006: Powering up Purpose at Work with Arthur Woods

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Arthur, thanks so much for being here on the how to be awesome at your job podcast.

Arthur Woods
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that it sounds like you’re keeping pretty busy and I know we’re chatting about how you’re jet setting and traveling all over but tell us what’s something that you’re doing for fun or keeping you busy off the bayou or outside of work?

Arthur Woods
Absolutely, yeah. Well, not working which is pretty much most of my day I try to get out to the ski clubs. I grew up in a place where you had a larger ski team than football team so that is still sort of where my heart is, it’s on the ski clubs.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that sounds fun, you know. Fun fact, I am actually currently in Bozeman, Montana as we’re speaking and there are lots of ski enthusiasts around us.

Arthur Woods
Oh my gosh! I’m jealous. I’m jealous. I’m in a much warmer climate than that. My heart goes out to you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, that’s good. So, you’ve got a really cool story that I enjoyed talking to you a couple of years ago when you were in the throes of this thing that was developing and unfolding. So, can you tell us a little bit of what’s the story behind how Imperative, your company, came to be and what it’s all about?

Arthur Woods
Absolutely, yeah. So, I was at Google a few years ago and started a job that was not extremely fulfilling for me there. I had loved the company Google and I followed it for years and years. I wanted to work there but my first job there was basically operating Gmail for businesses. So, I was helping organizations deploy Gmail, switch away from Microsoft and I was an operator. Intensive role, right? And I found myself pretty stuck about my job at Google and realized, you know, I was not making huge impact. I didn’t feel like a deep sense of the community and I wasn’t really growing and learning and I sort of woke up one day and realized well, you know, the ball is totally in my court, should make this work more fulfilling. And I sort of shifted perspective began to volunteer at YouTube and at YouTube, started to work on YouTube Educational endeavors trying to help democratize YouTube’s content for educational purpose. Before I knew it I was in a very role. I was connected to awesome people. I was growing and learning. I sort of make this off-on switch. I sort of… And, you know, over the course of my time at YouTube taking more of the leadership role I ended up having dozens and dozens of conversations with people that were also stuck in their work.

 

There’s a bunch of two-year itch wherein they didn’t quite know what to do with their lives. Do I go to business school? Do I stay here? And my message to them was sort of the same. It was, you know, you’re in control of your well-being and your fulfillment and the ball is in your court just like it was mine. I had this inkling that, you know, perhaps Google is not going to be where I stand in the short run even and through a great mutual friend we’ve introduced to a guy named Aaron Hurst. Aaron started a group called a Taproot Foundation. today a 15 billion dollar marketplace in pro bono and Aaron recognized that you have skilled professionals that wanted to go more in the community than just be in school, bench or plant a tree and if you could create a marketplace that connect those skilled professionals to local community need, you could really make a huge impact.

And over the course of 15 years Aaron built up this massive marketplace and worked with all of these pro bono professionals called pro bono workers, so much more fulfilling than their paycheck jobs. So, Imperative actually came after Aaron and I deeply exploring how we could addressed these need that we’ve both thought from completely different vantage points. You know, the next generations are coming to work looking for so much more than a paycheck. In pro bono can actually be just as fulfilling for people inside work as it is outside of work. How can we enable all work fulfilling pro bono work? At Imperative we started to to research and development on purpose in the workplace and it’s a talent analytics company that helps individuals uncover what their main purpose for helping organizations uncover new unique incredible ways to empower their people.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely! And so you’ve worked with some pretty high-end clients already in your youth as a company.

Arthur Woods
Yeah. We’ve had a chance to work with a really wide variety of companies and organizations from, you know, the YWCA Chicago all the way to the retail furniture company Westown all the way to technology companies like LinkedIn and what’s interesting is, you know, each one of those organizations has a similar challenge and that they want to, you know, (a) attracting to train the best people but (b) honors the potential of their people and just the how cross disciplinary is that need really is.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So, let’s really dig in here. And when you talk about purpose, how would you define purpose and I’d like to maybe get bit of a distinction going here because in your Workforce Purpose Index, you draw a lot of cool kind of claims and correlations and data, slice and dice bits and it reminded me a little bit about the Gallup Engagement type of work. So, tell me, how do you define purpose and how is purpose different than engagement for the purposes of your work?

