202: The 4 Keys to a Meaningful Career

I admit it: I listened to what everyone else that I “should” do for a “good” job, at least at the beginning.

Want to know where that got me? Into work I dragged myself through every day for over a year in a job that had no meaning…where I ultimately got fired!  

It was my first professional job right out of college. Everybody told me I should take it. After all, most people didn’t even have job offers before they graduated. Plus it paid well and provided benefits…

But my deepest truth is that I took the job because it was “available”. Just right there in front of me. And everybody and their mother congratulated me on how “lucky” I was to have a job.

So, in my infinite 22 year old wisdom, I made what I thought was the smart move and said, “Well, I don’t have any other job offers yet, and finding other jobs sounds hard, so I should probably take this one.”

I was definitely not setting myself up for long-term success and fulfillment in my work.

Looking back, I wish I’d had someone like Dan Cumberland to help me find a path to a meaningful career.

Dan is a former youth pastor whose story is similar to mine: the power of suggestion took him down a career path that never quite fit him (being a pastor), but seemed right at the time.

In his journey to get on a path that matched his personality and values and desired impact, Dan did tons of research and developed his philosophy behind fulfilling career pathing. He founded The Meaning Movement, a business and podcast where he helps folks with this kind of stuff every day.

Through his work, he created a framework that he’s dubbed The 4 Ps of Meaningful Work.

If you’re seeking work with more depth and purpose for you, let me take you deeper into his 4 “Ps”: Product, Profit, Process, and People.

1. Product

On the podcast, as he was waxing philosophical on meaning in your work, Dan said:

When we talk about work and meaning we are talking about impact, agency, and identity.

Dan Cumberland

Impact in particular is tied to the Product you’re creating, or the output you’re responsible for.

When he talks about Product, Dan referred to it both on the micro level — meaning, what are the daily deliverables you’re responsible for — and the macro level.

The macro level of Product could be the good or service that you contribute to, or Product could expand out to the purpose of that good or service in society. For example, working at a plastic bag company might not feel like it has a ton of meaning at the “goods and services” level, but might feel more meaningful if you think about how you’re creating a product that helps people hygienically and safely transport their food home to their families, keeping cross-contamination and spread of bacteria and foodborne illness at a minimum. It suddenly re-frames the Product of your work as a unique contribution to public health and safety.

We’ve had coaching clients come through our doors with certain predispositions about companies like pharmaceuticals or insurance companies and how their Product doesn’t feel like it’s in alignment with their own personal quest for meaning. However, when you look at the good actors in these industries and the companies that are making huge, longitudinal improvements in health and quality of life, it can be easy to see how your Product could be far greater than your own daily contribution.

2. Profit

Sometimes the word Profit gets a bad rap and is positioned as the opposite of meaning, as if in order to have a meaningful career, you can’t make money or turn a profit.

Yet when you think about Profit in a personally meaningful way, it becomes a way more nuanced — and far more interesting — conversation.

Profit can be defined as an advantage or benefit when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity.

In personal terms, this could mean that what you’re getting back from the company is greater (and more valuable to you) than what you’re giving them — you’re turning a profit because you’re not running on empty and feeling like you’re getting something in exchange for your work that’s of greater value to you than the time and energy you’re putting in.

To better understand your own definition of Profit, ask yourself: what are the advantages and benefits of work for me? What do I get out of it? What would make a job feel “profitable” for me, beyond the money? What can I get back from my employer that would feel well worth the time and energy I’m putting in?

