Purpose Isn’t a Poster on the Wall
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“We all have the potential to be what I call architects of change in this era that we all happen to be living in.” – Rick Yvanovich
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author, CEO and business leader Rick Yvanovich on the necessity of connecting purpose with performance.
A few reasons why he are awesome — he is a senior business leader, speaker, and CEO/Founder of TRG International, a multimillion-dollar, award-winning business & leadership solutions and services business, helping for SMB up to Fortune 500 clients in 80+ countries. He’s also the author of a book worth noting…Business As Un-usual – How To Thrive In The New Renaissance
Connect with Rick and learn more about his work…
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Russel Lolacher: On the show today, we have Rick Ivanovich and here is why he is awesome. He is a senior business leader, a speaker, CEO, founder of TRG International, a multimillion dollar award-winning business and leadership solutions and services business. He’s helping small and medium businesses up to Fortune 500 companies. In 80, 80 plus countries. He’s also the author of a book, really worth noting, Business as Usual, How to Thrive in The New Renaissance. Oh, look at that right there. Visually, visually represented as Hello, Rick. Oh, he’s, he’s throwing ’em all around. How you doing,
Rick Yvanovich: Thanks for having me Russel. And before we start, I’d like to just share a core belief that I hold very dear.
Russel Lolacher: Oh my right outta the gate. Go ahead.
Rick Yvanovich: We, all of us, you and me, everyone listening and everyone not even listening yet. We all have the potential to be what I call architects of change in this era that we all happen to be living in.
It’s really defined by constant transformation, and our task is not just to keep up, not just to keep our head above water, but it’s to actively shape the path forward. Now, if you look at me from stacking shelves, I started my, my career stacking shelves and learning the ropes of people management. As a trainee in supermarkets to immersing myself in a slightly more precise world of accounting and debits and credits and, and later navigating the even more constantly evolving landscapes of technology and people.
My story really demonstrates the power of transformation and continuous learning and the significant impact each one of us can make. So what I want everybody to, to remember as they, as they’re listening in is every day our actions, whether they’re bigger or small, they shape our future. And as we discuss stuff today, Russel, I want everyone listening to keep on remembering this.
You are your brand and every single decision that you make is part of the unique story that you are crafting for yourself. How re you react, how you adapt, and what you do in the, and how you innovate in the face of all of this crazy change is really gonna define your story and your legacy. And it’s this belief.
Inspiring each one of us to aim for what I call balance fulfillment. It’s really what I tend to work on these days. It’s, it’s actually my life purpose. So as we dive into whatever conversation, however you’re gonna steer it today, Russel, let’s not just think about adapting to change, but how we can define it.
After all, I believe that each one of us, if you embrace your unique qualities and you all have them, and you strive for that personal growth, you don’t become a participant, but a catalyst in our ever changing business as unusual world. So let’s get started. Russel.
Russel Lolacher: You are out of the gate and running. I was like, I’m, let’s have a conversation. You’re like, I have something to say. So I appreciate that Rick, I appreciate you setting the table a little bit. It actually, you’re speaking a bit about your career and a bit about your background, which is a nice segue into the conversation. And also it leads me to the first question I like to ask all my guests, which kind of gives us a sense of who they are in their own journey. Which is what is your sir best or worst employee experience you’ve had?
Rick Yvanovich: Best or worst employee experience. That’s a tough one. Okay, so as an employee, so I’ve been running one or more companies for the last 31 years, so let me think a little bit further back. Okay. The word I, I’ll use some different contexts. ’cause I, ’cause I think I know where the Quest question’s going to, to uncover a bit more about me. I, I started off working in a supermarket because, although I used to be a straight A student, obviously I, I wasn’t straight a’s all the way through school, so I got that Do not enter university, do not go do anything card. And, and I took a job I call it stacking shelves in the supermarket, but was as a management trainee and one aspect of the job.
I, I liked and, and that was working with, with people. ’cause you have to in a supermarket. And it was, it was a very, very close knit team. It was, it was very, very, very enjoyable. Okay. The, the downside about that job is I’m a numbers person. And my sort of brain went to sleep and, and at some point during that, only one year of doing that, I had this thought.
Called an epiphany and I said, I wanna become an accountant. Okay, I’ve got no idea why, why? I thought that, and, and this is not an accountant in the Hollywood, you know, accountant. Accountant too, and dealing with all those sorts of people. This is just a normal debits and credits accountant. So that, that was the downside.
I, I thought my brain had gone dead, so I needed to go back to school as an accounting school and, and learn that. And it’s, it’s only reflecting now decades later. ’cause that was back in the 1980s, a last century that I realized actually what a good job it was. Now a really terrible thing. You can call it terrible.
I think most people are gonna. Burst out laughing. But one of the terrible things that happened, I, I don’t think I was very, I really actually, I wasn’t very happy about it at the time, is it was the last day at work. The last day at work. Okay. And you know, yeah, they got me a present, they got me a cake.
