The Vision Pioneers Blog

by Miriam Garvi

The other day my landlord company sent me and every other tenant the annual 10-page survey on customer satisfaction. I sighed as I opened the thick envelope, thinking about how readily companies will make use of the customer’s time and how seldom this seems to lead to any improvements.

Well, besides your typical customer satisfaction survey, this company wanted to know our housing wish list…

«How do you want to live?» This question should really be rephrased into «What are you willing to pay for?» to reflect its true meaning. A display of quasi-concern that is used like a thermometer in order to determine which future course of action is chargeable on the customer’s account.

When business is reduced to sterile transactions, then ‘customer care’ has little to do with taking pride in providing a product or service that is good, useful, purposeful for the client. Instead it takes on the meaning of effectuating what will directly impact bottom line.

So many qualities are lost in a visionless, penny-counting world. Is this a price we are willing to pay?

by Miriam Garvi

The other day I was walking around among the glass skyscrapers of Hong Kong.

In business ideals of competition and growth have been put on a pedestal. Markets are redefined so we can claim to be the best or the biggest at something - but what that something is is of little importance as long as we can claim the position. We take great pains to belong to the beautiful people, that exclusive crowd of world citizens who can walk through life in luxurious air-conditioned gallerias with marble flooring where the daily pains of the unfortunate are far from sight. Great image, but what’s our contribution to the world?

Some fifty years ago, venture capital pioneer Georges F. Doriot raised a challenge as he was teaching future business leaders at the Harvard Business School: “Do we want to build or merely enjoy what others ahead of us have made possible? Really, how can one enjoy anything if one is not building for the future of others? Remember that our happiness is in direct proportion to the contributions we make.”

In the era of image, we seem to have forgotten all about legacy - forgotten about the strong imprint that is made when somebody is dedicated to making a difference even when there is no instant pay-off in sight. Such pioneering initiatives inspire us to find our own way of making an enriching contribution.

Image is exclusive and lies in the eyes of the beholder. Legacy is a challenge for each and every one of us and it is there for the taking.