I work hard to make my COO rich

Olive and I had dinner with my friend and his wife on Sunday. Mr. Chan (my friend, not me) works as a manager at the 7th largest bank in Canada, with 6000 employees across the nation. He told me that his bank's COO recently gave a speech to the managers in their Burnaby branch, a little pep talk. In his speech he laid out the mission of the bank, which included something about doing the right thing and serving customers. My friend (and distant relative... we Chans are all related somehow) Mr. Chan agreed with everything the COO said, and felt that all those things aligned with his personal Christian values.

The COO continued by explaining that the bank's stock prices were dismal. Then he revealed his true motives: his goal was to increase the bank's stock prices so that when he retires he will have butt-loads of money. Apparently he was not rich enough (it's fun to mock rich people that don't think they have enough money). I can now imagine my friend Mr. Chan thinking, "Yes! I will work diligently and creatively to serve the bank's customers and do the right thing, so that my COO can be rich when he retires." Thanks for the inspirational talk Mr. COO.

I think everyone is searching for meaning and significance in life, especially in their work. Pastor and author Erwin McManus describes it like this: "All of us long to become something more than we are. We are driven to achieve, moved to accomplish, fueled by ambition. It burns hotter in some than in others, but it is within all of us. We're all searching for our unique purpose, our divine destiny, or simply a sense of significance or some measure of success... all of us are united in our desperate attempt to make a future of ourselves. We all desperately want to achieve something, to accomplish something; we just don't know what. Worse than that, we don't even understand why. Yet that doesn't stop us from searching."

If most people were honest with themselves, I think they would agree that making as much money as possible is not a satisfying notion. Working hard to maximize profits for people that you don't know (a.k.a. your company's shareholders) is even less satisfying. How can you give your best to your work when you don't believe that it is really that significant?

Perhaps that is why Mr. Chan is thinking about quitting his job and working for a nonprofit. He is searching for something meaningful to do with his life, and his work is a large part of his life. Mr. Chan thinks working in nonprofit will be more fulfilling than his current work in the business world. And he is not the only person thinking this way.

"In the United States alone, 1.5 million nonprofits now account for $1 trillion in revenues annually of the nation's economy. During the past fifteen years, nonprofits grew faster than the overall economy, with thirty thousand new organizations created each year. In fact, nonprofits are now the third largest industry in the United States, behind retail and wholesale trade, but ahead of construction, banking, and telecommunications." (excerpt from "Forces for Good" by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant)

Many people are fleeing the business world to work for nonprofits, which aim to maximize social change and make a difference in the world. And these nonprofits are. This is significant work; the work of helping those in need. Money is important to fund and sustain the work, but it is not the be all and end all.

People in business recognize the great work that nonprofits are doing. That is why they give money and resources to support nonprofit organizations. You can argue that if the profit-maximizing businesses did not exist, nonprofits also would not be able to exist, because the nonprofit world largely relies on the donations of the business world to operate.

I will end with a very good question another friend, a small business owner, posed to me: "If God has given you the ability to make money through your business, is it your duty to utilize that skill to its full potential and make as much money as you can? The more money you make, the more you can give to help others."