I’m excited to talk with an old friend, David Burkus, about his latest book, Pick a Fight: How Great Teams find a Purpose worth Rallying Around.  David’s TED talk has been viewed more than 2 million times, he’s a renowned speaker, or at least he was before the coronavirus and he will be again, and he teaches at Oral Roberts University.  David’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, and Fast Company. He’s been interviewed by NPR, the BBC, CNN, and CBS This Morning. Since 2017, Burkus has been ranked as one of the world’s top business thought leaders by Thinkers50.

Sticking close to your purpose has never seemed more important than in the middle of this worldwide public health crisis.  Stay safe, everyone!  And stay purposeful!

Nick:  Thanks for chatting with me, David. What led you to this topic of finding the right fight?

David:  I realized that people don’t want to join a company; they want to join a crusade.

After my last book, I started looking at teams and what makes them united and motivated. There’s obviously a lot of research about purpose related to team performance and even individual performance. But I don’t think that research told the whole story because many of the best teams also had this a sense of group identity beyond purpose. It’s not just what we’re working for; it’s who we are as well. Right after that realization, I stumbled into research from Artis International studying why otherwise rational people join insurgencies, revolutions, and the like and it came to down group identity and shared values. Who we are and what we’re working for.

Nick: Why isn’t a simple positive statement of purpose enough – why do you need something to fight against

David:  There need to be stakes. It’s great to be working toward a brighter future, but humans are only motivated by the positive so much. Using the rhetoric of a fight flips the “brighter future” idea on its head by pointing out that failure would lead to a darker future. In addition, fighting the right “fight” is a means to identifying what are truly sacred, uncompromisable values.

Perhaps an example is best here: One of the three types of fights I outline is the “Revolutionary Fight” – which is when the team or organization says, “the whole industry finds this acceptable, but we refuse to accept that.” In other words, the status quo is accepting of a norm that we think is unethical, unwise, outdated, or whatever and we’re working to change that in order to right that wrong.

Nick:  What’s your favorite example of an organization that gets this right?

David:  There are so many great examples. Quest Nutrition, Ellevest, Alcoa in the 1990s. But there’s one organization I didn’t write about in the book that’s since become my favorite: Pela.

Pela is fighting for a waste-free future by making cell phone cases, sunglasses, and soon other plastic consumer goods out of bioplastic—basically a moldable plastic that biodegrades when composted instead of sitting in a landfill for thousands of years. They realize that we are likely not going to change consumerism, but we can change what’s consumed. They’re fighting the Revolutionary Fight—where the industry says regular plastics are an acceptable cost…they refuse to accept that.

Nick:  Simon Sinek told us to “start with why.”  What beyond that statement of purpose are you telling us?

David:  There is some overlap but, I’m not sure I’d label Sinek’s “why” a statement of purpose. It’s a peek at someone’s internal motivation, but it’s not really a plan of action or a cause to rally behind. It’s the first half of the equation. It’s “why” people do what they do but not “what” they’re specifically going to accomplish as well. As I’ve become fond of saying of Pick A Fight, “It’s like ‘start with why’ but there’s also a “how.”

Nick:  Who is David Burkus and what makes him tick

David:  I’m fighting to make work suck less. I’ve always been disturbed by the small numbers of people saying their daily work engages and inspired them. I believe that work-life balance is a myth because however your work makes you feel, you drag that feeling home with you. So, let’s make sure you drag something positive home. And they best way I’ve found to inspire and engage is to let people know what they’re fighting for.

Nick: Thanks, David!