The best job in the world

A friend of mine was writing a piece on why he has the best job in the world. He polled his predecessors for thoughts on the position. I was one of them. He was surprised by the response.

I can’t say anything I’ve done is the best or even my favorite. They all had pros and cons.

My first professional position was with a Fortune 500 company when they were living fat and happy. The upside was the money flowed like water. You flew first class, ate at the finest restaurants and expense accounts were rubber-stamped. Even better, I seldom encountered resistance getting funding for interesting ventures I conjured up. The minus was that internal politics ruled. There was more emphasis on acquiring a bigger budget than the division on the next floor than on taking market share from the competition.

My next position was with a family-owned business, almost the antithesis of the prior situation. That rewarded me with the satisfaction of driving their profits up by millions. The flipside was that my compensation went up by thousands. A lesson in the rewards of ownership. Not a priority today, but it mattered then.

Another position was a very successful start-up and the pride that comes with pulling that off. The major letdown was when the investors insisted on cashing out with a buyer to whom price was no object. It was like putting your baby up for adoption.

I greatly enjoyed rapid prototyping and product development. It provided world travel and perspective, along with knowing what innovations were coming down the line before they hit the shelves. The travel was wearing. You jump six to twelve time zones every other week and your body doesn’t keep pace with the clock.

In another enterprise, I conceived and developed a product that changed the course of a few hundred million dollar industry, if only by degrees. That’s pretty heady stuff. However, when there’s a big pot on the table, things get ugly quickly. There were 800lb. gorillas on one side, who would do about anything to keep the product off the market, and partners on the other, who would readily cut a throat for another percent of the take.

There were other stops in between, but these stand out. Now, I run a nonprofit treatment center for the indigent population of mentally ill and drug & alcohol addicts. The good days are when you feel you prevented at least one adolescent from committing suicide or substance abuser from losing a job. Those are very good days. The bad ones are BPD group. Imagine those few people you know from work, church, a web chat room, etc. who are always at the root of 90% of the friction. It’s easy to ignore a few. Now, fill a building with them. Talk about your black holes of negative energy.

Here’s where my friend and I part ways. I don’t define myself by what I do for a living and don’t rely upon it for all my life satisfaction. Raising two children to fine adults is at the top of the list. One of the most fun things I’ve done is found and grow a paddling group to one of the best of its kind. Providing people with adventures and life experiences they might not have otherwise enjoyed is hard to beat. I taught adults part-time in a weekend college for twelve years, which I wouldn’t call a position. Hard to put a value on when someone comes up to you and tells you about their achievements with the help of what they learned.

I also think my friend puts too much weight on the position as opposed to the person. I was speaking with a carpenter and fabricator this past weekend, both of who take a lot of pride in their craftsmanship and work ethic. Maybe they have the best jobs, in terms of how they approach and execute them. If they’re happy, they do. I always advise my employees, you're spending most of your waking hours here. Are you going to feel better about your life if you just walk through the motions or go all out and see your part in the advancement of the organization?

Finally, he looks at it as what he is today. Today will be history tomorrow. I’m more concerned with what I will accomplish and be then.

Hope I didn’t rain on his parade with an answer that was incongruent with his theme. But, he asked.