How Do You Define Success? 2

One of my passions is to help people and their businesses navigate to success, but, what is success?  It is different for everyone and for every business.  Your personal definition may include a large house, a sports car, or an annual trip to an exotic island or country.  Or maybe it includes a goal to laugh every day, read a lot of good books, raise your kids to be responsible and loving adults, or have enough money saved to retire and volunteer your time to your favorite cause. 

For your business, it may be making a specific percentage of profit or if you are a nonprofit then it may be how many people you have reached with your services.  Maybe it includes providing a product or service that improves the quality of people’s lives and providing a work environment for your employees’ satisfaction, growth, and financial support. 

 Definition is Key

 The key is to define your vision of success both personally and also specifically for your business if you are an entrepreneur or business leader.   How will you know if you are successful if you have not spent time defining what it looks like?  

“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.  When you don’t know what harbor you’re aiming for, no wind is the right wind.” – Seneca

 Questions to consider:

• What do I want written as my epitaph or on my head-stone?  What are people saying about me at my memorial service? 
• How can I use my strengths and talents to make a difference? 
• If failure was not an option then what would I do?
• How do I want to spend my day?  What does a successful day, week, and year look like?

 Work that Inspires

 Do you have a job, a career, or a calling?  What about your employees?   What do you think they would say?  In his book, Peak, How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, Chip Conley describes how great companies have a cause that inspires their employees.  He explains how important it is to create a causefor your employees to rally around in order to create more meaning in their work.  This equates to bottom line profits, lower expenses through lower turnover and the bonus of creating more overall quality of life.  In his book, Chip Conley explains how he did this with his team of hotel employees; this is especially impressive when you consider that the majority of his team is made up of low paid maids and desk clerks.  Medtronic, a fortune-500 medical device company, does this extremely well with regular references back to the mission statement of improving the quality of people’s lives and stories from patients who have received their devices.  I had the pleasure of feeling and seeing this first-hand in my experience at Medtronic.  It was quite inspiring to have this larger cause to work toward.

 We spend 25% more time at work than we did a generation ago.  Much of our meaning in life comes from our work.  Victor Frankl, concentration camp survivor, did a lot of work to help people create meaning in their lives after the war.  He found that if he connected unemployed people with meaningful volunteering then they were able to become employed more quickly.  He often quoted Nietzche, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

 How do you define success?  What ideas do you have to make your work more meaningful for yourself and/or your team?  Please post a comment by clicking on “Post a Comment” below.

Resources for More Reading:

Peak – How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow by Chip Conley

A Man’s Search for Meaningby Victor Frankl