Importance of Passion in Work

In this episode Karla, Alaina and Andrew discuss how important it is that an employee’s passion is aligned in the workplace and how productive they are when they feel comfortable and supported in their surroundings. 

Andrew Sherman serves as a legal and strategic advisor to both leaders of Fortune 500 companies and founders of rapid growth, emerging businesses in the areas of business planning, corporate finance, Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) and intellectual property harvesting, such as franchising and licensing strategies. He is the author of 26 books on business growth, M&A and strategy.  Andrew is an adjunct professor in the MBA program at University of Maryland and at Georgetown Law School for nearly 30 years.

Listen to Episode 108 here where Andrew and I discuss the largest transition of wealth in history.

Partner at Syfarth in Washington D.C.
Twitter: @AndrewJSherman
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Amazon Author Page: Author of 26 books

Alaina Love is CEO of Purpose Linked Consulting and an internationally recognized expert in leadership purpose and passion. She is co-author of the bestselling McGraw-Hill book, The Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results.

With a research team from University of Michigan, Alaina developed the Passion Profiler online tool, which identifies and measures the 10 passion archetypes operating in all of us and reveals how we are using them in the work environment. Over the last 18 years, Alaina has conducted research and created programs to support leadership and team development, with a specific focus on employee purpose and passion. Her work has shown that individual fulfillment and inspirational leadership are the keys to creating the level of employee engagement that produces outstanding business results and supports a thriving culture.

An avid thought leader, Alaina has served as a leadership columnist for Bloomberg Business Week, The Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review online. She currently writes a popular monthly blog for SmartBrief on Leadership, which was among the most widely read columns in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Alainas next book, Passionality, explores the art and science of leveraging passion and highlights the tool and techniques to bring purpose and passion into our daily lives.

CEO Purpose Linked Consulting
LinkedIn: http://www.twitter.com/workwithpassion
Twitter: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alainalove
Take the Passion Profiler assessment online
Author of The Purpose Linked Organization

Listen to the podcast here:

Read Along As Karla, Alaina and Andrew Discuss The Importance of Passion in Work

Karla Nelson: And welcome to The People Catalysts podcast, Alaina Love and Andrew Sherman. How are you guys doing today? Alaina?

Alaina Love: Terrific, terrific. Really happy to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, and we’re so excited to have you back on the show, Andrew. We had so much fun the first time.

Andrew Sherman: I know. An encore presentation, and now I get to bring Alaina into it. I don’t think I could be more blessed right now.

Karla Nelson: Oh, well this is awesome, I know. We’re actually, I think, cooking up one more podcast. We’ll let you know about it down the road. And Andrew, 26 books again. I’ve shared that story. It was amazing. I’ve done a lot of interviews and met a lot of people, had a lot of podcasts, but Andrew has this amazing focus of finding a problem and then just writing some solutions to it. So he’s got all sorts of different books he’s written, and there was one specifically about road rules, right? And the importance of passion is kind of how you and Alaina met, right?

Andrew Sherman: It is. In 2008, I wrote a book about life, after writing all these business books, called Road Rules. And one of the central themes running through the Road Rules book was the importance of passion, both in the workplace and in our lives and in our culture. And right around that same time I was introduced to Alaina by a mutual friend, actually another thought leader, Dr. Robert Rozin, in this field who has written a bunch of books, not 26, but he’s written a bunch. And he introduced me to Alaina and I did some homework on her research and the passion profiler, and it was really bonding at first sight to meet somebody who was so like-minded and so accomplished that we’ve been good friends ever since. And I think it’s coming up on 12, 13 years that we’ve known each other thanks to Dr. Rozin.

Karla Nelson: Nice.

Alaina Love: Yeah, we’re pretty blessed. We’re blessed.

Karla Nelson: I love those stories. You know our motto here on The People Catalysts podcast is, in business and life, relationships are everything. And so, I always love hearing the stores how people meet. So what we’re going to talk about a little bit here today is, anybody who listened to Andrew’s and I’s previous podcast, we’ll make sure there’s a link to it in the show notes below, is that there is this huge opportunity, this 40 to 50 trillion dollars that is the largest transfer of wealth that’s ever happened in the history of the world, right? And then you broke that down into the buying side and the selling side. And we really focused on the both intangible and tangible assets, and actually Andrew shared a really interesting story. Why don’t just share it with us real quick just as an example of the tangible and intangible asset when you were a young attorney?