Arthur Woods
Great question. Great question, Pete. So first and foremost, when we started Imperative, we learned that each person had a really unique distinctive definition of purpose and this was largely influent by… So, the very first thing was there were three kind of core myths about purpose that we needed to debunk just that we’re all in the same page. The first, purpose is not a luxury. It’s possible for anyone, any job and the best example of this is Viktor Frankl actually wrote that purpose isn’t construe the whole thought.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Arthur Woods
You know, the second is that purpose is and oftentimes we hear people say the only way I can experience purpose is if I go volunteer like build a in Africa and instead we learned that purpose is possible in any contact and you can have purpose from some of the least assuming experiences and finally, especially what we hear from grad school students that purpose is not a revelation. You don’t just go to school and discover your purpose. It’s not being struck by lightning. It’s a continuous discovery process and oftentimes grad school students across the group and realized wow a lot of people did come to grad school to find their purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
I was going to say like, what are we doing here?

Arthur Woods
What are we doing here? Yeah, I know. And it’s of course a lot of, you know, 2 or 3 years into your first job and you go to grad school to find my purpose and it’s sort of a dangerous idea because what happen if you don’t find your purpose after spending all that kind of money. So, instead what we learned is that purpose comes from three core chains. The first is when you had a sense of impact in your work every day, you have a sense of purpose. The second is when you form deep meaningful relationships, you have a sense of purpose and finally when you grow and you learn personally, you have a sense of purpose. So, those three together we call RIG – relationships, impact and growth – are how you measure purpose and that’s it. That’s kind of sort of fulfillment. So, we talk about the Gallup study. Engagement, it’s really important to know, you know, if someone come in to work and they they’re actually engaged and activated, I know they’re not so that’s an important question but there’s other question of to what extent do you fulfill? To what extent you experience meaning? And that’s a different question that we believe linked to engagement. We believe to get meaning you’re more likely to be engaged. It’s definitely should be…

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That makes sense. It’s clear. I like that. RIG – easy to remember. I respect a good acronym. So, in your Workforce Purpose Index there, it looks like you teamed up with the folks at NYU. You get some meaty staff there. I guess as I read through, tell me if this is all right, you had over 6,000 folks worked through this questionnaire which is about 36 questions and those questions that are geared toward assessing the extent to which folks do have the RIG going for them – the relationships, the impact, the growth – as well as what their experiences of work is like, just a little about what was that study and what are some of the insights from it?

Arthur Woods
Absolutely. So, the Workforce Purpose Index was aimed at getting really the first study of purpose in the workforce and one of the key of that which is concept of work orientation and definitely comes down to the fact that we formed a story about work and role that it plays in our life at a young age. Relatively, early adolescence enforced by the way that our role models look at work and, you know, at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that everyone in the world, everyone in the planet is seeking meaning. Everyone is in charge of meaning. There’s a major question however as to what role does work play in helping from achieving meaning. And what we learned in this work and in early research that we leveraged with it we have a story that worked in whether it can be a source of meaning whether we believe we are source of meaning or not and if we can look at index we see there are two workforces. One that sees work truly as a means to an end and fulfillment is only possible if outside of work and one that actually sees the act of working itself is a source of enrichment and meaning. That second group is what we call the Purpose-Oriented workforce and that see work as a means of sorting other people and achieving fulfillment. If they won the lottery, for example, they wouldn’t stop working altogether. They are fulfilled by acts of working. So, one of the things we measured in the Index was how many Purpose-Oriented people are in the workforce? We learned that 28% of the United States workforce is Purpose-Oriented and essentially those individuals outperformed their colleagues that are more money-oriented by every single measure and you know, it was a really kind of great indicator the purpose actually have a business scan.

Pete Mockaitis
And by that, I’d say it seems sensible. People are finding purpose in the course of doing their job and they are finding relationships and impact and growth personally for them. They’re going to be fired up and do all kinds of good things. So, when you talk about all the matrix or outperformance, tell me about sales or promotions or low … what are some of those?

