I was talking to a college professor friend of mine the other day.   He had just come back from an international trip where he had facilitated a student experience. During our conversation, he relayed his dismay at how little his students seemed to be grateful for.

The trip he took was to an impoverished area of a developing country.  He told me he often finds going to this place gets him back on track by giving him a sense of how lucky he is to live somewhere where there is abundance.  He was aghast at how his students’ attitudes were in such stark contrast to his.  Instead of talking about how they were blessed, he said they complained incessantly about not having wi-fi, not having hot water every morning for their showers, and on and on and on.

What struck me here was how this attitude has infected so much of our workplace.  How many businesses, managers and employees work from the perspective of “I want, I want, I want” rather than “how can I give?”  If “I want, I need and I must have” is the predominant attitude, how can we expect to be served well by businesses, how can we expect people to serve us well when we are customers?

We need a shift, we need a culture change, we need to re-think what business is really all about.  Is it to take or to give?  Is the business of business about “me, me, me” or “we, we, we?”  Think about it.  What is your business about?