Andrew Sherman: Well, when I first got out of law school I was working on a transaction. It was a split sale of a small chimney cleaning company. The total purchase price was $500,000.00. That night I was working on the final asset purchase agreement and bill of sale, and I realized that the assets only added up to $475,000.00, and I started sweating profusely thinking I was going to get fired for typos, and I literally could not sleep all night. The next morning the senior partner comes in and I said, “I need to talk to you right away. We’re about to commit fraud.” And he said, “Don’t use that word so freely.” And I said, “Well, you don’t understand. The purchase price is $500,000.00, and the assets only add up to $475. And he said, “Well, just write down goodwill $25,000.00.”

And I said, “But what does that even mean?” And he said, “You know, with all the other stuff, I mean, culture and governance and customer lists and people’s happiness in the workplace and customer loyalty.” And I thought, okay, this doesn’t sound right. That was in 1986. And if you dial forward, as Alaina knows, these are now the most valuable assets at Google and Amazon and some of the, you know, and Apple. The most valuable companies in the world understand that the intangibles greatly trump the tangibles in terms of their strategic value and enterprise value.

The reason Alaina and I have gotten along so well over the years is, she realizes, as I do, that if people are unhappy, if goals are not aligned, if governance is off, if culture is off, you’ll never, ever, ever accomplish the enterprise value that you’re capable of, and you’ll be on the short end of the stick when it comes to selling your business one day.

Karla Nelson: Oh, that is so true. Yes, we just did a podcast on that not too long ago about the largest cost to any business turnover and a bad hire, which those are two sides of the same coin, and that’s a very thin coin. Well, Alaina, we just can’t wait to hear about this passion profiler, and can you share a little bit about your story? It’s a very unique and amazing story, your pathway that you kind of walked here. But could you share it? How did you get started in this industry and then develop the passion profiler?

Alaina Love: Oh, boy. This is a really close to my heart, very personal story. I actually began my career as a research scientist. I was in medical school and then went on to become a research scientist in a pharmaceutical company in immunology. I thought when I got to that organization I would never leave. I thought I had a lifer here in this company. This is just the best place in the world to be, I’m learning so much, there’s so many brilliant people I get a chance to work with every day. And at some point while I was in the research field I made a couple of transitions from basic research into clinical research, overseeing clinical trials on what’s now an over-the-counter anti-ulcer medication.

And then I saw this place called human resources, and I thought, well, that looks kind of interesting. I wonder what goes on over in that place called HR? And so I started talking to people who worked there, and as it turns out, one of the women who was the director of the department was a former chemist who had worked in the laboratories, and she had made the transition from the labs into HR. So she had a job opening, and some 10 interviews later, it took me 10 attempts, she hired me. And I started working in HR and thought this is great too, because I get a chance to see drug development from conception in the laboratory all the way to market. And I grew and grew and grew into positions of increasing responsibility in that function until in finally was an executive director worldwide for the sales and marketing division of the company.

I had this just fantastic team working with me. We were dealing with some really tough challenges. We had had a phenomenal year. This one particular year that comes to mind is the pivotal one for me. And I got called to my boss’s office to receive my performance appraisal, which was glowing. I mean, he was thrilled with what we had accomplished that year, and thrilled with the fact that our team had basically saved the bonus pool for the HR function because some of the other teams didn’t do as well. It was the first year we were going to be evaluated by our client groups on our service to them, and that evaluation determined the size of the bonus pool that he would have to distribute to everybody in the department, though we had done a lot to kind of change the game.