Arthur Woods
Absolutely. So, you know, actually… I’m sure you know Pete actually adequate for the company and we learned that the Purpose-Oriented workers were significantly more likely to promote their organization while money and oriented employees were actually more likely to be on big scale. We learned that on traditional company performance scales in places like 12:03, Purpose-Oriented workers had significantly higher performance by the company’s own standards. So, at LinkedIn, to give you a sense they were 30% higher on LinkedIn performance scale. 41% of LinkedIn’s employees were Purpose-Oriented and they were almost of third more likely to be hired performers. Purpose-Oriented workers were 20% more likely to stay in their job longer than 10 years as compared to their colleagues. They had higher levels of meaning across RIG, all three of those areas – impact, relationship and growth – and they were more likely to achieve leadership confidently. And so, you know, we saw that every key measure we could look at, these folks were higher potential.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s exciting. So, tell me how does one get tagged in your system and I don’t want to get too deep into the of your data but I can’t resist. You’ve mentioned…

Arthur Woods
Yeah, absolutely. You’re inquisitive. I appreciate that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, how does one get tagged?

Arthur Woods
It all has to do with how much money you have. No, I’m kidding. It has to do completely with fj, we used a series of psycho-matrix and, you know, they assess the theories of core trait that we attributed to the Purpose-Oriented worker, to give you a sense Pete, were things such as being relationship-driven, having a sense of optimism for the world, seeing the world as interconnected, actually, you know, choosing to proactively and voluntarily continue to work if given sort of unlimited extra means. So, a lot of different traits and behaviors that we’ve correlated to this archetype. We didn’t ask people outright, “Do you love purpose?” that would have been sort of silly and people could have kind of and, you know, three certain accuracy saw a clear… there.

Pete Mockaitis
And so those kinds of 36 questions were about kind of agree, strongly agree, strongly disagree kinds of things to assess those elements and see if they cross the threshold to be called purpose-driven?

Arthur Woods
That’s right, yeah. So, it’s on a scale and based on our scale we’re able to attribute people to certain categories and that was both alongside there are kind of core performance matrix that were self-evaluated such as, do I expect to be on the job longer than two years, am I currently in a leadership role, have I been promoted to leadership roles alongside our matrixes, our RIG and our work orientation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And alongside the employee performance data from the performance-managed systems.

Arthur Woods
Right. So, LinkedIn and a number of other companies actually shared their performance data with us and we correlated it to those archetypes. That was we came up the ability to also get into it whether the employee is high in performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m convinced and satisfied.

Arthur Woods
It passes the kind of test. That’s a big step for us.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m sure your clients grilled you harder like, is this kind of significant, you know, and all those kinds of things. So, now that I understand how this works, okay, purpose is linked to all kinds of great stuff which makes intuitive sense and it makes kind of scientific data put together sense to me so alright. Imagine, here I am. I’m working in a job. How do I get me some more of that purpose?

Arthur Woods
Right. So, what we learned is that work orientation is very difficult to change and so, you know, you take a money versus task versus purpose-oriented workers and convincing a money-oriented worker that sees work as truly a means to an end, that work is actually a source of fulfillment, would be like convincing them that the color that they had defined as purple is actually really red, right? Now, it can change with someone having a significant… We don’t recommend a company to facilitate that so instead that’s how dangerous this is and that one I don’t want to be in and I think, you know, you can attest to this, Pete. I mean you read, you’ve been doing trainings and keynotes and you know to really change a person, it’s difficult. You can help a person realize greater potential and I think you do that all the time and you can help someone see more about themselves which is amazing. Those types of transformations I think are beautiful. If you can actually change the way a person sees the world…You know what we’ve done to sort of further that to not throw the baby out to the bath water, if you will, we’ve actually designed a series of experiences that help an individual uncover what uniquely motivate them in their work. So, let’s all focus on work together and of course the purpose of this podcast obviously and how can we even help money as that of money-oriented workers better optimize in their existing work and hopefully build a culture that’s more purpose-oriented by attracting and retaining more Purpose-Oriented workers but helping everyone realize greater potential in their existing work contacts. So, one of those things processes is the diagnostic that helps people their purpose drivers and everyone has purpose drivers just as much as everyone has strengths and levels and aptitude. So, we instrument which is very much meant to be for everyone, not just for Purpose-Oriented workers and the idea is to help bring vocabulary for purpose into the day-to-day work contact. Again, the Purpose-Oriented workers flack to that immediately because they can speak it out and work for them as a means for achieving purpose but to everyone else it’s still a means of better optimizing, better aligning to the work that you do every day, developing a better sense of self. So, the goal mostly is to continue democratizing this type of way of looking at work you know, insights for people to grow and connect.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, can anyone get their hands of these purpose-drivers assessment or do you have to be part of a company that’s higher? How does that work?

