How can I find meaningful work? How can I make my career meaningful?
Two of the most frequent questions we receive at ebbf.
Below you can find the full unedited transcript to the many great replies to the many questions asked about this topic from this recent interactive ebbf learning session with an expert in meaningful work, one of the first founding members of ebbf and currently secretary general of ebbf and of the Global Governance Forum: Mahmud Samandari.
He starts with this idea "There is no meaningful work!"
5:39 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
I guess, looking at the list of participants, everyone is familiar with BBF in a way or another. But just to give you an overview, it's just an open dialogue. The one we're going to have today, as we have every month, is going to roughly last an hour or a bit less. Every month, we have a speaker. But as we always say, no one is an expert here at the BBF. We are here to co-learn, co-create all together. And today, we have the pleasure of having Mahmud with us. He's one of the founders of eBPF. And the topic today, Mahmud, is quite controversial. So from the very beginning of eBPF, beginning of the 90s, you were there talking about meaningful work, right? And eBPF stands for mindful people, meaningful work, meaningful business. So how come today we are talking about that there is no meaningful work? Give us a little bit of insight about that.
6:41 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Okay friends, it's a really great pleasure to be here seeing so many familiar faces. I won't start naming them because then I will miss a few of them and I will be embarrassed. But it's good to see old friends and find new faces also. You know, the invitation presents me as an expert in meaningful work, and then the title is, there is no meaningful work. So, I think Daniel did it on purpose to say that I'm expert in nothing, which is true. But that in itself brings about an interesting idea, you know. It's a question of apparent contradictions, you know. And let's take a minute to think about the concept of apparent contradictions. Besides the fact that Daniel has exaggerated, there is also the question that we need to develop our capacity to reconcile apparently opposing positions. This is one of the serious problems of the world which is polarization, and we have to address it. And one way to address it is the topic of coherence. I'm not going to talk about polarization, but I want to use the concept of coherence to understand our theme for today. You see, once we have managed to go beyond either black or white, either good or bad, either us or them, then we come to the idea that the real thing that we are looking for in order to have meaning is the right combination. And that's why there is no meaningful work, because we create the right combination between the work that is offered and what we can bring to it, what we can do in order to give meaning to our work. Because you will find the same people working, several people working in the same place, some of them will find the work meaningful, others will not. So what has happened there? I think what we want when we say the right combination of some elements I would name some of them from my perspective. The concept of purpose, the concept of intention, the concept of values, the concept of volition, the will that we have to act, the concept of reading reality or seeing potential. What I see is one example that we are going to take. I will take one of those that I have chosen, after that you do the choosing and we talk about those other concepts. So prepare to remember when I finish this one, I'll ask you the list of concepts that I just used. And don't go to the recording, you won't have it before it is published tomorrow. I want to talk about the concept of purpose. I take it that there are several people people here are either already entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs, the ones from EBPF for youth. And I believe that we can look at that concept of entrepreneurs with the concept of meaningful work. I've done that a few times, started some companies, and one of the things I was very happy be able to do in it was the accounting. But I guess for many people accounting is definitely not an exciting thing. It's boring. Not many people will call accounting their passion. But imagine you want to become an entrepreneur and you realize that one of the first things an entrepreneur must be able to do is to understand every aspect of their business. At the beginning, you cannot hire all sorts of experts. You have to be able to handle all the aspects of your job, of your activity. And in order to do that, you tell yourself, if I don't know what accounting is really about, and if just the course is not enough, I'm going to work one year as an accountant in a company in order to be well prepared for my own or for my own startup. The year that you will spend learning about accounting and doing it may be doing a boring job, but it's extremely meaningful because it is for a purpose, a purpose that you assigned to that job. It will give you the means and the instruments in order to reach your purpose. So, very simply put, I believe that it's the concept of purpose that gives meaning to a job. It's not something out there, which is sitting there and he says, I am meaningful, please come and take me. It's a job there that you take and give meaning to it. Now, when we talked about coherence, it's also a fact that it's not only way thing. Yes, there are organizations that are conscious of the necessity of meaningful work for their collaborators and they create conditions for you to find meaning. But that in itself will not be enough to call that work meaningful. I want to look at this concept and before going to the other ones that you are going to to raise one on one and then we talk about them, I want to reflect a little bit about the concept of work itself historically. A human being has three distinct dimensions. We have the body, we have the mind, and we have the soul. Whatever you want to assign to the soul, whatever you call it, it's what is not body and what is not mind. Work in the whole history of humanity has responded to the needs of all three dimensions of human beings. When we were hunters, we would use our body to run after the prey. We would use our mind to outsmart the prey and find shortcuts to be ahead of them or behind them. And there was always, whether in hunting or in agriculture, a ritual part to what we used to do, a ritual part before going hunting, a ritual part before eating what we had hunted, a ritual part before sowing the seeds, and the ritual part before harvesting. And for thousands of years, work, which is what you used to