From Corporate Excellence to Self-Excellence

The journey from Corporate Excellence to Self-Excellence. This seems to me to be a strange title. As an educator, I am used to dealing with individual students, and my time is spent working to support each individual young person to become the best that he or she can become. One measure of educational success (a limited measure) is whether or not our graduates can go onto career success; whether or not our excellent alumni contribute to corporate excellence. I know they do.

So let me first address the question the other way around; the journey from Self-Excellence to Corporate Excellence. I can ask two questions – firstly, as a recruiter, what qualities am I looking for when I hire people seeking corporate excellence? And secondly, as an educator, what skills and qualities am I looking to grow in students that will generate corporate excellence?

I have only a few minutes, so I will be cruelly brief. Let me ignore the obvious and crucially important skills of critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication, self-management, and so on. There is enough said about them elsewhere, but please let me be clear – I do not underestimate them.  They are necessary.

This famous quote has an element of truth.  There is also the point what we love what matters to us personally

But they are too narrow; because they alone will not create the excellent corporations we – and the world – want and need. With so many examples to draw on, I think it is an obvious point that as citizens we need individuals that will ensure corporations do the right things; that look after people as well as profit (people and profit are, I believe in the long term aligned anyway). To that end, ‘Corporate Excellence’ has to encompass a moral perspective. The only way to do that, I suggest, is to insist on the skills I mentioned, for sure, but also to demand that individuals have the qualities of being Principled, being Committed to Caring for People, and of being Self-Aware enough to know when one’s values require one to act, even if it is uncomfortable. I’ll repeat that: we need Principled, Self-Aware individuals who are Committed to Caring for People. That’s what my school is about. Individual excellence here will move corporations to excellence.

So that was my initial thought – that the title is the wrong way around. In fact, in an earlier draft of this talk I even wrote to suggest that excellence flows from corporations to individuals is the sign of a profoundly confused value system. The real flow is the other way, from individuals to corporations. But on reflection, I think that’s a bit harsh. Yes, individuals can and must shape corporations. But it’s also true, I realised from my own experience, that corporations shape individuals for better or worse.

In fact, now as a leader, that issue is where I direct a great deal of my thinking. How do we shape our workplaces so that individuals can be the best they can be? And I have come to realise that what I have long sought for my students, is exactly what I want for my colleagues; indeed for myself, and my own family. Let me be more precise.  We no longer talk about providing only jobs but also about providing careers. Why is that?

Because Jobs are about the material benefits that derive from work and not about any other type of reward. The work is a means to an end that allows workers to enjoy their time away from the Job. The major interests and ambitions of jobholders are not expressed through their work.

In contrast, people who have Careers have a deeper personal investment in their work and advance not only through monetary gain, but through advancement within the occupational structure. This advancement often brings higher social standing, increased influence and higher self-esteem for the worker.

That’s all fine, but it misses something. So let’s extend the continuum that starts with Jobs, moves through Careers, and ends in Callings.  People with Callings find that their work is inseparable from their life. A person with a Calling works not just for financial gain of a Job, or for Career advancement, but also for the fulfilment that doing the work brings to the individual. I mean a modern sense of calling that goes beyond the original religious connections – work that is usually seen as socially valuable—an end in itself.

That may sound very noble; it’s also very practical. In a recent study, those who described themselves as having a Calling were significantly better paid, and had occupations higher in both self-perceived status and objective prestige level than those identifying with Jobs or Careers. Callings were consistently associated with greater life satisfaction, health satisfaction, job satisfaction and with better health.

This is not a surprise to any student of the human condition.  We do a better jobs when things matter to us personally, when we are committed to a cause.  If we can find ways to imbue our corporations with the moral purpose that underpins Callings, and create conditions to move from Jobs and Careers to Callings then we will create profound meaning at work, and we will bridge the gap between corporate excellence and individual excellence by simple alignment.

I do not think this is a new idea.  Freud may have got a lot wrong, but he was on to something when he said Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity.  Nor is this a western truth: I am told the Japanese have a word – Ikigai – which is the intersection between

• That which we are good at
• That which we can be paid for
• That which we love 
• That which the world needs

More poetically, Ikigai has been translated as the process of allowing the self’s possibilities to blossom. That resonates with the ancient Greek notion of eudaimonia – of flourishing by fulfilling one’s potential.

Moral purpose is old wisdom. We need to recover it.