Using Purpose to Set Our Focus
February 25, 2022 | On the Human Capital Innovations (HCI) Podcast
Katie Burkhart appeared on the HCI podcast for a conversation with host Jonathan H. Westover, PhD. She talked about using purpose to set the focus of a business from top to bottom and back up again.
Listen to the episode below or on other platforms.
read the transcript
excuse any typos as we tried to capture the conversation as it happened.
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Welcome to the Human Capital Innovations Podcast! In this HCI podcast episode, I talk with Katie Burkhart about using purpose to set our focus.
Katie Burkhart, welcome to the Human Capital Innovations Podcast.
Katie: Thank you, John. I'm excited to be here.
John: Yeah, it is a pleasure to be with you today. I'm super excited to have this conversation. We're gonna be focusing on purpose and how purpose can be used to set our focus in life, in our relationships, with work, and in everything that we do. Hopefully we have a good solid why behind it and a good purpose. And hopefully that will lead into how we focus on achieving those things—developing, maintaining, and sustaining those different aspects of our lives.
As we get started, I wanted to share Katie's bio with everybody. Katie Burkhart is the mastermind behind MatterLogic, the smart system for running a purpose driven business, and has quickly become one of the go-to experts in the space. She is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, minimalist designer, jargon Slayer, and sharp communicator. She synthesizes connections that enable humans to make the most of the time they invest in their work.
I love all of that. That's fantastic. Particularly the minimalist designer. I'm an aspiring minimalist myself, and I think that's fantastic.
Anything else you would like to share with listeners by way of your background or personal context before we dive on into the conversation?
Katie: I would love to share just a small story about how I got into this work, just to sort of tee it off. My very first job was as a lifeguard at the pool I used to go to when I was growing up. And I looked up to these lifeguards; they were super cool. They had sunglasses and car keys because when you're ten, that's what looks really cool. And I got this job and was told to do it, but by the time I was with my sunglasses and car keys, a lot less people came to the pool. And I had a tendency to work the early and the late shifts because I had sports practices and other things going on.
So, I looked at an empty pool and awful lot. And I used to—you know, it was a 15 minutes in one chair, 15 minutes in another chair, 15 minute break, rinse, repeat—and I just used to remember sitting there basically watching the time tick down until the shift was over. And what I left with was, “I don't ever want my work to be like that. And I don't want my life to be like that. How do I make sure I'm making the time I spend on whatever I'm doing really matter?”
And that's what I'm excited to bring to my work every day. And I hope I can share with others.
John: Yeah. I love that. I think we've all been there. I've certainly had many jobs like that, where I'm just like watching the clock and dying to get out of there. I remember one job in particular I was working at—it was very rote, just repetitive type of work, and just kind of mind-numbing work—and the time would go by so slowly. I felt like it was typically a 10-hour shift. I felt like 10 hours felt like a week. You know, it just went by so, so slowly. Oh, and the only thing—the only redeeming factor of it all—was I knew that I was doing this to save up money, to go to college, and then I would be able to move on and never look back. You know?
And so that's kind of what drove me for six months while I did that. And you know, more power to those people who had that job and loved it. It fulfilled them and whatever, but for me, that didn't do it. And I knew that about myself early on and that drove me to pursue my passions and find my meaning and purpose in the work that I do and the education that I sought, the people I work with, et cetera.
I think that's really important. Can, can we always do things that we love, where we do things that just fill us with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. Always. No, of course not. But we can design our life around things that are more likely to give us meaning and purpose. And that will help us get through the times where perhaps we do have to do that task that nobody wants to do, and it just needs to get done or whatever. But it all has to start with that. Why? We have to know why we're doing what we're doing and we have to have a deeper meaning behind it. If we're just doing it to make money, if we're just doing it for the status symbol of the keys or whatever, like you were saying. Yeah, that's gonna fade so quickly.
Katie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the big things we have to look at is: how do we really define purpose—both at the individual and corporate level? So looking at it as an individual, I think one of the things that we have to recognize is two things. One, not everyone's purpose is going to be to save the world. You know, some people's purpose is, “I wanna do really great work.” Like I care about the quality of the work that comes out. I really want to refine my skills. I wanna become a master of what it is that I do. Or being able to bring home a stable paycheck so that I can spend time with my family or spend time traveling or whatever it is.
It all counts. And I think that that's a really important thing to understand that the value and the meaning is different for each person. And then I think when we think about meaning sort of crossing that chasm between individual to business, a lot of the isn't just this is amazingly positively impactful. It's also, do we understand what the point is? Are we sitting in this meeting because we have a really good reason to be here? All the way up to, are we all coming to work around a company that has a really good reason to be here, or are we just adding to the noise?