They might even give. Yeah. Yeah. They got me a card as well, I think. And I had gone down to the warehouse for whatever reason to the loading dock, and they jumped me. And the have you, if you’ve ever seen the back of a supermarket and how, see how goods are delivered. Okay. Some are delivered just stacked on pallets and others are put in these sort of cages that are on wheels.
Okay. And usually they’re lockable, especially if it’s like, wine and spirits and things like that. And they locked me in one of them. And they stuck in the middle outside the loading dock. And then I was pelted with eggs, tomatoes, all sorts of slimy stuff. They thought it was funny. I guess if I was a 16-year-old kid, I might have thought it was funny to, to someone else, but, but no, I didn’t think that was funny at the time.
Okay. So that, that, that was sort of, one of one, one of the worst. I’ve had some other jobs as well, which I absolutely just hated with a vengeance. It was like so boring that. You know, I’d rather die than have a career like this. Unfortunately, that was my first ever accounting job, which is a bit of a disaster since someone should become an accountant.
So, I, I, I can go on and on and on. They’ve been lots of them. I’ve lot worked for lots of different companies.
Russel Lolacher: Fair enough. Sorry, I’m bringing up such bad experiences for you.
Rick Yvanovich: No, it makes me laugh. I mean, you know, one of the things is, one of the things is, is, you know, as you, as you get older is and I’m obviously a little bit older. I am a baby boomer. They haven’t retired me off yet. But that’s my fault ’cause I’m a, I’m a workaholic entrepreneur, so that’s my fault. No one to blame, pop for self.
The, the, the fact is, is that we’ve got to learn to laugh at ourselves. Okay? You know, it is not just rolling with the pipe, but you’ve gotta see the funny side of things. You know, I’m not, I don’t have all the answers and I do stupid things like other people may do, and silly things happen to me just like it may happen to other people.
I’m just normal human.
Russel Lolacher: Sure. Fair enough. Fair enough. I appreciate it. Well, I so appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability with that, I thank you for that. When we started off this conversation, heck, before we even started the conversation, you were dug into transformation and the importance of change in our, in our role as catalyst and all this. I wanna, I know we’re gonna start talking about performance and purpose and how those intermingle. But I’m kind of curious to start off, you’ve got it written right there in the title of your book, where we’re in this new renaissance. Is that what you mean with the Renaissance? Is that we’re in this constant state of change and that it’s a, it’s a, it’s something we need to adapt into.
What do you mean when we’re talking about this new renaissance?
Rick Yvanovich: Okay. There, there are a few things around it. There are many ways to interpret
Russel Lolacher: Sure.
Rick Yvanovich: Rene Renaissance really means a rebirth. And when we look back at the real Renaissance, which is going back centuries, is what was it really all about? Okay. Back then, Renaissance was also talking about expiration.
You know, and in those days well get on your horse or your donkey or your ship and sail to some other part of the planet and go find a new country or, you know, a new bit of land. So it was a bit like that. The Renaissance today, I believe is, you know, we, we have things like generative ai, which is taken us into.
For some people, science fiction land we’ve discovered most of the planet. So it is really taking things in a very, very different direction, that digital direction. And, and, and really challenging us to rethink where we could go, where can we take this? Where can we explore? What can we uncover? So it’s really that thirst for knowledge, that curiosity.
Okay. Back then it’s, you know, it was harder to discover new stuff. These days is a lot, it’s a lot easier. Okay. I also think that it’s there are some other things that you can bring in some politics or religion because back then it was challenging the establishment and I guess we’ve seen a lot of that over the last five years happening across the world.
But anyway, going back to, to what I really think it is, it’s really challenging and it’s reframing, rethinking of what we explore, directions that we go in. It is linked to purpose because I think gone are the days where, you know, you just do that nine to five, you do the job to pay the mortgage.
The, the wake up call to that was COVID COVID. And I wrote a about it in the book ’cause I, I, I wrote the book during COVID COVID, you know, one analogy is, is that pre COVID, we seem to be, we, you knows. Terrible generalization. We seemed to be content enough or we accepted that. We got up, we commuted to work, which was usually a pain.
We got to our office building, we sat down in our little cube and we jumped on our little hamster wheel doing whatever we did, going nowhere. And then we went home. And that was life. And it paid the mortgage and that’s how life is, right. And then COVID came along and they threw the office away, which was a challenge, and we were forced to work from home.
And then as COVID. Sort went away. We were told to come back and then don’t come back and then come back and so, so we’re yo-yoing, are we coming back or not coming back? Are we supposed to be in the office or not in the office. And how many days a week are we supposed to be here or not here? You know, are we working hybrid or not?
