The Mission Can Change How You Experience the Work

Maggie Amato described a moment when the mission behind a project became personal.

In her Fireside Chat conversation, she recalled working on a team involved with electronic health records for Veterans Affairs. Her grandfather was a veteran, and she had seen the difficulty of coordinating care and information across locations. That experience made the purpose of the project more immediate to her.

She identified it as an important discovery about herself: the mission she worked on affected how passionately she approached the work.

Connect the responsibility to the people it serves

A project can be described through systems, access and delivery milestones. Amato's account added the people whose experience gave those responsibilities meaning. Understanding that connection changed how she thought about her own motivation.

The editorial application for cyber professionals is not that every role must have a personal family connection. It is that the human purpose of the work deserves attention when choosing a role or explaining a team's responsibilities.

Who relies on the service? What becomes harder for them when it does not work as intended? Those questions can reveal why a technically similar role feels different in another organization.

Amato's story does not claim that a meaningful mission removes the challenges of a job. It describes recognizing an influence on her engagement that she could carry forward in her career. Knowing which purposes draw out your commitment can help you evaluate opportunities with more than the title or technology in view.

Listen to the original conversation with Maggie Amato · Read the transcript

From the Fireside Chat archive: original episode published 2022-12-07. This is an editorial reflection on that conversation, not a new interview or an update on the guest’s current role.