Our culture has an interesting relationship with money.  While there are as many variations on this as there are people, the general sense is that we all want more money because we will feel better, people will like us more, we will be more acceptable.

There is also the contrarian approach of those who secretly want more money, don’t have it, and want to look like they know best.

So, if we hone in on one phrase to express this, it might be “money buys happiness”.

Is this really true?

Turns out, the jury is still out.

Let’s break this down a bit to get some clarity.  First off, should “happiness” be the desired end result in the first place?  I would argue that, instead of happiness, having joy, contentment,  and love are better things to move toward.  Happiness tends to be temporary, transitory, fleeting, and fickle.  Something might happen one moment that makes us happy, then the next moment, another thing might happen that makes us unhappy.  Joy, contentment, and love tend to be things we put in place deliberately.

If we look at money’s impact on joy, contentment, and love, John Lennon said it best: “Money can’t buy me love.”

There are nuances to this, though.  The lead author of a study connecting salary with happiness or satisfaction conducted at Purdue University said this:

“We found that the ideal income point is $95,000 for life evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 for emotional well-being… this amount is for individuals and would likely be higher for families.”

Apparently, then, we can put a price on happiness, or at least connect a dollar amount to life satisfaction.

Another factor can be debt.  This article published in Quartz highlights how heavily debt depresses the sense of well-being, and conversely, how the absence of debt lifts the mood.  (I’d have to agree, having been on both sides of the coin plenty of times in my life…)

In other words, money can buy happiness up to a point, but debt is depressing.

But how do we explain the many stories of people who live in extreme poverty, or have very little, and have a high level of contentment?

We’d have to ask Mother Theresa or Ghandi (or a host of other examples), but I don’t think it comes down to a question of money (or lack thereof) for them.  Some of us (myself excluded) have learned the fine art of contentment, inner peace, self actualization, or whatever your favorite term for it is.  They have found a way to effectively control what makes them content, without being influenced by what’s around them or focusing on what makes them “happy”.

Contentedness is their superpower…

Did I go on a tangent here?  Nope – this is deliberate.

There are three things I want to get across with this:

1. Money, or rather our relationship with money, has a significant effect on our emotional well-being
2. Debt has an even more deleterious impact on us
3. We’d all feel so much better if, instead of focusing on the financial picture or on happiness, we just keep our money straight and focus on contentedness instead

 

In my role at work, everything comes down to productivity and effectiveness.  I might even be considered, by some, to be an expert on utilizing process and technology to increase productivity and effectiveness.

For today, though, I’m going to give you a metaphor (technically, this is actually a simile…) from both the expert and the frustrated employee perspective:

Companies operate like they are in their own long-distance car races.

Imagine you closed down Interstate 80 – New York to San Francisco.  You then took each company, gave each employee a car that is representative of their capabilities as an employee, and gave those employees a goal with a prize:

• Get to the other end.
• Part of your prize is based on how fast everyone can get to the other end and how many make it.
• The other part is based on what order you come in.  Come in first, get a bigger prize.  Come in later, get a smaller prize.  Don’t finish?  Get nothing.

Let’s see how various types of companies would do.

A company of one

There are a lot of variables and wildcards in this one.  A high-performing person operating as a company of one probably won’t break down along the way, and can probably go pretty fast.  This person probably gets a decent prize at the end.

On the other hand, someone with pipe dreams but no experience, talent, or grit is likely to find themselves stranded somewhere in the middle of Ohio, hoping for the kindness of a stranger.  If they reach San Francisco at all, it won’t be very fast.

A start-up

If this start-up has a group of high-performing individuals who can work with a team mentality, they’re likely to speed along the freeway, drafting off each other for additional speed and fuel economy.  They’ll help each other if something goes wrong, but if one person is consistently underperforming or having trouble, they’ll leave that person in the dust.