And he told me during that conversation that I was in the succession plan as his replacement when he left that role. Now, believe me, as somebody who was very hardworking and very ambitious, this should have been absolutely phenomenal news to me. But for me, it felt like having an out of body experience, like I’ve overdosed on cold medication and my brain is separate from by body, and I’m watching this conversation go on between these two people. I learned later that I said all the right things in that meeting, but it was amygdala hijack. I have no recollection whatsoever about what actually came out of my mouth during that meeting. But I remember walking back to my office and closing my door and sort of sitting there and saying, “What is wrong with you? Why are you not thrilled with this news? This is what you’ve been working for. You’ll have an opportunity to report to the CEO of a multinational, multi-billion dollar company, you’ll be able to make all of the growth and changes in the HR function that you think are important, and oh, by the way you’re going to make a lot of money.”

But I sat there wrestling with myself, and it was like these two voices were in my head warring with one another. And one voice just said, “You know, oh, my gosh. I don’t want that job. I don’t want that job, and in fact, I think whatever I came here to do I’ve done, and I’m finished here.” And the other voice said, “Wait a second. You’re being rash. Let’s just think about this for a moment. Maybe you’re in shock because of this news. Let’s take a moment and just, you know, give yourself some time.” So the two voices are in an argument with each other, and they finally agree that I will put a stake in the ground some 18 months into the future and if i don’t feel differently within that time frame, I get to leave. So I look up 18 months later, I come screeching into that stake into the ground. I don’t feel any differently, and I reduce my annual income by 100% overnight. I leave. And I remember-

Andrew Sherman: I don’t know why you’re both laughing. I just heard 100% reduction in income.

Alaina Love: I know, well

Andrew Sherman: I fell off my chair over here.

Karla Nelson: It made me think of every entrepreneur that I’ve talked about that’s made that crossover from their corporate focus, right? Which you’ve learned all this wonderful stuff, and then all of a sudden decide, oh, because we’re talking about passion here, right? And so that’s right, really at the center of why people go, hey, I wouldn’t go to work for myself because I wouldn’t put what I like to call a dent on the universe. I’m not sure, I think Steve Jobs was the first one to call it that. I thought it was pretty cool. Okay, so you decide that 18 months later you step away.

Alaina Love: I’m out of here. I step away, and about two weeks after doing so I think to myself, wonder if this could’ve turned out differently? Was that really what I had decided to do? But I remember thinking to myself how is it that this company lost me, and that I grew out of love with my organization? I mean, how could that be? I thought I was a lifer when I came in. And what I realized is that increasingly I was feeling, over the years, less and less like my passions were being connected to the things that I was being asked to do. I felt less a sense of purpose in the work, and I felt strongly that I was here to do something bigger than what I was doing, but I didn’t have a language to describe that. In fact, my boss was wonderful when I told him that I was leaving. He pulled out this giant top hat. He threw a cape on and he started pulling rabbits out of his hat like crazy, offering me one job after another. I could not find a way to say yes to any of them.

I realized after pondering about this that if an organization could lose me, if I could decide not to be a part of a company that I thought I would be with my whole life, who else were we losing? Who else was feeling this sense of disconnection from who they are and what they were doing every single day of their lives? So I pull out my nerd hat and I become the researcher again, and I conducted a study looking at people who were deemed by their organizations as being high potential. People that they would want to grow into leadership positions in the organization. And I looked at people over 14 different industry segments, both domestic and international, for profit, nonprofit, and government.

And what was incredibly consistent when I spoke to these folks who were high potential is that they wanted to feel like their work mattered, that what they were doing was more than just an economic means to an end, and that keeping them in their organizations depended largely on them feeling like they had an outlet for their passion in the work that they were doing. Because if they didn’t, these were people who had choices. They were very talented. There were other organizations that they could go to. But those who felt like they had the triad of being skilled for the work that they were doing, having an outlet for their passions in the work that they were doing, and being in an organization that honored their values, folks who’ve lived in that sweet spot where those three intersected felt like there’s all to play for. I’m going to ride this wave all the way to the beach. I might be able to go across the street and make more money at that other company, but I don’t know if I can create this experience that I’m having right now.

Andrew Sherman: And you know what? Alaina, if I could just reinforce one point, give you a chance to take a breath too. One of the things I’ve been frustrated by, and I’m sure both of you feel this way is, the HR role in corporate America, whether it’s big companies, medium companies, and particularly weak and small companies, is still to this day non-strategic in many, many companies, more focused on filling out forms and complying with this and getting this approval, and enforcing the employee manual. I’ve been asking, including in speeches for SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, when does HR get a strategic seat at the table? When do HR issues bubble up to the board of directors level?

