But we suck it up and deal with it, because somehow, somewhere along the way, we started believing that’s what we were “supposed to do.” That the world needs people who look a certain way, act a certain way, say certain things.

We have this impression that to put too much focus, too much attention, on what drives us, what motivates us, is somehow selfish.

But this is all a lie. You are as much of “the world” as I am, and we are as much of the world as that other person over there.

What the world really needs, more than anything else, is more you.

The big problem is that we get this whole idea backwards. We think that doing the things we love makes us selfish, but it’s actually the other way around. Doing something that “isn’t you” — taking part in activities that drain the life out of who you are — is actually the most selfish thing you can do.

Why?

Because when you find a way to do more of the things that make you come alive, you are a better person. When you are living in your strengths, you can do more good, you can create more light, you can be a more full human being.

That is as unselfish as it gets.

For us to not figure out how to do that is to deprive the world of one of the few things that can actually make it better.

(Of course, the enormous challenge is finding the real us. Not many people have the courage to do this.)

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Dr. Howard Thurman

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As an organization, IKEA is showing some amazing glimpses of brilliance into the ways a company will be successful in the new economy. Here are four that I found:

1) Be Unapologetic About Apologizing
One of the first things I noticed when walking in the front doors was their usual stack of new catalogs, but this time, there was a big sign on the front. As you can see, it’s a flat-out apology about some mistakes they made inside. This catalog JUST came out, and the up-front-ness of this approach really made me take note. (How long did it take to get an apology from BP about a catastrophic natural disaster? Did we ever even get one?) Organizations can’t just be “companies” anymore, they must have a decidedly human core that freely admits when they mess up, saying “Sorry!” quickly and in a transparent way.

2) Recognize Cost Is About More Than Price
To make it in the new economy, organizations will have to adopt a “legacy view” of life, recognizing that we have a responsibility to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Chances are, the world will be here long after we will, and the choices we make now have a profound and lasting impact on the world of tomorrow. IKEA has made some pioneering strides in this area, detailing a “Never Ending List” on their website (currently 77 items long) of continuing improvements, including outlawing plastic bags, flat packaging couches, and even phasing out incandescent light bulbs!

3) Continually Drive More Value To Customers
How many companies out there are lowering prices right now?

Well, that’s exactly what IKEA is doing, lowering the prices on many items (including one of my personal favorites: the meatballs!). By building upon their list of continuing improvements, they can drive more value straight to the customers.

Organizations have always had to provide value, of course — it’s just going to be even more important in the new economy, where consumers have more power than ever before in history.

4) Add More Meaning-Makers
On my way out of the building, I saw this sign at the base of the escalators.

The best companies know that the marketplace of tomorrow requires true leaders who can make quality decisions at every “level,” from top to bottom.

Employees who ask, “Why?” are consistently trying to generate meaning from their work, and if they can, they will build positive growth. Not to mention they’re more passionate about everything they do, which is always more profitable — and makes work more fun!

Feel free to add any glimpses of brilliance you’ve seen at IKEA below!

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The most important thing you can possibly do to have a great career is to know yourself. Research shows that the best leaders in the world don’t have anything in common, with the exception of this one thing — they’ve redefined “success” to mean “self-awareness.” The more we understand ourselves and apply that knowledge in a productive direction the more successful we will be.

But how do we find our area of strength? It boils down to discovering where these three things intersect:

1. Talent
2. Life Experience
3. Passion

Talent is the naturally occurring patterns of behavior we each have, allowing us to effortlessly do some things excellently almost every time. The best way to uncover your innate talent is through an assessment like the Clifton StrengthsFinder™.

Life Experience is made up of the things you know, the skills you’ve gained, and the experiences you’ve had that make you, you. It is the cumulative image of all the formative events in your life, your family background, schooling, etc.

Passion is what makes you get out of bed in the morning. It’s whatever makes your heart beat a bit faster. It’s what you love. These are the things that, when you do them, they never feel like “work” — even if they’re part of your job.

There is also an element of personal Character that encircles all these components, determining whether we focus our unique abilities in a positive or negative way. The whole thing looks something like this:

Feel free to post any questions below.

Also, don’t forget to stop by the terrific social community Brazen Careerist: the kind sponsors of the video above and a community of sincere individuals engaging in meaningful conversations about the world of work. Please consider this your official invitation to join if you’re not already a part!

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These two things are always striving to stay in balance. Can one try to influence the other? Of course, and as they do their side of the scale goes up. But the other side will “fight” to retain equilibrium.

