Thoughts on technology, strategy, creativity, and other random things that interest us.

We are all working for each other

Powerful thoughts | October 31st, 2010 by Neeraj Kamdar

I watched this brilliant speech some time back, by Matt Ridley on TED.com titled “When ideas have sex” (embedded above). What amazing insight into the progress of the human species. During his talk, around the 8:21 mark, he says “we’re all working for each other”. That sentence stuck in my mind and I’ve been pondering over it for a few weeks now. This one sentence, has the ability to change your entire perspective once you grasp the enormity of this simple thought.

Matt quotes Leonard E. Read, an economist from the 1950s, wrote his famous essay “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read” in 1958. The essay focuses on the fact that no one person in the world knows how to make a seemingly simple object, a pencil, from beginning to end. In reality, millions of people have a hand in the making of that pencil, many without even knowing it. From the people who mine the graphite, to the lumberjacks who cut the trees for wood, to the people who make the rubber for the eraser, everyone contributes to the process.

Once you think about this deeply and realize that everything you do is a contribution to the human race and the world at large, there is no greater motivator to strive for excellence, no matter how small the job at hand. It is difficult to work at all times with a global mindset, but look around you and observe how many people are working for you – the millions of people who had a hand in building the computer on which you’re reading this article, the policeman directing traffic so that you can get to work, the waiter at the restaurant you ate at last week, the author of the book you are reading – everyone is working for you. You owe them excellent work in return. You owe it to me. And I owe it to you.

P.S. – Thanks to Fuzzimo for their excellent work on the pencil graphic which I used in this post.

Tags: Leonard E. Read, Matt Ridley, TED