do, as hunters, and then later as farmers, had meaning because it responded to all the three realities, to all the three dimensions of our existence. A few hundred years ago, two things happened at the same time. One, at least in Europe to start with, but then the rest of the world, the enlightenment, we thought that the ritual part, the spiritual part does not make much sense and we started to put it aside. Maybe we were right because that came together with some other superstitions and things like that and we said let's get rid of it all at the same time. The industrial revolution made the use of our body relevant for work. Machines started to do part of the work we used to do. And this didn't happen easily. It happened with revolution. And in England, they had the burning of the machines. In France, there was the brûlée les métiers, all the cloth-making machines, because they were taking away jobs from people. But somehow, apparently, we overcame that, and we also said to ourselves, you know, how can we have eight billion people wearing shirts that have been done one by one by people? So, it was necessary for us to move it to a more machine-based production. We did lose some process and that is the person who made my shirt will never have the satisfaction of seeing the result of her work being used and I will not have the satisfaction of seeing what I have paid to benefit the person who worked for it. But whatever the consequences were, what we have now is the dimension of of the bodily work has been reduced considerably. Why are we afraid now? Because the only thing we thought we had kept, which was the intellectual part, is probably going to be taken over by others, by machines. And that's why we are worried. We are talking about, all the time, meaningful work. We're talking about stress, talking about robots will replace us. We're talking about fear. But let's go back one second to what we lost a few centuries ago, and that was the spiritual part of work. If we consider, if we start to remember that work done in the spirit of service is an act of adoration and therefore is the highest form of spiritual contribution to humanity, work will find all its meaning whether we use our body or entirely our brains for it. Machines will become our allies in order to do better what we can do. So I will stop with this example and then the concept of coherence and let's explore because this is not a talk, this is a conversation. Let's explore together what this little introduction and the other concepts that we have mentioned at the beginning have to do with meaningful work. First, who remembers the other concepts?
18:24 - daniel truran - madrid
Another question, by the way, in this question-answer session, I think there's also questions coming Mahmoud. Yes, I'm done.
18:33 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
We are ready for exchanges, not only questions and answers, because I'm sure everybody has reflected on this topic. If they are interested here, it means they have reflected about it and they have a contribution to make. Definitely.
18:50 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
I mean, before we jump into the other elements, I was just wondering if you have some practical example you can can share from your long career. I know you've been coaching several entrepreneurs throughout the past few years. Any experience where you could see that it was difficult to create that purpose for mind, body and soul, as you were describing, when the environment was not fully supporting, right, which is most of the case?
19:26 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
You know, For several years, I was a coach for startups for the Swiss government, especially technology startups.
19:36 - Unidentified Speaker
And my field being ICT, several of them have to do with applications, online services, etc.
19:45 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
And you could tell the difference between those who had a passion for what they were doing because they that it responded to a real need in the community. For example, applications in order to create community shops in order to exchange different products together within a neighborhood. And those who went by the idea that they wanted to be the next Zuckerberg. In other words, create a platform for whatever reason, put enough people on it, so that one of the big ones buys you. And that passion for, well, there was passion there, it was passion to make millions the way they had seen around them, was not enough to give satisfaction, and several of them had and finally those startups did not pick up. Another example, very personal, is what I had in my own life. One of the first activities I started was in banking with information technology for banking. Back in 1984, we started in Geneva, the first online real-time charting services in the world. There was no online real-time charting package in the world until December 1984, oh my god, 40 years ago, when we started to launch it here in Geneva. Nowadays you go to your phone and you say you look at Google and you look at any chart you want. At that time it didn't exist. You would have to manually input the numbers in order to get a chart over a date. The exciting part of the work for me for the first three, four years was I set up something from zero. I opened branch offices in five, six countries. I did something in a technical world which was not my field because my studies have been in international law. I created an infrastructure for a company that became started from three, and by the time I left, we are about 60 people in different countries. But then I started to ask myself, okay, these things that I did with a lot of excitement and passion, now I can start reflecting about what the company really is doing. What we were doing was making or helping banks and financial institutions to make faster a few million by just trading currencies. It lost its meaning for me. Before that it had a meaning because I was creating something. When I started to say what else is there to do, there was nothing. I left. I was not the founder. I was co-founder and then I left the company. So this brings in another concept and that is these things are not eternal in time, something that is meaningful at one point can become less or vice versa. In other words, it is a permanent conversation we have with ourselves in order to find out whether there is a meaning and when there is, where is it, and how do we create that meaning. One other thing that When you create meaning for others, what you are doing does become meaningful. It's no more the action that you are doing, but the outcome of the action. And when it is for the benefit of others, it definitely finds meaning.
