Someone said to the philosopher, Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire said, “Compared to what?” This comes to me after the past weekend, when the staff of the Darden School welcomed the many hundreds of visitors for reunion weekend. We have a high-performance service culture within the Darden Enterprise. Some of the Darden staff members arose very early on Saturday and Sunday (or stayed late) to provision the returning alumni. They did it out of a sense of being part of a valuable production, creating a special experience for our guests. This kind of work is not easy, but the alternative (the “compared to what”) is just not something they dwell on. This is dedication.
Education is a performance art. One sees this in the work of faculty teaching teams, the coordinated work of staff members, the late-night rounds of maintenance people. All that we do tries to create a very special experience for our students, visitors, and the wider profession of business. The recent research of Joseph Pine and Batten Fellow James Gilmore and others on the experience economy confirms that high-performance enterprises know that great service is founded on the creation of a special experience.
Such dedication imposes peak demands on our colleagues. It is not easy to deny one’s family, friends, or rest for the sake of people you don’t know. Today’s entitlement mentality might encourage some people to check out of work when the demands rise. But the service ethic affords a different view: we have a mission to “improve society by developing leaders in the world of practical affairs.” To the extent we accomplish that, busy is good. I honor all of our colleagues for rising to the challenge. Life is hard; yet we get on with creating the high-performance community to which we aspire.
Posted by Robert Bruner at 04/22/2008 03:41:43 AM