Mark Zuckerberg's 3 Visionary Steps to Connect People to a Visionary Purpose
Mark Zuckerberg has some visionary advice for future (and present) company leaders. In one of the quintessential visionary moves of this century, Zuckerberg launched FaceBook from his college dorm room in 2004, though what he first envisioned wan't quite so lofty, simply wanting to connect his fellow students on campus. Last Thursday, Zuckerberg returned to that campus to deliver this year's Harvard commencement speech with some vital insights about connecting ...
"Today I want to talk about purpose. But I’m not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We’re millennials. We’ll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. One of my favorite stories is when John F Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: 'Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon'. Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness."
"But," Zuckerberg added, "it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others." That's never been truer for any company at any time in history. It's not enough to be visionary (to have great ideas), companies have to bring those ideas into the world by creating a common visionary purpose, at every level. Zuckerberg uses three simple "visionary" steps ...
STEP #1: TAKE ON BIG MEANINGFUL PROJECTS TOGETHER
"Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put a man on the moon – including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover dam and other great projects. These projects didn’t just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things. Now it’s our turn to do great things. I know, you’re probably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything.
But let me tell you a secret: no one does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started."
STEP #2: REDEFINE EQUALITY SO EVERYONE HAS THE FREEDOM TO PURSUE PURPOSE
"Many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers. Now we’re all entrepreneurial, whether we’re starting projects or finding our role. And that’s great. Our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress. Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives when it’s easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built. I also built games, chat systems, study tools and music players. I’m not alone. J. K. Rowling got rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get Halo. The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail ...
Look, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I don’t know a single person who gave up on starting a business because they might not make enough money. But I know lots of people who haven’t pursued dreams because they didn’t have a cushion to fall back on if they failed."
STEP #3: BUILD COMMUNITY ACROSS THE WORLD
"In a survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion or ethnicity, it was “citizen of the world”. That’s a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of people we consider “one of us”. For us, it now encompasses the entire world.
We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own ...
We all get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or sports teams, churches or music groups, they give us that sense we are part of something bigger, that we are not alone; they give us the strength to expand our horizons."
[Excerpts above were taken from Mark Zuckerberg's May 25, 2017 Harvard speech.]
