In Give and Take by Adam Grant, he writes about the power of purpose to improve not just happiness, but also productivity. His answer, like many brilliant insights, seems obvious once it's pointed out. The big surprise is how huge the impact is.

‍

Adam looked at paid employees in a university's fund-raising call center. Their job was to call potential donors and ask for contributions. He divided them into three groups. Group A was the control group, and just did their jobs. Group B read stories from other employees about the personal benefits of the job: learning and money. Group C read stories from scholarship recipients about how the scholarships had changed their lives. Group A and B saw no difference in performance. Group C, in contrast, grew their weekly pledges by 155 percent and weekly fund-raising by 143 percent.

‍

If reading about someone made such a big difference, Adam wondered, would actually meeting someone have even more of an impact? A group of fund-raisers were given the opportunity to meet a scholarship recipient and ask them questions for five minutes. The result: Over the next month, weekly fund-raising went up by more than 400 percent.

‍

He found this effect persisted in other jobs as well. Lifeguards who read stories about saving drowning swimmers were 21 percent more active in watching over their swimmers. Students editing letters written by other students spent 20 percent more time on them if they first met the authors.

‍

So what is Adam's insight? Having workers meet the people they are helping is the greatest motivator, even if they only meet for a few minutes. Is this something that you and your colleagues, teams, or company can benefit from?