I dunno, I’m confused. Okay. But you know, it’s, it’s confusing. All and, and like, where’s the office gone? Where’s my cube gone? And, and I don’t even know where my hamster wheel is. I dunno what the point of this is anymore, but I realize it’s actually pointless what I was doing. Okay. Some people actually, you know, in that, I’ll call it time out from the office in that however long COVID lasted for them.
’cause some countries were locked down for years.
Like Australia, like Vietnam, where I was at the time you know, we were locked, literally locked down for years. I didn’t travel for years, literally. And so without, accidentally, without realizing it, my whole thoughts of work just as me personally changed, it just changed.
Before it’s like, yeah, get up early, go to the office, be there, work hard, work hard, and suddenly I can’t walk out the front door. I’m not allowed to. I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta work from home. And I, at the time, I didn’t like working from home. And, you know, how can I sit down around the conference table with, with my teammates if I can’t go to a room where we can sit down around a conference table?
You know, it just really disrupted everything. And you, you start working in a different way. And like it or not, I realize that you can work in a different way. So maybe I was one of the people, a Luddite, who was resistant to working completely virtually, and I realized that actually I could make it work.
Okay. And, and I’ve tried to work virtually from other countries several times in the last 30 years and failed both times. And yet I hadn’t actually left the country. I was in the same country and I had to work virtually and it was working and I realized I actually quite liked some of it. And guess what?
Lots of other people realized that they quite liked it as well. So I believe that the whole relationship with workers changed because yes, I might have missed going into the work and you know, seeing my colleagues and going out for lunch and doing all that kind of stuff. But there was other stuff that I was missing as well.
One, one of the call it funny, one of the things that, that, that I missed was since I literally did not step outta my apartment for months because you, you weren’t allowed to, or you were allowed to once a week with a permit. So I literally didn’t go out the apartment for months. I really miss trees, you know?
I thought, I’m gonna go out and hug a tree. I thought, oh no. What’s happening? What’s going on? Okay. And, okay, I’ve had these conversations with other people, and guess what? You know, I’m not the only person thinking like this, you know, or. Just walking in the grass in your bare feet or, you know, going to the beach and, you know, jumping all these things that you could do once a year or however many times you do it, like when you are not allowed to do it anymore, you suddenly realize that, that, that you miss it.
And so I believe the, this renaissance thing I’m really talking about is, you can call it a rebirth or an awakening. Or maybe it’s a reawakening of how we should be looking at life. You know, a a, and this is why, you know, my life purpose is all about balance, fulfillment. On the one hand, we want fulfillment at out of what we do.
And I’m not saying that, and that’s not necessarily Yeah, I really love my job. It’s, it’s not just that, it’s, it doesn’t matter what we do ’cause it could be a work thing or a non-work thing. We just get out fulfillment out of a something and that’s enough for us. Whether that’s all work and, and no non-work or all non-work.
And, and, and nothing at work, or it’s a blend of the two. It really doesn’t matter. We’re all different, but we either feel fulfilled or we don’t. So we’re either doing stuff that gives us that fulfillment or it doesn’t. So that’s one aspect. And the other aspect is the balance. Okay. People talk about work life balance or life work balance, and I hate that ’cause they’re both wrong.
That’s like, is there a choice? Is it one or the other? No, because COVID taught us that life and work are the same thing. ’cause you, you might be working off the kitchen table. Okay, one minute you’re with the kids and we’re having dinner, and the next minute you’re on a conference call to someone else on the planet or someone around the corner actually.
You know, it’s just became part of life. And, and so when I talk about balance is, you know, I talk about it in the book. There’s I use a castle as the analogy. They’re different. Buildings in the castle and each, there’s seven and each building represents something. And the thing that they represents is an aspect of your life.
Okay? So when I talk about being an architect, it’s like architecting your own castle. So imagine your own castle and you’ve gotta build it. And there’s seven buildings in it. You, you can only put down one brick a day or a few bricks a day. You’ve got to decide where you’re gonna put them. Okay. And it’s up to each one of us individually.
What shape or form or color or whatever we want our castle to look like. They’re not gonna be the same. Okay. That’s because for each one of us, what balance is to us and what life is to us is different. ’cause we, we are human.
Russel Lolacher: Sure.
Rick Yvanovich: Because we’re human, we’re unique individuals, and so it’s seeking that balance and that fulfillment, balance, fulfillment, as I call it, is what I think life is really all about.
So that, that’s where my renaissance comes in.
Russel Lolacher: And, and thank you for that. I appreciate that. It, it’s making me, my brain is going over and over again about getting back into the purpose piece of this too, because I’m curious from your. Understanding and from your research through the book is, do you think purpose has changed and the definition of purpose has changed over since we went through it and we’re into this new Renaissance, or do you think it’s more about clarity? Because I mean to define purpose, it’s why we do the things we do. From how you’re talking is, and I mean, I mean this from a leadership sense, and I mean it from an organizational sense because it used to be all about make money, deliver a thing. That’s not how you’re talking right now. You’re talking about how the how and the why, not the what at the end of it.
