“We are here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here.”
Steve Jobs, Cofounder, Apple, Inc.1
We all come into the world with a purpose, born with capabilities and potential. Most people don’t get to figure out what their purpose is. The business of life, making ends meet, or even just surviving take over.
You may be a member of the millennial segment, sharing student loan burdens that have surpassed the nation’s aggregate credit card debt. You may be a Boomer facing the risks of living so long that healthcare costs stand to overwhelm the best-laid plans.
Chances are, though, if you have explored this book you are motivated to operate with purpose that is bottom-line plus. You enjoy the luxury of getting to figure out your purpose. You aspire to create something of value. And you have the curiosity and persistence to overcome the odds and succeed.
You are lucky, and your luck comes with a special responsibility to make a difference for others. Look around and explore. Seek insights about what gets in people’s ways and how to help them. Get past cut-and-paste answers that do no more than automate an existing solution. Address needs that haven’t been addressed. Plant something new that has a shot at permanence. Permanence does not need to mean forever — nowadays it is more likely a springboard that will lead to another innovation. Don’t just do more of the same as yesterday or last year.
Make change happen.
Serve, don’t sell.
While focused on customer segments, create value for all of the surrounding stakeholders. Do this well, and bottom-line growth and shareholder returns become byproducts. So do the impacts where the dots to financial results may be harder to connect, but are the most meaningful — strengthening the community, building workforce viability, protecting the environment, improving people’s financial health.
Manufacturing and retail store jobs are on the decline in the United States. The coal industry is not coming back. With all the excitement about self-driving cars, five million people who drive for a living could lose their jobs in the next ten to twenty years.2 Twelve percent of firms on the Fortune 500 list in 1955 were still there in 2016. While overall job growth is up, dislocation is affecting geographies, sectors, and demographic groups.
Economic and social stability depend upon innovation. The friction of capital and information, and the impediments that used to be caused by distance, time, and space are gone. Change makers close the gap between napkin-back idea and real-world impact.
Sacha Levy, a fellow angel investor, told an intern at his startup that there were one million reasons why the business would fail, and only one reason it would succeed.3 That one reason would be if none of those other million reasons actually came to pass.
Reality is the list of failure possibilities is infinite and unknowable. Those possibilities exist — both real and perceived — for just about any idea that is big and bold enough to make a difference and therefore be worth realizing.
The reality is that change making is not reducible to a formula. There is no guarantee of reward, no programmable answer, even if you follow every piece of advice in this book.
Raja Rajamannar of Mastercard practices a strategic execution method that is proving effective, and is bettering the odds. He believes startup and grown-up companies bring strengths to each other that offset their respective deficits. Joining forces is a practical strategy for execution and results.
“Big companies,” he says, “have funding, scale, brand, support systems, infrastructure, and budgets. But they also have bureaucracy and don’t see the near-term value of innovation investments.
“Startups are hungry. They bring speed, burning passion, and agility, but they may be furiously and passionately barking up the wrong tree. They don’t have infrastructure, and often lack an understanding of what it takes to scale.”4
And, as Liza Landsman, venture capitalist and former president of Jet.com, says, “Startups don’t have a monopoly on innovation, and legacy companies don’t have a monopoly on bureaucracy.”5
Magic can happen when the two work together.
There is no way to identify, let alone preempt, all failure causes. Rather, my goal has been to break down into small enough, manageable steps the things you can do to better your chances. The path is neither clear nor secure. The advantage of a book format is that it unpacks onto two planes the change maker’s framework, which in reality has many dimensions. This simplification makes a better user experience for you, the reader. But, there is also the risk of the framework being perceived as simplistic.
Innovation is best illustrated as a series of irregular, interconnected, moving, and messy loops. As you pursue your purpose, pick up the pieces of supporting structure for your journey that make sense to you.
When we stand still, time is passing, and so there is less opportunity to make a difference and achieve purpose. So get moving, and while you are making your dent in the universe, give back to other change makers by sharing what has worked for you and what you have learned. With the reach and ease of social media, not sharing is inexcusable.
Make change that matters. Find your purpose and passion. Choose happiness.
The “start, stop, continue” exercise, also sometimes referred to as “the valentine” is here for you to take as a step toward your change making aspirations. The first step is to commit to getting started ... then to do it.
Write down the answers to the three questions.
One solid commitment in response to each question is fine — and no more than three.
Keep your commitments handy as reminders.
Share these with at least one person whom you can count on to help you stay accountable to action.
1. Steve Jobs, widely cited without a specific attribution, possibly Playboy interview in 1985.
2. Stephen Greenhouse, “Autonomous Vehicles Could Cost America 5 Million Jobs. What Are We Doing About It?” latimes.com, September 22, 2016.
3. Sacha Levy, angel investor, in correspondence with author, October 2017.
4. Raja Rajamannar, senior executive, Mastercard, in discussion with author, September 2017.
5. Liza Landsman, former president, Jet.com, in discussion with author, September 2017.