23:55 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
My first reaction is leaving always the answer. I mean, I love the concept that We need to have this conversation with ourselves constantly. It's an internal question we ask. Am I finding meaningful in what I'm creating and the impact I'm having? But very often when we find ourselves in this complex environment that doesn't really support our purpose and our meaning, is leaving the organisation or leaving that environment always the answer? Or until when can we really try to recreate meaning and change the culture? Environment, the vision of the place we are before we take the action of living, if it makes sense.
24:40 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Until the goal that you have set to yourself for change becomes impossible.
24:46 - Unidentified Speaker
I'll give you another example.
24:48 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
In Latin America we had a company that started the first cable TV company in south of Rio Grande, the first legal cable TV company. Because all the others were pirates. They would take signal illegally and then resell it. And it was very exciting because it was innovative, we started to do it, and we found customers, we found legal ways to do the work. And then in that company we had partners. At one point we decided to create a magazine for our services, which was fantastic. Back in 1989-1990, you couldn't go online to see the programming of your TV, you had to buy a magazine to find the programming in it, so we started with a magazine. Very good, very nice. Immediately some people say we would like to put publicity in it, so we started to put publicity in it. Then at one point, the partners said, okay, now that we are doing publicity, let's also put publicity for alcohol. For part of the founders that was a no-no because we had created this concept of cable TV as a family entertainment and it took us about a year where we stood on our position and at one point we were
26:23 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
by the other partners. We left, but we sold our shares. We did not lose everything, but we left because our effort to keep it meaningful after a year of struggle was no more giving results. The question of when it is not giving results is very difficult. But what is easy? What good thing is there in the world that is easy?
26:59 - Unidentified Speaker
Great, thank you.
27:00 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Werner, do you want to go ahead and ask your question? Yeah, sure.
27:05 - Borná | The Netherlands
So if you can go many directions with the start of your career because of the studies that you did before, how do you know what a good place or company or field is to start in? Does it have to align with one of the goals of the Baha'i faith, or is there another way to fill out like should you go into the direction where you're good at, or should you go into a direction where there's a lot of developments? Conditions are different all the time.
27:40 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
I don't think there is really one formula, one thing. But I would say that really, you can, I was just talking to a friend who used to work at the beginning of it with the organization, called the best companies to work for. And he was explaining how they came up with the idea, what are the criteria that they set up in order to do the ranking of companies, etc. Interestingly enough, they said that one concept around which everybody was in agreement is that if there was trust reigning in that company, then it was a good place to work for, work in. But I don't believe the same company will be attractive to everybody because precisely of your passion. You have a passion and you have capacities. And then finding the best combination, finding the coherence between your passion and your capacities is a formula can create. Of course, you can consult. Of course, mentoring is there for that. Of course, there are people who will, you know, you can ask people about their experiences, etc. But the right combination, you are the only one who can create it because nobody will know from inside you your potential and your passion and your capacities.
29:17 - Borná | The Netherlands
And how do you know if within a company there is a lot of trust. Like, do you talk to people or do you, is there some sort of way to figure that out also online as well?
29:33 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Listen, the first activities that I started were back in 1980s. So, there was nothing to consult online. It was trial and error. And again, you see, even with the second example I gave, you. We started the company with other people, therefore there was trust.
29:54 - Multiple Speakers
After a period of time, it was not there anymore because interests became divergent. So there is no reality that stays there forever.
30:04 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Sometimes a company is bought by another one, the things change. Sometimes the director, the CEO changes, things change. The question is, again, I would ask the question, knowing a little bit about the company, which people today have many more options in order to look them up. The question would be, how much do I believe I can do something for the company? Not the other way around.
