Leadership as Advocacy
ur job does more to define us than any other factor in our lives, which means work matters. Work is the primary determinant of economic security, social status, and the structure of our relationships. My job has received more time and attention at every step of my career than my family, friends, and personal care combined. Beyond time spent, my work shapes my happiness, dignity, and the future I see for myself. I have been an employee and an employer, and if I’ve learned one thing, it is that work matters, and I do my best work when my work matters to me.
The reality of our modern work structure is that employee engagement isn’t a metric that’s been prioritized. In fact, a Gallup tracker for U.S. engagement has never shown more than 40 percent of employees to be excited about and committed to the work they do over more than two decades. In a country that has long espoused freedom of opportunity as a core value, a general acceptance that most people won’t like or care about their jobs has settled pervasively into American society.
I founded AMP with Daniel Taylor with a shared commitment to helping people do what they want and make a living doing it. My work experience in private and public corporate structures means that I’ve lived as a piece of employee engagement data. As a founder, I believe Daniel and I, and leaders like us, can pursue purposeful work as the core focus of our businesses and find success doing it.
I think there are two barriers that have long obstructed overall engagement, one of which has already been diminished. I also believe that if a coalition of leaders come together to confront what remains of these barriers, we can define a better, smarter, happier future of work. I want to talk about these barriers through my lived experience and propose solutions already working for us at AMP that others can deploy.
As humans, we’re habit-forming, and we rely on our habits for the structure of our lives. It’s hard to willfully disrupt the patterns we have developed, even when the result might be more satisfaction in our lives. Leo Tolstoy spoke about this habit-forming condition and said, “Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.”
Low employee engagement is tied to work as a habit-building activity and contributes to the overall difficulty of finding purposeful work that also meets employee needs. The first barrier to engagement is driven by the primacy of work in our lives. As such, our days and schedules are designed around the expectations of our employers. I’ve always determined when and how often I can exercise, spend time with family, and engage with people socially based on my responsibilities at work.
I started my career by taking the first job offer I got. I was an English major in college, which meant people often asked me what I would do with my degree. Honestly, I wanted to be a poet, but I needed to pay rent in New York City so I took a job. It was a great opportunity and a productive learning experience, but it was also a role in an industry that I quickly knew wasn’t suitable. Even so, I had a life designed around the work I was doing and the time I spent at work. The prospect of a career change was daunting because it meant a forced adjustment to my established habits, even to begin a job search.
Tolstoy’s concept of being thrown off habitual paths was made manifest with the COVID-19 pandemic. With the arrival of the “essential workers” label, pandemic-related restrictions on activities, and the new reality of a global health crisis, everyone’s habits were forced to change. As a result, 2021 was a record year for resignations, labor movements, and passion-driven entrepreneurship. Cultural change as the result of COVID-19 helped people reinvest time in passion projects, interests, and hobbies that result in greater happiness and satisfaction outside of work. Many people took this opportunity to establish new expectations for the role of work in their lives.
Human behavior change is hard but is often fruitful when it happens. Where a global pandemic has forced mass habit change toward purposeful work, a second barrier remains. It’s hard for people to find purposeful work that also meets their needs. Reality check: People will be complacent in jobs that ask them to drive results for a generally absent group of ultimate winners that don’t feel like part of their communities. Yet, these are also the roles that frequently come with high salaries, usually because the business models we expect to follow reward profit at any cost. In today’s business ecosystem, it is incumbent on leaders to create good jobs that also align with a shared purpose.
At AMP, we’ve answered this call, and it’s working. Ensuring purposeful opportunities for employees has strengthened our business through better, smarter, and happier work. We’ve learned that building in a shared purpose requires us to look beyond data and policy for solutions to the employee engagement problem.
When we rely on data for policy and operational decisions, it is easy to miss opportunities for more effective culture change. People are generally willing to accept a lower salary to take on a purposeful role while at the same time showing enhanced motivation, productivity, and well-being when working in that role. The fact that an employee will accept less doesn’t mean they deserve less, but data can confuse this point.
Data is beneficial to track and predict mass changes in our society, but it cannot predict an individual’s behavior. Employee engagement relies on personal factors, and we’ve adopted a multifaceted approach that allows work to look different for different individuals. This environment allows people, not data, to determine our employment structures and core values.
