Over two thousand years ago, a Jewish Carpenter Rabbi volunteered the wisdom as to what the express road to the top of life’s ladder is. However, the ‘wisdom’ of the current age seems to fly in the face of that wisdom even though, all through the ages, that wisdom has never failed to produce and sustain individuals and enterprises that attain outstanding success.
In today’s fast-paced world, the words ‘servanthood’, ‘subservience’, and ‘submission’ seem to be mere anachronisms. A significant number of children today grow up believing that having to serve others is beneath them. If you doubt it, check out the way children from privileged homes where maids do all the work think and behave. Chauffeur-driven to school even as toddlers, ordering the driver or maid around or being asked to come to table after the maid has prepared the food and set the table, they grow up with an entitlement mindset that makes them believe that the whole world was created to pay tribute to their over-bloated ego. Subsequently, they are sent to Ivy League schools (usually privately run and sometimes insanely expensive and the students are the ones who give a performance appraisal on their teachers) where they are taught that the only thing that matters in life is winning because they are so unique and special, thus setting them off on the path of getting on at the expense of others. Talk about the tail wagging the dog! Unfortunately, this only prepares them for life’s rat race where the winner remains a miserable rat! They are strong on self-esteem, but highly deficient on service delivery. They hardly realize that the only thing that will lay the solid foundation for their success in life is their capacity to either land or create and keep a job on which platform they learn to serve others!
Raised on the mixed-up cocktail of the illusion that everyone’s opinion counts, they can hardly bear it when the boss tells them that their opinion on a matter is not important or sometimes not even welcomed. They are mostly maladjusted to the reality of the workplace characterized by the ability to take orders, follow instructions, do things only when asked to or enduring enervating rants of dissatisfied customers without losing their cool! Even when they inherit their parents’ business empires, they are more fixated on living large while others slave for them, with little regard for the enterprise’s sustainability. Without the strength of character to sustain it, such an enterprise soon joins the rank of dinosaurs.
Employers are not swayed by the university or class of degree or extracurricular propensities as they are about the employee’s ability to deliver sterling performance on the job!
Service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy on planet earth. In life, the way up is down. To stand tall, you must learn to stoop low. In the timeless but oft-despised words of the wise Carpenter, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be servant of all. (Mark 10:44). This wisdom flies in the face of contemporary logic. But time and time again, it has proved to be one of life’s most enduring truisms. Great leadership is characterized by great capacity for serving others. People gladly surrender leadership to the person who they believe would serve their interests best. Everything we need for our journey through life is in other people just as what some people need is in us. Service is the platform of exchange of these inherent values. When the transactions are successfully executed, reward or remuneration is the result. Those who find service repulsive will also find success elusive.
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Nobody wants to buy anything from an arrogant salesman. We all resent anyone who sells anything to us as if we didn’t matter. Earning money is a reward for service rendered. The wealthier you want to become, the more you must seek a platform to serve people. Wealth is in people. Service is the Automated Teller Machine that dispenses the cash! And it is not so much about doing what makes you feel good or what you love doing as it is about what needs to be done because that is what others need.
The culture of excellence is driven by quality service delivery, not by treating people as expendable constituents of a process. Jack Truett, proprietor of America’s largest privately owned fast-food chain Chick Fil A used to tell anyone who asked him what his business does that he was in the business of customer service, his employees being his first customers. The company has seen more of its employees through college education than any other company in its category in the USA! The chain remains hugely successful even after his demise. Zappos is not known for the number of shoes or clothes that it sells. The huge sales volume is a consequence of its culture of unparalleled customer service.
SouthWest Airlines in USA is one of the world’s most pocket and customer-friendly airlines that I have ever flown, its services are delivered with the customer practically in the ‘pilot’s seat’. Little wonder its flights are almost always full even when many of its competitors complain of low patronage! Even through some of the worst economic periods, while several of its competitors tether on the edge of bankruptcy, it continues to make its shareholders happy without breaking the bank.
Service is the bedrock of the contribution culture that characterizes the developed world. On the other hand, an entitlement mindset continues to be the bane of the Third World’s underdevelopment. Look around you. Our banks, telecommunication companies, supermarkets, hotels, manufacturing companies, the civil service (which operates oblivious of the meaning of “civil”), governance structures, even employees all seem to operate in the delusion that people exist to serve them instead of the other way round. An experience with most of these institutions leaves you convinced that they are purpose vehicles for fleecing, rather than serving people! Still wondering why we are the way we are?
The Carpenter Rabbi was right after all!
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
and then