30:32 - Multiple Speakers
It is cliche that Kennedy said, don't think about what your country can do for you, but think of what you can do for your country. But the cliche is as true about our individual activities.
30:46 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
You know, trust, by the way, trust is not something that you go and look for. Trust is something you bring to the company. In other words, first, you are trustworthy. That's your first duty when you go into a company that is not yours. And the second thing is your mission to bring about trust within the company.
31:07 - Borná | The Netherlands
So the question is, when you go in, can you do that?
31:12 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
you see it there or not. The other reality of today that is very different from my time is that in my time when you would look at somebody's CV and they had hopped around every two years, you would say it's an unstable person.
31:33 - Borná | The Netherlands
No more today. Yeah, it's usual, very usual. No more today.
31:38 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
So that in itself is first of all a challenge but a good one for the employer because they will try to make their best to deserve their employees. And it's a good thing for the employees because it gives them the option to test and trial. But if they really want something out of it, it's not to go and test how good the company is, it's to test how good they can be by contributing to the company.
32:09 - Borná | The Netherlands
Okay, so looking at your own qualities and seeing what you can bring to the company is a good starting point. Okay. And then I had a little bit of a related but separate questions. So if you have companies coming to you towards the end of your studies and pursuing you for a job at their company, and you yourself have an interest in some other Is it better to go with the companies that are pursuing you, or is it better to try and approach the companies that you don't have a relationship with, but you might find interesting to work there?
32:50 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
If they have come to you, it means they are interested, and therefore they must invest the time that is necessary to have conversations with you.
33:01 - Borná | The Netherlands
Take your time. Ask the questions.
33:03 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
In an interview, you are not the interrogated part. You are also a questioner. So, you ask them questions. It's a bit different when you're running after a company, but still, when you're looking for one, and you find the opportunity of the first interview, tell yourself if that first interview does not give you all the answers, it's not worth pursuing. Because if you do not get answers to your questions, then it's rolling a dice.
33:39 - Borná | The Netherlands
If you're a gambler, do it. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Borna.
33:46 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Over to you, Zack. A very interesting question as well.
33:52 - Zack - Denmark / New Zealand
Yeah, thank you. So I was just thinking, a lot has changed since 1980s. We have a lot of different job opportunities these days and the majority of what I see, unless you're an entrepreneur, is that our roles are operational and you have limited capacity to really create influence and you're a little detached from the final product of your work. And so I'm thinking in a role like this where you have kind of limited influence and perhaps you can't can't see the end product, how can one find inspiration in these sorts of roles that make up the majority of jobs these days?
34:37 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Why would influencing the end product be the only way where you can exert your influence? If you make life better for the 10 people who are sitting in the same room as you, is that not good enough? I'm asking the question. I'm not saying it is or not. I'm just questioning the assumption that we arrive in a company and we believe if we manage to change all its policies and all its investment purposes and everything that comes into the product, then we have been successful in changing it. Change starts with small stuff.
35:22 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
The day you serve the coffee to people who have not had this privilege of companionship, you've already brought the first seeds of change. The question again is your intention and your purpose. If you enter into Shell and you decide that you're going to entirely transform their business into renewables, Well, good luck. Sorry, Zack. Was it anything close to what you had in mind?
35:56 - Zack - Denmark / New Zealand
I was asking about where you personally draw inspiration from Perhaps my question was also poorly phrased. So I think you've had a wealth career experience than me, and I'm wondering where can I draw inspiration to create a meaningful career? Do you consult the Baha'i Writings a lot, or how do you go about the process of finding meaning in a career, which I think is something that a lot of people struggle in these days, especially when roles, you can't be the first in so many things these this?
36:41 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
You know, a little commercial intervention, I collaborate with soul.com, you may be familiar with it, look it up, mostly because of what I'm going to say now. At soul.com, what we do is to help companies transform themselves into communities. Because we believe no matter what size and what type of company you are, the real way for you to improve, to bring about change, is to transform yourself into a community. And we know from our own experience within our community that everything starts with an individual that takes an initiative, that creates a core group around him or herself and that core group starts with small actions, brings about small changes and the addition of small actions, small changes within a core group and going to other core groups and creating a group and a movement will eventually build community. Even if everybody in the company wants to build a community, It will not happen overnight. It has to be the sum of individual actions. If you are the person who starts with that individual action, and if you consider that is meaningful for you, you have created your meaningful job for a while, because you will change the definition of that meaning once you have gone through phase one, and then phase two becomes meaningful, then phase three becomes meaningful. So the question of intention now, purpose is what you want to finally achieve and intention is that you do want to do it. These are things that you will have to assess every day. There is a reason why we are supposed to call ourselves to account every day because none of those things is once and for all. Ilya. Welcome, Ilya. Good to see you. Thank you very much, Mahmud.
