“Reason doesn’t move us”.
With a strong purpose, a company can increase employee motivation and loyalty. But for employees to find fulfilment in their work, they also need to recognise what is truly important to them.
Over the past 20 years, journalist and coach Mathias Morgenthaler has interviewed more than 1,000 people who are following their calling in their careers. He has published the best of these interviews in his book “Out of the Box”. We wanted to find out from him how people can find professional fulfilment even in large organisations. (This interview was first published in more detail in AMAG’s employee magazine.)
Mathias Morgenthaler, how did you come up with the idea of conducting interviews on professions and vocations, and when did it become your passion?
Mathias Morgenthaler: To be honest, it wasn’t my idea. The newspaper had created a new editorial vehicle around the job advertisements. A superior trusted me to do something for which I didn’t have any experience, namely to fill half a page a week with topics from the world of work. This was at the age of 21 and with the experience of a second-tier sports reporter. I had to figure out how to do it. The interview form seemed natural because it’s easier journalistically. Over time, I found that not only was it practical for me, but that focusing on one person created very personal professional portraits that touched many readers. The interviews are a reminder that you can make your own way in your career, that you don’t have to fit in and do a job. That’s why the series is called “Job + Vocation”. It was only over the years that I understood what I was actually doing. The response to the interviews showed that behind every story there are thousands of other people who also want to go their own way and do something personal.
In your book “Out of the Box” you mainly portray people who gave up their previous jobs to find fulfilment in a new one. Have you also met people for whom “Out of the Box” was possible without changing jobs?
Yes, these stories do exist. But it is more difficult to tell them because employees are often not allowed to give information to journalists. That’s why I prefer to talk to sole traders, the self-employed and people who have changed jobs. But I can give you my own example: I have been working for the swiss government for 20 years, and since this year I have been working for Tamedia’s business editorial department, where I have been able to take on many different tasks with a great deal of freedom. As an employee, I was always given the opportunity to develop new ideas with a high degree of personal responsibility. Whether you are employed or self-employed, a lot depends on whether you know what you want to achieve and whether you are clear about what you need, to achieve it. My training and travelling years were in the sports, local and foreign affairs departments. Then I was offered the job of business editor. Having studied literature and linguistics rather than economics, my aim was not to outdo the other business journalists in terms of expertise. My contribution was to look at the business world from a philosophical and psychological perspective and to ask fundamental questions. In this way, readers who might otherwise skim the business section were interested in my writing. I am grateful that my boss allowed me this special role. Many people are taught from an early age not to make mistakes and not to deviate from the norm – at home, at school, at work. They go through a career of conformity and lose touch with their strengths, their personal signature. This is why it is so important to develop a sense of where your core talent lies.
So it’s also about personal responsibility?
Yes, you have to stand up for what you want. You have to fight for them. I always have a bit of a problem with people whining and complaining and waiting for someone to roll out the carpet or offer them a stage. We are all called upon to create our own stages and announce our ambitions. If you do that, you can see relatively quickly whether the employer is interested in people with initiative and tenacity, or whether conformity is expected. You can then decide whether to stay or move on. I find that people often complain about not having enough freedom, but are not willing to take on responsibility. People prefer to complain about superiors who restrict them. That’s why I want the “Job + Vocation” series of interviews to encourage people to take more responsibility for their work and to be clearer about what they want to achieve professionally.
In your book you have derived theses that can help in the search for one’s vocation. One of them is called “Reason is overrated”. What do you mean by this?
Reason is not the driver of change or innovation. Reason is very good at optimising, at defining steps towards a goal. But reason does not set us in motion. It is the heart and the gut that give the impulse. But many people mistrust that gut feeling or the physical signals that something needs to happen. They immediately rationalise and find many reasons why a change does not make sense at the time. In my coaching I’ve met many people who have said to me: “I’ve made endless lists of pros and cons, and I know everything about it, but I still don’t have a sense of what’s the right thing to do”. Most companies would probably never have been created if entrepreneurs had made decisions based on reason alone. Starting a business has always been a bet against the odds. An entrepreneur believes in something and burns for it, even if there is a lot of evidence against it.