John: Or are we just adding to the noise? I think that's a great question to ask. I think the pandemic has kind of pushed us to question the why and the purpose, and challenge assumptions, and challenge norms because there's so many things that we just did day in and day out because that's to what we do. That's what we've always done.
We hold this meeting weekly because we always hold this meeting weekly or whatever. And we did so many things that just didn't matter. And people knew it didn't matter, but it was just the flow, and the norms, and whatever. And certainly it wasn't just the pandemic, but the pandemic has given us a chance to do a little bit of a mental reset and, again, to challenge those assumptions and those norms and to do some self-reflecting on our own personal why as well as organizations on their why and their purpose.
And I think that's been a really positive outcome of the pandemic because I think most people have had to wrestle with this over the last couple of years. Some companies haven't made it through. Some individuals have decided what I was doing is not at all what I want to continue doing. It's a big driver behind the great reevaluation, the great resignation, and ultimately, I think it's a good thing though—to challenge those things that don't make sense anymore. Perhaps they made sense at one point in time, but they don't make sense anymore. And we've all been in there. We've all been in those meetings that seem to have no point. This could have been a five-minute email, or a phone call, or whatever. Nobody wants to be in those meetings.
Nobody wants to to spend endless amounts of time and energy on something that ultimately isn't gonna help the business. It's not gonna help their career. It's not gonna help the customers. It's just pointless.
And so you're absolutely right. What is my purpose and what is meaningful and fulfilling to me likely provide meaning or fulfillment in the same way to other people, but we all have to have that. And we all have to figure out what that is for ourselves. And as leaders, we have to figure out what that is for the people that we lead. And as an organization, of course, we have to figure out what the big why is behind why we exist, why we do what we do.
Katie: Yes. And I think the work as leaders to recognize that it's not about you is a huge piece of this. You know, we went through—I like to call it the great pause before the great resignation—where we had this collective moment altogether at the same time of saying is what I'm doing worth it? And all of a sudden, for people—for different reasons—things changed, but they were all largely asking the same question.
And I think as leaders, you're having to stop—and I do this with my own businesses—and be like, “Hey, am I doing this because it's about me or am I doing this because it's delivering value to the people I serve, because it's delivering value to my team members, and because I'm building mutually beneficial relationships with my partners.”
How am I really thinking about that? Because that's where success really lies. And helping your team members individually to understand not only what their value and what their purpose is but then giving them space to actually fulfill that and understand how that contributes to your overall purpose is where that really starts to get powerful.
Because at a top level, we have to know why we exist. Right? I like to talk about Forrest Gump and the ping pong ball. You ever watched the movie? He goes from watching this TV endlessly, and people are like, “How can you listen to that?” And I'm like, what a brilliant example of noise! You know, how can you please turn the noise off? They're like, “I'm gonna teach you how to play the ping pong.” And what the guy says to him is he holds the ball up in front of his eyes an says, “Never take your eye off the ball.”
And I think a lot companies had the ball on themselves—i.e. how much money can I mak—and really drove everything they could toward that focus. How efficient can I make things? How hard can I press you as person, as a system, as a planet. However you wanna look at that, the goal was to get to the money.
As a purpose-driven business, the goal is to fulfill your purpose. That's the ball you have your eye on. And everything that you're doing has to drive toward that. And that requires a completely different way of not only an understanding the business and showing up as a whole but what do we do once we get there and how do we go about doing it. And what I like about a ball is it's a circle. sk what's the point.
John: Yeah, absolutely. And you started to move us in the direction of focus, which I think is just a really important offshoot of purpose. Now, we spent in a lot of time focusing or swimming amidst the noise. We spent a lot of time focusing on the wrong things, things that just don't matter. And I was talking to someone the other day, and I was reminded of the saying: what we can measure often doesn't matter, and what matters often is really hard to measure. And to me, that largely comes back to focus. If when we choose to measure something, that's what we wanna focus on. We want that as our outcome, and we're gonna put energy into achieving that thing. I think so often organizations choose the wrong, the wrong metrics, the wrong outcomes to focus on.
Or they're incomplete. They choose a set of three or four that might paint one part of the picture and they ignore so many other aspects that are also perhaps more important than those things that they selected—and simply because of convenience or because of lack of creativity on how to measure what matters. And so we have to be thinking about what we should be focusing on and how we're gonna focus on it so that we can lead to better positive, impactful outcomes related to those things.
