Your Role in Changing the World

Your first instinct in reading this is to skip it if you’re still young. Please don’t. Trust me, it’s something I’ve tossed in my mind since I was in my late thirties, and first folded the concepts into a book (no longer in print).

The idea is this: be realistic about your role in changing the world, and thus feel a lot more satisfaction in a job well done. Maybe you run a firm that’s purpose-driven, and some days you wake up and feel like the job is just too big. It is. We’re using very little hammers, and if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re sometimes pounding the wrong nails.

Lower Your Standards

What I mean by that is to be realistic. Principals who want to change their world through their business might be onto something, or they might be skipping a few steps.

A decade from now, it’s unlikely that any current client of yours will remember your firm, and even less likely to remember what project you were working on together.

But they will remember who you were as a person. Did you listen? Did you ask the hard questions? Were you empathetic? Fair?

But even if they don’t remember that, I’ll remind you (and me) that every team member will remember absolutely everything—good and bad—about your management style and who you were as a person.

So by lowering your standards, what you’re essentially doing is recognizing what’s within your reach (the people around you) and what might not be (the larger world you so desperately want to change).

My Own Journey with This

Realizing this has been a lifelong struggle. I have an unhealthy craving to “matter” in the world, and it’s not good. It means I lift my eyes too much rather than noticing what’s right in front of me: a spouse, a family member, a sibling, a friend, etc. But when I recalibrate and look right in front of me, that occasional note from someone who appreciates something really hits nicely, because it’s extra. It’s icing on top, but it’s not the cake.

I really love how Freddie deBoer said this once:

I’m a writer. Though I’m given to waxing pretentious about my profession, here that’s not a philosophical statement or some soul-searching claim about vocation; I mean it in the most banal way possible. I write things, and sometimes people read them. If I’m lucky, they think about the things that I’ve written after they read them. If I’m really, really lucky, some small number of them change their minds, in however small a way. That is the actual arc of what I do: words, then readers, then (rare but real) effects on thinking, usually minor ones. That arc is narrow, fragile, and unpredictable. The range of things I can meaningfully influence is small. The kinds of readers I reach are finite.

If we were to change that up a little, you help your clients accomplish things. Most of the time it just moves a small gear in the larger transmission and very few people are going to notice. Sometimes they will, of course, but usually not.

You can reimagine your role, though, and embrace the opportunity to change the world through your personal interaction with others, the business is just the vehicle to do that. Let’s think that way.

A Warning

In another life, I managed the finances and operations for two dozen well-known athletes and entertainers. The one thing about that role that I’ll never forget is this: some of them were just as delightful in person as you might expect, and some of them were complete assholes.

You’re an idol to some group of people. Make sure that when they meet you, they are even more appreciative and not disappointed. And I’ll be very specific: if people outside your immediate circle think highly of you, but the team doesn’t respect you in the same way, you’re a fraud and it’s time for a therapist or some tough love from one of your team.

Seeing Differently

I like what Bob Hutchins said in a recent post, especially in the context of AI’s uncertain impact in how we shape our worlds:

The systems we've built, education, work, professional identity, were never designed to help us live well. They were designed to sort, measure, and extract. AI just makes that visible.

So what do you do?

You stop treating your small kingdom like it's the whole world. You care about your work without letting it define you. You participate in the systems you're in without mistaking them for reality.

You ask what it means to live trustfully inside something larger. Not as an escape. As a correction. A way of seeing that puts everything else in proportion.

You stop wasting time proving you're right, superior, on the right political team, or 'saved'. You just try to live and love the daily mystery of being here at all. And maybe this will push us toward kindness toward others. And ourselves.

Don’t be trying to “change the world” out there while you’re “losing the world” in your immediate circle.