Startups Can Harness the Power of Purpose

Understanding what genuinely motivates people to engage in purposeful work can substantially influence the trajectory of a startup.

As an entrepreneur or investor in new ventures, understanding what genuinely motivates people to engage in purposeful work can substantially influence the trajectory of a startup. The Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior (The Academy of Management Review; Barrick, Mount & Li, 2013) helps us understand how personal attributes and workplace characteristics come together to drive motivation, performance, and overall job satisfaction. TPWB also helps founders and investors to construct more engaging work environments, assemble cohesive teams that are destined to flourish, and lay a stronger foundation for long-term success.

This article explores the core principles of TPWB and shares practical tips for integrating them into your venture. If you are a member of a founding team, or an investor evaluating high-potential startups, these insights can help you leverage the power of purposeful work to spark innovation, fuel growth, and cultivate an environment where everyone thrives.

The Startup Lifecycle: When Purpose Matters Most

Before exploring the principles of TPWB in depth, it's important to understand where this framework delivers maximum value along the entrepreneurial journey. The startup lifecycle typically unfolds through four distinguishable phases, each with unique challenges and priorities:

Discovery Phase: During this initial stage, founders focus primarily on testing hypotheses, defining the core problem, and validating that their proposed solution addresses genuine market needs. The team is usually small and highly committed to the founding vision.

Validation Phase: As the concept gains traction, attention shifts to refining product-market fit through customer feedback loops, iterative development, and establishing initial revenue streams. Early market validation signals that the venture has potential beyond concept.

Efficiency Phase: With proof of concept established, the focus transitions to creating repeatable, scalable processes. This phase involves standardizing operations, optimizing customer acquisition costs, and building infrastructure that can support growth.

Scale Phase: Once efficient processes are in place, the venture enters a period of aggressive expansion – increasing market share, diversifying offerings, and significantly expanding the team to support growing demand.

While purpose and motivation are important at every stage, the implementation of a purposeful work framework is most critical during the transition from validation to efficiency. This inflection point typically coincides with several organizational changes that make TPWB especially relevant. Teams begin expanding beyond the founding circle, bringing in employees who weren't part of the original vision – many of whom may have values that diverge from those of the founding team. Organizational culture transitions from implicit shared understanding toward explicit values and practices. Division of responsibilities becomes more specialized, potentially distancing some team members from the company's mission as they are required to focus on more narrow tasks. The pressures of growth begin to test team cohesion and alignment with venture goals.

What makes TPWB valuable for growing startups is its complementary nature – it enhances, rather than competes with, other essential business activities. Even during intense periods of product development or market expansion, thoughtfully applying elements of this framework can deliver returns in team alignment, reduced turnover, and increased productivity. The principles can be implemented incrementally, starting with foundational elements during busy periods and expanding to a more comprehensive approach during periods of relative stability.

For founders and startup leaders, recognizing the right moment to begin implementing TPWB principles is key to maximizing their impact. The appearance of certain triggers – such as the first signs of team misalignment, challenges in recruiting top talent, or decreased enthusiasm among early employees – often signals that a more structured approach to purposeful work could be beneficial.

Understanding the Four Purposeful Goals

Central to TPWB are four fundamental “purposeful goals” that shape how people behave at work:

• Achievement Striving: The drive to "get things done" and demonstrate competence.
• Status Striving: The aspiration to "get ahead of others" and gain influence.
• Communion Striving: The desire to "get along with others" and build relationships.
• Autonomy Striving: The need to "get control" over one's work and make independent decisions.

Recognizing these motivational pathways helps you better understand yourself, your co-founders, and your employees. In a startup context, each of these strivings can manifest differently. Here are the characteristics of each type of striver in the startup workplace.

Achievement Strivers:

• Thrive on meeting milestones and achieving key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Excel at product development and execution.
• May struggle when faced with ambiguity or frequent pivots.

Status Strivers:

• Natural networkers, adept at pitching ideas and forging industry connections.
• Often take the lead in executive or business development roles.
• Risk becoming overly competitive or too focused on personal branding.

