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PURPOSE

“PURPOSE, resolution, and harmony unify life and give it meaning by transforming it into a seamless flow experience.”

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

THE SECOND ABSOLUTE FOR LEADERS:

It was a bleak, increasingly scary time in the last months of 1942, as the daily news was filled with reports about the air, sea, and land battles of World War II. Unbeknownst to nearly anyone, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was busy hatching a top-secret plan. The mission: harness nuclear energy to build a weapon powerful enough to decisively end World War II.

Spanning four years, involving 130,000 workers and 6,000 scientists, The Manhattan Project was an unprecedented scientific endeavor with unthinkably tight deadlines and quite literally the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Whether you regard it as travesty or a triumph, the creation of the atomic bomb was, in terms of leadership and organization, a historic achievement. Few are aware, however, of the project's lackluster early beginnings.

Purpose is the anchor of the organization.

In a desire for complete secrecy, the U.S. government told the scientists that their work was in the service ...