Some measures of personal non-monetary Profit could be:

• Learning a new skillset
• Joy from fun relationships with colleagues
• Unique access to industry or company leaders
• Flexibility to allow me to enjoy the rest of my life
• Great benefits (tuition benefits, fully paid insurance, healthy lunches served onsite)
• Constant opportunities to grow and try new projects
• Changing a market/industry/problem that’s important to me

Additionally, a great way to think about how you define Profit in terms of your monetary paycheck is an exercise from Jenny Blake, author of Pivot. Instead of tying your self esteem and worth to one specific number, give yourself a range:

• What’s my “minimum” number, or the number I’d accept as a minimum to do work that filled me up with joy and light? Remember that sometimes the things in our lives that we consume and see as “needs” are often coping mechanisms, retail therapy, or purchases that help us numb out the pain of not living the life we feel called to by our hearts.  
• What’s my “ideal” number, or the secret digits in the back of your head that you’re always passively scanning job ads looking for?
• What’s my “jump for joy” number, or the one where I’d be so thrilled and overwhelmed that someone valued my contributions that much, I’d be jumping out of bed every morning ready to dive into my work?

Defining what your bottom line is can be incredibly helpful in finding and achieving it.

3. Process

Dan explains Process as the “doing” of the work.

To start exploring what kind of Processes are most meaningful for you, ask yourself: what kind of tasks or activities do you love and get lost in doing?

You can tell when you’re enjoying a Process when you find yourself in a “flow” state: you’ve been working with such focus and intensity that you look up at the clock, and two hours have gone by in the blink of an eye.  

Sometimes you can also see the tasks you love based on what you volunteer for. When you’re doing projects or activities outside of work — like a passion project, a side hustle, or a volunteer program in your church or community — what kinds of roles do you naturally gravitate towards?

In other cases, seeing yourself how others view you can be helpful in seeing your natural gifting in Processes. What kinds of things do people come to you for help with? What problems do you always jump up to help other people solve? Those answers can be great affirmation if you love having long conversations about English class homework with your niece, or if you enjoy troubleshooting issues with software system compatibility on your mom’s computer. Each of those natural gifts would point to different work (and styles of work) that would be personally meaningful to you.

4. People

To round out the 4 Ps of a meaningful career, Dan recommends getting clear on who you work with — and for.

What kind of People do you want your work to serve? Individuals, groups, communities, countries? Challenge yourself to describe a single individual you’d like to help. What is that person’s backstory? What are they like? Why do they need this kind of help?

People also refers to the people you work with: your boss, your direct coworkers, and your colleagues across the organization. What qualities would you want the leaders of your organization to embody? How would you be able to tell through their behavior if they are successfully living out their (and your) values?

Sometimes, organizations can espouse certain values, but act in ways that aren’t aligned.

For Lisa Lewis, one of the career coaches on our team, she had a particularly painful experience seeing a leader give lip service to values while acting out of alignment:

“My last consulting job was at a company that talked a lot about creating positive work-life balance. However, one particular leader on the team actively undermined that policy in pressing employees to take on projects even after they’d said they couldn’t.

“I found out that my grandfather had just died. She called me into our 1-on-1 meeting, and when I sat down with her, my eyes were already full of tears. I told her I’d just learned of a loss in the family, and she immediately responded by telling me to “take all the bereavement time I needed”.

“And then, as if she’d been possessed, she immediately switched into corporate mode discussing her project and told me that she would need my decision about whether I could start on a new project by the end of the day. I was flabbergasted and felt like my legs had been kicked out from under me. I could feel a permanent rage blackout coming on. Something inside of me said, “there has got to be a better way,” so I committed to searching for a new job that same day.”

Reflecting on the best and worst team dynamics you’ve experienced can be a helpful way to clarify what’s most important to you in terms of People. When do you feel alive and safe and thrive in a work environment? What are the times you’ve felt shut down or deflated or hamstrung in your ability and desire to contribute to the greater goals at work? Writing down the commonalities between each set of experiences reveals what your core values around culture, personalities, and individual contributions are.

WRAP UP: WHAT DOES A MEANINGFUL CAREER MEAN TO YOU?

Now that you’ve reflected on the Product, Profit, Process, and People that create a personally meaningful career experience for you, comment below and share with us: What are some of the traits of the 4 Ps for you? What came up that you weren’t expecting? What came up that validated your hunches about what you need?