It’s About the Impact, not the App

If we are software coders, we can get hypnotized by the killer hack. If sales professionals, we can be entranced by the nuance of well-run client meetings, and if project managers, it’s easy to be seduced by the latest task management app. But remember, while the devil is in the details, the beauty is in the result, the impact, the difference.

Don Tapscott has a marvelous illustration of the power and importance of connecting people with ideas, without being encumbered and distracted by the mechanism itself.

A few years ago he was in his house when down the hall he hears his son calling out, “Dad! Dad! Come here – you’ve got to check this out!” So Don walks down the hall to his son’s room and finds him at the computer looking at images of space and his son is saying, “Look Dad, that’s a quasar, and that could be a black hole, and over here are stars being born, and this light we’re looking at is millions of years old! Isn’t that amazing!”

Don is pleased with his son’s interest in the cosmos, and says “That’s very cool son, where did you get these images?” And his son says, “Oh, they’re not pictures I’m streaming live from Hubble.” At this point Don’s jaw drops, and he says to his son, “What?! Do you understand you are harnessing the most powerful telescopic instrument on earth? And it’s not even on earth?” To which his son replies, “Yeah whatever Dad, but look that’s the Orion Nebula!”

Ultimately our purpose here together is about connecting people with ideas. Ideas that translate to service, and valuable innovation. Ideas that can change both our beliefs and behaviors, which then can cascade out and change whole ecosystems within an organization. Providing people with the confidence of ideas and knowledge allows others to reach through our fears, find our passion and display it through purpose.

Our passion is what we love to do, but our purpose is why the world loves you.