Communion Strivers:

• Construct strong relationships both internally (team dynamics) and externally (customer relations).
• Excel in HR, community management, and customer success roles.
• May avoid difficult conversations or decisions if they feel such actions threaten harmony.

Autonomy Strivers:

• Strong innovators who create novel ideas and disruptive solutions.
• Prefer flexible work arrangements and minimal hierarchical constraints.
• Can resist or feel stifled by the structures and processes necessary as the company scales.

Action Step: Reflect on your own predominant purposeful goal as well as those of your co-founders or key team members. Consider how you can align roles and responsibilities to maximize these intrinsic motivational drives.

The Alchemy of Motivation: Where Individual and Environment Meet

At the heart of TPWB lies a basic but impactful idea: Meaningful work emerges when personal attributes harmonize with workplace characteristics. This intersection creates what researchers in organizational psychology call "experienced meaningfulness" – the profound sense that one's work matters and connects to deeper sources of fulfillment.

Personal attributes that drive startup success extend beyond basic personality traits. While conscientiousness and extraversion certainly play roles, entrepreneurial environments benefit from traits like adaptive curiosity, the capacity to deeply understand evolving customer needs; diagnostic perception, the ability to identify flaws in existing solutions; and solution imagination, the creativity to envision and design better alternatives. These entrepreneurial attributes often distinguish high-performing startup teams from merely competent ones.

Simultaneously, the environment you cultivate as a founder establishes the conditions where these attributes either flourish or wither. Job design in startups should balance structure with flexibility, allowing for both focused execution and creative exploration. Leadership approaches must adapt to different team members and situations, sometimes providing clear direction, other times empowering autonomous action. The culture within your venture – from communication norms to celebration rituals – creates the invisible architecture that shapes daily experiences and decisions.

The relationship between these domains creates a self-reinforcing cycle. When market-curious individuals find themselves in environments that encourage customer discovery, both the individual and organization benefit. When creative problem-solvers work within flexible structures that value innovation, motivation naturally follows. Conversely, misalignment between personal attributes and workplace characteristics quickly leads to friction, disengagement, and eventually, departure.

For founders, this insight offers a strategic advantage: by deliberately designing workplace characteristics that complement the attributes of your team, you create conditions where motivation becomes self-sustaining rather than requiring constant external reinforcement. The converse is also true – when you recruit new hires based on the alignment between their values and the characteristics of your venture, you allow for growth and innovation unmatched by firms that hire based on capability alone.

Action Step: Map your startup's motivational ecosystem by identifying the personal attributes most crucial to your venture's success and the workplace characteristics you've established (intentionally or unintentionally). Look for points of alignment and tension, then adjust your environment to better support the attributes that drive your specific business model.

Applying TPWB Principles to Key Entrepreneurial Challenges

Founder-Market Fit

When founders discuss “founder-market fit,” they typically emphasize relevant experience, network connections, or specialized skills. TPWB builds on this by suggesting that founders also benefit from aligning their personal purposeful goals with the demands of their chosen market:

• Achievement-driven founders may shine in markets that call for rapid product iteration or continual technological breakthroughs.
• Status-driven founders might thrive in sectors where personal branding, thought leadership, and networking are especially important.
• Communion-driven founders could gravitate toward community-centric or customer-focused markets, such as mission-based ventures or consumer-facing platforms.
• Autonomy-driven founders may do best in creative or emerging industries that reward originality and flexible thinking.

Action Step: Evaluate your own market alignment through the lens of your primary purposeful goal(s). If there is a clear mismatch, consider pivoting toward a domain that resonates with your motivational style—or bring on a co-founder whose purposeful strengths complement your own.

Building a Complementary Founding Team

A successful founding team often requires diverse skill sets. TPWB suggests that diversity of purposeful goals is equally vital for a well-rounded group:

• An achievement-driven CTO paired with a status-driven CEO may combine product excellence with strong market visibility.
• A communion-driven COO can build the supportive operational framework that enables an autonomy-driven founder to explore creative solutions.