39:06 - Ilya - Geneva (Switzerland)
Actually, it's funny because my question was related to the question that Zack asked initially. And going back to the historical introduction you just made about the Industrial Revolution, in the West, we tend to often think that it's a thing of the past. But the truth is, industrialization continues. It's just been outsourced to other areas of the globe. And I'm thinking about sweatshops in Southeast Asia, or the garment industry workers in Bangladesh, or even in certain parts of Eastern Europe, where most of the industry has moved now, most of the production in Europe. Does all of this also apply to a factory line worker who perhaps doesn't have, you might say, being the devil's advocate here, the luxury of asking themselves this question, there's only one job in town, there's no way of leaving town, and it is to work for Foxconn or for whatever industry there is, and there is no influence that you can make beyond just towing the line and doing what you're told, working those hours, and making sure that the quality of what you do is right. I mean, you can certainly, by your behavior, be a good example to the other employees to the limits of your abilities, but you are locked in. You do not have the freedom of certain choices as an entrepreneur in a developed country or in a better social position. Could you, or maybe I don't know, it's a bit of a challenge here, but I'm eager to hear your thoughts about this.
40:59 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Friends, with Ilya we have many interesting conversations, so I allow myself to ask him a question for his own question. What would Frankl tell you? Viktor Frankl, right?
41:14 - Ilya - Geneva (Switzerland)
Yes, yes. Well, he would tell say that meaning is everything and that even in the concentration camp, if you can survive, you have chance of surviving, at least, if you find meaning in your day to day survival existence.
41:35 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
And do you think there is no possible friendship among people who are working in hard circumstances? Absolutely, maybe even more so. Now, I do understand that several of our conversations are at least my experience, even though in Latin America, I try to be as much possible in contact with, you know, indigenous communities, etc. It has been limited to certain parts of the world. So, I'm sure if this same conversation were had with people who are, you know, in mining in South Africa, industry in Bangladesh, probably some other insights would come from the participants into this conversation. Of course, but we can try to also imagine what it could be and how they do give meaning to their work. I'm sure that not all of them believe that it's meaningless, but we have to find out what and I cannot speak for them. Thank you. Thank you, Alia.
42:46 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
I'm just going to rephrase one of the questions from Adrian because I think he has a problem with his microphone. He was asking for some example about the possibility of joining an organization. A corporation really with a clear intention, which is the one of inspiring or maybe promoting WBF values and how to be accepted or even more appreciated for that contribution. Have you ever experienced something similar? You said how to apply or how to find a company like that?
43:32 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
I didn't get it. How to join.
43:37 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
a company with a clear intention of inspiring the culture, the organization, and if I understand correctly, his question is also how to promote those values while being accepted, right?
43:48 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Yeah, I think there is two parts in that, you know, how to join in the sense that how can you enter or how you can find a job in a company like that, and the second thing is once you are inside, how can you influence the process. I think the first part is the real struggle that we all have. The other day I was sharing it with my young friend who asked me the question and I took out the document, the file that I have of 95 applications I made. At the end of my studies, none of which worked out. And then a friend called me and said, are you free? I said, yes. And the next day I had a job. So that is, the process is different for different people. And I still am very proud of having sent those 95 applications because it showed that I was, I was doing my part. And then when the other thing arrived, I had the flexibility of accepting it. So, I don't have much advice as to, you know, how can you get specifically into a given company, but one thing is sure, if you want to get into a company, you study what they do, you determine, again, what we said with Borna before, what is your contribution to that company? I won't mention names and companies, but there was this this guy who joined a large consultancy company as a junior first level. And after a few months, he was asked, how do you like your job? He said, well, when I joined this company, because it's number one in the world, I thought I would have meetings with the CEOs and conversations with them, et cetera. And then he was asked, We understand what you would get from having conversations with CEOs. What do you think they would get out of having conversations with you? So, yes, of course, it would be fantastic if I find a company that has everything, all the right things for me, but I should also consider what I have for that company. So, the mixture, again, Is it going to be beneficial both ways? Yeah, clearly.