And it all comes back to the purpose that should drive the focus. And oftentimes, it's the tail that wags the dog. We find ourselves in the flip side of that. And we allow the KPIs to drive everything that we're doing in the business, as opposed to having the purpose drive the KPIs.
Katie: Yes. And I’m gonna respond to that by backing into it with a story. I was talking to one of my team members the other day who came and was going through his list of stuff—very organized. He said our client said, “We have this video opportunity because we're shooting. We're doing this series of videos for this reason, and well, we probably should take advantage of the opportunity. We should do other stuff with video, and what do we wanna do about that?” And without any hesitation and with no niceties, I very bluntly responded, “What's the point?”
And sort of looked at me and paused. I said, “Is there something they wanna achieve from shooting this video? Is there a particular video they have in mind? Is there a way they wanna use it? Is there a greater outcome that we're trying to achieve and we think video may be a tactic that helps us get there? What's the point of shooting the video?
If you start with the point and work backwards, you will pick better actions to get you there because you can be more deliberate. In this case who are you choosing to interview? What questions are you going to ask them? How might you ultimately cut together the footage in order to achieve this end? Which is why working backwards is really important. Otherwise, you can quickly end up with terabytes of video footage of totally random people because “Hey, we had a video opportunity in May, perhaps we shoot some people.” So when you really think about that, getting it to set your focus.
The way I like to think about purposes is a lens for decision-making, and the purpose is the focal point. And the first question should be, does this help us fulfill our purpose? And I promise you, in most questions, you'll take half of the options right off the table, right off the bat, because it has nothing to do with why you exist.
And then if you're really looking to do it better, you should filter it through the rest of your Core strategy—which includes your vision, mission, values—and say, “Okay, does this help a us achieve our vision? Does it help us get to the outcomes we wanna achieve?” Okay. Yeah. Does it fit within the unique capabilities? Our distinct capabilities are outlined in our mission, in the actions we take, and can we do it within our values—how we actually execute those actions based on who we are as an organization. And now you're starting to make decisions that really keep you focused on the right things, and in a place to be really successful.
John: Yeah. And much of what you were just saying reminds me of how easy it is to have mission creep and to just start to try to be all things to all people. And that's a recipe for failure because you can't possibly be. We all live in a resource constraint kind of an environment. There's only so much we can do. And if you start to chase the shiny object thinking, oh, that's the next thing we're gonna do—and you're not running it by your purpose, your mission, your values, and your vision of the organization—it's almost inevitable that you're gonna end up going down a path that ultimately doesn't align with what your core competencies are, the value that you can bring to the market.
Katie: Yep. It's more distraction, more noise, versus what you can really do and do effectively. And that's where that narrow and deep is gonna result in better impact than all over the place. And help everything to make sense to the team that you're asking to roll up their sleeves and come to work every day. Which is why one of the key shifts that we talk about leaders and teams needing to make is: no is your most powerful. Please don't say yes to everything. Say no, say no more.
At an individual level, I personally do a life review every six months and look at anything that takes my time—from I have to water my cactus so it doesn't die all the way to spend time with my family. I have time on my businesses. I would like to exercise. And then really look at where am I getting fulfillment? How am I learning something new? What needs to stay here?
And the activity isn't really about adding new things to the list. It's about taking things off of the list because it's not getting the time and attention that it needs. It's not where my energies need to be invested right now. And what people have to remember is, in some cases, no doesn't mean no forever. It means not right now.
But while you should do that at an individual level, companies need to be doing that at an organizational level. In a lot of cases, when people go into strategic planning or one-year planning or goal setting, it's an exercise in all new things we can add versus really looking at are there things that we shouldn't even be investing anymore because it didn't work that great in the beginning or we've learned what are the people we serve value and what they need has changed. Therefore, we need to shift how we're going about delivering that value.
John: Yeah. I'm thinking of an organization I was working with recently. They had their strategic plan, and it had something like 82 action items. And I'm like, “Okay, how are you possibly going to do this in any meaningful way?”
Yeah. You're chasing everything. Right? And there was nothing on there that didn't sound good. Like it all did good. It all was like, “Oh, that, that sounds important.” So it's not even about saying there are things that that truly are counter to the mission that we need to get rid of but it can be good things too. Like you said, sometimes the timing is just not right. And there's only so many things we can focus on. And so choose those things you're going to really drill in on.
And there, there might be tangential things that come up along the way that you need to reevaluate, maybe pivot. But man, when you get to the point where you're just having these ridiculously long lists of KPIs, or action items, or strategic points in your mission or in your strategic plan. Yeah. It’s impossible to focus because there is no focus. Right?