If this start-up has a variety of capabilities, but averages toward the low end, you’ll get a variety of different results depending on different factors.  If they help each other, they’ll get to the end, but much slower.  If they don’t work as a team, most are likely to break down along the way, and their arrival in San Francisco is questionable.

A global enterprise

As you visualized the previous examples, you may have noticed that each company collectively had control of their fate.  Here, however, is where we diverge from this trend.

This global enterprise has run this race many times, in order to achieve its enormous size.  It has experts in how to go fast and navigate the route.  It has maybe 400,000 quite reliable cars, including super- and hyper-cars, economy cars, luxury cars, you can imagine the people working in such a company.  It even has its own team to assist those who need it.

Now, picture the scene at the mouth of I-80, just a few miles west of Manhattan.  6 lanes of west-bound tarmac.  Everyone wants to get to San Francisco – all 400,000 of them.

It starts slowly.  The first out of the gate, including a Ferrari, a Corolla, a Lexus, and a Ram pickup, all hit the gas.  The Lamborghini stuck behind the Corolla gets impatient, and tries to cut in front of the Mercedes next to it in a bid to pass.  The Mercedes has to hit its brakes, slowing everyone behind it.

Fast-forward…  Everyone is finally hitting their stride, faster passing slower, but all slowing down when the person in front slows down – say for a curve, a lane merge, avoiding a deer in the road, you name it.

No big cities once you leave the New York metro area until…   Cleveland.

Now, everyone has to slow for freeway twists and turns, avoiding taking the wrong exit and ending up on I-77 South, narrower lanes through the city.  It’s a much hairier task to get 400,000 cars through the city, even on a closed course, than it does 100.

Because the prize is partially on personal performance, and partially on company-wide performance on which they have virtually zero influence, everyone wants to get in front of the one they’re following.

• Stop and help?  That’s someone else’s job.
• Listen to the organizational expert tell me how to drive?  They don’t know how I do things.
• Follow executive direction?  Heck, they’re the ones driving the Bugattis, Maybachs, and McLarens up front.  There’s no way I’ll catch them.

At the end of the road…

As we work through this metaphor (simile), I’m pretty sure you get the point.

It’s much easier for a small organization to perform well.  There’s plenty of room for all to work toward the goal together.  There’s less incentive to promote self over group – in fact, it’s usually pointless if all are working together.

There are organizational experts who, using reliable data and studies, would suggest that the line between performing together like these small organizations and performing with the self in mind in the larger organizations is around 150 people.  Think about that for a moment.

If companies start to lose relative effectiveness at around 150 people, why are there organizations that are much larger?  Self-interest.  If the organization is larger, there’s more individual advantage to being a Ferrari among supercars.  It’s easier to hide mistakes and rely on the perceived stability of the large organization to attract talent and revenue.

Is there a lesson here?  I’ll leave that up to you.

 

Working in Corporate America, I find myself coming up against this unnamed, nebulous dilemma within myself.  I struggle with the actions of organizations and the people within, and with the intention underlying the actions.

I know I’m not alone in this – there are articles and movements and other evidence throughout history and in our current era that revolve around this struggle.

However, it wasn’t until recently that I was finally able to name it for myself.

Mind you, it may seem obvious once I lay it out, and there may be all sorts of content out there saying exactly what I am about to write, but it was a revelation to me.  Naming an object is progress toward understanding it.  Being able to give a name to the dilemma provides me with an anchor I can use to understand the dilemma and start to define how it applies to me.

The name?  Ruling the world vs. changing the world.

Many may read this and scoff, saying, “I’m happy with my middle class life.  I don’t need to change or rule the world.”

Before you write me off, read through to the end, as I think this affects more of us than you might think.  Perhaps even yourself.

First, some context.

Those of you who know me or who have read what I write here are aware I have been involved in purpose-seeking and self-understanding for a long time.  Sometimes I can think through it quite philosophically.  Other times, it’s just made me want to scream, cry, or curl up in the fetal position.

This activity has caused me to flit here and there, seeking a (preferably) permanent fix to this search for meaning.

