The word purpose, and the corresponding purpose-driven label, get applied to a lot of different things. If you’ve heard me speak before, you know that this is one of my favorite (or not) challenges about working in the space.

I recently read several studies on “purpose” only to discover that they were looking at something different, like social justice issues or sustainability.

It’s not that these things aren’t important or even relevant to many purpose-driven businesses, but that doesn’t mean the business has a focused purpose or that it’s running against a double bottom line.

Here are 3 things often…

I rewatched the movie the other weekend. I hadn’t watched it in a while and had only seen the edited for TV version. (Man, does Erin swear a lot).

For those who don’t know the story, Erin is a single mother looking for a job so she can take care of her three kids. She ends up insisting her way into a job at a law firm where she shrewdly uncovers that a big corporation (PG&E) has been poisoning people through contaminated water. In the end, she and her team win the class action lawsuit with a settlement of $333M.

…

Benefit Corporations and Certified B Corporations have gained a fair amount of traction over the last five years amongst social entrepreneurs and the people who support them.

While complementary, they are different. In simple terms, Benefit Corporations have to do with a company’s legal structure, whereas a Certified B Corporation can be any legal structure. Both entity types are part of the purpose economy looking to shift the engines of capitalism to better support society.

The question is, do you have to change your structure to a Benefit Corporation, or go through the process of becoming a Certified B Corporation…

I saw an article in a newsletter titled, ‘Fiverr: it’s bad, guys — it’s bad.’

As a designer myself and someone who helps to steer people away from this platform, I just had to click and give it a read.

The author, Geoffrey Bunting, is right: It’s bad.

His argument takes a deep dive, investigating the platform’s messaging, the way it treats its workers, the impact on its customers, and its ultimate impact on the value of design as a whole.

To sum it up, “…in the pursuit of profit and haste Fiverr leaves all its users behind.”

The author…

“…for the companies you care for.”

I saw the phrase while scrolling aimlessly through my LinkedIn. It was in a post addressed to founders or CEOs. I don’t recall the rest of the post or even who posted it, but the phrase stuck out.

For the companies you care for — What if that was really the way we thought about it?

Companies can easily become dehumanized machines that put out a product and bring in enough capital to keep running. We think in terms of growth-hacking and optimization. Data reigns supreme.

But when I read “care for,” suddenly the…

You spend, on average, a third of your life at work.

Most Americans will work until age 62. If you start working right after college graduation, you will work for 40 years of your average 78-year lifespan.

Or to look at it another way, you’ll spend an average of 90,000 hours on the job.

That’s a huge percentage of our time — and time is finite. It’s no wonder then that rising generations want the time they spend at work to be … well, worth it.

Given my age, many people assume that I choose to work with purpose-driven organizations…

Now and again, I get asked which brands I love, or at least which groups I think are doing a really good job with their branding.

I’ve taken some time to think about that — especially now when I’m making more conscious decisions about which brands will retain my loyalty.

One brand that comes to mind for me is Chipotle. I am a more than frequent diner and have come to form a cheerful relationship with the brand as if it were a friend.

Here are three areas where their brand stands out.

Values

The Chipotle brand is built on its…

I read an article a long time ago that asked the question, “What are the things you do that make you forget to eat?”

The question is supposed to help identify those things that engage you fully, that make time disappear.

For me, being knee-deep in a design project does that. Figuring out how to get every piece to fit, the whole design to flow, and the entire thing to be brand aligned is a process — one that I sink into until I reach a point where everything works.

I’ve been doing a lot of design work recently, and…