Let’s be honest: we all have those days when nothing seems to make sense. You wake up, grab your coffee, sit down at your desk, and think, ”What’s the point?”

Sometimes, it’s life in general that gets us down. But more often, it’s work.

I have spent decades helping organizations large and small change their cultures. And in that time I’ve seen the same pattern again and again. When leaders try to run their companies like machines, the living, breathing, messy humans they rely on switch off.

This problem has only gotten worse as we’ve moved into the digital age. New technologies help us track everything. Businesses worship at the altar of the KPI (key performance indicators), the executive dashboard, the quarterly performance report. But as we focus laser-like on optimization, something important often falls by the wayside: We forget to ask what it all means.

The data is sobering. Only three in 10 U.S. employees feel engaged at work. Globally, that number drops to just two in 10. That means most people are intellectually and emotionally disconnected from the tasks they spend most of their day on.

The economic costs are enormous. According to Gallup’s global workplace report, disengagement costs companies around the world nearly $9 trillion annually in lost productivity. That’s the equivalent of nearly 10% of global GDP.

But this isn’t just about the bottom line. It’s a human tragedy as well. Every disengaged employee, every worker who drags themselves to their desk asking “What’s the point?” represents the destruction of human potential. Meaning matters, and when we can’t find it in our work, we limp through........

© Psychology Today