Even in my teaching at Georgetown Law School, I’ve got 80 students, and when I ask them how many of you want to be labor and employment lawyers and deal with people issues, I only get a couple of hands that go up. I mean, we all agree that people, culture, leadership, governance, are the enterprise values, enterprise value drivers of the next decade, and yet nobody wants to work in the space. How are we going to square up maximizing value if a lot of the young people aren’t even choosing this career path?

Karla Nelson: That’s a good, go ahead Alaina.

Alaina Love: I was going to say I would agree with you, Andrew, having come out of the function. What I can tell you is that there’s a lot of attention being paid to overseeing benefits and making sure we’re recruiting people into the organization and filling positions especially in those organizations where the growth is high or where the strategy for growth is through acquisition and merger. There’s a lot of focus placed on those kinds of issues, but I don’t see as many HR professionals spending the bulk of their time worrying about the culture that’s being created. Spending time making sure that things that are supporting the culture, which ultimately supports the engagement that employees experience at work every day, is the top focus that they have. They get sidetracked with these other things. And I believe they do it at the peril of the organization.

Andrew Sherman: Exactly. And I’ll add one other area. Karla asked how we met. One other strategic intersection that Alaina and I have talked about and we’ve spoken on together is, so much of the HR effort right now is focused on diversity and inclusion. And it should be. We still have a lot of work to do. But what isn’t focused on as much, or at least not until a couple years ago, was the business proposition of diversity and inclusion and the innovation that comes when you have a truly diverse team, an inclusive team, and so there again the enterprise value dividend of some of these HR priorities has to be part of the dialogue. Because it’s not just because it’s the right thing to do, it’s also because it makes really good business sense. And it drives enterprise value, and it’s reflective of our societal demographics.

Karla Nelson: And-

Andrew Sherman: And from that, it’s not a big jump for people to feel more passionate and aligned in the workplace when they’re in comfortable surroundings and supportive surroundings and truly people are genuinely curious about each other because they want to learn, not just because there’s some statistical reason that they’re on the same team.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, and Andrew, you make a great point here of what I was going to mention about HR, because everybody always asks us. We do play a role in HR in the work that we do at The People Catalysts, but by default there are a lot more later adopters. So if you think about 110 years of marketing research of diffusion of innovations, there’s more later adopters that are attracted to that type of work that you were talking about, Alaina, which is the hiring aspect. All these things that need to be done that are very, coming into work and doing the same thing. Or looking at all the things that could go wrong so you don’t get in a legal situation. And so I think that would be so interesting with what you brought up, Andrew, about nobody wants to go into that strategic HR space because you could very well, the mindset of HR has not been the strategic aspect of it. And strategic comes from the early adopters. Tactical comes from the later adopters. And so it would just be curious, so go ahead. Go ahead, answer on that, or respond. I would love to hear what you have to say on that.

Alaina Love: You’re absolutely correct. I think you’re absolutely correct on that, and I’ll tell you, if I look at my own practice here at Purpose Linked Consulting, that people who are the earlier adopters of this work around the passion profiler are leaders, leading teams who are worried about, do I have the right people on the bus? Do I have them in the right positions? Am I giving them an opportunity to express their best selves at work every day? Because they realize that on average, each of us is going to spend well over 85,000 hours of our lives at work. The only thing we spend more time doing is sleeping. So if I’m going to attract and retain the very best talent, I’ve got to give them an outlet to express who they are and bring the best of who they are to the work.

So when we talk about things like diversity and inclusion, part of what we need to be including in that conversation is, do we have a diversity of passion sitting around the table contributing ideas? Because that’s where innovation comes from. It’s not from living in an echo chamber.

Karla Nelson: Yes, I agree-

Alaina Love: Go ahead, I’m sorry.

Karla Nelson: That’s an excellent point, Alaina. I’m totally tracking with what you’re saying because the work we do is just based off the core nature of your work, right? But you could be passionate about something and it doesn’t fit, like the affinity of, if you love basketball but you’re four or five. It’s like you can have a passion, but it’s the affinity, it’s the two. Like, what are you great at, and what are you passionate about? And there is something just brilliant that comes out of when you can identify where somebody lives. They just open up and now they’re being held in their magnificence versus what we, unfortunately, do a lot of times is point out what people are not.