46:27 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
I'm just going to shift. Can I ask a question to Susan? I really like your comment. You were giving your point of view as a human resource specialist about how to run interviews with many young people here. Hearing the call today. Would you mind to elaborate a little bit more on what are your recommendations in preparing the right question during the interviews? Sure.
47:00 - Susan Miraftabi, California
First of all, I'd like to say I live and work in California. However, I've been really lucky to work for multinational companies. Last one was Bayer, the German company. But I want to give the caveat that my perspective is from California and US. My global experience. You guys have to help me out with and I'm here to learn. I'm not here just to teach. I'm here to learn too. So you gotta help me with that. I do know about the work councils in Europe, but that's about it. So what I can tell you that when a candidate does a really good job before the interview, there are two things I would recommend a person does even maybe before you do your resume. Get to know yourself and your values and as a Baha'i, my values are usually very aligned with the Baha'i faith. So I don't even bother working with companies that don't match those values. And then you may have additional values that might be, for example, reducing gas emissions, contributing to the environment. So there's your personal values, and then there's how you want to contribute to the world at large. You should know that even before you write a resume or go to an interview. And then you should do a really good job of reading the company's annual report, their mission and vision, their website. Maybe we have in the United States Glassdoor.com and similar, where you can go get reviews from employees and previous interview candidates. And sometimes they're fair reviews and sometimes they're unfair. So you have to use your best judgment. And then when you go to your interview, of course, in the US, we tend to have the attitude of what can I do to be of service to this company. But just like Mahmud said, it's two parties interviewing each other. So you absolutely have to also think, what can I do for me? You know, do I want to spend eight hours a day, 10 hours a day, many, many days of my life with this company? And not everything's apparent in the first interview. And if you still have questions that don't get answered, ask if you can meet with them again. Don't give up or agree to an offer, either way, without having all your questions fully answered. That would be my advice.
49:24 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Thank you. Anyone has something to add on top of that?
49:31 - Unidentified Speaker
Great. Any further questions? We're getting towards the end. Have you interviewed them?
49:39 - daniel truran - madrid
been receiving, have you interviewed somebody for a job backwards, and what do you ask them?
49:46 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
The question may have varied, but what I was looking for is whether I could trust them. The only thing, because if you have to look behind your back all the time with colleagues, you use positive energy, a negative purpose. If you trust the person and they don't know technically what they have to do, you'll help them train.
50:16 - Unidentified Speaker
You train them yourself.
50:18 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
And my organizations have been mostly technical, even though I'm not an engineer myself, but I would sit down, learn from my engineers what the thing was only a total about, but the interview was not only about their capacity, their technical knowledge. For me, 90% of the point was, can we trust this person to be a good member of the community?
50:49 - Unidentified Speaker
Done a few hundreds of those, not millions, not thousands.
50:54 - daniel truran - madrid
What about right now, there's a lot of people that have some There's one question that one person didn't want to ask the question, but it was great because in spirit of service, we want to have time to serve. But then companies say you have to work night, day, 24 hours per day, always be available. So how can you shape your career by telling your company, this is important for my life, service, and therefore I will give 200% to you, but I need space to serve. How would you suggest that a young person is looking for that, they're just used to serving, needs their service space, approach a company and say, I need my time to serve. How can you sell it to your company?
51:47 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Let's look at it from different perspective. First of all, we talked about coherence from the beginning, right? Coherence means opposing things. Service and work are not opposed to one another. So, creating a balance, creating a balance between two things, it means they're opposing one another. They're not. So, to a great extent, at least this is the privilege I've had in my life, in my own companies, my work was 200% service. So, I really, you know, even at the beginning when I was doing that job with the companies, with banks, and then I think I thought I was doing something useful because it was giving them more insight into their trade and transactions etc until I realized that the only benefit of all of that was more profit. So then it didn't make sense anymore. But I think you remember when we had the lady from Gosh. Who did the inter-religious work in the U.S. In what company was it? Neymosin. Neymosin in Intel.
53:01 - daniel truran - madrid
Yes, in Intel.