If you want to create room for manoeuvre in an organisation, doesn’t that require a certain amount of ambition?
Yes. If you want to get ahead in a big organisation, sometimes you have to use your elbows. And of course there are people who make a career out of being more ruthless than others. But we are coming to a time when it no longer necessarily takes a management span of a thousand people to make a difference. It no longer takes 50 years and CHF 50 million of capital to make a difference. This is good news for all ambitious people: Today, strong ideas and customer impact can put you ahead of the game. And not the ability to fight your way up the hierarchy. Ambition is also important for the company itself. A long tradition is no longer a guarantee of future success. Companies cannot just focus on maintaining power and fighting the competition. The financial sector, for example, is facing major challenges. As young and agile companies enter the market, they need to consider what their ambitions are other than just making money. A 15% return on equity is not an ambition. You have to want to offer something interesting to the customer.
“If you stay curious, you grow younger” – that’s another thesis in your book. Isn’t curiosity a quality you have or don’t have? Or do you think there are ways to awaken your own curiosity?
I have a colleague in my tennis club who, at the age of 49, told me that he always reads my interviews with interest, but that he himself was too old to change anything. He works for the cantonal government and gave me a plausible explanation as to why change was not possible. On the same day, I interviewed an 82-year-old businesswoman. She told me she was having the time of her life and had just gone into e-business with her eyeglass shop. Both are true. For one, work is most exciting at 82, and for the other, at 49, it’s too late to discover anything. It’s all about attitude. You can train and cultivate an attitude of change. The other day I read from the two Logitech bosses that they believe there is nothing more dangerous to an organisation than success. Success fills you up and reduces curiosity. Organisations do well to nurture curiosity and create an environment where curiosity and ideas are valued. But it is mainly up to the individual. People overestimate external constraints. This is probably because it is not pleasant to deal with one’s own fears and insecurities.
The thesis that “who controls everything with a tight grip, has no free hand” is an elegant one. But let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a 55-year-old family man with children in education and a large mortgage on his house. Why should he seek fulfilment by relying less on security and taking more risks – even if his own company encourages him to do so?
It depends on your own willingness. In coaching sessions I often hear that someone cannot change because, for example, they have to finance their children’s studies first. I think that is a dangerous attitude. Who knows if the children want to study at all? And who says they can’t finance their own studies? You have to look more closely: What are the real constraints? What is fear? What is more part of the view that a lot of money means a lot of security? What family beliefs have a limiting effect? Talking to a third person can help here.
You write that someone who fulfils all expectations should not expect to be fulfilled. Does one need a pinch of resistance to be happy professionally?
I don’t think you should see life as a test where you have to make as few mistakes as possible. Someone once told me in coaching that he already knew what he wanted to do, “but life is not a concert of desires”. If you live by the motto “duty first, then pleasure”, you may never get to pleasure. He will always want to try a little harder and do things better in order to feel free. Freedom, however, does not have to be earned; it consists in experimenting and taking risks. Life is not a test, it is an adventure and a journey of discovery. Our working lives, in which we spend an average of 96,000 hours, can also be a voyage of discovery. Otherwise, when you reach midlife, you realise: I have come a long way, but my successes has nothing to do with me. That’s why it’s important to follow and defend your own ambitions. That takes courage, rebellion and distance. If you know what you want, you can work towards it in a larger organisation. What can I do? What do I want? What is most important to me? What makes sense to me? You can’t ask yourself these questions often enough.
Mathias Morgenthaler
Journalist at the government in Bern since 1997, economics editor since 2002 and member of the Tamedia economics editorial team since this year. He studied German and communications in Berne and Fribourg (lic. phil. hist.), has one daughter, lives in Berne and at the Lake Constance, works all over Switzerland and loves Hamburg. He is the author of the books “Beruf und Berufung” (Zytglogge 2010) and “Aussteigen – Umsteigen” (Zytglogge 2013, with Marco Zaugg). His latest book was published at the end of 2017: “Out of the Box” (Zytglogge), a collection of the best interviews and theses on how to make your profession your vocation. Find out more about Mathias Morgenthaler at www.beruf-berufung.ch.