Keep in mind that the interaction patterns among these goals vary depending on whether the goal is self-driven (achievement, status) or other-driven (communion, autonomy):

• Self-driven goals (achievement, status) exhibit a substitution effect, meaning a strong personal attribute can compensate for weaker workplace characteristics, and vice versa.
• Other-driven goals (communion, autonomy) display a synergistic effect, where alignment between personal attributes and workplace characteristics significantly amplifies motivation.

Action Step: Map out the purposeful goals that each member of your founding team most strongly embodies. Aim for a balanced mix while watching for friction points—especially between strongly self-driven and other-driven individuals.

Crafting a Motivating Startup Culture

Organizational culture has a powerful influence on how individuals pursue their purposeful goals. Because culture can be a major differentiator in attracting talent, it is especially important in a resource-constrained startup. Consider how different cultural emphases resonate with each goal:

• Achievement Culture: Values results, efficiency, and tangible success. Appeals to achievement strivers but may feel impersonal to those who prioritize relationships.
• Competitive Culture: Recognizes individual achievements and advancement. Energizes status strivers but risks creating a cutthroat environment.
• Collaborative Culture: Prioritizes teamwork and mutual support. Welcomes communion strivers but could frustrate achievement- or status-oriented members seeking individual recognition.
• Innovative Culture: Encourages experimentation, autonomy, and new ideas. Attracts autonomy strivers but may lack structure for those craving clarity and goal-oriented processes.

Striking a balance that accommodates multiple pathways to “experienced meaningfulness” is an art form. Some ways to create a well-rounded culture include:

• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to satisfy achievement strivers.
• Public recognition opportunities to engage status strivers.
• Team-building events and cross-functional collaborations for communion strivers.
• Flexible work policies and “innovation time” for autonomy strivers.

Action Step: Review your existing or intended startup culture. Does it offer avenues for each purposeful goal to flourish? Identify any areas where individuals might struggle to find meaning, and implement targeted cultural practices to fill those gaps.

Designing Meaningful Work Experiences

One of the key propositions of the TPWB is that striving for these four goals leads to “experienced meaningfulness,” a deeper sense of purpose at work. In a startup context—where resources are often scarce—intentionally creating meaningful work experiences can bolster motivation, enhance job satisfaction, and improve retention.

For each purposeful goal, consider how you might design specific work experiences:

Achievement Meaningfulness: 

• Provide concrete metrics for success and frequent feedback loops.
• Celebrate key milestones such as product launches or notable customer wins.
• Invest in professional development to support mastery and growth.

Status Meaningfulness:

• Establish leadership tracks or “ownership” opportunities for high-impact projects.
• Encourage qualified team members to speak at conferences or industry events.
• Implement transparent career ladders that reflect individual contributions.

Communion Meaningfulness:

• Nurture a sense of collective identity and a unifying mission.
• Promote collaboration across different functions and roles.
• Support initiatives that foster community involvement or social impact.

Autonomy Meaningfulness:

• Offer flexible working hours and remote work policies where feasible.
• Allocate “innovation budgets” or resources for independent exploratory projects.
• Include employees in key strategic discussions and decision-making.

Action Step: For each major role in your startup, brainstorm at least one way to heighten that person’s sense of meaningfulness based on their primary purposeful goal. This can be as simple as offering more flexibility in scheduling or as ambitious as retooling the scope of a position to align better with the individual’s motivational drivers.

Adaptive Leadership for Diverse Teams

Your leadership style strongly influences how team members pursue their purposeful goals. TPWB aligns each purposeful striving with certain leadership styles:

• Initiating Structure: Emphasizes clear tasks and goal achievement (Achievement)
• Authoritarian: Centralizes authority and decision-making (Status)
• Consideration: Exhibits support and empathy (Communion)
• Empowering: Delegates responsibility and encourages initiative (Autonomy)

A challenge for startup leaders is recognizing when to switch between these styles to address both the immediate situation and the motivational makeup of the team:

• Use initiating structure to outline sprint goals or product roadmaps for achievement-driven individuals.
• Adopt an authoritarian style during high-stakes moments where swift, decisive action is required.
• Show consideration when team members are grappling with personal or professional challenges, emphasizing trust and emotional support.
• Employ empowering leadership when creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking are paramount.

