Compounding to Reach Their Purpose

Even without knowing where all those parts I stamped out each day would eventually go, who would benefit from them, or how any of the blood and sweat I put into them had even the slightest lasting impact on the greater good, I still found a way to motivate myself each day in spite of always achieving well beyond the numbers required to remain employed; I realized that competing against my own best performance gave me something to strive for! And since us Driven folks are so fueled by results, that was enough for me to push through the mundane - since no one there had painted a clear picture of an organizational purpose (and certainly not an individual purpose) that I could focus on.

Before you disregard the “blood and sweat’ comment as embellishing my experience, let me assure you that I’m not. Most parts of the factory averaged between 90 and 100 degrees from mid May to late September. While most work stations had some sort of fan pointed in the general direction, there were plenty of times that I had extensive work in areas with no airflow whatsoever. I can’t say that it was always as bad as what I did in construction, pouring concrete or nailing down roofing metal at 100 degrees in the glaring sun, but it was still plenty warm. And if you were to dig into OSHA’s laceration statistics for the sheet metal manufacturing sector, you’d quickly see that blood was indeed part of the process as well. Once in 1999, as I cut a metal banding strap off a coil of steel I was loading to my press to stamp more blanks, the strap sprung back and hit my forearm just above the Kevlar protective sleeve I was wearing and cut an artery. Since that happened before the first break, I dug a Band-Aid out of my toolbox and kept working; I had a lot to get done! I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend that approach for treating a cut artery!

In complete transparency, still today I can get just as consumed in churning out parts in competing with what I view as my previous best. Although the “parts” today aren’t metal blanks that eventually get rolled up to serve as the guts of a muffler or metal on a roof of a chicken or turkey house, I can still lose sight of what all the smaller tasks I’m so focused on checking off my list are building to - and more importantly, how they compound toward achieving the definite purpose I’m working toward.

God clearly had a plan when He put Cindy into my life. I won’t go into all the reasons I have for making that statement here, but I will share how great she is at making sure I routinely take time to reflect on what all the daily and weekly tasks we’re working to knock out add up to. In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell shares that “The sooner you make the transition to becoming intentional about your personal growth, the better it will be for you, because growth compounds and accelerates IF you remain intentional about it.” Just like making that transition to become intentional about our own personal growth, even the most monotonous and mundane work we do that’s in line with achieving an organizational purpose and our individual purpose compounds! The key for any of us to draw energy from that lies in taking the time to reflect on the progress we’re making over time rather than remaining fixated on just trudging through our daily routines. And as leaders, we need to be every bit as intentional about helping each of our team members measure how their daily work has contributed to reaching their individual purpose! 

So before we move to looking at what we can do to help our team members have the best possible shot at achieving their own definite purpose, let’s take a look at how we can ensure them that what they value really matters and be sure we’re connecting what they’re doing daily does indeed contribute to them achieving it. More on that soon!