributing to something that matters to you?
If you’re a manager, help your people find that meaning. Create space for conversations about purpose. Support those who want to transition to more values-aligned work. Model what it looks like to make choices based on principles, not just profits.
And for those who have the privilege and resources to make bigger choices: consider creating your own company with strong values you believe in. Values that can attract employees who want to work for you because of what you stand for, not just what you pay. Values that you’re willing to protect even when it costs you something
You’re not alone in this. There are now thousands of B Corporations - companies that legally commit to balancing profit with purpose and benefiting all stakeholders, not just shareholders. The movement is growing. The old Friedman doctrine is cracking. We don’t have to accept that capitalism means pure profit maximization.
We all die eventually. The question is how we spend the time between now and then.
You’ll spend most of your waking hours at work. That’s not going to change. So the work has to be worth it. Not just financially; though you need to pay your bills. But worth it in the sense that at the end, you can look back and feel you contributed something meaningful.
You made the world a little better. You helped people. You stood for something. You didn’t just extract value, you created it, in the deepest sense. That’s what I mean by the need to do good. It’s not optional. It’s essential to a life well lived.