And I think many organizations fall into that trap. It just so easy to do, especially when you're building those things by committee or by consensus. You end up just dumping a bunch of extra things on. And so having the courage to say no. And like you were saying, I think of it in terms of pruning. I need to prune back in order for a plant or a tree to really thrive. You have to prune it. And if you don't do that, it becomes overgrown. It suffers, and it's not healthy. It's the same thing in my personal life, my relationships with my team, with my organization. It's what's gonna drive more health. It sometimes seems counterintuitive because you're cutting things back. But it's gonna drive things in a more healthy direction.
Katie: Yeah. And you, John, mentioned something about measurement, and I think this is where you get into what's easy to measure versus what's hard to measure. Even just understanding working backward, typically we start at the beginning, I can easily measure the output. I had 50 webinars this year, and next year, we're gonna have 75 webinars—which means we did better. The answer is: not necessarily, you just did more.
Start at the end and work backward and say, what outcome do we wanna achieve? What value are we delivering to the people we serve? And really the value you're delivering is what are you helping them do, achieve, or become. The question you're trying to ask and measure based on those pieces—when you get to pruning—what you're saying is where are we most effectively driving that value? Where are we maybe not so effectively driving that value so that you can double down on the things that are really working versus just being focused on how many more actions might I take. But that does get into your point about what are we measuring. Outcomes are harder and will probably require you to talk to people, and ask better questions, and actually listen to what they have to say. But since it's not about you, that's a big piece.
John: Much of what you're saying reminds me of the idea of just having bookends to our strategy. You start with the clear purpose and the point. What is the point? What is our why? Right? And then once you figure out what your why is, then you want to think about the other end of the book. The bookend you want to think about, okay, so with our why, with our purpose, what would we expect to achieve? What outcomes do we want to see, right? So then now you have the two ends of the bookends, and now you can fill in the middle. You can work your way backwards, back towards the beginning. So then you can think about the flow of how everything works together to get you to those outcomes—all built on the foundation of purpose, which will allow you to focus on the right things.
And then, like you said, you work backwards in terms of trying to figure out how to best measure and evaluate what you're trying to accomplish. And I think a lot of times, we only focus on the end, or we only focus on the beginning, or sometimes we don't focus on either of those. And we just like are doing all sorts of muddy stuff in the middle. And I think we need to have the whole, holistic picture if we hope to have sustainable long-term growth and positive outcomes and impact.
Katie: Yes because it really is. One of the other shifts we talk about a lot is the long game, the main game. So how do we start to get more comfortable with measuring my 50, 75 webinars? It’s like instant gratification. I can see a little number tick up, and I feel really good about myself. But did it do anything? So there's understanding of what you're targeting, and how you're setting up those goals, and how you're looking at that, and how you're measuring things is part of that long game.
But it's also part of setting up the expectation that it's going to take time and that you actually have to look all the way down the road to the visin. And then be really excited about the focus and endurance it's going to take you to get there because it isn't gonna be something you achieve next quarter and go Woohoo. And I think for us as people, as well as for us as organizations, getting people used to we're going to get there. We have to know where we're going, and it may take us a while to get there. But it's totally gonna be worth it if we're making the right decisions along the way.
John: Yeah. Well said.
Well, Katie, it has been a real pleasure chatting. I know the time it's flown by, and we're gonna have to close up here in just a few minutes. But before we wrap up, I wanted to give you a chance to share with listeners how they can get connected with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then give us the final word on the topic for today.
Katie: So, I would say number one place to find me is LinkedIn. While I am mostly allergic to other forms of social media, I do enjoy the LinkedIn platform, and I will connect with anyone who connects with me. And if you have questions or you just wanna follow my posts, I post almost every day with something that is hopefully useful to you. Please do. We'd love to meet you.
The other place to find me is I am very proudly the author of not a book, and I have put all of our thinking, our system, what does it mean to be purpose-driven, how do I go about doing it up on we call MatterLogic, which you can find matterlogic.co.
And if you'd really like to get actionable insights in your inbox every week and be part of that community, please visit matter logic.co/weekly. I'd love to have you there as well.
If I had to leave people with a final thought, it's always asking yourself two questions. What's the point.? And if I'm struggling to come up with an answer, am I just adding to the noise? Do what you can to not add to the noise, both as an individual and as a team because your time is worth more than that.
John: I love it! Well said!
Katie, it has been a pleasure talking with you. I encourage listeners to reach out, to get connected, to find out more about what Katie and her team can do for you. I hope we can all strive for more clarity in our purpose, which will lead to better focus in how we go about living our lives. I hope that everyone can stay healthy and safe, that we can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.