So is it?
Rick Yvanovich: I’m really talking about the why. Okay. So you can say, yeah, some of this is coming from, you know, Simon Sinek, love him.
You know, the golden circle. Why? So why are we doing things? You know, so you can say, yeah, purpose has changed because I think for. Rightly or wrongly purposes has been muddled up with goals.
Okay. So yeah, I want, I, I want a bigger car. I want a bigger house. I want a second car. I want a second house. I want a beach house. I want this, I want a, I want something material. Okay. To me, that’s more like a goal. That’s very materialistic. Okay. And that, that’s, that’s not purpose. So purpose is really the why.
What’s getting you outta bed in the morning? What, what is it that you are doing? And you get into what we call flow. Okay. You know, so you, you start doing something like what? I thought it was only nine o’clock. It’s not, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Well, I got carried away. I was having a really good, you know, I really got into this, which means, you know, you’re really resonating with whatever you are doing.
It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You, you know, you are just lost in it. You’re just so immersed in it, okay? Because you want to do it and, and you are getting pleasure and satisfaction out of it. So I, I, I think this, this COVID thing has, has made people pause and think like, what is the point? What’s the point?
Okay. Why have I been going, you know, for, for years I’ve been going to the office and commuting and blah, blah, blah, and working there and doing this. And now I’ve learned that, you know, for a year or so, I’ve been working from home doing, you know, doing the same job. Getting the same work done, but actually doing these other things.
So if I’ve got kids, I’ve spent time with them, you know, I’ve had time to go for a, you know, for a walk. Whatever I’ve done, I’ve been able to do as well. And I got out of that, you know, nine to five or whatever it is, rat race. And, and I’ve ignored all that commute ’cause I didn’t have one. So why should I continue on that?
Like what’s now important to me? Do I, you know, if the company’s insisting I do that. Is that the life that I want? Okay. So I think the way that we work is changing. Okay. And I think this is one of the biggest challenges that organizations have because. It’s a new thing. Like what do you mean?
Employees have a choice? What? We gave ’em a job. They’re supposed to turn up, aren’t they? No. It doesn’t work like that anymore. And that’s why we’ve seen so much. You can call it the great resignation or the Great Reshuffle or the great whatever. I think these are people who are just voting with their feet.
Now I know a lot of them have been thrown out. Let’s put them aside. But some people are just voluntary walking out the door. ’cause they say, we don’t like this anymore. It doesn’t suit us anymore. Okay. And they’re in search of a something. Okay? Because they’re outta balance what they’re doing. Out of balance, they don’t feel right about it.
Okay. And it’s a bit like, you know, if you are tr trying to balance, you know, on a, on a something, you know, on a seesaw or whatever, or, you know, put a plank of wood across a log and you’re just trying to balance, you know, when you are in balance, you’re in balance. Like everything’s cool. The moment you are out of balance, you are, you know, you are jiggling around a bit.
Trying to regain that balance and if we’ve got that feeling in life. So what’s off kilter about it? Is it the job? Is it the commune? Is it the people we work with? Is it our boss? Is it the rules of, of this organization or this industry? You know, is it the environment that we like? What is it that is making us off balance?
It’s very, very hard to pin what is balance. We all know what off balance is, but it’s very, very hard to pin what is balance. So I feel that some people are out of balance and they’re searching for it. They’re searching for satisfaction, whatever that is. Now the issue is, is that if they don’t know what they’re looking for, they may not never find it because they dunno what they’re looking for.
Okay. And this is where purpose really comes in, okay? If you understand your why, if you have a real meaning to what you are doing, then the way to really feel fulfillment and to, and to really feel in balance is to make sure that everything that you do is in line with your purpose. ’cause another way of looking at is, is if you do have a purpose.
But what you are doing is taking you in the different direction from that purpose. It’s not taking you towards it. It’s taking you maybe the opposite or a tangential to it. It’s not gonna make you feel very well. So if you have a, a certain core values and they clash with the values of the organization that you are working with, that that, that’s a clash of values.
That’s a clash of purpose. ’cause values are the underpinning of of purpose. It’s gonna also put you out of balance and you’ll probably walk. Okay. Yeah, I, I can go on and on and on.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah. Oh no. All good, all good. I mean, and, and you kind of touched on it there, is that I hear you and I, I understand, and I think it’s extremely important to understand our own self-awareness, to understand what is driving us personally. But we’re not an island either. We have to work within organizations that may not have the same purpose.