53:02 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
And you remember what she said that the CEO of Intel had told his people in his company. If what you are doing on Monday at your job does not reflect what you were doing on Sunday, I don't want you. I want you fully in the organization. More and more organizations are understanding that once you are your 100% true self, you're more useful. If they don't understand it, again, well, if you have a choice, don't look into them.
53:47 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Thank you, Mahmud. Thank you, Gregory, to share the link about what is special in the video. I remember watching this perspective from Dr. K. So I recommend as well to have a look at it. It's a bit long video, but if you have the time. Gabriel, you have a question.
54:11 - Vahid Khamsi - Frankfurt
Do you want to go for it? Is this for me?
54:16 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Yeah, go ahead.
54:17 - Vahid Khamsi - Frankfurt
So I feel personally concerned when Mahmud talks about Shell, that was my first job, and then consulting, then I went to BCG after Shell. So I can respond maybe, I can say, but I don't think you were talking about me. Anyway, and I think there's a mix of the young people and the people that are more experienced. So for those who take it for what it is, I mean, those who are like Gary and Greg, I I mean, you guys are, I love your opinion on this, but I thought for the young people, so I actually just resigned. I'm on my gardening leave, that's why I'm so relaxed right now. And I'm switching industry, I'm switching geography, and I'm switching function, which is the third time I'm doing that. And I realized that as I was giving kind of my farewell speech yesterday, and I was like, Why do I do that? And literally it is every seven years. So seven years it was Shell, then seven years BCG, then I did SAP now, and now I'm going into the insurance financial services as CIO. So I'm a digital transformation. And because I just thought a number of you are asking, and I think your story also Mahmoud showed that big oil doesn't mean that you're in Shell, that you cannot do something meaningful, even if you work on conventional fuels. Insurance, everybody hates this industry. And I think my feeling is actually that's why I want to go there. I want to go into the insurance industry to do something different, to switch from gathering premiums. And the goal of the insurance industry is to have the lowest payout ratio, right? I mean, everybody saw what's happening in the US right now, low payout and then anger. And I think there is a sense within the insurance community that they want to switch it to protecting people. The purpose of the insurance is we want protection, we want you to have peace of mind. When you have an accident, you take a picture, the claims is automatically settled, there's a replacement called, and through AI, you can automate all of these things. But what I thought was very interesting, Mahmud, when you said it's not dependent on the industry, it's dependent of what, it's not even dependent on the role, but actually of how your journey and what your contribution is. So I thought about this a lot because, of course, Shell, I got so criticism. Then when I was explaining to a friend what I was doing in the software industry, I said, oh, it's so meaningful during Corona, we have buy on tech. Oh, so you're a big pharma. I was like, it is.
56:50 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
I mean, it is so easy to be black and white within the industries.
56:54 - Vahid Khamsi - Frankfurt
If we didn't have Shell or Exxon, we would all be walking around or by bike. We wouldn't have plastic, we wouldn't have plastic bags or clothes. So I think it's difficult to be so black and white. Within the industry. Even I did a workshop with Philip Morris. For me, I was really anti-tobacco. But Philip Morris is going away from tobacco. They're doing a massive transformation to go away from smoke. Of course, they invited me to Modena and Maranello to drive a Ferrari.
57:21 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
So that was also where my values of Formula One versus my personal ethics were very difficult.
57:26 - Vahid Khamsi - Frankfurt
But I would say, I was surprised that the people in Philip Morris were actually people that realize what's happening. They're closing a lot of their factories to do the transformation. They went to vaping, but also from vaping, they're going towards injections of how we can use this technology to bring vaccines or medicine. But I would say, I like the theme. I want to explain, Mahmud, that it's not about an industry. It's not about the function, but about how you relate to that and what you make out of it, and even the small steps. And I think that's where, as you start a career, nobody knows what they want to do. I mean, people really switch completely. So it's okay to try. I think, Borna, when you're asking, is that the right industry, right company? I think probably it's the connection, your ability to make a change and on your personal journey, how that fits. And then nowadays it's very acceptable to switch, whereas before it was much more difficult. So it's okay not to know. Most of the people here don't know and they switch. And after a couple of years, they switch again and completely different and it's totally fine. Unacceptable nowadays.
