The Authentic Organization

Over at Nonprofit Online News, we recently launched a Civil Society LifeWork Survey. I mention it here because of the way in which it touches on the matter of authenticity.

The survey opens with a series of more conventional questions, based on a broader Pew survey conducted in 2006. My main objective with these was to see if there were benchmarks that we could use to compare civil society respondents to the general population. Those questions were:

(1) Overall, how satisfied are you with your job?

(2) How satisfied are you with the _kind of work_ you do?

(3) Here are two different ways of looking at your job. Some people get a sense of identity from their job. For other people, their job is _just_ what they do for a living. Which of these best describes the way you usually feel about your job?

(4) Have you ever switched careers — that is, switched from one _type_ of work to another _type_ of work? If yes, how many times have you done this?

(5) How likely is it that you will switch careers sometime during your future working life?

(6) Over the course of your work life, have you taken any special courses or re-training?

The survey continues with another six questions that are meant to ask people to look a little deeper. These are the kinds of questions that I wish people were asked in large scale surveys, but never are. Frankly, I believe the world would be a very different place if we all had practice answering them. Those questions were:

(7) If you knew you had two years to live, would you continue to do the work you do?

(8) And what if you only had two months to live, would you continue to do the work you do?

(9) Do you have a personal mission statement or reasonably well-articulated statement of your calling in life, as you currently see it?

(10) Do you have a clear sense — in that you could make a list — of what you accomplished last year?

(11) Do you have a clear sense — in that you could make a list with times associated — of where your time goes in any given day or week?

(12) Do you have a reliable personal practice that brings you face to face with the most important choices about your life and work?

All of the first dozen questions were multiple-choice in nature. (My intent was to have them take less than 90 seconds to answer.) The very last question is based on an exercise that I sometimes give my coaching clients:

(13) Consider the following hypothetical two-part deal: Someone offers you a year off to rest and renew, followed by a five year contract on reasonably comfortable terms. The requirements of the contract are that you make a difference in the world, a difference you would be proud to have be the last thing you do. What would you do with that time?