Why do you get up and go to work each day?
Whether it’s for purpose or for the paycheck, we spend most of our waking hours in an office, co-working space or clicking away at a coffee shop.
In March, the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation will join 9News to honor its Leader of the Year, Marco Campos, at the 9NEWS Civic Leadership Luncheon. He’s the founder and managing partner of the engineering firm Campos EPC, and invests his time and company resources to bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education to high school and college students. Roy Spence, a co-founder of the ad agency GSD&M and author of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven by Purpose, will be the keynote.
We asked them about what it means to be purposeful at work—and how we can all integrate it into our day.
Marco Campos
How do you put purpose into action in your work?
I put purpose into action by aligning and unifying our management team and employees to a simple, yet compelling company mission statement and pledge for excellence. By incorporating our core values of ethics, performance and compliance into everything that we do, we don’t lose sight of our company vision and duty to society.
Which is better, passion or persistence?
Passion drives persistence. As an entrepreneur and businessman, you can’t have one without the other and continue to grow. From an engineering mindset, I would say that keeping your nose to the grindstone is the pathway to opportunity.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for businesses to integrate purpose into their organization?
There is no time like the present. Core values, transparency of management, alignment of employee value propositions to the success that they bring to the company and a compelling company mission statement form the foundation for a focused and action-oriented organization.
Roy Spence
How do you put purpose into action in your work?
If you are led by purpose in your life and your life’s work, you will never have just a job—you will have work to do. My purpose is to inspire and help others to find and fulfill their purpose. When I actually live up to my purpose, it is never just a job, but a calling and a reminder to me that I have work to do!
Which is better, passion or persistence?
So many times we are forced to make artificial choices: passion OR persistence. No—passion AND persistence! Passion without persistence is nice, but not impactful. Persistence without passion is determination without a clearly defined goal or destination.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for organizations to integrate purpose into their organizations?
Once an organization fully discovers why they exist, the only way purpose can truly be embedded in any organization is for the CEO and every senior leader to champion their purpose every day.
Leadership Landscape is a quarterly column by the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation, which works to build leadership capacity in the metro area. The Leadership Foundation convenes a unique, diverse group of business and civic leaders in programs ranging from collegiate to executive-level, challenging leaders to think about issues facing the metro area in new ways. Learn more at denverleadership.org.
Danielle Mellema is the communications and marketing specialist for the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation.