Why Are You Here?

Getting To Know Your True Reason for Being by @jonathanhinshaw

The famous question thrown at Jony Ive in the film Jobs (Ashton Kutcher had the role of Steve Jobs)…

“Why Are You Still Here?”

In the scene, Jobs is considering his return to Apple after being ousted from the company over a decade earlier. He walks through the halls of the building and enters a room full of designers, developers and coders. Ive is there … the director of design at the time and the chief of all design at Apple as of 24 hours ago.

I took it to be a mini-job interview … a way to gauge Ive’s commitment to the work and the bigger picture. Jobs knew Ive could likely work anywhere.

The question struck me. I wondered how I’d answer it on-the-spot after 16 years of doing my work. I wondered how our team would answer it.

How would you answer it? How would your team? Right now!

We made a meeting of it here at EBWAY Creative. Maybe it’s something that would be helpful for you to try with your own company and team…

“Why are we here?”
“Why are you here?”

Please think about that over the next few days and make sure that you come back to that question as often as you can. You should be able to answer it or this work isn’t likely worth your time. Or, you could be in the wrong position — currently!

As business owners, managers, designers, coders, writers, entrepreneurs — we need to make sure we are all engaged 100% of the time, each one of us, in the pursuit of our own bigger picture as often as possible. When we slip, we need to be resilient and support each other.

If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long.
Just figure out what’s next.