Personal Goals and Organizational Goals

I am exploring the role purpose and goals play in symbiotic relationship with a company vision, so a qualitative approach was used, allowing for an abstract theoretical exploration of the social experience.

A cyclical process of gathering data, coding, reflection and review through memos was used to allow theoretical ideas, categories, and themes to emerge. The themes were then examined for validity against the codes.

Data was gathered through interviews with open ended questions; allowing the interview process to be flexible, and the conversation to flow and evolve. The interviews were designed to pull out stories and personal experiences that illustrated connections between personal purpose, goals, corporate vision, positive relationships, engagement and motivation. Understanding that one's personal purpose is often evolving and changing, the questions were intended to capture the connections between their understanding of their personal purpose or goals at that time. The questions used during the interview process are listed in the Appendix - Supplementary Materials.

Because the literature indicated that even in the academic world the words purpose, meaning, calling, and driver are often used interchangeably and are considered interrelated, I was careful not to focus on just the word "purpose" during the interview.

The research was done in the context of high performing, senior leaders in U.S., for-profit organizations. Because I wanted to observe the way people articulated the role personal purpose and personal goals played in the alignment to, or possibly a symbiotic relationship with, a company's higher purpose vision, I selected a group that would most likely already be aligned to their company's vision.

I sought out companies that had a higher purpose statement that was communicated publicly. A higher purpose statement was defined as an articulated vision statement that is future directed and beneficial to the greater society. Companies with a published higher purpose statement were identified through personal networks and publications that recognized businesses as having a higher purpose vision. The initial quantity of possible candidates was large to assure there were enough companies that fit the criteria. Each recommendation was vetted to meet the definition of higher purpose by researching the company online, reviewing company literature, as well as asking people within the industry, and within the organization, to determine if the company indeed had a higher purpose that was shared within the company.

To assure a large enough pool of people to be interviewed, it was important that each company had multiple layers of management, enough breadth to include more than six high performing leaders, and an established performance review process. The organizations in which I conducted interviews all had annual sales revenue above $600 million.

I conducted interviews within four companies that met the criteria, and provided geographical and industry diversity. I was introduced to the CHRO, company president or divisional vice-president by mutual acquaintances. They connected me with an internal resource who identified members of the senior leadership team considered to be high performers. High performers were defined as individuals who had received an "exceeds expectations" or the equivalent rating on their performance reviews as established within the individual organizations, or were identified as high performers by their supervisor.

One of the outcomes of the goal-setting theory is that goals refer to important future outcomes and therefore, the selection of goals infers a desire to achieve a purpose or consequence; and success is associated with one's ability to pursue and accomplish goals that are important and meaningful. Because a person may have a goal to accomplish a personal purpose it was important to find people who interpreted success through the completion of the task or goal as well as people who were motivated to complete the task only if it led to a much greater purpose. In order to have two different groups for comparison purposes, I selected a sample within each organization that included people who were considered by their supervisor as primarily goal/task driven as well as people who were considered purpose driven.

Very early on it became clear that when the only choice a supervisor was given to describe the primary driver was purpose or goal, the perception of purpose was more favorable. Only 30% of the people interviewed were identified as goal driven by their supervisor. One statement made during an interview reflected this negative connotation of being goal driven:

Through the axial coding process, distinct themes emerged but the categorization of the responses did not always match up with the original classification of goal or purpose driven as provided by their supervisor. Saldana discusses allowing conceptual frameworks to emerge from within the data. It became apparent early on in the process of coding interviews that the way people responded to the first question was creating such a conceptual framework. The first question I asked the participants was, "What is important to you, motivates you to hop out of bed in the morning, and/or provides purpose or meaning to your life?" Two very distinct categories emerged. The phenomenon of the role personal purpose and personal goals had on symbiotic visions was clearly differentiated within two distinct areas of context, with the context being an individual's primary driver. This is supported by the statement that thematic sampling depends heavily on the quality of the data which is influenced by the setting or context.

To eliminate the possibility of misclassifications by the supervisor due to possible negative connotations with being goal driven, and to avoid projecting, I identified a related and unbiased classification that could be applied to the subject's responses. Although I am really studying goals vs. purpose, the task vs. socio-emotional drivers construct is closely related and created an unbiased classification. This categorization was selected because it represents the contrast between being task or goal driven vs. future or purpose directed.

The way participants responded to the first question indicated their inclination for having task or socio-emotional/future oriented tendencies. Task-positive preferences are connected to being goal oriented and include a predilection for goal achievement, problem solving, decision making and the ability to control actions. Respondents were classified as task positive if their answers included being motivated by being acknowledged or appreciated for the work completed, maintaining balance, seeking opportunities, the work they do or solving problems. Socio-emotional preferences are much more future or purpose directed and are linked to social cognition, creativity and an openness to new ideas. Respondents were classified as socio-emotional if their answers included being motivated by one's passion, making the world better, the desire to make a difference and helping others in need. Table 1 illustrates sample responses for each category.

Eleven participants gave task positive responses and thirteen participants gave socio-emotional responses. One hundred percent of the participants who gave responses indicating socio-emotional preferences were perceived by their supervisor as being purpose driven. Yet only 55% of the participants who gave responses that would indicate a task positive preference were perceived as goal driven. When a participant gave more than one response, in all cases both responses fell into the same category. To assure I did not use the responses to this question in the coding process, the responses to this first question were removed from the coding process. The remainder of the questions were used for the qualitative analysis.

Sample

Twenty-four people were interviewed; seven interviews from one company, six interviews from two companies and five interviews at a fourth company. The interviews averaged an hour in length. Because of the narrow focus of my study, after twenty two interviews no new themes were emerging and it was not necessary to expand the interview pool beyond 24.

Fourteen interviews were conducted face-to-face in a quiet location selected by the participant. Eleven interviews were conducted over the phone with the participant finding a quiet location that would allow them to reflect without interruption. IRB protocol was followed to assure consent, accuracy and confidentiality. Seventeen participants were based out of their corporate office and seven were based in other cities, outside their corporate headquarters location, around the United States. Participants were located in the states of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin. After the interview, participants were categorized by industry, tenure at their current company, level within the company and gender, as illustrated in Table 2, to see if any of these descriptors impacted or contributed to the themes that emerged.

The interviews were coded using an open coding, exploratory approach as recommended by Saldaña. I coded and sorted the interviews manually as well as electronically utilizing the web application Dedoose. After completing an initial coding on all interviews, interviews were reviewed to verify that consistent coding was applied. Focused coding was used to synthesize large sections of data, such as stories, and axial coding was used to identify the frequency of common themes and the existence of dominant themes. All coding was done blind to the initial criterion to see if themes emerged. The interviews were tracked with a two-digit identifier.