We had our firm retreat last month. As part of our team outing (you don’t want to hear about the results of the marshmallow challenge) we spent some time talking about the reasons behind the jobs we do and the meaning behind the work we produce.
We came up with 4 primary tenets: People Matter (hence our tagline), We support our community, We like what we do (even on April 14th), and We fulfill dreams.
We were inspired by training we received from www.mentorplus.com [1] and a video on TED by Simon Sinek [2]. Our firm has already been talking about our passion [3] for the wine industry and the role we play in it, but this video got us thinking specifically about “why” we do what we do rather than our normal focus on the “what” and the “how”.
You might think it would be hard for accountants to find meaning behind tax returns and financial statements. But our firm does much more than that. We see our role as supporting the people of the wine industry so they are free to make magic happen all over the Napa Valley. We might do it with calculator tape or lead pencils, Excel spreadsheets or financial forecasts, scorecards or dashboards but at its core, what we do is about helping people live their dreams.
If you take the time to think about what you do each day, it probably isn’t about generating revenues or earning a living, it’s hopefully about something else that goes deeper. We tend to get too caught up in the “doing” and forget to think about the reasons that give our actions meaning.