Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Recent epiphany

Apr 17, 2008 09:43 am / 2 comments

After work­ing on a project that demanded all my knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of the past 40 years, I was rewarded with deep learn­ing and epiphany.

As I was read­ing Rachel Remen’s Kitchen Table Wis­dom for the 23rd time, I came across the part that described the work of busi­ness con­sul­tants. Although Remen was talk­ing about the work of med­ical doc­tors, if we viewed busi­ness con­sul­tants as busi­ness doc­tors it is still so true. It is a story about an elderly woman with can­cer who decided against surgery that would pro­long her life. Her deci­sion enraged the hos­pi­tal and staff. 35 years after this inci­dent, Remen pre­sented this tory to a class of med­ical students.

Recently, after I pre­sented this story to a class of med­ical stu­dents, a second-year stu­dent com­mented that he felt the prob­lem was that the doc­tors had known this woman’s dis­ease, but not the woman her­self. Who was she? he asked. She was elderly. Had any­one found out what she had lived by all that time? What was impor­tant to her?

A fine dis­cus­sion ensued about the dif­fer­ence between defend­ing a per­son against death and mak­ing a com­mit­ment to their life. The stu­dents raised some hard ques­tions: How do we serve life? Can we know what is “best” for peo­ple, or do we only know what is best for the treat­ment of their dis­ease? Is it pos­si­ble to improve someone’s phys­i­cal health and yet dimin­ish their integrity?

So I have felt about my recent project. How do I know what is “best” for peo­ple? I feel com­mon busi­ness con­sult­ing prac­tice may improve a company’s finan­cial state­ment which is sup­posed to reflect the health of that com­pany, but I also feel many of prac­tices to improve the bot­tom line some­time dimin­ish the company’s itegrity.

Remen won­ders how com­ments like the one her med­ical stu­dent made would have been received 35 years ago by her class mates and teach­ers, and she sus­pected it would not be received well. Busi­ness world has been chang­ing too. Think­ing about these deep mat­ters may not have been impor­tant in the past, but it is our job now to con­sider these matters.

Possibly Related

• Building trust in workplace
• Last Samurai — Mastering
• Mentoring
• Knowing but not trusting what you know
• Business as output of education
• Knowledge management
• Work result expectation difference by cultures

More

« Japanese boys addicted to PSP | What does productivity mean? »