“All happiness… comes from the good heart cherishing and wanting to benefit others.”
HH Dalai Lama
Last week I attended a startup event here in New Orleans. The budding community strikes me different than Silicon Valley. It’s a little more earthy, more grounded than visionary.
One local mentor said the key to startup success is to fall in love with the customer’s problem. Sage advice. The more we understand and focus on solving the customer’s problem, the more valuable our solution.
But that’s not exactly what he meant.
I sensed he was speaking about service, not business. Many people, myself included, sometimes focus on solving a problem because we want to build a successful business. The customer first. But what we really mean is: our value is to build a business, and in order to achieve success, we put the customer first.
Conversely, this mentor’s view is: the value is other people, and we build a business to support those people. The advice and behaviors are similar, but fueled by different values. One value is about business, the other value is about others.
Imagine someone in your family is sick, and you turn all your attention to finding a cure. That’s service. There is no attachment to a particular solution, the only goal is to overcome the problem to save someone you love. It is also the empathy you have when you help others overcome a challenge you yourself once faced. You fall in love with addressing the problem.
Step back and assess whether your efforts at work are in service to your business, or whether they are in service to your customers as an end in itself. It’s not really a question of which one is better, both paths will lead to success. Just something to notice.
I picked up this wall scroll above while visiting Dharamshala a few months ago. It now hangs in my bedroom. Every morning I read these words, and I remember to extend kindness to everyone, because it is only through other people that we find the deepest happiness.
I invite you to bring this kindness into your work, and to be grateful your work allows you to partake in both giving and service.