It was the fall of 2003. I had just started my university studies in Canada and it was approaching midterm examinations. I remember the professor for one of my management class offering students to review past year management midterm papers in order to help them prepare for the upcoming examination during his office hours. This was entirely new to me – I hadn’t learnt the concept of teachers or lecturers having office hours. The only time you could ask lecturers questions was during the class itself. So for a professor to offer past paper reviews during office hours was a real opportunity.
Out of a class of 450 students (it was a first year management mandatory course), I don’t remember seeing more than 20-30 students who took up the offer. But that didnt seem to bother me. I remember visiting my prof’s office for the first time to review the papers and of course as I reviewed, we got talking and I would ask questions pertaining to his lectures to gain a better appreciation and understanding. What started as just a student-teacher relationship quickly matured into a friendship and working level. Towards the end of my semester, my professor offered me a teaching assistantship, which I would go on to hold for 2 years until the end of my university education. Apart from that, we struck a good strong friendship and I often would look forward to his christmas year end parties. Mind you, during this whole time when I was my professor’s student, I was not at all interested in brown-nosing. I merely took the opportunity that was presented in front of me.
Fast forward 13 years now, and I do wonder sometimes how people at work fail to see the opportunity that is in front of them. Having worked for 10 years (I celebrated my decennial anniversary in April!) I have come across tons of individuals from all form, shape and sizes. Some are bright, some are gifted and some are just plain lazy. Too often I have seen the case that today’s workforce often complaining about how work is boring and unstimulating. And how as managers, we are told we need to make work more exciting and purposeful for them.
But I also feel, today’s generation has forgotten the virtue of carpe diem – learning to seize the opportunity. We are often fed with false notion that the reason why our current workforce can sometimes be apathetic is because they aren’t interested and the fault lies in us, managers and supervisors. Perhaps that is true, but I believe its because many today have forgotten what it means to seize the opportunity that is given to us. I have seen this happen one too many times at the workplace and I myself sometimes have succumbed to this thinking (why bother working hard, what is it to me? There’s so much to do, I better not try and be a hero and put up my hand)
And therein lies our paradox. While we are at an age where information and knowledge is greatly available at our disposal, we have become less imaginative, less inspiring and less intelligent. We are more exposed to literature knowledge than any other generation and yet that has not translated into productive use and the betterment of society. I am not talking here about the mega success stories or the rise of young tech entrepreneurs who are making dents in the universe. I am referring to our common everyday experience. I am alluding to the daily interactions we have with our colleagues, the hubbub that goes on at our workplace. This is where most of us spend 80% of our time.
And I believe this “epidemic” can be traced back to a lack of learning to seize daily opportunities. We are spoilt by one of technology’s biggest fruits – instanism – so much so we have lost the ability to seize the opportunity. Although instanism has brought about many positive changes, I believe the single biggest negative produce of instanism is that it has diluted many virtues such as perseverance, tenacity and even…empathy. We give up if things don’t excite us, if we don’t see the end result. We choose our interest based on what interests us.
And its sometimes unfortunate to see it trickling down to the workplace. We are in an age where we are losing one of life’s greatest virtues to technology. It doesn’t help either that companies too have forgotten such virtues and that these virtues just become embalmed in obscure and vague corporate mission statements. We need to change this. We must recapture and proliferate the importance of seizing opportunities in life and teach this to our younger ones.