Andrew Sherman: Exactly. Let me make one other, strategic intersections. So, when I wrote the book on the crisis of disengagement that Karla, we talked a little bit about on the last show, and more than happy to do more on a future podcast. And Alaina contributed a guest contribution to that book because what we both see is this disturbing level of apathy in the workplace. Of people disconnected to their work, disconnected to the values of the company, and this is one of the root causes, the lack of passion or unaligned passions is a root cause of the levels of disengagement. So when we talk about only 4%, according to Gallup, of the entire workforce considers themselves highly engaged, the same issues could be said about passion in the workplace. How much more valuable would your enterprise be? How much more productive? How much more innovative? How much more profitable if you could move the needle? Move the passion needle inside your company’s culture or chart, governance, leadership?

Alaina Love: Well, I’ll tell you the answer to that question, Andrew.

Andrew Sherman: I hoped you would.

Alaina Love: The answer is one hell of a lot. I was actually-

Andrew Sherman: I was hoping you would. Exactly.

Alaina Love: Gallup actually did a study on this, because they study everything which I love about them.

Karla Nelson: I do, too.

Alaina Love: And they actually looked at the number of people in the U.S. workforce who are considered actively disengaged. That’s about 18% of the 50-something percent that are disengaged. I think from the last numbers there were about 34% of the workforce that’s considered engaged. The rest are disengaged. Of the rest that are disengaged, about 18% of them are considered actively disengaged. Those are the folks who are-

Andrew Sherman: Yeah, totally-

Alaina Love: You know, at the water cooler complaining about everything. They’re swirling around the porcelain and they want to take everybody else with them. So they’re miserable. Gallup looked at that and said, “Okay, what is the impact on lost productivity from people who are actively disengaged? Let’s look at that in a dollar figure over a one-year time period in the United States alone.” You care to take a guess on what that number looked like? Huge.

Andrew Sherman: The one I saw was about $800 billion per year.

Alaina Love: Yeah, so the range that they’ve seen or tracked most often is somewhere between $450 and $550 billion a year. That’s the number I’ve seen. I can believe that there are years when it’s up as high as 800. But think about that for a second. If that’s happening across the nation in a year from actively disengaged people, what is happening inside your company if you’re not paying attention to this issue? This is huge.

Andrew Sherman: The other thing is, some of the consequences which I think, Karla, we talked about last time, are not so pleasant to talk about. I mean, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, workplace violence, workplace pilferage. These are things that are very real, very, very dangerous to our society, and also have an engagement and passion root or core to them.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, that’s a good point. Alaina?

Alaina Love: On the flip side of that, there’s been some research done. In fact, the study was published in HBR a couple years back, looking at employees who are happy and feel a sense of passion and purpose for their work, and what they found in this study is that those employees are 31% more productive than their counterparts who are not happy. They are likely to generate 37% higher sales if they’re in sales roles, and they’re three times more creative. Now, every time I put those figures out in front of anybody who’s leading a team and say, “Who would like a team that’s 31% more productive”, everybody raises their hand. “Who wants a team that’s generating 37% higher sales?” All hands go up. “Who wants people who are three times more creative?” Both hands of every person are waving in the air. Of course we do.

So it’s kind of a no-brainer that this is an important thing. Appalling to me that not more attention is being paid to it. And frankly, when you look at organizations, go to organizations and especially the commoditized industry, all things created equal, the organization that has figured out how to harness the passions of its people and has provided an outlet for those passions to flourish, is going to win hands down every time. It’s the competitive edge that organizations are not making enough of, and need to be playing really close attention to.

