How to Make Your Work Matter More (Without Changing Jobs)
How can you make your work more meaningful without changing jobs? Start by identifying something you genuinely care about, connecting it to a priority within your organisation, and taking one small action where you already have influence. Meaningful work doesn't always require a career change. Sometimes, it starts with finding a way to make a positive difference in the role you already have.
You Can Be Successful at Work and Still Want to Make a Bigger Difference
You've built a career. You've developed expertise. You're good at what you do.
But perhaps you're beginning to wonder whether the work you're doing is making the kind of difference you want to make.
That question often becomes more important after a significant life event, such as having children, losing someone close to you, or experiencing a health challenge.
Lucia Knight explores this with Hannah Keartland, who helps purpose-led business leaders turn their desire for positive impact into practical action.
Hannah's starting point is simple: everything we do has an impact, whether we intend it or not. The opportunity is to become more intentional about reducing negative impacts and increasing positive ones.
How Do You Find More Meaning in Your Current Role?
Hannah suggests starting with two questions:
What do you care about? What gets you excited, frustrated, or motivated to make a difference?
What matters to your organisation? Where could meaningful change also support an important business priority?
The intersection of those two answers is where you may find your greatest opportunity to make progress.
For example, a business focused on attracting and retaining talented people may also benefit from initiatives around wellbeing, sustainability, or social mobility.
When your personal interests and organisational priorities align, meaningful work becomes easier to move forward.
Without that alignment, you risk what Hannah describes as pushing water uphill — investing energy in something important to you but struggling to gain traction.
Can One Small Action Really Make a Difference?
You don't necessarily need a new initiative, a large budget, or an ambitious transformation plan.
Hannah shares the example of a senior leader in a rapidly growing business who wanted to make more progress on sustainability but was already juggling enormous responsibilities.
When the leader mentioned upcoming AI strategy meetings, Hannah suggested a small action: ask one question about how the business would consider AI's potential negative social and environmental impacts.
One question. In a meeting she was already attending.
The example illustrates how a small action, taken in the right setting, can have the potential to influence much bigger conversations and decisions.
The key is to start within your sphere of influence, rather than waiting until you can change everything.
What's Your Next Step Towards More Meaningful Work?
If you're questioning whether your work could offer more meaning, you don't have to begin by planning your next career move.
Start by understanding where you are now, what might be holding you back, and what small change could help you move forward.
Take the Free Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz
Lucia's quiz will help you discover your Joy Readiness Score, your easiest quick win, and your biggest blind spot — so you can start moving towards work you might want to do forever.
About Hannah Keartland
Hannah helps purpose-led business leaders get unstuck on impact-related challenges, from clarifying priorities and creating impact reports to aligning commercial success with positive impact.
She brings more than 20 years of experience leading innovation and finance at director and board level.
For more ideas, subscribe to Hannah's Better Business Bites newsletter.
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How to Make Your Work Matter More (Without Changing Jobs)
[00:00:00] How Can You Make More Impact at Work?
Hanna Keartland: The questions you ask and the stories you tell can be some of the best ways of starting to have an impact in the work you do, especially if you're a senior leader. 'cause they show what you care about and they can really start to shift conversations. They can influence decisions and they can really start to change the culture of the whole organisation.
Lucia Knight: I met today's guest at a TEDx audition, which was honestly one of the hardest things I have ever done in the name of Joy at work. Thankfully, we ended on the same TEDx stage and Hannah's talk about making a positive impact on the world through the questions you ask and the stories you tell has logged in my brAIn years later, I asked Hannah Keartland here to share some of her ultra clear thinking about impact and her practical ideas on how you can increase your impact in your current role, whether that's the role you want to keep forever or not.
Let's dive in.
Hannah, I come across people so often who've experienced a big life event that has somehow made them want to think about doing work that is more meaning or work that has more impact. In your experience, what could that look like?
Hanna Keartland: I really recognise this. Loads of my clients they're in the C-suite, they're partners in professional services firms, and they are really passionate about having a meaningful impact through their business and their work. And so often that's been triggered by a sort of life event.
Maybe having children losing a loved one, a health issue. And where I start is by sharing everything we do has an impact, whether that's intentional or not. So, For example, the way I'm speaking now and what I'm choosing to talk about what I had to eat for lunch and where I bought it, how I treat the people I work with.
And when it comes to those impacts that you are having every single day with every single decision you're making, I suggest thinking about impact in two ways. So there's understanding and reducing the negative impact that you have, whether as an individual or as a business. And then thinking about the positive you impact you have and how you can increase that positive impact.
Lucia Knight: Okay. Okay. So I love that. That's nice and simple, isn't it? And I love that everything we do has an impact. It's just often we don't think about it in advance. So let's say someone is ready to think about that in advance and they may be ready to take action in their current role, whatever that is in their current company, what might they do?
[00:02:46] Start With What Matters to You
Hanna Keartland: So I would suggest that they pick one thing to focus on. You've got limited time, you've got limited energy, you're still doing your day job. So pick one thing and to help you pick that one thing I would suggest you ask yourself two questions. So what are you passionate about and what matters within the business?
