A few weeks ago, a new business acquaintance shared this video with me. From the start, it had me hooked. What’s not to love about complex research distilled into nifty, easy to understand drawings?

Drawings aside, what really resonated with me was the message. The illustrator extraordinaire is Dan Pink, author of the book Drive, and the video neatly summarizes the main premise of the book - that human beings are motivated by more than money. Instead, he argues, what really drives employees to perform at their best are three things: autonomy, or the ability to direct your own work; mastery – the ability to learn and excel at something; and purpose, or the notion that the work you’re doing really matters.

At Brilliant Ink, we talk a great deal about the motivation of meaningful work. In fact, it’s one of our core beliefs, and we frequently encourage our clients to think about how to connect their people with the higher purpose of their work.

Sometimes this is a slam dunk. If you work for a pharmaceutical company that is manufacturing drugs people rely on to manage deadly diseases, it can be easy to connect the dots between your work and the value you’re providing to customers. If, on the other hand, you work for an accounting firm or a company that manufactures computer graphics cards, you have a bigger challenge on your hands.

If your company has your customers’ best interests at heart, then you have a viable story to tell about your higher purpose. Here’s how you can do it:

• If you haven’t done so already, define your higher purpose. A good place to start is by looking at your mission and vision statements. But here’s a warning: beware of vague language! Nobody is inspired by a higher purpose of “providing customer-centric solutions that tackle complex business challenges.”

• Spell it out in meaningful, inspiring terms for your people. For example, if you’re an internet company that makes its money from ad revenues, then sure, talk about the importance of your advertisers – but don’t forget about your end user, either. Without them you wouldn’t have any advertisers.

• Look for simple ways to reinforce your purpose. Build it into leader remarks. Add it to your careers website and talk about it during interviews with job candidates. Feature stories on your intranet that bring it life.

• Build it into your culture. This is more complex and takes time, but think about all the ways in which your employees experience your company. There are bound to be opportunities to realign your current business practices with your higher purpose. For example, perhaps your performance management program can be redesigned to encourage behaviors that support your higher purpose.

Of course, if this were easy work you probably would have already done it. But remember the payoff: employees who are working toward a higher purpose are more likely to perform better, and better performance leads to the

Holy Grail: better business results, which benefit everyone.