Andrew Sherman: And I’ll tell you, Karla, one thing that Alaina and I have been talking about lately is the impact on the professions. I can’t begin to tell you how many lawyers, doctors, accountants, consultants, engineers, scientists, are completely burnt out. They’re completely frustrated, they’ve lost their passion for what led them to the law, or accounting, or medicine, in the first place. But they’re so boxed in, in their lives with financial commitments and other things that they come to work every day with this heavy financial burden and absolutely no passion left for their jobs. And yet, we who are getting surgeries and taking advice from these professionals every day, don’t really understand the level of burnout and other things that are going on in their lives. There’s a lot of applications both organization and personal to Alaina’s work. I don’t think it comes as a shock to any of your podcast listeners that we have a society right now that’s very fractured and very dysfunctional and very broken, and a piece of that brokenness is the inability to feel any emotion around your day to day work, and your day to day lives. That’s got to get fixed. This is not who we are as a nation.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, great point.

Alaina Love: I think we’re at that the issue is even more concerning and disturbing if you look at the demographic shift that we’re experiencing across the globe. We’ve got Gen-Z’rs who now are the majority in the population. They’re overwhelmingly looking for brands and looking for companies that they feel have a purpose, that are dedicated to social impact, that are environmentally conscious, that have strong values, and that are purpose-focused. So, if you want to attract, retain and engage that group of the population, you got to have a different and better story to tell. And you’d better understand the why behind your business, and you’d better be able to link your why with their passion, or you won’t keep them. Look at the record unemployment, or low levels of unemployment now. The war for talent is raging.

Yes, and that’s kind of interesting. You were picking up what I was thinking there, Alaina, around that. Because now you see where everyone’s talking, we’ve talked about talent management. I could give you every corporate buzzword that you’ve also heard around that aspect of finding and aligning your team with your purpose and your why, and making them feel like their work matters, that they matter. Because nobody gets burnout when they’re a part of a winning team and they feel like their work matters, and that disconnect. It’s interesting, because I always talk about, and there’s another Gallup poll, you know, 70% of people hate their job. Not dislike it, hate. 89% worldwide hate their job. And they’ve been doing that, conducting that since 2000, and it’s pretty much the same numbers. There’s a little bit of a skew sometimes.

Karla Nelson: I was chatting with Andrew about this as, what do you think that does to their health? Their finances? Their relationships? I never thought about the other side of it. What happens to the people receiving those services from those individuals that are burnt out?

Andrew Sherman: Exactly. And I’ll add one more data point, since we’re on a data point roll. There was a study that ABT, I believe, came that said that something like 62% of America’s workforce are open to an overture, okay? In other words, open to being talked about leaving. Could you imagine if 70% of our country’s marriages, one or more spouse said, “Oh, yeah, I’m open to an overture”? What do you think the divorce rate would be? I mean, you can’t keep people in jobs if 70% of them are “open to an overture.” And to Alaina’s point, I think we’re raising a generation that for the first time in probably 100 years, I mean 100 years, I certainly don’t remember having this conversation with my great grandfather or grandfather. For the first time in 100 years is willing to place qualitative over quantitative. Experience over money. They want to know the company’s values, they want to know they’re important, they want to know the value of the work that they’re doing. And if that costs them an extra 5 or 10 or 20 thousand dollars, you know what? They’re willing to make that sacrifice or they have one of us as their backstop.

And they can afford to make those choices because they’re going to have inherited wealth. We’re going through an important transformation and Alaina’s hit the nail on the head. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re the leader of a company, and you’re not understanding that you can’t just throw another $5,000.00 at somebody and expect them to take the job, that’s not how it works with this next generation coming up.

Alaina Love: Now we have a generation where meaning matters over money.

Andrew Sherman: Very well said.

Alaina Love: Meaning matters over money. And I don’t see that shifting. I just see that increasing over time. The other thing that’s also true, Andrew and Karla, is that I’ve noticed that the other generation in the workforce, the baby boomer generation, is starting to sound a lot like the millennials and the Gen V’rs to me when I hear them talk about this particular issue. I call it a confluence of self actualization happening at both ends of the generational spectrum. The baby boomers are saying, “Well, you know, I’ve gone through several financial crises in my time, and my 401K is still a 201K. It’s not quite where I need it to be. I can’t really afford yet to retire. But if I’m going to spend x-number of years, additional years working, then it’s got to be that I’m doing things that I feel a sense of passion for, that are fulfilling, that I’m getting some sense of purpose from, or why the heck am I doing it?” And you have the other end of the generational spectrum kind of saying the same thing.