Most mornings, I am on a New York City subway, reading a book, happily, on my way to the office. Five days a week, I commute to work, and I love the commute. I love going to work, and I love being at work. Some team members work remotely. Digital advances allow us to work together live and asynchronously to drive our mission forward each day. The model works because the team is obsessed with a shared purpose.
In practice, hiring for passion over experience results in a more productive team when a collaborative approach to policy creates the groundwork for a unified experience.
A shared mission is critical to employee engagement, and our determination to offer self-direction in roles and responsibilities drives it further. Members of the AMP team avoid burnout by focusing on business priorities that align with their personal priorities and interests, making the entire organization more productive.
As a leader, I must be willing to listen, learn, and adapt to the needs and interests of the team. This means that my triangle on the office chore wheel is bigger than everyone else’s, because the shared interest requires me to do extra work. I embrace the opportunity to serve in order to enable my team to do the work that is most meaningful to them.
Leaders should not be representatives of a broad organization against the interests of their direct reports. Our mission at AMP is to empower an equitable future through entrepreneurship, and our shared purpose is to help people build lives they love while doing what they love. That’s an offer we seek to make to every participant on the journey, including team members. Our people have goals and aspirations, and we want to empower them no matter the direction that leads.
Our outside-the-box solution is also a call to action. Here’s an example we’ve put into practice: a policy of giving employees one paid day off each month to build something new or learn something new. If they’re learning something new that will benefit the company, we’ll cover the cost. We encourage leaders to take a step to add something new and radical to their operations, whether it is a four-day workweek, company-wide salary transparency, a reduction in manager roles at their business, or something else. The first step is to talk to employees and work with them to identify a path forward. If a coalition of leaders takes this step, we will meet the future of work in stride.
Leadership as Advocacy
As a leader, I’ve learned that knowing what is best for people is not a guessing game. People will tell you what they need. The businesses that succeed in the future of work will embrace a variable approach to engagement that works for individual employees. That means leaders must advocate for every individual in their community, listen to people before choosing a course of action, and be primarily committed to maintaining a shared purpose.
The jobs we create will serve as more than a checked box or data point. Where work is the central activity that lives are built around, there is a meaningful distinction between a job created and a good job provided. Reality check: Leaders who focus on offering free coffee instead of shared purpose will not create a sustainable culture. Purposeful work, once a rare benefit, has become a prerequisite for many workers. In an employee-driven environment, people will continue to demand dignity and satisfaction in the work they do. At the same time, they will strive to see a tangible benefit to the communities they are part of from their work.
The businesses that are succeeding at the frontier of the future of work are those that center employee interests in diversity, inclusion, and transparency in the corporate culture and elevate purpose over profit. There is no purposeful work without meaningful participation, and work at the center of our lives must reflect the values of the community to be fulfilling. The policy choices that underpin employee engagement are variable by industry and sector. True success in inspiring purpose comes from a willingness to elevate every voice in determining those policies. Every day, I am not just willing but eager to be proven wrong by members of the team, who usually have the information I need to see what is right.
We live in a culture-driven society built on the stories we tell. The AMP story is one of access and equity, and we tell that story in how we operate, collaborate, and communicate within our community. The future of work is iterative. It’s designed by stories and led by example. The stories that resonate today are those that demonstrate inclusivity, diversity, and sustainability in narrative and action. We strive to do that every day to redefine a future of work that meets the needs of every member of our community. If you want to embrace the culture we aspire to, start by listening. If you want to know what a better, smarter, happier workspace looks like for your business, ask your team.
Prior to founding AMP, Hayden was part of the founding team at IPG’s TRAVERSE32, where he served as creative executive. In his advisory career, Hayden has had executive-level access at brands including American Express, Spotify, AT&T, Levi’s, and USPS. Hayden’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including People’s Telly Gold and TribecaX Best Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. He lives and works in New York City.
Prior to founding AMP, Hayden was part of the founding team at IPG’s TRAVERSE32, where he served as creative executive. In his advisory career, Hayden has had executive-level access at brands including American Express, Spotify, AT&T, Levi’s, and USPS. Hayden’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including People’s Telly Gold and TribecaX Best Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. He lives and works in New York City.