To be Different, Make a Difference

Dear loving people,

I come across many people who want to succeed at what they do, they want to be in the top jobs, they want to be appreciated, they want to be valued, they want to rise to the summit and so they plunge into work, working hard and confident they will get there but time passes by and nothing happens and so they go complaining everywhere.

Catherine of Siena said “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” Here then, is the biggest question, is it enough to work hard? If you asked me, I will say vehemently that, hard work is not enough. You need to make a difference in all you do. Let’s now see how far Jude and Julius traveled along this line…

Two great friends, Jude and Julius, had joined an international development organization together just after graduation. Both of them worked really hard. Three years have passed and the company‘s director promoted one of them, Julius became head of the health department, while Jude did not get any promotion and remained at the programs department as Project Manager.

Jude decided that it is unfair, so he came to his boss and told him, that he the boss, didn‘t value hard working staff. The boss knew, that Jude works very hard, and in order to show the difference between him and Julius, he asked: “Go and find out about the latest funding opportunity in the country at the moment”. When Jude returned, the boss asked: “How much is the funding envelope? “. Jude went back to his computer and then returned to say the allocated amount per applicant was 2 million dollars.

Then the boss asked Julius the same thing. Julius left the office, and when he returned he said: “at the moment, there are two funding windows that fit our mandate. One is for 2 million dollars and the other, just 5 hundred thousand, now there is huge competition for the 5 hundred thousand and I am sure organizations ‘TD’ and ‘ZS’ might be submitting and you know they are our huge challengers. I will prefer we go in for the 2 million opportunity because we already have huge amounts of secondary data in-house that could enable us come up with a preliminary assessment at minimal cost and we are best known for good projects in that sector. I know organization ‘XY’ might be submitting too but they are no match as far as we are concerned.”

Jude was impressed by the difference between him and Julius, he realized that he needs to learn a lot from his friend and that hard work was not enough. Successful people are more observant, they think and see several years ahead, while most of people see only tomorrow reasons why they don’t achieve much.

Mahatma Gandhi said “It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”