Little did I know at that time that it was only the first in a series of epiphanies. And I couldn’t imagine that these epiphanies would begin to be more frequent, and happen one after another, at an unimaginable rate.

Here’s what happened until now, one year later, and the results I obtained.

After finding my Vocation

The moment when I was able to name my Vocation and explain it in some sort of elevator pitch, it was suddenly tangible. From that moment, it was clear that all I would do would be aligned with my Vocation.

Every decision, every article, every intervention, every post, every discussion would contribute to bringing humans at the heart of businesses and the world of work.

And I’m proud to say that I managed to follow this guideline. There were a few situations where I could have hurt my Vocation. When it happened, I felt dirty and disgusting. I was threading on my values. So I decided that I would uphold my convictions, even if I had to put myself at risk.

It was systematic. I just could not contribute to a system that encourages the abuse or contempt of humans at work while turning them into cogs in a machine. The first thing I did was to find an environment that would be safe for people to be people, and where my beliefs would not be seen as whims, but as something that goes without saying. And that’s when I agreed to work at Marine Press as a manager.

Scattered experiments

I tried quite a few things. Experimentations on humans, if I can use that expression. I’ve created definitions of awesome, squads of managers at the service of employees, experiences to increase psychological safety, constant reflections on how not to be indispensable, experiments to rehumanize recruitment and found a way to create interviews that are optimized for the candidates, promoted benevolent leadership, savagely rebuked traditional management and its bloodthirsty and power-hungry managers, realized that being an imposter is not such a bad thing, to the point of diving headfirst into the creation of video series, more recently…

All these were my short controlled experiments to find ways to put people once and for all at the heart of work, so that they can be its actors rather than its victims.

I enjoyed every minute of these experiences, and I learned something from all of them. They all reminded me that what I was doing was worth doing.

Additional epiphanies

Other epiphanies have occurred more recently, and these were not related to all humans for once, but one in particular: myself.

Time is not an infinite resource

In my early days, my experiences were confined to the Products and Technology department at Marine Press. I was paid to do these experiments. Awesome, right?

As I expanded my playground, I realized that I could do more. My experiences began to grow outside of my work, and into my network. We exported our experiences to Spark the Change by giving a lecture, and I started to include people from my network in my experiences by giving them a voice.

The more experiments I did, the more I was exposing my network to these experiments, and the more they were time-consuming. Very time-consuming. At first, Primos Populi required about 2 or 3 hours a week. Today, if I do not hold back, it can go up to 35 hours. The thing is, I’m already working 40 hours a week.

I sometimes worked 75 hours a week because my need to bring people back to the heart of businesses is stronger than doing the minimum to live and eat.

I had to find ways not to sacrifice my physical and mental health, my life and my family while continuing to promote the place of the human being at the heart of work.

Time is Money

By spending so much time working to fulfill my Vocation, life started sending me signals. Tiredness. I was burning myself out. And this is how one realizes that of all the resources available in life, time is the only one that you can’t buy.

After reading Maurice Lefebvre‘s article entitled How to find time for meaning, and after much discussion about how much value people actually bring to companies in 40 hours, it did not take me so long to realize that what I was doing in parallel of my work was what was paying the most in terms of intrinsic motivation.

Understanding that time can’t be bought, I wondered what I could sacrifice. The family and my personal life, my vocation, or my full time job. To ask the question was to answer it.

Inspiring people is more dangerous than it seems

While working on Primos Populi, I kept telling myself that if my texts or videos helped but one person, they were worth the effort.

I have received a lot of positive feedback on my texts about Vocation. Several people wrote to me to say that they wanted to reorient their career to devote it to their vocation. That made my heart smile.

But more recently, I started to have much more meaningful and emotionally charged feedbacks. Here are a few.

I cried watching your video on the Impostor Syndrome. Thank you, thank you for saying it aloud !!

After watching your video on The Goddamn Resources, I went to see my boss who is preparing the creation of an ERP tool (Enterprise Resource Planner). I told him, “Hey, you never treated us as resources or even called us resources, why don’t we do an Enterprise People Planner?” We could add people’s skills and career management functions to it. It would make us stand out from the competition”. My boss said it was an incredible idea and gave me the lead of the project. I was thinking of looking for another job because I was lacking in challenges, in the end, I found the challenges without changing employer!

But the most significant feedback was this one:

Someone shared with me your Practical Guide to Becoming a Terrible Manager. When I finished reading it, I was shaken because I recognized all the bosses from the company I worked for in it. The next day, I resigned, with nothing else ahead of me. I had just decided that I deserved to be happy in my work.

OH. 

Oh. That was a kick in the hornet’s nest of my Meaning. It was not immediate, it took a few days for me to understand what I had just read. But when I did, I was completely overwhelmed by a sense of tremendous accomplishment. My quest for Meaning finally reached its first milestone.