Arthur Woods
No. Anyone can get their hands on at imperative.com. If you click on ‘For Individuals’ and you will sign up to answer 30 questions, you get a three drivers and these drivers explain who you work impact, why you work and how you approach problem solving. 1 of 24 just like archetypes and if you really want to go crazy, go all out, you can get the 20-page report which is like the purpose-drivers on and how to communicate, how to team up, how to focus your growth and development. It really kind of interesting leveraging on teams and with your manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is robust. Wow! Cool! Looks like you put the investor’s money to good use over there, that’s cool.

Arthur Woods
Yeah. We can’t sit on our hands over here. It wouldn’t be purposeful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well played. So, can you give us an example of what might be an example of a purpose driver and what might be an example of an archetype just so I can kind of get my arms on what that means.

Arthur Woods
Sure, absolutely. So, there’s three dimensions that we learned people experienced meeting in their work areas. I mentioned level fulfillment which is RIG right and deep relations and growing and learning, I’ve presented that. However, how I experience purpose basically that’s kind of hard-wired way that I see work and experience purpose as just like work orientation. So, the first is the scale which you see your impact made. So, we learned it is and people use their impact all the way from the very hands-on individual way all the way up to a societal scale on scale and so it’s based on a spectrum of, “Do I work every day to impact individual lives that I can point to?” “On what end?” or “Do I work every day to impact a lot of social change to the societal scale?” One of the things with teams and organizations in the middle of those two. So, one of your drivers is either individual, organization or society.

The second is how you see the world work and essentially this linked toward one or two which we called karma versus harmony and we’ve learned is that karma-oriented people see the world as being basically solving for itself. You know, you don’t need to intervene. The world will adjust for itself. Economy is off for themselves. Your goal is to lift the barriers so that the highest can realize their highest potential. So, they’re very achievement-driven, advancement-driven, kind of potential-driven approach to seeing the world work, it influences the way people influence them, why do people act you know personally is what they see the political spectrum in the world. The second of those drivers is harmony and these are people that are extremely driven, in equality, make sure everyone’s voices are heard to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table and so we learned that people see the world work in a harmony way when they actually seated. The system is actually fundamentally unfair and you need to intervene and so, you know, karma versus harmony is the why and that’s sort of why you’re driven to work.

The last piece is how you approach problem solving. What we learned is people have a natural style to how they problem-solved how they experience purpose. There are four drivers. The first is human-centered which means you problem-solve by empathizing with an individual or defining solution that uniquely meet their needs. The second is community-oriented which is problem solving by taking a very relationship-driven approach and connecting to others. The third is structured-driven which means designing a system of quality, you know, leveraging an existing best practice and to solve the need. Finally, which I think might be your key around these great questions which announcing new insights and new knowledge and really gain evidence to solve a problem. So, those three areas – who you impact, why you work, and how you problem-solve – if you select one of each of those drivers there are 24 possible combinations. We’ve named each of those combinations and what’s fascinating if the drivers have a on what energizes you, how you tell your story of work every day, the blind fact you have in a way that you build relationships, your natural leadership style, the way that you vest interface of the team. So, we built the whole series of experiences around kind of a multiple way that you can apply these. The very first though is it’s understanding more about yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my gosh! That is wild. It’s funny because I’m often guilty. I do love knowledge and I have a bias I think towards action and tactics and the how’s and the practical nuggets and so where and what can we do to get more purpose and you said, well actually that depends on which of the 24 archetypes that you are.

