A brooding thought occurred to me this week. As I was preparing for yet another 'quarterly business review', I asked myself the following:
If someone asks me "what do you do for a living?"
Is my answer, "I write quarterly business reports"
I fast forwarded to age 60 or 65 and repeated that answer again to the question
"What did you do for a living?"
"Well, I wrote quarterly business reports - and let me tell you they were FANTASTIC!"
That thought caused a churn in my stomach. I do not want that to be my answer, however well I dress it up (and example of a dressed up answer - "I turned in strong profits in the majority of quarters of my 30 years career in business")
This thought was gnawing at me all week. And then the aforementioned Thursday came around.
I woke up Thursday morning in a bit of a sweat. I was to face our top 12 corporate clients - each the most well known companies in the world. I was to position to them a new service we were developing, and the risk of them either not understanding or worse misunderstanding my intent was there - and I could not afford to turn off any one of them, let alone all 12. Plus of course given the importance of the occasion everyone of my senior executives were present at the meeting.
So here I was Thursday morning - feeling hollow about my quarterly business reports on one hand, and feeling a bit unnerved about the prospect of things going wrong on the other. As I was writing my speaking notes, I paused for a bit, closed my eyes and let my mind relax and wander.
Then a question occurred to me - who are these people that I was facing, and why are they listening to me?
These were my customers, and I was there to serve them. I was not there to sell them. I was not there to dazzle them. I was there to serve them. Setting aside all the noise, and the concern about risk, if I could let that one passion come through, then that was all that mattered.
I went it with my preparation and in my mind this one key - I am here to serve you. I am not here to force myself or my service upon you - here it is - if you like it - I am here. Mercifully, the meeting went great - and some clients wanted follow-up meetings right off the bat.
On my way back on the plane I was sitting in my seat exhausted when it occurred to me that I might have also stumbled upon a piece of the answer to my original question about the hollow feeling about writing quarterly business reports.
Who do we serve?
A doctor serves patients
A politician serves constituents
A teacher serves students
A business person serves customers
So at the end of one's career, if one were asked the question, so what did you do, one need not say, well I wrote dazzling presentations. One can say, I cured patients of ear-nose-throat problems, if one were an ENT specialist.
What gives meaning to our professional lives, it occurs to me, who we have served and what impact that service has had on their lives - as opposed to one's profits, or fame or legacy.
If someone asks me "what do you do for a living?"
Is my answer, "I write quarterly business reports"
"What did you do for a living?"
"Well, I wrote quarterly business reports - and let me tell you they were FANTASTIC!"
That thought caused a churn in my stomach. I do not want that to be my answer, however well I dress it up (and example of a dressed up answer - "I turned in strong profits in the majority of quarters of my 30 years career in business")
This thought was gnawing at me all week. And then the aforementioned Thursday came around.
I woke up Thursday morning in a bit of a sweat. I was to face our top 12 corporate clients - each the most well known companies in the world. I was to position to them a new service we were developing, and the risk of them either not understanding or worse misunderstanding my intent was there - and I could not afford to turn off any one of them, let alone all 12. Plus of course given the importance of the occasion everyone of my senior executives were present at the meeting.
So here I was Thursday morning - feeling hollow about my quarterly business reports on one hand, and feeling a bit unnerved about the prospect of things going wrong on the other. As I was writing my speaking notes, I paused for a bit, closed my eyes and let my mind relax and wander.
Then a question occurred to me - who are these people that I was facing, and why are they listening to me?
I went it with my preparation and in my mind this one key - I am here to serve you. I am not here to force myself or my service upon you - here it is - if you like it - I am here. Mercifully, the meeting went great - and some clients wanted follow-up meetings right off the bat.
On my way back on the plane I was sitting in my seat exhausted when it occurred to me that I might have also stumbled upon a piece of the answer to my original question about the hollow feeling about writing quarterly business reports.
Who do we serve?