This explains why it is so incredibly difficult to change a culture, as well as why it’s so painful to introduce into a culture a leader who doesn’t “fit.” That leader will push, and the culture will push back.

These two things are always trying to stay balanced on the scale.

Let’s say we are trying to bring change to an organization. We bring in someone, an insider or outsider, a change agent, a consultant or a coach, to try to do this. The only way for them to be able to actually make sustainable growth happen is by focusing on both sides of the scale.

It’s not enough to focus just on improving individual leaders — the old culture will eventually push them out. Likewise, it’s not enough to focus solely on group behaviors, the culture, because they don’t exist without the individual people that make them function.

What to do?

Option C.

Over time, the entire scale must be raised.

What’s going on behind the scenes, what we don’t see, is that the interactions between individual leaders and the larger group culture will always push the entire scale into motion, either going up or going down. There is no such thing as a plateau in an organization — it is always moving one direction or the other. Getting better or getting worse. Improving or deteriorating. Evolving or regressing.

That’s why Option C is the magic, focusing on the both/and of the scale, not the either/or.

Yes, focus on the individual leaders. Make sure they are in the right spots and for goodness sake, get the wrong people off the bus. But also focus on the system, the culture, the groupthink, which is really just a collection of a million tiny decisions the individuals make. If we want it to last, it has to be both/and.

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This is why net neutrality matters to me, in just a few words.

In a very real way, the collaborative power of the internet is the greatest hope we have for a better future for our children and grandchildren. It allows our collective ideas and brainpower to spread exponentially — imagine what future generations will be able to do with this compounding of information, knowledge, and wisdom?

The continuing neutrality of the internet is what will allow emerging generations to collaborate on, invent, and champion new and innovative solutions to the world’s greatest problems. To allow today’s controlling interests to usurp the future creativity of our descendants is a Free Speech violation of the grandest and most destructive kind.

It is short-sighted and selfish for any single entity (or entities) to claim control of something that rightfully belongs to the collective of humanity.

If you agree, and would like to do something to help make sure a creative and collaborative future is the one we create, please visit SaveTheInternet.com’s FCC page here. Feel free to copy any or all of my comments if they are helpful to you.

Photo by Mark Knol on Flickr.

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8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player”.

Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.
There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

And so on.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?

The ecology dies.

If you’re creative, if you can think independantly, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.

So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.

However if you’re not paricularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzzword or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but… people like watching dinosaurs die.

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I think this is generally true for most people, but something about my intensely competitive nature — and the fact that I think things through pretty well before I make up my mind — seems to amplify this feeling even more.

There’s nothing wrong with being right. Making “correct” decisions can help people, help organizations, and help the world.

But at the end of the day, doesn’t an obsessive need to be right all the time come in direct conflict with being open to new things?

Fundamentally, if I believe I already have the end-all-be-all “gospel truth,” it also means I’ve closed my mind to other options. I’m no longer open to hearing other perspectives or seeing from someone else’s point of view.

Maybe we can only be “right” until we learn something new.

We make the best decisions we can with the information we have, but then we learn something we didn’t know before — something that upsets our apple cart, shifts our paradigm. Suddenly, we aren’t “right” anymore.

Perhaps that’s the more important part of this: being committed to always learning new things, being open to change, and available for growth.

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Also, today our camps will be played by gelatinous colored mammals (reference above picture).

On one side we have The Camp Of Information — Green gummis.

This Camp states that the more information we have, the better leaders we are sure to be. They incessantly attend seminars and read magazines, blogs, books, articles, and tweets to gorge on a constant deluge of models, bullet points, acronyms, and metaphors, thinking that more content will ensure better practice.

In truth, these folks generally spend time creating problems by continually disseminating new models, bullet points, acronyms, and metaphors that only serve to confuse an already overwhelmed population (i.e. the Red gummis).

On the other side we have The Camp Of Ignorance — Red gummis.

This Camp maintains an undying, unwavering faith to the “If it ain’t broke, please for the love of God don’t fix it” mentality. They fear change more than public speaking,* haven’t read a non-fiction book since… well, actually they’ve never ‘technically’ read a whole one, and spend most of their energy ignoring trends and shifts, hoping this means they won’t ever have to deal with them.

In truth, these folks generally spend time fixing problems that could be easily solved by better practices, new science, or automation. (If only they could decipher what the hell those Green gummis were talking about!)

The middle ground is hard, but it’s the only place that actually works.

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*Statistically scarier than death.
Photo by furiousgeorge81.

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At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Princeton Class of 2010
Baccalaureate, May 30, 2010 (Source Here)

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