Finding Purpose at Work: Behind The Power You Don’t Know You Have

Last month, I was flying home after a customer workshop.

I was travelling with someone I have come to admire deeply over the past few months.

He runs a highly successful business. The company is thriving, the team is growing, and from the outside, everything looks great.

As we talked, the conversation gradually shifted from projects and business updates to something more personal.

Purpose, meaning and impact. The kind of difference we want to make in the world.

What struck me was that despite all he had achieved, he admitted something that surprised me.

He felt disconnected from what he was doing.

What he really wanted was to help people.

To make a positive difference in someone’s life.

To contribute to something larger than himself.

As we talked, I started asking questions.

And as I listened, I realised this was not the first time I had heard a successful person express the same feeling.

In fact, I had heard it many, many times before.

From people who had achieved much of what they once dreamed of,yet still felt drawn toward something deeper.

A desire to contribute and to help others.

A desire to create a positive impact beyond their job title or business.

As I sat there on that flight, I found myself reflecting on the journey that had led me to rediscover my own sense of purpose.

When Losing My Father Made Me Question Everything

Two years ago, my father passed away.

Like many people who experience a profound loss, I found myself questioning everything.

Not only life, but work and purpose.

At the time, I had spent years building Share PLM, a business around Product Lifecycle Management, technology adoption, and digital transformation.

The company was doing well.

We had great customers, a wonderful team, and meaningful projects.

Yet something felt incomplete.

For months, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what we did was too niche. Too specialised. A service business. Too focused on systems and products.

I kept asking myself a question that became increasingly difficult to ignore:

Is this really what I want to dedicate my life to?

Finding Purpose at Work: When I Needed More Meaning

The truth is that I wasn’t questioning the business.

I was questioning myself.

Like many people in mid-career, I had reached a point where I needed my work to mean something more.

I wanted to help people.

Helping other women thrive in technology was always my drive.

And I wanted to help others discover what they were capable of, and to create a positive impact that extended beyond projects and software implementations.

The problem was that I saw those ambitions as separate from my business.

One Question That Changed My Perspective

One warm summer evening in Spain, I was sharing a glass of wine with a childhood friend.

We hadn’t seen each other for quite some time. Since then, he had built one of the most successful businesses in his industry in Spain.

As we remembered our childhood adventures and the trouble we used to get into, the conversation gradually shifted from the past to the present.

I told him about the questions I had been wrestling with for months.

About my doubts.

About purpose.

About the feeling that there had to be something more.

Patiently, he listened as I explained everything I wished I could do.

When I finished, he looked at me and asked a simple question.

‘Why don’t you do all those things you want to do through your business?’

At first, I didn’t understand.

In my mind, there was the business.

And then there was purpose.

But he challenged that assumption.

He gave examples of entrepreneurs and companies that had found ways to connect commercial success with a broader mission. Companies like Mango, which created a foundation to support social initiatives, Ecoalf, which built sustainability into its business model, or ONCE, which has spent decades creating opportunities for people with disabilities. None of them abandoned what they were good at. They simply found ways to use their businesses as platforms for creating the impact they wanted to see in the world.

Then he asked another question.

‘What is actually stopping you?’

I remember sitting there and realising I didn’t have a good answer.

Nothing was stopping me.

The limitation existed only in my own mind.

The Day Everything Started to Align

That conversation stayed with me for weeks.

The more I reflected on it, the more I realised that technology or PLM was never the real purpose.

It was simply the tool.

The purpose for me was always helping people.

My knowledge and what I had been doing until now was the vehicle.

That shift changed how I looked at everything.

Instead of talking about digital transformation, I started thinking about human transformation.

Instead of seeing my business as a technology implementation company, I started seeing it as a platform to help people grow.

For the first time, my personal purpose and professional purpose started moving in the same direction.

And something remarkable happened.

Work became lighter and ideas came faster.

And I felt more energised than I had in years.

There Is Magic in Alignment

The older I get, the more I realise that we often underestimate the impact we have on other people.

A question can change someone’s perspective.

A conversation can change someone’s direction.

A few words of encouragement can give someone the confidence to take a step they have been postponing for years.

My friend did not give me a business plan.

He did not solve my problems.

He simply asked a question:

“Why don’t you do those things through your business?”

That question changed the way I saw my company, my purpose, and the impact I wanted to have on the world.

It reminded me that sometimes the greatest gift we can give another person is not an answer, but a different perspective.

That is why I believe we should be more generous with our words.

Encourage the friend who is doubting themselves.

Tell a colleague when you see potential in them.

Share an idea that might help someone move forward.

Ask the question that nobody else is asking.

You never know what might happen next.

We often assume that changing someone’s life requires a grand gesture.

More often, it starts with a question, with conversation or with kind words.

A moment of genuine belief in another human being.

The ripple effects can be far greater than we imagine.

Why This Matters in the Age of AI

I believe this question becomes even more important as artificial intelligence reshapes the world around us.

AI is changing tasks, jobs and business models.

Many of us will have to rethink what creates value and what makes us uniquely human.

But perhaps the most important question is not what AI can do.

It is what we want to do.

What do we care about?

What impact do we want to have?

What kind of future do we want to help create?

I believe that the people who thrive in this next chapter will not necessarily be those with the best tools.

They will be those with the clearest sense of purpose.

Believe in What You Are

Greater clarity about what we consider important and inspiring often triggers our motivation to gravitate towards these things and seek to strengthen them.

I believe this is exactly what happens when alignment occurs.

We become clearer about what matters and more motivated to pursue it.

And we naturally begin shaping our work, decisions, and relationships around it.

Because purpose creates energy and momentum.

And that momentum ends up creating impact.

So take a moment and ask yourself:

What matters deeply to me?

How can I express more of that through the work I already do?

Who could benefit from my experience, my encouragement, or my support?

You probably have more power than you think.

More influence than you realise.

More opportunities to help others than you can currently see.

Believe in what you are.

Help others discover what they are.

And remember that some of the most important changes in the world begin with one person deciding to use their talents in service of something bigger than themselves.

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