‘What do you do?’

I was at a wedding the other week and it was the question I was asked most. Not where I lived. Not whether I had children. Not what I believed in… What do you do?

Nobody needed to add ‘for work’ and they didn’t need to. At some point in time, asking what someone does for a living has become shorthand for understanding who they are.

I read recently that more than 95% of both Gen Zs and Millennials consider a sense of purpose at work important to their overall job satisfaction and wellbeing. What's surprising isn't that people want meaningful work, it's how much we now seem to expect work to provide.

In the past, more of that sense of purpose may have been found elsewhere. Religion offered shared beliefs. Local communities created belonging. Family roles were more clearly defined, even if they were not always better… As some of those structures have weakened, work has been asked to carry more of the weight.  

This growing expectation of purpose at work is interesting because, elsewhere in business, purpose has been losing credibility. For years, brand purpose was mainly aimed at consumers. Companies were encouraged to explain the higher reason they existed beyond making and selling things.

Sometimes that created distinctive businesses, but it also created a lot of emotional advertising and cringeworthy brand propositions. Banks were unlocking our financial freedom. Energy companies were powering human progress. Every new product seemed to be starting a movement.

The problem wasn't purpose itself. It was trying to make ordinary business operations sound more meaningful than they actually were. Consumers became better at spotting the gap between what companies said and what they actually did. Brand purpose didn’t disappear, but people became tired of seeing it used in marketing.