I felt privileged today to listen to Dr. Prasad Kaipa at the kickoff event for Queens University TWIST Conference. Prasad is one of the co-authors of From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom
Prasad spoke thoughtfully and with such quiet insight about what it means to make wise leadership choices. He talked about how we can create worth and value in whatever we do and in every choice we make.
He said that many businesses are looking in a rear view mirror each quarter to judge performance, rather than looking ahead or valuing the intangibles associated with our relationships with our stockholders, employees, customers, and other stakeholders. He gave the example of WhatsApp, a 55 employee company that recently sold to Facebook for $19,000,000,000. (Yes, that is an awful lot of zeros!) That company’s value is not based on its track record or on the measure of its tangible capital physical assets, but on intangibles like its intellectual capital, its relationship capital, its potential, and how it aligns with the needs of its customers . . . and its buyer.
Prasad challenged us to stop looking at the purpose of a business as only being to make a profit. He said that is like believing that I am living in order to breathe, eat, and sleep. That resonated profoundly with me.
It reminded me that sometimes my brain gets in the way of my purpose.
There are a whole lot of smart people in this world. But one of my take-aways from Prasad’s talk is that wisdom is still a very rare and precious commodity. Prasad said that if we are wise, as well as smart, a small number of people can change the whole nature of our conversation about any given topic.
Prasad gave me the courage to re-articulate what I want this blog to be about.
My blog is about how the decisions we make concerning the food we put in our bodies can change our physical health, our spiritual well being, and our relationship to our environment. More about that in coming posts – I just wanted to thank Prasad for opening my eyes to the bigger picture of what I’m doing and the potential impact it can have on the lives of other people.
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