Andrew Sherman: Well, and then you add one more interesting development which is the advent of technology and impact of robotics. And people are saying that one fourth of our total global workforce could be replaced by robotics by 2030, and people are saying, “Wait a second. Number one, if my job’s going to be replaced by a robot in 10 years, I’d better reconnect with my core loves and passions and beliefs. And number two, I’d better be passionate in the workplace because that might be the only thing I have left to keep me relevant relative to a bot.” We could do almost a whole show on where Alaina’s work and research overlaps and intersects with the impact of technology on the future workforce.

Alaina Love: Absolutely.

Karla Nelson: No doubt. No doubt. And the other piece that is, it’s not that I enjoy the fact that the unemployment rate isn’t low, I think that’s a great thing right now. One of the outcomes of it that I think we’re starting to see is really taking this thing, HR, seriously. So let’s hope that at least it helps in knowing that when the unemployment rate is low, and millennials are, and I do believe SHRM reported this, the average lifespan now of a millennial here in corporate America is 18 months. Two months of them enjoying their engagement and doing what it is they do, thinking they can have this, as you were saying Alaina, matters over money, making their dent on the universe. And then all of a sudden, they spend 16 months after that looking for another job, right?

And so it’s kind of interesting all the different aspects of what we discussed around that, and have discussed not only on this show, but my goodness, the technology piece and aspect of that as well, Andrew, is a huge piece in where we’re going. And then to come up with the thing we started with is the 40 to 50 trillion transfer of wealth, the greatest transfer of wealth ever to happen and then going through these intangible, these things that, and as Andrew, you had stated, all these large companies, the intangibles. Even if you include just data in that one, my goodness. Data, people, culture, leadership, the way that technology is impacting our companies. The way just the globalization too of the workforce itself, right?

Andrew Sherman: Right. And when it comes to enterprise value, look, you’re fooling yourself if you’re listening to this podcast and you don’t think that one of the key areas of due diligence in the future when you’re positioning to sell your company isn’t going to be culture and passion and levels of engagement. Buyers are going to want to know. Do you have an engaged and passionate workforce? Or do you have people with their foot halfway out the door who couldn’t care less whether this company succeeds or fails? And if that’s the case, you have to ask how many dollars of enterprise value am I leaving on the table? How many dollars did I have a chance to fix it before it was too late? How much wealth am I robbing my future generations of by not fixing this problem ASAP?

Alaina Love: And do you have sound systems in place that once that company’s sold will allow that company to maintain that level of engagement and the quality of the culture?

Andrew Sherman: Exactly.

Karla Nelson: Love it.

Alaina Love: And have you embedded it in the way you think and do things?

Karla Nelson: Guys, we could go on forever and ever on this. This is just what I love. I think there’s a huge opportunity as well as all of our listeners in looking at this huge transfer of wealth that’s coming up, and understanding how this impacts. It doesn’t matter if you have the local store on the corner, guys. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. This impacts every aspect of enterprise value. So with that said, gosh guys, thanks so much for coming on the show. Where can we get ahold of you, Alaina?

Alaina Love: You can reach me at thepurposelink.com. That is our website, thepurposelink.com. And my contact information, my direct email is Alove@thepurposelink.com. I’d be happy to give you any further information that you might want on the passion profiler and the work that we do.

Karla Nelson: And Andrew, where can we get ahold of you, my friend?

Andrew Sherman: All my information is available either at Seyfarth, seyfarth.com, and if you’re interested in some of the books that I’ve written, they’re all on my Amazon author page.

Karla Nelson: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Alaina and Andrew. Until next time, definitely take a look at your enterprise value and how you can use the passion profiler to make a difference in the intangible aspects of your business.

Andrew Sherman: Awesome, awesome. Thanks for being such a great host, Karla.

Karla Nelson: Thank you, sir.

Alaina Love: Thanks, Karla. It was terrific. Thanks, Andrew. It was so good to talk to you again today.

Karla Nelson: You got it, Alaina.

Andrew Sherman: All right, we’ll talk soon. Bye, everybody.

Karla Nelson: Goodbye.