This October 1st, I became self-employed and launched my own business, operatics. After 15 rewarding and successful years in a good job, I quit that job and put my own and my family's economic existence at the risk of being wiped out unless I manage to get my new, HANA-based business up and running almost from day one.
"Bravery" and the underlying motivation
I was at TechEd Las Vegas this week, and almost everybody I spoke to used the same word when commenting on my adventure: "bravery." Now if you let your mind wander and think of any cases of actual bravery, perhaps you'll come to the same conclusion I did: Bravery alone explains nothing. I don't even believe that bravery per se exists, because it doesn't tell us WHY someone is doing something that might get them hurt. To understand what might appear as bravery from the outside, the thing we really must understand is a person's motivation. If the motivation is strong enough to override whatever fear might be keeping us, we act despite the fear.
As I prepared to launch my business, I tried to understand my own motivation for doing this, and I found an answer that I believe translates to many people inside the SAP Community, which is why I'm sharing it with you.
I asked myself the question: What motivates my behavior? A few examples for the things that I'll do:
- Think hard about an industry I know I'll never engage in, try to understand it and reflect on its specific challenges, and invent possible solutions.
- Invent new business models or think of improvements for existing business models (of other people's businesses). I love to brainstorm about innovative business models such as "the hotel of the future" even if nobody ever asks me to do that.
- Notice details that turn something that could otherwise be a great experience, place, service, product, etc. into something unsatisfying or mediocre, carefully think through it how it could be improved, and what other opportunities exist in the field.
- Reach out to the people in charge and share my feedback and suggestions.
Thinking about other people's problems (without being asked to)
In a way, this behavior is irrational, because I'm spending my energy and brain CPU cycles on somebody else's problems without them even asking me to do it. Because not everybody is indeed interested in growth or improvement, and because many people feel under attack when they receive constructive criticism, my analysis and suggestions aren't even always welcomed and lead to no actual improvement (although I do get better at giving these ideas away in a diplomatic manner that makes the recipient actually accept the gift). I'm self-confident enough to know that I'm no idiot and the analysis and advice I come up with is not worthless. People who follow my advice don't usually regret it. So I spend a lot of energy on creating it, it's valuable, I give it away for free without even being asked to, and frequently it lands in a metaphorical dumpster as an undesired present.
Irrational?
And yet I do it. I thought that if I can understand the motivation for this behavior, it will lead me to understand my overall motivation structure for launching operatics and taking this great risk in my life better. As I reflected on this, the following insight came to me:
Whenever I see the ingredients for magic, I want to put them together in just the right way to allow the magic to happen.
Let me repeat that, because truer words were never spoken:
Whenever I see the ingredients for magic, I want to put them together in just the right way to allow the magic to happen.
And the ingredients for magic are all over. I stumble upon them every day - at a hotel with great, truly dedicated staff, or at an SAP customer's site who has all the tools and technology in place to allow the creating of amazing solutions, or when speaking with an SAP architect who is working on a software product, or in a restaurant with great food, service, and customers.
The ingredients for magic
This is my way of looking at the world: Where someone else may see a typical business they're working with, I see that they've got all the ingredient for magic in place, even if they aren't using them. I can feel that the magic is just waiting to happen - it just needs some minor obstacle removed or some of its constituents to be slightly rearranged so that the magic can happen and amazing events may unfold. And I have a strong urge to be a catalyst and an enabler for the magic to happen, because that is something you just can't allow to go to waste, can you?
The foundation of mentoring
I believe that this is a very fundamental trait that fuels the passion in many different people - something that is essential and close to our individual cores, yet widely shared among people.
The twitter profile of my dear friend moya.watson contains a phrase that I believe goes back to the same motivational structure: "Bridging the gap between hither and yon."
I believe it's what drives the wonderful community fostering work of marilyn.pratt, who has mentored half the people who are active on SCN, and often spots and then fosters someone's talent before anybody else, even the mentee, would believe in them. Marilyn has a keen eye for the magic that can unfold from a person when some encouragement and guidance are added.
It's also what drives some successful executives to generously coach others without asking for reciprocation. I know one person who bills as much for one hour as I make in two months, and he spends a significant amount of time sharing his advice for free and coaching rookies. I believe that he, too, spots something special in those rookies that he wants to see unfold.
Now that I've begun to look for that trait in other people, I'm finding it in many shapes and varieties.
So whether it's connecting people, or bringing ideas and concepts together so that SAP's product development gets it right, or whether we speak to customers and show them how they can combine software products A, B, and C, which they already have, and create some magic they wouldn't have thought possible -- all those activities go back to the same fundamental motivation and value set: to be able to know the ingredients for magic, and then enable it to happen.
A driver for community engagement
Are you like that? Is this something that fuels your community engagement or volunteer work? Could this make you start your own business, like I did with operatics, or is it the reason you have already launched one? Would you base a major life-changing decision on the urge to be an enabler for magic, because its ingredients are all over the place?
