by Dominic Bria

Even though it's been postponed until fall, you’ve probably already seen the theme for this year’s Annual Shingo Conference in emails from the Shingo Institute: Know Your Why. It’s a familiar theme. Renowned speaker and author Simon Sinek wrote a book about it (Start With Why, Portfolio, 2009) and gave a terrific TED talk on it. In his book and talk, Sinek focuses on how leaders should inspire action by rallying people around a great purpose. This concept is closely related to the Shingo Guiding Principles “Create Constancy of Purpose” and “Respect Every Individual.”

We chose this theme for the Shingo Conference because the importance of knowing your why is underestimated and deserves to be spotlighted as the game changer it can be. Yes, giving individual team members a knowledge of how their work advances the purpose of the organization improves the organization by helping team members feel more engaged. But it goes far beyond that.

Mounting Evidence
In 2019, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a study that significantly adds to the growing body of evidence that there is an association between having a life purpose and mortality rates. The authors found that having a sense of meaning in one’s work is linked to better overall health over time. This appears to hold true regardless of gender, race, education, or income.

Another significant paper on this topic appeared in a 2016 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine. Using data from 10 different studies, it provides compelling evidence that having a motivating life purpose is associated with reduced risk of mortality and cardiovascular events, such as stroke or heart attack.

The results of these studies suggest that an understanding of purpose is not only good for organizations, it is also good for individuals. The Shingo Conference theme, Know Your Why, is meant to help you think about ways to choose and communicate a purpose to your organization so that all team members can understand their role. And it must be a purpose beyond just profits for owners or stockholders.

Purpose
The most compelling purpose statements use phrases like, “We improve lives in X way by doing Y.” It is interesting to note that the common denominator in many compelling organizational purposes seems to be either saving or improving the lives of others.

And that is the intent of this year’s Shingo Conference. Even in small ways, we want to help improve the lives of others. Instead of providing logo shirts for attendees, part of the cost of registration will go toward providing socks for homeless people living in the Orlando area. Speakers and workshop instructors are also customizing their presentations to inspire attendees toward improving lives by improving work.