It is a thirst that can be quenched by just shifting the organization's story about why it exists. Ultimately we work, not for shareholders, but for customers and future societies. They are, after all, the groups that will vote with their purchases and their policies. Shareholders will win big, of course, but a higher stock price is a dead end as far as meaning goes. The truly great companies, of course, flood themselves with meaning.
Medtronic employees know that every pacemaker they make is part of a dramatic patient story.
People who clean operating room floors know that their attentiveness can prevent deadly attacks of septicemia. People who develop Internet software know that we are changing the relationship capacity of people everywhere in the world. People in global toothpaste companies know that their customers won't have to go through the agony of lost teeth at a young age. Elan is Life Force Life in all its forms, we now know, does more than evolve in a linear or incremental way. It virtually goes into periods of instability and then explodes into new forms of order and competence.