We may have team members that have completely different purpose. So as much as we’re talking about flow, there’s friction. All around us. And it’s not just easy for somebody to just say, you know what, this doesn’t align with my purpose, so I’m outta here. That’s not unfortunately, mortgages to be paid and you know, and kids to be raised. How do we. Navigate that even though we may understand who we are and what we are, I, I bring this up because I do a lot of speaking engagements where I’ll ask people, what is a great leader? And they bring up the Simon Sinek and the Brene Browns of this purpose, and I’m like, great. But they’re not the ones that get promoted. They’re not the ones that get opportunities because as much as we might wanna work from home. There’s a lot of information out there saying the people that stay at home are not the ones that get promoted because they’re not in line of sight executive, or because they don’t get seen in the office regardless of the value of their work, they are not as present, right?
So this, there’s a lot of argument against that. So how do you reconcile purpose versus this environment?
Rick Yvanovich: Okay. I’ll challenge to what you said. ’cause the assumption there is some people lower down are working from home and the executives are sitting in the office. Hmm. Really?
Russel Lolacher: Well, I’m not saying just the executives. I’m saying I’m, I’m saying that a lot of people don’t get the same opportunities if they’re not having those walking people past a, a hallway or a cubicle or there is that small talk. There is that relationship building that doesn’t happen in a teams call because it’s, you’re not in that particular meeting, but somebody might go, Hey, Sally, down the hall. What does she do? Again, like it, it inspires more conversation.
I’m not saying, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have purpose and maybe your purpose is your kids and your family, so you need to stay home, but you may be missing out on opportunity by choosing your purpose while others are going, this is not how we run the organization.
You should come back ’cause you’ll have more opportunity. Because I think there was another study I listened to where it was millennials want to go into the office because they wanna be mentored and they wanna have those interactions.
Well, gen X and boomers are like, no, I wanna stay home because I have kids and a family. So you’ve got this half generation that wants to go to the office and the other half goes, I don’t wanna go to the office. And they’re not running into each other. So I’m just, I’m just trying to understand how purpose, personal purpose can be conflicting. Out there,
Rick Yvanovich: All right. My view is I’ll give two different views. Okay. The, the book is called Business as Unusual, and, and it’s written from the perspective of the business leader. It’s the first of a series of books. Okay.
Russel Lolacher: cool.
Rick Yvanovich: My challenge to those organizations you’ve been talking about is the organization is at fault. Okay. Because the assumption is, and I’ll put my hand up, I’m a baby boomer as well, and I am working from home. I’m in fact working from Switzerland and the operations run in Vietnam. I’m very far away. Anyway the, the thing is, is I, I have to realize that you know, we do work in a hybrid environment and the rules of how we work, as in how we work together, how people succeed, what we expect people to do, how people get promoted are different in a office only environment. They worked the way that you and I and many, many other people know how to work. ’cause we, we did I, we did it for decades. All right. That playbook is out the window because if the office is now hybrid, it doesn’t work like that.
Okay. So how should an organization change itself? How does it change? Its, its culture as it were? How does it change its behaviors of all the individuals? How does it change its outlook? Such that it should be irrelevant if you are working in the office or if you are working remotely and you never, ever, ever in your entire career with that company will even step into that office.
How do you make the opportunities the same? How do we make it equitable? Because it is. Inequitable. If we’re saying you have to be coming to the office. ’cause that’s how you get seen and that’s how you get com promoted, which means that it’s, if you are not coming to the office because you work in a different country and you can’t go into the office, which is only in that other country, which is miles away or wherever it is, is it’s, it’s mean.
It’s, it’s not equitable for you. It’s, you could say it’s unfair. And that’s not the employee, that’s the employer. So my challenge to employers is like, what have you done to. To adjust for this ’cause you need to do that if you fail to do that. Let’s go back to the employee side. Well, hang on. Let’s be serious.
And this is even me speaking, even if I have some of my employees listening, you know it applies to you too. If you feel that the organization, even, you know, my organization, TRG that you are working for is not in alignment with your purpose of what you believe in, then leave. ’cause it’s not you. You can’t be successful here.
You can’t be. So what’s the point of staying? I’m not saying that we don’t want you,
Russel Lolacher: Right.
Rick Yvanovich: I’m saying like, well, we’re not gonna be able to meet your expectations if we’re trying to go over there and we believe this. And you actually believe that it’s, it’s, you know, we can’t, we, we can’t change us as an organization like that.
So if anything, I said I’m sorry. We’ve made a mistake as an organization, we should have uncovered the, the, it’s like this and, and, and there there’s this potential clash or mismatch of expectations. Now that’s okay moving forward with new hires, but what about the fact that some organizations, you know, have moved to hybrid ’cause they’ve just had to move to hybrid, so the goalpost just got moved.
Okay. And, and that’s sort of okay, that’s just the circumstances, right? You know, well, when we hired you was we were only working from this O office and okay, so now years later, because whatever’s happened, we’ve shut down and done whatever, and yeah, we’re now allowing hybrid because some people during the pandemic moved away and they don’t wanna come back.
And they’re great employees. We want them to stay and they love staying at home and they do a great job. We don’t wanna lose them.