58:29 - daniel truran - madrid
Mahmud, can I ask you, building on what Vahid just said, I love your gardening leave, this is new, it's winter, what are you going to do in the garden in the winter? Anyway, balancing, because I know a lot of young people have a lot of values and ideals, they go into a company, black or white, either everything is perfect, or rejected. And Vahid just said, it is not black and white. So it's also about giving in, allowing, in Can you share something, Mahmud, about your views between the 100% purity of everything being absolutely right and values-driven, and adapting but not giving up your values in situations which are usually not so black and white? Thank you for that, Vahid, very useful.
59:16 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
I think to some extent, for me, it's even difficult to say it because it's so obvious. There is no black and white. There is never black and white. As Waheed said, and by the way, Waheed, it was not because I didn't see you, it's because I saw you that I mentioned Shell. So, yes, you know, every single business that exists today is that one day or today already or still is providing a service that is needed. It. This is why companies and organizations exist, and why they do not disappear. If what they are offering does not have any use, any need, they will disappear. The question, therefore, is how it is done, and on the how, you have influence. As Waheed did, the seven years that he was in Shell, I know what he was doing. Be careful, Waheed, I know and he was doing exactly what he just told us. He was trying to put into that reality something that he thought was useful at that time, putting together a huge internet information technology system that would connect offices of Shell all over the world. So, the black and white, by the way, the thing of black and white also applies to values. Let me just use this last example. Sorry, I see that we are going over time. You know, we believe that values are absolute, and they are only absolute in their definition, not in their application. Tell you what I mean. Justice is a value, and it's absolute. There is no discussion. Justice is only a good thing. On the other hand, peace is an absolute value. Peace is good, there's no discussion, war is not good. But when in the 90s the government of Colombia made an agreement, a peace agreement with the FARC to end 60 years of war, the government's purpose was peace at all price. The agreement that they made with the FARC was refused by the people because they wanted justice. So the right agreement that came, more or less right agreement that came afterwards, was the one that had both respect for peace and for justice. And they are not in absolute compatible. They are basically put together in the best combination, which means none of them is absolute, none of them is 100%. Black is 100%, white is 100%. Nothing black or white. Everything is colorful. Not great. Thank you. Exactly. We have one last question before we end, Mahmud.
1:02:23 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
Gabriel is asking in the chat, does it make sense to measure meaningfulness? If you impact a lot of people, does it mean you are doing something more meaningful compared to if you're doing coaching 101? What's your take on this?
1:02:48 - Mahmud, Planet Earth
Really, again, I think this is one of those black or white. First of all, if you develop your capacity to influence one person's life at a time, and that learning allows you to scale it, then that's the answer. But if you cannot handle it even for one, why would you go for numbers? So, it's a learning process where you do what you do, do what you know, you do it well, and that learning allows you whether it's something replicable or not. We start small and escalate and evolve.
1:03:26 - Martina Crepaz - Malaga
I think my takeaway of the many things that you have said today and also building on Vahid's experience, congratulations to giving a change to your career once again. I guess it's many of us here in this room that have gone through this shift is really having this internal conversation with oneself, right? Trying to stay connected to our evolving purpose is very often essential and too many times we do forget to stay in touch with that evolution of our purpose, of our meaning, our definition of success itself, right? It shifts so many times as our priorities in life change. And I think without really regular reflection and awareness of this change is so easy and so common to lose ourselves in the wrong job or in the wrong objective. We risk really to chase goals that no longer resonate with us and very often we get to achieve what used to be our purpose and suddenly we feel like unfulfilled anyway despite the achievement. That we have got to. So my learning based on my personal experience is that the true direction in life and career really comes from aligning our action with the priorities and the purpose that we have in this present moment.
ABOUT MAHMUD SAMANDARI:
Mahmud Samandari is a visionary leader known for fostering collaboration and driving purpose-driven transformation. Through his work with soul.com, he helps organizations evolve into communities centered on leadership, social responsibility, and growth. As Secretary General of ebbf and of the Global Governance Forum, he champions values-based leadership, bridging corporations, universities, civil society, and governments to advance sustainable development. His extensive experience includes roles with the Global Governance Forum and advising EU projects on responsible innovation.
A pioneer in innovation, Mahmud launched Latin America’s first satellite-based distance learning platform and has spearheaded ventures in IT, telecommunications, and public transportation worldwide. Dedicated to empowering youth, he mentors young leaders and advises AIESEC globally. Fluent in five languages and enriched by his global experiences, Mahmud is driven by a deep commitment to fostering human potential and creating a thriving world for future generations, especially his granddaughters.
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