Recently I sent out to the WAG community an invitation to test a new tool that I created, the TripleP Quiz – Purpose, Passion and Profit. A remarkable number of you took the quiz and offered me valuable feedback as to your experience taking it, the significance of the results, and how the tool might best be utilized. I would like to return the favor and deliver a post-quiz debrief on your collective results.

First a bit of background on the tool. Following the publication of my last book, I went on the road for two years talking to companies about significance and purpose at work. I discovered that when workers explain what motivates them they keep coming back to three basic drivers: Purpose, Passion and Profit. So I designed a short inventory to identify how individuals lead with one of these drivers. I say “lead,” because we truly operate with a mix of motivations. But I found that nearly everyone I interviewed revealed a primary driver that shaped their experience at work. I aim not only to help workers learn more about themselves, I hope to offer the workplace a language for job engagement and the range of motivations that inspire team members.

The TripleP took a leap forward in a café on San Francisco's waterfront. I regularly connect with Joy Anderson, President of Criterion Consulting, with whom I have collaborated on a range of projects over the years. While mulling over a few concepts to save the world – what else do you discuss in a café? - the conversation thread kept returning to our understanding of how people create meaning. I told Joy about the TripleP, and we spent the rest of the morning brainstorming about how to turn it into a tool that would be dynamic and easily accessible. The TripleP Quiz was born.

It has been helpful over the past few months to run the quiz on members of fixed constituencies – our first client was a university alumni network in the Midwest - and then analyze the results. With each new organization that runs the quiz, we can measure the validity of specific questions and the overall distribution of responses.

Ok, moving on to the WAG list....Not surprising, you are a very Passion-led community! Here are the top-line results:

56% of you lead with Passion
26% of you lead with Purpose
18% of you lead with Profit

Compared to our first control group, the number of Passion-led individuals is almost 20% higher. Obviously, the WAG community values inspiring and creative work. No matter how much a prospective employer or client entices you with the higher purpose of a job, or the tangible rewards of achieving, if you do not feel passionate about the activities that the position involves, you are not likely to find the job enticing. In other words, Passion-led people shiver at the thought of waking up to a month of Mondays and face a set of tasks that are uninspiring. Among WAG readers, the single question that received the strongest response was: “My job must allow me to learn and grow.” About 70% of you who took the TripleP Quiz marked “Always” to this statement.

By and large, I meet Purpose-led people most often in the non-profit and civic sector. Don’t get me wrong, these individuals are not disappointed to take on creative tasks. But what inspires them is the larger mission of the enterprise of which they are a part.

Purpose people do not fit into a one-size-fits-all box, however. While one person may want to find a cure for cancer, another Purpose person finds motivation for designing a new software. You want Purpose people to help drive the mission and core values of your organization. They keep the enterprise on course.

The smallest slice of WAG readers fit into the Profit camp. Profit in this regard does not solely refer to bottom-line financials. In a much broader sense, Profit-led people find meaning in achieving a set of determined deliverables. They are the ones who provide discipline and structure to the organization. If you have ever started your own enterprise, you know the valuable role that Profit-led people play, especially once your operation began to scale.

The more I engage with companies, the deeper I appreciate the range of motivations required to make an organization healthy and successful. Individuals are not all wired the same; they find meaning in very different ways. Unfortunately, we do not always value the differences.

Last week I received an extremely cynical note response from a WAG reader who took the TripleP Quiz and proclaimed that Passion people are self-indulgent. In essence, this Purpose-led individual wanted to send the message: It is well and good to seek inspiration, but get over it people, because the world is full of suffering people. It is always a temptation for Purpose-led people to feel that any other motivation for meaning is inferior, if not a sell out.

His dogmatic tone reminds me of a dilemma that a CEO presented to me recently. The company was a victim of its own success; it was experiencing wild economic growth. When the company launched over a decade ago, the a very passionate founder attracted a first wave of employees who also believed fervently in the products of the company. Once the company passed the $100 million mark in sales, the management team saw the need to bring in Profit-led people who could better discipline its operations. The early generation workers, of course, viewed the intrusion of the Profit-led people as a threat to their Passion-led corporate culture. The Profit-led people felt less than welcomed. For their part, they wondered how such a chaotic, undisciplined crew could have gotten so far in business.

My challenge is help the employees see the value of an orchestra with many instruments. No organization can sustain itself without a strong mission (Purpose), a creative and inspired dynamism (Passion), and clear set of achievements and deliverables (Profit). When any one of these values dominates in such a degree that it squeezes out the comfortable space that the others offer, then the organization will falter. Those enterprises that value the uniqueness of their personnel, on the other hand, design work environments where productivity thrives.