So if we think about what you're passionate about, that could be this is something that really gets you excited or gets you angry, gets, what's the thing that gets you fired up? For example, it could be gender representation in your industry or social mobility, or it could be, some really gnarly kind of environmental or human rights issues in your supply chAIn.
What's something that like really gets you excited and motivated to wanna do something about it?
[00:03:31] Connect Your Passion to Business Priorities
Hanna Keartland: And then what matters in your business? And there's sort of two aspects to this. So this could be because you know that in your business, this is where you've got the biggest negative impact or maybe the biggest opportunity for positive impact.
So if you can see something that really matters, and if you could just shift it a little bit, then that's gonna be meaningful, then that's sort of one place to look.
And it's really important to look at what matters strategically. So for example, I work with lots of professional services firms, and for them, attracting and retAIning brilliant people is always a strategic priority.
And work on sustainability, social mobility, wellbeing, all these sorts of things can really help to meet that strategic objective. So you can then be doing meaningful work that is aligned with the organisational strategy, their priorities. And that's when you can make the most progress.
When you choose to work on something that isn't a strategic priority, then you are constantly trying to, push water uphill and you just really struggle to make progress.
Looking for that strategic alignment and how it connects into something that you are super passionate about. And then also make it doable. Think about what you can influence. So you might be, you might wanna start in your department where you've got more control, you've got a bigger sphere of influence you know, you might prove something then, then be able to take it, wider.
But focus on what's doable. Focus on one thing, focus on connecting it to what you're passionate about and to what matters strategically.
Lucia Knight: Lovely. And that makes so much sense when you say it. But often that pushing water uphill is what grinds people down, doesn't it? Because you're choosing something that connects with you and feels meaningful for you, but you haven't checked in. Is it really a strategic priority? So there then people lose energy, lose focus and lose the potential for impact. So that, I think that is fantastic.
So let's say somebody's listening to this now and everything you've said has resonated, and they already know the problem or the opportunity within their organisation or whatever that they're interested in. What is the best way for them to make that small start? What do you advise?
[00:05:43] How One Question Can Create Change
Hanna Keartland: So I would suggest making it something really doable. So something that doesn't take a lot of time, doesn't require budget. Often you'll see these opportunities for the really big transformational thing, but that's not usually the best place to start. So let me share an example. I was working with someone, she was on the exec team of a rapidly growing PE-backed business.
Super, super busy, spinning loads of plates. The business was going at a hundred miles an hour. So I'd help develop the sustainability plan, the responsible business plan. And every time we met, she'd look at me really guiltily and she'd apologised that she hadn't made any progress.
And she always had made progress, but she didn't feel like she was making progress. And then one month she mentioned that they had some big strategic meetings coming up around AI. And so I asked if there'd been any kind of discussion around the negative social and environmental impacts of AI and there hadn't been.
So I suggested that the one thing that she could commit to over the next month was asking a question in one of those strategy meetings about how they could bring in and consider the negative impacts of AI when they were creating their strategy. So all she had to do over the next month was commit to asking one question in a meeting that she was already going to be in.
So relatively easy to do 'cause she was already there in a leadership capacity, part of those discussions, asking those questions. So relatively easy to do. But because of her seniority and because of the strategic nature of those meetings she was in, then that one question could have a huge impact. And this bit around asking questions was something that I talked about in my TED Talk.
So the questions you ask and the stories you tell can be some of the best ways of starting to have an impact in the work you do, especially if you're a senior leader. 'cause they show what you care about and they can really start to shift conversations. They can influence decisions and they can really start to change the culture of the whole organisation.
[00:07:42] What Does Joy at Work Really Look Like?
Lucia Knight: So I have one more question for you. Hannah, when you're doing work in a way that feels joyful for you, if I was the Netflix documentary watching you in your room or on the stage or whatever, what would I notice about you that would tell me, wow, she's feeling joy at work.
Hanna Keartland: I can think of two different scenarios, whether either when I'm on my own or when I'm with other people. And so when I'm on my own, so maybe I'm creating something, but on my own I just have this deep focus. I will be so absorbed. I'll just be so focused on the thing that I'm doing and nothing else will come in and I will be beavering away and I'll be having these ideas and I'll be writing stuff down and I will just be completely immersed in it.
The other time when I would say I'm finding joy at work is when I'm talking to people who are really aligned in terms of their values and their outlook for what we're trying to achieve in the world. So we we are both excited by the same thing. We're both passionate about the same thing.
We've got very similar kind of vision for the world and we are bouncing off each other. People who I find really like then energetic they're sparking ideas in my brAIn. And we are both kind of talking, it's backwards and forwards and there's just this energy and kind of boun, which I'm probably doing now 'cause I'm imagining it.
And it will be this kind of pace of thinking and connecting dots and going, oh, and we could do this and that connects with that. And if we brought this person in and this idea in, and we could do this and all that would blend really well with that. And so this kind of energetic bouncing, which would be with someone else who's energising me and giving me these ideas and inspiring me, or I'm doing that sort of on my own, on a piece of paper.
Lucia Knight: When you're ready for more, take the Boost Your Joy at work quiz. I built it for experienced people who know that more joy at work is possible, but they're just not sure where to start. This is where to start. You'll discover your joy readiness score, your easiest quick win, and your biggest blind spot so that you can start moving immediately towards work that you might want to do forever.
