For basketball fans, who can forget game one of the 1992 NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Portland Trailblazers? OK, more specifically, the moment when Michael Jordan just sank his sixth consecutive three-pointer, and as he jogged back down the court, he raised his hands and shrugged as if to say, "beats me, it's just happening by itself!" Since that night, we have associated that sense of autopilot in any endeavor as being "in the zone."

In the field of behavioral science (and coincidently at the University of Chicago), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yes, that is how you spell it!) had already defined that state of focused concentration, highly efficient performance, and sense of emotional buoyancy as a "state of flow." Characterized by an acute sense of mastery, a lack of self-consciousness and almost self-transcendence, it is that feeling we too seldom experience at work: When we are really loving our job and we get so absorbed in what we are doing that the day is over and we feel like we just got there. That elusive feeling we all wish we could experience every day, but in reality may be lucky to experience once a month, if that. So what does this "flow" have to do with a sense of purpose? Is it important? Why is it so hard to get our arms around it and make it part of our everyday life? And how can we bring more of it to our work?

As we learn more and more about human behavior, the brain and the neuroscience that drives us, we are learning that many of the old sayings made popular by the likes of Zig Ziglar and other sales luminaries are based on fact, not just whimsy. Two of my Zig favorites are: "You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want," and "People don't buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons."

In his work on "prospect theory," Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus at Princeton, made a very similar argument. To summarize and simplify Kahneman's work, look at it this way: Human decision making, including the decision to buy or not buy, act or not act, or give a complete effort or not, is in fact based very much on emotion and then rationalized with facts. His work was so compelling that it ultimately earned him a Nobel Prize for economics in 2002.

If this is true, then why don't employers spend more time creating the emotional experience that will inspire us to act and give our full effort? As we have identified in past articles, three out of four American workers are not engaged and are not giving their best effort at work. The untapped performance potential is enormous! So why aren't we mining this incredible resource? Part of the problem is that it is hard, it takes a lot of time, and the steps are not easily defined.

As we follow the trail of "how we feel determines how we think and how we act," we have to start with feelings - those touchy-feely, fuzzy intangibles that make most of us (especially men) cringe. The reason is that the part of the brain primarily responsible for emotions does not have the capacity for rational thought, including speech. We have to really reach from the neocortex - the part of the brain that can deal with facts and words - down into those fuzzy feelings to create any meaning from them. And that is really hard.

So where does that lead us in our effort to create a work environment that is so filled with meaning that it inspires that positive emotional decision to give our best effort, and ultimately to get us into that productivity "flow" in our professional lives? Well, let's start with where it doesn't lead us. It does not lead us to the traditional starting point for professional purpose: the mission statement. Almost every organization has one. Most of them have it printed in nice calligraphy and hung on the wall in an attractive frame. It was likely developed by the company founder(s), and spells out in detail why the company exists. How many times have you read a mission statement that said something like, "...to deliver superior quality products and service to the clients and individuals that we serve." Intellectually, this is an accurate and defensible purpose for any company. But here's the problem. This is supposed to be your rallying cry! This should be the thing that brings your organization into alignment. This should unite your team to give their best effort, which will create more days of "flow," and ultimately create such an extraordinary experience your that clients and customers can't help but get caught up in it.

How many people in your (or any) organization actually know where the mission statement is even located, let alone know what it says. And if they don't know what your purpose is, or why you do what you do, how likely is it that there can be an emotional desire to support and further that purpose? If we can't create that emotional connection with the people we work with, how likely is it that we are getting that additional passion and discretionary effort that is going to be required for us to achieve our goals as a company? Good products and good people will get us to a certain point, but it is going to take substantially more to make us and our organizations great.

What are some tangible steps you can take to create a common sense of purpose for your organization? Here are a few that might help:

1. First, don't confuse what you do with why you do it. If your purpose for being is to "provide the highest quality insurance products and extraordinary customer service to the companies and individuals we serve," that is a "what" - easy to explain, easy to understand, but not something to inspire a movement. It simply doesn't elicit an emotional response.

2. Bring as many people from your organization together as you can to talk about the emotional "why" that connects you as a team. For my organization, we have developed a "why" that says we believe in inspiring and harnessing the limitless potential of people, "Creating unstoppable organizations." This may be too long, but we at least have a starting point.

3. Which leads to the next step: Keep it brief! This is not one of those situations where the one with the most words wins. On the contrary, work like hell to keep it as brief as possible. If you want people to remember something, don't present them with more than three things. In this case, try to get your rallying cry down to no more than four or five words. This will take time, but it will yield huge rewards on two fronts. First, the simpler it is, the more likely it is that everyone in the organization will remember it, from the reception desk, to sales, to customer service, to the CEO. Second, don't think "mission," think "mantra." For example, consider these mantras in today's marketplace: Nike - Just Do It; Apple - Think Differently; Target - Democratize Design. These are all powerful "why" statements.

Remember, if you can create a purpose that is simple and concise and that captures the emotions and imagination of your team, it will also be easier for the marketplace to understand your purpose, and influence prospects' decisions to work with you. It is like Simon Sinek says: Your objective is not to do business with everyone who needs your product or service, it is to find everyone who believes what you believe and then find a way to partner with them. Only when we have that clear sense of purpose and we can embrace it on an emotional level can we consistently feel that "state of flow."