“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
Calvin Coolidge
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
Milton Berle
While at dinner with friends this past week, we began a discussion of what I have variously called “a sense of urgency” or “ownership” among those who toil in service professions – or, indeed, in any other job you care to name. Both terms are an attempt to capture the sense of responsibility that a few in these professions have that makes them own a client’s problem to the point where they will pursue it to conclusion without having to be prodded either by the client or someone higher in their own food chain.
Perhaps I can best explain the concept by a story my fellow blogger, Eliot Mentor, is fond of telling whenever the subject arises. Eliot once asked a junior attorney – let’s call him Brad (name changed to protect the guilty) – to contact someone (let’s call him George) about information that was needed for a client’s legal matter. When Eliot checked a day or so later to see if Brad had spoken to George, Brad responded that he had called and left a voice mail. Eliot probed further and kept getting the same response, and finally said to Brad: “Then you haven’t yet done what I asked.” Brad, not understanding that he had been tasked with making the contact and getting the information and not with leaving a message for George and awaiting a call back at some undetermined date, had to be directed by Eliot to make another phone call rather than continue to wait, probably in vain, for George to return his call. In Brad’s mind he had done what was asked; in Eliot’s mind, Brad had failed to follow through and seemed insensible to the difference.
Eliot needed the information and didn’t have it; Brad was satisfied by a cosmetically defensible action. After all, if George wouldn’t return his call, why was he to blame? Brad had to be reminded that making the call wasn’t the goal and that he had to find another way.
Someone with a sense of ownership and urgency might well have not yet spoken to George either – especially if George didn’t want to be bothered with the matter. But he or she would have been able to tell Eliot that they had already made a couple of calls and would have been able to relate their plan for follow through in the event George didn’t return their calls. In other words, they would have accepted responsibility for getting in touch with George, whether by phone call, email, letter, or a personal visit – whatever it would take to finally get the required information. They would likely have already spoken to George’s secretary to find out if George was away or to find out what the best time would be to contact him. In other words, they would have taken the problem to heart, and had a sense of internal urgency about completing their assignment since they would have understood the client’s need for the information and made the client’s need their own. They would also have a sense of when that information was required and would have built the necessary timing into their action plan.
I suppose many reading this piece would not find Brad’s response to be lacking. After all, they might reason, he did make a phone call when he was asked and he should not be held responsible for George’s failure to respond. But that reaction misses the point of Eliot’s poking. Of course Brad isn’t responsible if George refuses to cooperate, but he cannot know that George is refusing to cooperate on the basis of a single voice mail – especially a voice mail with the likely content of “Hello George, my name is Brad. Please call me at…..”
The point of this piece isn’t really about the benefits of perseverance. To me, Eliot, and others like us, the benefits of persistence are obvious and we have no ability to understand those who fail to grasp the concept. Persistence ought to come naturally – like breathing or thinking or feeding oneself. It is a necessary survival trait: whatever life throws at us, we must find a way through if we wish to survive, and God knows life will throw plenty our way before our turn at bat is up. And if whatever it is that was thrown our way was not really our problem in the first instance, it became our problem once we accepted responsibility for it.
So why is Brad the way he is? Brad is, by the way, reasonably successful at what he does and most likely understands the value of persistence. He has a fine mind and an ability to solve complicated problems, and taking on and solving complicated problems requires a form of persistence. But how much more might he become if he possessed a sense of urgency to fuel that persistence?
It is the nature of a service profession to act for others. A good friend of mine – a named partner in a Vancouver BC law firm – once told me, after becoming in-house counsel for a short time, that the biggest blessing of having done so was no longer having to worry about other peoples’ problems since the problems had suddenly become his own. But he was still someone’s employee and the problems really weren’t his own – they just seemed like it, because his goals as in-house counsel were wholly congruent with those of his employer. It just seemed easier to him, somehow, when he only had one client to be responsible for. Needless to say, he possessed the sense of urgency to which I am referring and welcomed what he perceived as a break from carrying the load for others – even while it was no break at all.
So what is the point of this piece? I keep asking myself the same question as I seek a way to end the rambling. I suppose the point of the piece is that, for the life of me, I am unable to comprehend why others don’t get it – why they don’t get something that seems to me to be as plain as the nose on my face. Everyone is in service to someone else. Even the world’s richest persons have someone or some demon they must placate. Bill Gates is probably trying to live up to the values that his mother and father taught him as a child – his mother was, and his father is, service minded to the point where others’ needs have always come first. There is no shame in being in service to others; in fact, there is a great deal of satisfaction when the service is done right.
So why do some give of themselves so grudgingly? I haven’t a clue – and am proud of my ignorance. It is one lesson I have no wish to learn. As my mother taught me, whatever I do, I must do with all of the skill and dedication I can bring to the table. Thanks, Mom, for a lesson that has served all of your children well in doing whatever we’ve done.