• You’ve seen me start numerous businesses that fizzle out.
• You’ve seen me rant about my job, only to move to a different job with the same problems.
• You’ve seen me go through depressive episodes simply from despair.
• You’ve seen me be mildly self-destructive (or at least self-neglectful).

All of this – for lack of purpose, and lack of framework to define my purpose.

Enough about me…

As I’ve hinted above, frameworks (or at least naming the thing) are very helpful in doing anything meaningful.  Recently, I came across a framework for defining purpose (hats off to Dr. Michael Gervais for this one), which breaks purpose down to just 3 components:

1. It matters to you
2. It’s bigger than you
3. It’s in the future

Ruling the world vs. changing the world fits nicely into those components.

It’s bigger than you – Arguably, it’s simple enough to say that changing the world = bigger than you, and ruling the world = all about you.  But let’s flesh it out to make sure.

Ruling the world, when done humbly and with a mentality of stewardship, can be bigger than you.  More often than not, though, the mentality does come down to personal gain:  Pride, power, money, etc.  So, for our purposes, with that caveat, ruling the world generally = all about you.

Changing the world, likewise, can also be twisted.  There are plenty out there who have gone on a misguided quest to change the world out of solely selfish or ill-informed ambitions.  I’d argue, however, that in many cases, this “changing the world” activity was borne from a “ruling the world” attitude.

Let’s just work from that simple statement at the beginning, then, and agree that #2 is generally best satisfied from a “change the world” approach.

It matters to you – Notice I didn’t start with #1.  Two reasons:  1) I wanted to keep the integrity of Dr. Gervais’ statement, and 2) The above bit will fold nicely in what comes next.

Finding something that matters to you can be especially hard when you are locked in despair and depression.  Sometimes you just stumble upon it by accident – it’s not always intentional.

Even when you have a good idea of what matters to you, you may have a combination of skills, talent, and temperament where you have no interest or intention of coming up with a new idea, business, organization, movement of your own – you would rather work for someone else.  Totally fine.

Guess what?  You can still pay attention to change the world vs. rule the world.

Here’s the hitch, though.  By working for someone else, you still need to examine your employer’s motivation.  (You can take this farther by examining the motivations of everyone in your life, but don’t let it turn you into a hermit or a crab – or a hermit crab.)

I’m going to use a very close to the heart example of “it matters to you”.

You’ve figured out by now that I’m good at what I do.  My employer thinks so, too, best as I can tell.  That’s a bit satisfying in itself.  But it still feels empty, devoid of purpose (other than paying the bills).

Is it bigger than me?  Absolutely.  Huge company, publicly traded, I’m working together with half a million other people to achieve my employer’s goals.

Is it in the future?  Sure.  It’s Sunday, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have a job to do when I start work tomorrow morning.

Does it matter to me?  Aye, there’s the rub.  My employer, along with (in my experience) the vast majority of large, publicly-traded companies, has a “rule the world” mindset.  Yes, they provide valuable, important goods and services.  No, they’re not actively working to undermine society in some way.  But at the same time (again, like most of these large companies), their #1 goal is shareholder return.

Who are these shareholders?  The company’s executives and institutional investors, with a dash of individual investors.  Basically, mostly people who no longer need to earn more, but continue to push for more out of a desire to “rule the world”.

Do those shareholders matter to me?  Only to the extent that pleasing them allows me to keep earning my paycheck.

So, since I have failed the “purpose” test with my job, I keep searching.  Maybe you have the same conclusion.

Somehow it always comes back to me…

So, what do I want to do about all of this?

First off, I want to encourage anyone who reads this to examine whether they really have purpose in their life, and if they don’t, to start seeking it, keeping the rule the world vs. change the world question in mind.

The other thing I want to do is insert the “Change the World” mentality into my guiding principles.  Whatever it is I’m doing, I want it to be about where I am contributing to and helping others, rather than how I am amassing money, influence,  recognition for myself.

Join me.