Arthur Woods
Yeah, it’s not that handy. I mean a lot of them are, the goal is to make it very accessible but it is scientific to your point. So, if you are one of those guys that want to do a super, super deep diving into the science there’s time to give you the chance to do that. However, there’s an ability to and say oh well, I’m just very hands-on and I connect to people to solve problems, good to know.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. And so it’s not just about what I’m hearing then. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Oh, you got more purpose, well then you need to ask her for your back, if I’m your supervisor. Well, that may apply way more to you to one archetype than another.

Arthur Woods
That’s exactly right and I think part of the mistake of our workforce today and in leadership today when we have a community control model is we treat employees like they all are the same just like in the industrial economy and still today, unfortunately in many classrooms we treat students like they all learn the same, same way, you know. So, there’s a huge opportunity each employee in a workforce has a unique blueprint in terms of how they experience purpose and if we can meet them where they are, it’s an extraordinary opportunity for leaders to actually help each individual make the most out of their work and it doesn’t have to all be in one identical fashion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s great and so that’s definitely and see how things shake out on the assessment and at the risk of what we just said of oversimplifying, are there in semi-universal best practices that are put to good for most people to their mind to get more purpose going?

Arthur Woods
Yeah. I would start by asking yourself those three questions of how deeply meaningful are my relationships, do I feel like I’m part of the community in my work every day, am I making an impact and a difference in my work every day and am I learning and learning personally. If any of those three are missing, there’s a huge opportunity to sort of, you know, assess your current environment, say, well look what do I have to do that’s sort of the deciding constraints and what do I want to do, what I love to do and if I am low in one of those three in my RIG rating, what do I need to change.

And I think so often like I sort of find myself at Google, we feel stuck and we sort of get frustrated and our immediate reaction it’s sort of like our involuntary reaction is to jump shift. Find greener grass like somewhere else and what we’ve began to realize and I think what kind of hit me at Google was the grasses are greener on the other side. It’s greenest where you water it. Sometimes that is on the other side but how do we make our grass greener, right? And I think one of the, you know, one of the ideas that we coined was called job… It’s essentially almost your job management by assessing your constraints, assessing your… measuring your current levels of RIG and looking at ways you can enhance of your work and some of the most inspiring stories of job came from hospital janitor of all people. It had very little and not a lot of accolades or pay yet managed lo and behold actually bring better care to patients in the hospital. I talked with janitors. So, they are really inspiring stories like that employee with a college degree for example, I’ve got so much than that. I can do so much more and yet I didn’t give my full credit. So, that’s starting with a small dose of self-awareness is the ticket to making things better at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is a great setup. The grass is greenest where you water it. Is that an Arthur Woods original?

Arthur Woods
No, definitely not. I’m sure if you Google that, you’re going to see a bunch of memes from like 50 years ago that says that. It’s one that I very admiringly copied. Someone said it and I’m sure it’s been said by many times.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, when you said memes I just imagined…

Arthur Woods
That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
This is fantastic stuff. That janitor story, I think you’ve kind of outlined it well. Could you flash that out a little bit? So, like what source of action did you begin taking?

Arthur Woods
Sure. The early research that inspired us with qualitative research they really was on work orientation which we of course repurpose and leveraged in our index and this was an interview. So, I’ve interviewed about 340 people in hospital and it was doctors, nurses all the way to hospital janitors and the assumption had been, you know, are doctors sort of the most educated senior members of the hospital will be the most purpose-driven and they’re here for impact and everything else and everyone else just here because they have to do it, right. To the contrary what they discovered was there were a number of nurses and doctors that were there mainly for and there were also a visible member of hospital janitors that were primarily at work for purpose and this was sort of astounding because these individuals are in a very compromising environment and, you know, a lot of studies that went to show hospital janitors are often extremely mistreated in hospitals and yet this Purpose-Oriented group emerged and they were actually largely fulfilled in their work so their RIG was quite high. The research went on to discover was these individuals were tailoring largely the story they told themselves and other people about their work that they’re actually were serving as, you know, a means of helping patients get better and not just forced. So, they were serving as translators between patients and doctors that didn’t speak the same language. They were oftentimes bringing humor to the patient’s experience. They were, you know, changing…. So, really going above and beyond and, you know, in many of those cases when these researchers went back to interview client, patients in the hospital, they learned that those janitors were a major reason that they were getting better. So, it was pretty extraordinary to see what this can do to transform the experience of an individual but how it can actually meet the mission of the hospital as the janitors…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh that was beautiful stuff. Oh, I could talk to you about this for hours