Russel Lolacher: And I, I appreciate you bringing that up too, because you hear a lot of organizations in the hypocrisy of all this because they’ll talk about innovation, they’ll talk about their supportive diversity and accessibility, and then they’re like, but there’s only one way of working. There’s, here’s our purpose driven, this is how we do things here.
This is where the opportunities lie. But like, but what about that? Person that does your building is not accessible. It’s not easy for some people to get into it, and they can, are perfectly set up at home and are amazing employees. And yet, and yet you’ll hear from those executives going, but we must, we have to.
I’m like, well, then you’re not really as innovative or as diverse as you think you are embracing.
So I I, I love the idea of just maybe adjusting. Understanding their purpose is thing, but it’s the why and how they get to that deliverable and the people they bring with them along the way.
Rick Yvanovich: So, so the challenge to organizations is, is you were talking about millennials and I think gen X and baby Boomers, but you’ve left out generation Z,
Russel Lolacher: Yep. Gen Alpha as well. Yeah. No. Yep.
Rick Yvanovich: And gen, Gen Z even today. If I look at, look at my own organization gen Z is. 45% of our employees. So I’m saying by 2027 there’ll be more than 50%, or there’ll at least be 50%. And, and so Oh wow. We’ve got a lot of generations here. And, and I think the, the challenge with Gen Z so is, is they too want to be in the office.
Okay. And my generalization there is because if you are a Gen Z, and you, you had, you know, you couldn’t enter the workforce because of COVID. So the, ’cause there were less jobs. Okay? So you are dying to get a job, all right? And then COVID goes away, and now you can go into an office. Or you want to go into an office, right?
Because let’s be honest, if you’re living at home and you’re the kid, even though you know you’re not a teenager anymore you wanna get out and you’ve been stuck at home maybe with people you don’t want to be with all you’re young, you’re generation said, right? You don’t mind coming home to them, but not spend your all day there.
And so you want to come to the office. Okay. We have to accommodate those. And so, you know, we’re trying to deal with multiple generations and as, as you’ve already said, they think differently. Some wanna be there, some don’t wanna be there. And, and we’re trying to get, like, we’re just trying to get everybody to play nice with each other and it’s, it’s blooming hard.
Okay. And there’s no playbook for it because I believe everybody is, is searching, like, how do we make it work? And just because it works in this, this company over there doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for us. They, they’re different. They, they do different stuff, you know, than us. So it’s, it’s, I still believe it’s gonna take a while to settle down, but it’s.
We need acceptance of the fact that we don’t know, but our intent is to make it better. And we’re thinking of ways to make it that we might even agree. Let’s do this, and it can be a complete and utter failure. Okay. That was a, we tried it. We know that doesn’t work. All right. So we should try this one now.
Okay. There’s nothing wrong with it, with it failing. As long as we’re explaining the why of our thinking and what we’re doing and why we’re changing direction and trying something new you know, we are trying to make it better. Okay. We don’t have all the answers either. So going back to the purpose of the purpose individual, alright.
Now, organizations, yes, they have a purpose. They’re supposed to have a purpose. They’re supposed to have a why. This is not their mission. This is not their vision. It is their why. It is their purpose. And that really needs to be more than something stuck on a wall or a corporate brochure or a website.
It really needs to come alive. It needs to be proven that this is what we really mean. Okay? Otherwise it’s just a token effort and it’s a waste of time. There needs to be clarity around it of what the organization is doing. ’cause if it’s not clear what the organization is doing, how can any one of us as individual employees get in alignment if we have no idea what they’re doing?
Okay. Similarly, even if there is clarity in the organization now, the, you know, boots on the other foot as individuals, do we each have clarity? Of what our purpose is. And I think it’s bad enough in organizations. It’s not being that clear or it’s a token thing stuck on a wall with individuals. It’s absent with a lot of people.
Now one of the things that I like doing, and one of the things I tend to do is I, I like speaking to, to young folks. I, I speak often at, at universities. So I try and do, I know 3, 4, 5, 6 different uni, different university talks a year. And, and the topic that I’ve been doing for the last, oh, more than a year, and I’ll, I’ll take it through into 2026, is personal growth in the digital age.
Okay. And you know, I could have a, a a, a room full of students. They could be undergraduates or they could be graduate students. There’s, you know, maybe a hundred of them or whatever. And I always ask the question, who here has a life purpose? And I’d be surprised if more than 10% say they do. So they don’t, and then when I talk about purpose and what people wanna achieve is, yeah, I wanna finish my degree, I wanna get a first class honors, valedictorian, all that kind of stuff.
I go, that’s not a purpose, that’s a goal. What’s your real purpose? And they stop and think. ’cause they don’t know. All right. So, you know, we put employees in the company, the company, it, it, and we, we accuse a company of not having clarity in their purpose. Okay? Let’s say we fix that. Now we put a bunch of people in there who have no idea what their purpose is.