If the Vocation is a goal more or less attainable but for which we will fight body and soul, our Meaning is the means by which we can reach our Vocation while having the most significant impact. That’s what determines how you make a difference. How you matter.

And I had just found the Meaning of what I was doing and realized that what I was doing mattered. This blend of Purpose and Meaning brought me a feeling of happiness as I have not known before in my professional life.

The story has come full circle

Actually, there are two stories that came full circle.

The person who gave up her job because she deserved to be happy, I contacted her recently to tell her about the effect her message had had, and that I also decided to sacrifice my full-time job because I too deserve to be happy, without burning myself out, without sacrificing my personal and family life.

The other part that came full circle made me smile. Since all this time my Vocation was clear, I was always looking for how it would become Meaningful. I thought I had to find the way that would have the most impact on people, myself and the world.

This testimony made me realize what I did mattered when I help people take ownership of their career, and take charge of their future to be happy.

And yet, if I go back to December 2017, in my article Why You Should Focus on Your “Why”, here’s what I wrote:

A good day was when I had the opportunity to help someone improve their work environment or work conditions. When I helped someone take charge of their own future. Not only someone in my team, but anyone within my organization, or within my external network.

There was always Meaning in what I was doing. It simply took some time to understand how much it mattered.

What now?

I’m joining my friends Maurice and Axel in their companies. By doing this, I will be able to help people flourish in their work or to emancipate themselves from toxic workplaces. I can devote my time to transforming companies so that their employees can take ownership of their work, bring a maximum value and live in a healthy culture. I can inspire by giving lectures, coaching, mentoring.

And what about Primos Populi?

It will be the voice of our work. You will have way more content, much more regularly! 🙂

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

Following many discussions with people from my network and my surroundings, I felt the need to write this series of articles. It seems that the concepts of profession, passion and vocation are very often mixed or perceived as interchangeable. 

In this article, I would like to demystify the concept of vocation, and I shall do so by simply explaining each of these terms that are often used in an improper way.

What is the difference between vocation, passion and profession?

What is a profession?

Profession
A paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.

Oxford Dictionary

Your profession is what you do in life. It’s the work for which you are paid and wake up every morning, and with which you are generally good at. 

Some people chose their profession when they are young, and study for years in order to develop it. Others end up in their profession by chance, or out of necessity, without planning it. Some people’s profession will mutate, change, evolve into something new, and find themselves very far from the original version of their profession.

It might not be everyone who enjoy their profession: some love it, some others tolerate it since it’s necessary to put food on the table. 

A lot of people will have the same profession for their entire life, others will collect different professions throughout their life. 

What is a passion?

Passion
An intense desire or enthusiasm for something.

Oxford Dictionary

A passion is what thrills you and excites you. It’s what you do for yourself, because you like doing it. You can more or less explain why. You’d do it without being paid for it.

Your passion, you can live it outside of work, just because. Someone can have multiple passions, others don’t have any precise passions. 

Some people have a profession that’s linked to their passion, and are paid to live their passion. Others leave well paying jobs to get one that’s linked to their passion. 

Living your passion is a little bit like taking care of yourself. You do it for yourself because you love it.

What is a vocation?

Vocation
1.  A strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation.
2.  A person’s employment or main occupation, especially regarded as worthy and requiring dedication.

Oxford Dictionary

Your vocation is your why. It can be linked to your profession or not. It’s something that transcends your career, your passion and your profession. Something greater than you. A cause, a goal, a belief that’s almost utopian, and that is most probably impossible to bring to a conclusion, but you will die trying.

Your vocation is not about you. It’s about others, about the world, about society. When you’ll be asked “What do you want people to remember you for when you die?”, your answer will most probably be linked to your vocation.

The odds are that the difference you bring to the world by serving your vocation is definitely linked to your passion. Because serving your vocation is extremely gratifying and fulfilling. 

It might happen that some people are not passionate at all with their vocation, and they serve it simply because it has to be done, it deserves to be done, but they get nothing out of it. But I haven’t met anyone like that so far.

Your vocation is this lighthouse in the horizon that guides you towards your goal, and helps you make decisions. You won’t be making any decisions that contradict your vocation. If you do, you will feel a great moral conflict, as you are violating your values.

Your vocation is the impact that you want to have on the world. 

The trinity

Some people, of which I am one, can reach the Trinity, if I can call it that. Meaning that there is a correlation between their profession, their passion and their vocation.

In short, what they do, how they do it and why they do it are in harmony. In a similar way, what they think, what they say and what they do are also in harmony. 

From this moment, nothing can stop them. Nothing can stand for long between them and their vocation.

And you?

Did you find your vocation?

In the next article of this series, I will introduce you to multiple people who found their vocation at very different periods of their lives. Because a vocation has no age.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com