Arthur Woods
I love it, me too.

Pete Mockaitis
But that might not be ideal for anyone else listening. So, I’ll just ask you quickly, is there anything that you’d like to drop to contribute before we’re going to shift gears into the rapid fire of fast faves segment?

Arthur Woods
You know, I think you’ve nicely covered mostly. I really do think so that we’re in the middle of what would I think as a massive paradigm shift in work. If you look at where we’re going as a workforce in the society, you know, the World Economic Forum estimates that basically the higher middle structure of our workforce will be displaced by technology and.

The first will be the creative class and you’ll have a really kind of emerging exciting renaissance of new creative job and you’ll start to see awesome new either high tech jobs or creative jobs emerged and I think, you know, many people on this call will be to, you know, be part of that workforce and that won’t be any surprise but you didn’t think about the other end and what’s going to happen is you’re going to see a number of people that are underemployed in workforce where it’s actually not optimal to replace individuals by technology or still cheaper to pay people to perform a series of and it will be sort of like the 21^st or 22^nd version of… dystopian view of the workforce but that’s really where we’re going as we continue to build technology that does replace jobs and replace the sort of service economy.

So, you know what I ask myself in that area is, “What does that mean for purpose?” “You know, where is purpose fit?” And I think of a highly underemployed workforce and I think, wow, we have a long way to go to ensure that those individuals when they work hard are empowered. I hope they’re not, you know, they’re not marginalized. So, I think the paradigm shift is really in a way a human revelation which is how do we help people realize their potential at work? How do we create a system and tools that enable readers to not just managed but empower? How do we get people, you know, the next generation if they’re in school thinking about work, a new story about work that work is not just a means to an end but it can be a source of enrichment? Instead of paradigm shift that the client cross every single level from the way that we bring our children up to the way that we promote people, the way we classify jobs, the way that we inspire new leaders, and I think it started if we each of us asking or question ourselves which is why do I work and where am I at, at my best but, you know, it really is for the sake of hopefully a larger societal shift.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is important stuff. I’m so glad we’ve got you taking on some of this important work.

Arthur Woods
Well, you too, Pete. Your work is exactly in this …. It’s very important.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re all great. Yeay!

Arthur Woods
You’re great.

Pete Mockaitis
Appreciate it. So, well now let’s wrap it up and talk about some of your favorite things rather quickly. I want you to tell us what’s your favorite quote, something that inspires you again and again?

Arthur Woods
You know one that I always come back to was Louis Armstrong when he said, “What we play is life,” and I heard that at a young age. You prefer his music of course but it’s just different meaning to that that what we play is life.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. How about a favorite study? A piece of research or experiment that you find yourself thinking about a rapid zing frequently.

Arthur Woods
Yeah, well precisely Workforce Purpose Index, just kidding. There was a really interesting study on zookeepers that came out and it was, I’ll make it really brief but basically it was a study on purpose on zookeepers and what they learned is that the zookeepers were so mission-driven and so worried about the well-being of animals that no one else could take care of them that they actually the back that they have purpose at work from their managers because they thought that either they would be marginalized or underpaid or someone else like mistreat the animals. purpose which is an interesting one to explore but it was the zookeepers study …

Pete Mockaitis
And that would it guess. How about a favorite book?

Arthur Woods
Favorite book. So, I just finished and it was amazing. A Short History of the World. I don’t even remember the author but amazing, very good.

Pete Mockaitis
Great! And favorite website or online resource?