We’re is, is this an accident? Waiting to happen? Alright, so, you know, when, when we look at this purpose, you know, as you’ve rightly said, it is also very, very personal. Okay. And, and that’s why again, on, on on the book, it can be reapplied to the individual. So how are we constructing our own life? Have we really thought about it?
Maybe I’m overly passionate about this and totally biased. ’cause a, I wrote a book and b well, I’m a baby boomer and it took me most of my life to realize that I should have worked this out decades ago. So, you know, be better than me. Work this out. You know, when you’re young and can do something about it, not when it’s like at the end of your career, it’s a little bit late.
Russel Lolacher: Fair. Totally fair. I think as we’re wrapping up our conversation here, I think I like to wrap up and I think it’s really a good question to ask as we get here to the end is how. So what would you recommend, Rick, if, how do we define our own purpose? Because as you said, you just talked to a group of people.
10% of them know their why, know their purpose, but they must have done some work. It didn’t just be, I mean, sometimes it’s an epiphany. Great, good for you, but a lot of the time you have to do the work. You have to get super curious and vulnerable with yourself. If somebody was listening to this podcast right now and having our conversation going, purpose sounds great.
I’d love to have one for myself. What would you recommend to them of taking those first steps to define their own purpose for their own journey so they don’t make the mistake you and I have that we’re figuring this out later in life.
Rick Yvanovich: Okay. There are a few, few ways of doing it. Number one, go and get the book. ’cause there’s a whole, because there’s a whole chapter about it and, and it’s a step by step of how to do it. Okay. I have a bunch of courses that explain it as well, but let me just quickly run through it. It’s a nine step process.
So it is not a quick thing and people might go, Hmm, it’s a little hard work. Okay? But let’s look, let’s look at it from a different perspective. Your purpose is the whole reason why you do stuff is what you get up in the morning and it’s gonna fuel you for the rest of your life. So how much effort do you really wanna put into it?
Like five seconds or a little bit longer? Okay. But so to me. The, the first step is to identify what your core values are. Okay. That’s not an easy thing.
Russel Lolacher: No.
Rick Yvanovich: Again, I mentioned before I speak to all these universities, and another question I ask, ’cause I know the answer to the purpose is how many people know what their core values are?
Funny enough, not very many. Okay. And, okay, I go on a, I can go on a bit of a tangent here ’cause I actually talk about boundaries, different topic. Nothing to do really with, not necessarily to do with life purpose, but it’s linked to values. So the example that I give is like, how, you are working together in a project school project and there are four of you or five of you, and you’re supposed to get together at a certain time, at a certain day, at a coffee shop, all right?
And someone’s always late. Always, always late. I just ask the question, does it bother you? And some people say, no, couldn’t care less. And other people say, God, that really ticks me off. All right. So I’ll pick on that person. Like, why does that tick you off? Okay. And they usually uncover, well, they really value punctuality.
Okay. They said, we said we would meet here at 10 o’clock and have a cup of coffee together and work on the school project and like, you know, 10 30 they sort of drag themselves in and we’ve had to wait and it’s really annoying and I don’t like it. Okay, so to that person, it’s sort of one of their core values.
All right. Which means that they don’t like it when, you know, and the boundary thing is if someone is stepping over that boundary and you know, not being punctual when it really, when punctuality is really important to that person. Okay. So core values is very, very important. Okay. The, the, the next step is to.
Try and uncover or to explore and uncover. So I, I tend to, there’s, there’s an exploration step on each of these. So we sort of look at things and then we end up uncovering things. Okay. So for core values, one way of doing it is we can go through a list of core values and I can give you two core values.
You know, say I’d know timeliness, we were just talking about that. And and should we say respect, which one is more important to you? It doesn’t really matter. You pick one of them. Okay. So there’s a way you can do it with cards and you, you go through lots and lots of pairs and you, you are always discarding one.
Okay. Where you can do it, pick five and then discard one or pick 10, and then discard one. It gets hard, it’s easy to discard the first one. It gets harder and harder. If we we’re trying to get down to what’s your top two or three or four core values? I could ask you, Russel, what are your top core values?
Russel Lolacher: Oh my goodness. I’ve done this exercise before and I don’t have it off the top of my head, which is horrible because to be honest, they’re only good if you know what they are, if you remember what they are, if they’re impactful to you. It’s like having a vision and mission. I go to rooms and I’m like, so what’s your vision and mission?
We don’t know. Then it’s horrible because if you don’t know what it is, it’s not motivating you. So I just have my own weakness that I’m just demonstrating going, I got some work to do.
Rick Yvanovich: Okay, my, my and there are two sides to the coin of a core value. And, and I’ll show them, I’ll demonstrate ’em now. My number one core value is integrity. If I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it. I’ll half kill myself to ensure that I do it. Okay. And you may say, that’s great, great to have someone like that on the team.
