How to be meaningful according to Tim Cook? An Empathic Business Approach to serve Humanity.
A few days ago, while we were writing an article on the use of empathy to find your path and thrive in business, Tim Cook delivered to the MIT graduates one of the best Commencement Speech you’ll hear.
Cook starts by reflecting on its own career and the way he found a purpose in his life. He goes through the same problems we all encountered, from high school to college and the first jobs. What is one’s purpose ? Is it the job you dreamed of when you were a kid? Is it your major?
When you work towards something greater than yourself, you find meaning, you find purpose. So the question I hope you will carry forward from here is how will you serve humanity.
For Cook, it was finding Apple, a company that stood for something bigger than selling electronics and make money. Apple’s vision, back then, was to serve humanity. It means to look at humankind and see how it can be helped to move forward.
He achieves his purpose when he sees an iPhone allowing a blind person to run a marathon, an Apple Watch catching an earth attack before it happens or an iPad helping an autistic child connecting with others.
Measure your impact in humanity not in the likes, but the lives you touch; not in popularity, but in the people you serve.
This leads us to the main question our generation is facing. In 2017 how to be meaningful? Cook delivers the best answer, look around and see the people you affect by your behavior; ask every day, do I make people happier ?
When you put things in perspective, there are many ways to be meaningful, no matter how small is the community of people you serve. Through social media we get the wrong notion that being meaningful means changing the world, when it really means bringing joy and happiness, make the world a better place bit by bit, one person after another.
Nowadays, finding one’s meaning has become one the most daunting task of the young adults. Some are desperately looking for a great tech or a great breakthrough that will impact the world, others avoid this question and work high-paying jobs without fulfilling anything except their bank account.
One of the best ways to combine both is to have a new approach of business. Rather than focusing on the tech or the money, let’s focus on the customer and how we can bring happiness to his life.
Taking an empathetic approach to business, we can more easily measure and realize the impact our project has on the world and more precisely the communities we are serving.
We can identify a community in need, we can understand the issues they are facing in their everyday life. Understanding everyday problems of communities, as small as they are, gives sense and practical problems to solve.
Think about the people you see around you, go on a micro level, speak to them, more importantly listen and make their problems yours. You’ll soon realize that you can have an impact on their lives for the better.
You’ll become meaningful.
If you want to read on the topic, we recommend Jon Kolko’s book “ Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love”. The author gives a thorough reflection on the topic and great tools to help in the day-to-day business. We also recommend you to watch the entire speech of Tim Cook here.
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