Arthur Woods
Yeah, there’s a called the noun project and you can search for any noun that gives you a visual. They’re trying to find a new way to classify things visually online.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! And how about a favorite habit or a personal practice that’s been very effective for you?

Arthur Woods
Yeah. So, a form of Buddhist practice and I chant every morning, every night. I chant the Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and it’s such a great way to sort of …

Pete Mockaitis
What does that translate to?

Arthur Woods
I’m going to butcher this but more or less without directly translating for Japanese, it means I’m engaging myself to the practice of eternal peace and pushing forward towards challenges to achieve eternal peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well that sounds …. You don’t have to put yourself on the spot but what does that chant sounds like? Are there any kinds of musical talents there?

Arthur Woods
Yeah. You literally repeat Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and what’s interesting is when you hear people do it becomes almost like a trance-like chant and it goes so fast sometimes you don’t recognize what it is but it really is it’s a pretty moving experience especially if you do so in the community.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! Thank you. How about a favorite tool, gadgets, software, hardware that you can use often?

Arthur Woods
Favorite tool. That’s a great question. You know what this is so funny but my mom just gave me this, I don’t even know how to describe this. It’s a little man like a little figurine, imagine, right, and his pants, the shorts are a tea bag they hold tea and you have his arms hang over a coffee cup and it looks like he’s, I have to send you a picture of this, just amazing. It’s like those one of those gifts that you get and you’re like wow this is like one of the most special gifts I’ve received. It’s so cool and it’s probably like worth $5 right. It brings you joy when you see this thing. It’s like this guy hanging out over a cup and his pants they hold tea. So, it’s really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that will serve you well.

Arthur Woods
It’ll serve me very well.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite time-saving trick?

Arthur Woods
Time-saving trick. So, I am starting to schedule, Google actually taught me to schedule an hour-long meeting to be 50 minutes in your head and half an hour-long meeting to be 25 minutes. So, you basically try to end 5 minutes or 10 minutes before respectively and it’s just of not running over. I hate that experience of like always being three minutes for your next meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the idea is when you’re actually making a meeting request, it is for 50 minutes?

Arthur Woods
That is the way Google set it up. We would send out 50-minute invites for an hour-long meeting or 25-minute invite. I’ve not sent out invites like that but what I do is l look to end the meeting 5 minutes before or 10 minutes before. It doesn’t always work but you can then start sort of mental habit that we’re not ending on the dot. We’re going to end early.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that, a lot. And how about a favorite truth bomb or nugget that when you share as you’re doing, you’re consulting or speaking, you see head start nodding people retweet it, they take their notes on it, what’s some of that nugget or quotable quote?

Arthur Woods
Yeah. The grass is greener is one that I see retweeted a lot. You know, one is certainly that everyone has the opportunity to tailor your job. Your job is written in mark pen and if we start to believe, you know, realize that we have the pencil with an eraser, we’re very empowered to, you know, make decisions that are right for ourselves. Nothing is ever permanent.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent! And favorite role model, someone you look up to professionally in life?

Arthur Woods
Yeah. So, I have to say Richard Branson has just been this guy with tons of courage, tons of and again just like we just talked about, never accept that willingness to never settle.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh great. And a favorite way to find you if folks want to learn more about you or Imperative, where would you ideally direct them to, the website or email or twitter?

Arthur Woods
Absolutely. So by twitter, at @arthurwoods and my email arthur@imperative.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, perfect. And finally, favorite challenge or call to action you would leave folks with who are seeking to be more awesome at the job.

Arthur Woods
Yeah. Go get your purpose drivers and you know, if you’re interested to get the full report, I think you’ll find it as a meaningful first step in self-discovery if you’re still in that early stage and maybe a or you ask yourself some deep questions and you’re looking for answers or affirmation.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, Arthur, thank so much for taking the time and I know you’ve got a busy travel schedule and a lot of things on your plate this week and next but much appreciated and this was a real treat.

Arthur Woods
Pete, it was a pleasure and you’re a great host.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shocks! Well, thank you and have a good one.

Arthur Woods
Alright. Thanks, Pete.