The, the flip side of the coin. Hmm. Well, if I’m like that, I expect everyone else to be like that as well. And not everybody is like that. So it’s a bit like that timeliness. If timeliness is a thing, you know, and, and you are always on time, you expect everyone else to be on time. You get upset if they’re not okay.
So on me. So if I find that, hey, we agree that this will be done by this date and this time in this way, and it hasn’t been done, it, it winds me up a bit. Okay. I’ve now learned that, okay, my, my approach to integrity and how I look at things is maybe a bit extreme, and other people aren’t like that. So I need to find out how they are and maybe dial it down to where it should be.
Otherwise, we’re gonna have an expectation mismatch. So again, this is, this is about boundaries. Anyway, the second thing is exploring and uncovering our passion.
Russel Lolacher: Mm.
Rick Yvanovich: Okay. What really gets us going? Okay. And I, I have lots actually in the book, I’ll just look at it. I have 33 questions to ask
Russel Lolacher: Wow.
Rick Yvanovich: some of them will jog your mind.
Like, what are the things that you love to do? It’s a simple thing. Write them down. What are your hobbies? Write them down, you know, what makes your heart sing? You know, write them down, you know? When you’re engaged, what are you doing? When you lose time, you lose track of time. What is it that you are doing?
Yeah. If money was no object, you had a mountain of it, what are you gonna do? You know, I, I got to all of these. I’m just asking. I’m a coach. I ask a lot of questions and some of the questions will trigger you a thought and you’ll write something down. When we look at that, ’cause there are 33 questions.
You must have written something. Oh, okay. Maybe that’s what really turns me on
Russel Lolacher: Well,
Rick Yvanovich: ’cause, because off the cuff it’s very, very hard to, to do. It’s very, very hard to do. And maybe for a lot of people you wanna do it with no one else around.
Russel Lolacher: I wanna, I want to leave it there because I, I love the first two you gave me because I think really getting into values, understanding your boundaries, getting super curious about yourself and interest. I wanna leave them wanting more. Rick, I want to, I want them being curious to do more. ’cause that’s.
Eight is a lot, but you said it’s a lot of work and people might roll their eyes. Well then they’re not taking their purpose seriously enough because it’s important work. And it will define your decisions and your career and your leadership if you have this cemented. And I think it’s important to maybe review it every year. ’cause our lives change and things impact us
Rick Yvanovich: Abso Ab. Ab absolutely. It’s not a destination. It’s, it’s, it’s a purpose. It’s, it’s, it’s like a meaning. And so, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s why we get up in the morning on another, we can, if we had more time, we can talk about icky guy. It’s a bit like a icky guy as well. But you know, you for, for, for those people who have got it,
Russel Lolacher: Yep.
Rick Yvanovich: Once you’ve got it, it’s like.
That’s it. Now it makes sense, you know, and, and for me it’s like, wow, it’s putting a turbocharger on. All right. Now, having said that, the first time I ever put together a life purpose statement, and there is a structure to it, again, have a look at the book was about seven years seven years ago. And when I wrote the book.
After I wrote the book, I changed it. So in the book it says one thing, but since the book, since I I did a TEDx after the book and in, in preparing for the TEDx, I completely changed my life purpose.
Russel Lolacher: We’re on a journey, Rick. We’re all on a journey and that includes our purpose as well. I’m gonna leave it there.
Thank you so much for being here, Rick. I really. Appreciate your time and just connecting purpose to the, the, to thrive in this uncertainty. We seem to be living in nonstop, so I thank you so much for your time today.
Rick Yvanovich: You are welcome now. Now as we close, Russel, I want to leave everybody with a, with another thought.
Russel Lolacher: Sure.
Rick Yvanovich: Or other, I wanna remind people we’re not just participants in this ever changing world, but you are architects shaping the course of your lives, your careers, and the world around you. I encourage you all to embrace the change and define it rather than just adapt and react to it.
Be that catalyst in our business as unusual world. The transformation always starts with you and I’m really eager to hear about your journeys. So Russel. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Really huge kudos. Gratitude to you for having me on your podcast today and let me Twitter on about all sorts of stuff.
It’s been a fun conversation and I hope our listeners have enjoyed it as much as I have. And to all you listeners out there, wherever you are, I really, really, really appreciate your time and attention and more importantly. I look forward to hearing from some of you, learning from you, learning and hearing from some of your experiences, and perhaps sharing more in-depth future discussions.
Thanks again, Russel, and to all listeners for this wonderful exchange.
Russel Lolacher: That’s Rick Yvanovich. He is a senior business leader, speaker and CEO founder of TRG International, and he has a book you should certainly check out if you want to figure out what your purpose is. It’s called Business As Unusual, How to Thrive in the New Renaissance. Thank you so much again, sir.
Rick Yvanovich: Thank you.