A doctor serves patients
A politician serves constituents
A teacher serves students
A business person serves customers
So at the end of one's career, if one were asked the question, so what did you do, one need not say, well I wrote dazzling presentations. One can say, I cured patients of ear-nose-throat problems, if one were an ENT specialist.
What gives meaning to our professional lives, it occurs to me, who we have served and what impact that service has had on their lives - as opposed to one's profits, or fame or legacy.
5 comments:
It is indeed an interesting thought. I will comment on the last sentence !
There are three categories of people in this world. 1. The innovators/entrepreneurs/wealth creaters etc. 2. Work for organizations 3. Do nothing - but criticize others.
Most of us belong to the second category. These can again be divided into two categories. a) Those who are lucky and get jobs they desire and enthusiastic b) Those who do the jobs simply because that is all they can get and they need the money.
Hopefully, you belong to the first category ( I did). These are the people who have the questions you have posed. Because, they put their heart and soul ito the job they do, they look for the results they have achieved in their job. Since most of these people belong to a piece of a much larger puzzle( the picture in your essay), their effect in the overall picture not only depends on them but the team in which they are a part of. Assuming that there is an overall coordination for the success of the mission, one can look for the results of his/her contribution and its effect on others. Some times, even the best effort of a most enthusiastic person can end in failure if the over all system in which he/she is a part is faulty.
So, ultimately, those who are smart, intelligent, hard working and motivated to do their best may succeed or fail due to thee system in which they are a part. If one is lucky enough to be in such a good system, he/she can be effective in having an impact on others.
This is indeed beautiful.
Similar feeling comes over me some times in the night, awake in the bed.
In a way, serving others is the reason we are here.
I ask my students the following; have you made a difference to the world around you...
I do not think the feeling of "serving" is the overwhelming criterion
in everyone's professional lives. Surely, it is not so for me. Sure, whatever work
I do is supposed to help someone someday, but while I am working
I do not continuously think about serving others. I think most of us are
merely serving ourselves. To say otherwise is perhaps a romantic gloss
or some kind of desperate search for justification of what we are doing.
What would you do afterward, if you were to miraculously become so
rich that you do not need to work for several generations? Would you
still think of serving? I don't know about you, but I will go travel the
world, as a starter :-)
> We should indeed strive for meaning
Not sure "should" is the right way to say, but we are welcome to do so in our own way.
In the end companies do not do business to serve others, but for profit. Not that there is
anything wrong with it. If people are served as a side effect, it's alright. But no, it is not
part of the ultimate portfolio.
Almost the same for individuals ... money, fame and legacy are very important motivations for
us. Unless we are into serious philanthropy from the heart. And only I know if it is true for myself.
Saying that I am serving others makes it sound as if I am doing something more
benevolent than what I am actually doing.
To me it is unnecessary and mostly self -serving :-)
Great thoughts on who do we serve in business.
I feel, the basics of service leadership remain the same in all walks of life. "Servum Servorum"is one of the Latin titles given to Pope and it means "the servant of servants of the Lord". As you may know "Thondaradipodi" is the name taken by an Azhwar. The name means "Dust of the feet of the devotees" as the Azhwar chose to be the servant of the devotees.
Having seen your interest in science, philosophy and business I thought your honest input on another topic might be educational. Especially after the link from Chandru provoked some thoughts towards society. It is about global finance. What did really happen in the last 30 years. Where do we go from here?
There are reasons to believe that Fear and Greed started taking over the lives of many. It is not only the issue created by the Bulls, Bears and other players in the Wall Street but also by all those driven by the same fear and greed in main street. But the point is that we have started shying away from investments in fundamental research and long term projects contrary to the values from some of the business courses I took about fifteen years back.
Some of the articles I happened to come across on this topic seem to be taking sides one way or the other with selective statistics. I thought a balanced viewpoint can come from someone like you with passion in multiple fields. The topic is sensitive, could arguably be most debatable and may also qualify for an offline response as necessary.
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