Action Step: Pinpoint your default leadership style. Consciously practice adopting alternative styles that align with the purposeful goals of team members and the evolving needs of your startup.

Leveraging Feedback Loops

TPWB underscores the value of feedback in reinforcing purposeful strivings and cultivating meaningfulness. Startups move quickly, so designing effective feedback loops is essential for sustaining motivation and spurring continuous improvement:

• Hold regular 1-on-1 meetings focused not only on tasks but also on the individual’s purposeful goals and personal growth.
• Conduct team retrospectives that address how collective efforts align with both short-term objectives and larger purposeful aspirations.
• Use pulse surveys or quick check-ins to measure ongoing morale and perceived meaningfulness.
• Encourage peer recognition by giving team members ways to celebrate each other’s contributions, big or small.

Action Step: Evaluate your current feedback mechanisms. Do they offer insights into how effectively your startup supports each purposeful goal? Identify at least one fresh feedback channel to incorporate or refine in the coming weeks.

Advice for Investors

For investors seeking the next unicorn or disruptive force, TPWB provides a unique lens for due diligence and mentorship:

• Assess founder-market fit not only in terms of technical expertise and network but also how well the founders’ purposeful goals match the market’s needs and growth patterns.
• Examine the founding team’s diversity of purposeful goals. Balanced teams often prove more adept at navigating complex challenges during scaling.
• Look at the startup’s culture and work design. A company that supports multiple meaningfulness pathways is more likely to attract top talent and keep them engaged.
• Gauge whether the founders exhibit adaptive leadership, an attribute that often distinguishes successful leaders from those who struggle under pressure.

Action Step: Integrate questions about purposeful work into your initial or follow-up conversations with founders. Inquire how they plan to craft meaningful experiences that resonate with the diverse motivations of their teams.

Implementation: Avoiding the Attribution Trap

As you apply TPWB principles in your startup, be mindful of a common cognitive bias that can undermine even the best-intentioned approaches: the fundamental attribution error. This error occurs when we overemphasize personal characteristics and underestimate situational factors when evaluating performance and behavior. In the volatile world of startups, many factors beyond individual traits can impact outcomes: market shifts, resource constraints, competitive pressures, and simple luck all play significant roles.

A balanced approach to TPWB implementation acknowledges both personal attributes and contextual realities. Effective implementation includes creating a "situation-aware" feedback culture that considers both individual factors and external circumstances, training leadership to recognize when attribution bias is clouding judgment, using external directors for objective guidance when implementing major organizational changes, and fostering psychological safety so team members can discuss both personal preferences and contextual challenges openly.

It is vital to remember that implementing TPWB principles is not about rigidly categorizing people, but rather about creating an environment where diverse motivational drives can flourish in service of your venture's mission.

Conclusion: The Purposeful Startup Advantage

By weaving the principles of the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior into your entrepreneurial strategy, you position your venture—or the one you are investing in—to deliver more than just financial returns. You create a work environment that resonates with deep human motivations, an advantage that can translate into:

• Enhanced employee engagement and retention, crucial for maintaining productivity and morale.
• Greater innovation capacity, fueled by teams that feel personally invested in their work.
• A stronger employer brand, helping you compete for the best talent in the market.
• A more resilient culture, better equipped to endure the inevitable highs and lows of startup life.

As you chart the course for your new venture or weigh an investment opportunity, keep the TPWB framework in mind. By aligning personal attributes, workplace attributes, and leadership practices with the four fundamental purposeful goals, you can build a startup environment where individuals and organizations flourish in tandem.

The path of entrepreneurship is rarely smooth, but it offers a rare opportunity to create meaningful work that resonates at a personal and collective level. When you leverage insights from the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior, you not only drive tangible success but also spark an experience of purpose and fulfillment for everyone involved. This deeper sense of purpose can be the catalyst that propels your venture to remarkable achievements—while nurturing a vibrant, motivated team that genuinely cares about the journey.

Technical Note: ChatGPT-4o by OpenAI was used to copyedit the final version of this manuscript. The ideas and structure remain the intellectual work of the author and the cited sources.