Keeping Work Meaningful When Technology Changes Everything

Abstract The author is the founder and CEO of MORE 4 Leaders. She contends that “researchers who look at digital work in blue‐collar environments have found that adoption is rarely just about training and usability. It is also about identity and control.” She cites a variety of academic studies and further notes that “when people experience work as meaningful, they tend to stay engaged and recover better when the work gets hard. When meaning erodes, adoption becomes compliance. Improvement slows. Discretionary effort disappears.” Building on the well‐known research of motivation academics Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, she says that “purpose is the sense that the work matters. Autonomy is the agency to use judgment in how the work gets done. Mastery is the experience of getting better and growing. Connection is the feeling that you belong to something bigger than yourself.” Each of these four drivers is described in detail. She has this advice for leaders: “After launch, go see the work for yourself, not for a ceremonial tour, but to see what people actually do, what they avoid, and what they work around. Leaders who see that reality early can adjust before frustration calcifies.”