Around this time last year, I was struggling to find my rhythm.

My version of work-life integration looked more like work-work integration, and it was taking a toll on my relationships. So I faced a conundrum: how could I maintain the stimulating fast pace of the job I love while making space for the people I love? And what about personal development outside of work?

Put simply, how could I work smarter?

There’s a ton of advice on this topic—everything from “turn off your phone for two hours each evening” to “drink more water.” But those are tactics. What I needed was a new perspective.

So I turned to a tool we employ with our clients at Zeus Jones, when the businesses we work with need their own guiding light. It’s called Belief, Purpose, and Pursuits (BPP). On the surface, it’s a simple framework. The Belief is what the brand believes about the world. The Purpose is the brand’s mission—what they’re going to do about their belief. And Pursuits are principles that help brands take action. The BPP serves to guide everything brands do, from hiring to product development to marketing and communications. For more on the BPP and how we’re working to evolve it, check out Christian’s post from earlier this year, “An Evolving Model for Modern Brands – Beyond “Belief, Purpose, Pursuits.”

In thinking about how to create my own personal BPP, I had some questions:

To find the answers, I basically followed the process we use here at Zeus Jones:

Immersion and Research

I wanted to be thorough, so I started by digging into my existing equities, perceived problems, and questions. I interviewed my parents to get their perspectives on my strengths, weaknesses, and potential paths forward. I looked back on some of my more reflective personal blog posts and half-done journal entries to better understand some of my previous thinking. And I reflected on what has made me feel balanced and fulfilled at each stage of my life and career.

This phase started to tease out some common themes around what’s important to me: learning, creating, being challenged, working hard, helping others, knowing the people around me are taken care of, and—overall—a sense that I’m making something, somewhere, a little bit better.

While my key themes were personal and meaningful to me, they weren’t necessarily unique. As often happens when we go through the process with brands, the themes and values that began to emerge could apply to others. But, just as it is for our clients, the BPP is only as good as what you do with it. So I took the ideas and moved into the drafting phase, with the goal of crafting something that would be right for me.

I shared an early version with my parents. My mom (a natural creative) wanted to know what I would do with it. My dad (a natural strategist) was more curious about how I would evaluate whether or not it was working. Good questions. As I thought through the answers and refined my draft, I also shared it with Jason, a friend and coworker who, as a result, began his own personal BPP quest.

My resulting framework (forever a draft) looks like this: My Pursuits are purposefully a mixture of guardrails and open doors, at work and at home. Focus close is designed to keep me grounded in my home life and immediate relationships, instead of taking them for granted. Create beautiful moments gives me permission (and pushes me) to continue making art, at work and in my personal time. Seek and support provides a lens for all of my projects and decisions, wherever they come from.

To keep ourselves on track, Jason and I met and shared our BPPs and our “phase 1 plans” for taking action. Mine consisted of 1) dedicating sacred no-work dinner hours each evening and 2) booking and paying for consistent dance studio rehearsal time (I’ve learned that pre-paying is an excellent motivator).

Months later, I’ve been in the studio seven times and counting, my husband and I eat dinner together almost every night when I’m in town (and we recently took a truly adventurous adventure in the backcountry of Alaska), I’ve become much more vocal and action-oriented about issues that I care about, and Jason and I still do accountability check-ins on our BPPs from time to time. It’s also helped me to be happier and more efficient with my work—when cool opportunities come up that involve extra time or travel, I can take them and feel good about them, knowing that I balance them out with my Focus Close efforts.

My framework isn’t something I consult every day—or even every month—and it’s certainly not something I use formally to make all of my decisions. But I know my purpose, and can use it intuitively. It functions as the great balancer when things get out of whack, which, you know, still happens sometimes.

So, what about my questions?

1) Can a BPP be useful to an individual?

Yes. People are, in fact, just as complex as businesses, with competing priorities, literal and figurative arms and legs, and struggles to stay flexible and relevant while also being purposeful. What I thought would be a small, easy exercise turned out to be not so small or easy, with one major exception: I was the only approver.

2) Will it have a positive influence on my life and my decision-making?

So far, yes. But as things change, I’ll need to change as well. This framework may not be the answer to all my future questions.

3) Will this process uncover any flaws in the framework itself?

One thing I learned is that the answer to my dad’s initial question—how I’ll evaluate the success of this BPP—is still a little ambiguous. It tends to be a tricky task with our client BPPs as well, because the full effects of the framework manifest over months and years of shifting perspectives. That said, when the framework is successful, it results in real actions, which should be measurable in and of themselves.

Evaluation is another piece of our ongoing mission to define and refine the future of brand frameworks. And as we do that, I’m excited to bring a personal perspective to the table. After all, even the biggest businesses are made up of individual people. And—as I can attest—sometimes we all need a little help figuring out what to do next.

What’s your take?

Add your own thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

March 3rd | 2016

Not Like Me: How Homogeneity Impacts Our Work, and What We Can Do About it
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