I don’t know how to operate without the thing that I’m doing having a reason to be done. This way of thinking served me well over the years to help my career remain on track towards an always improving goal.
I think giving people a purpose and meaning it helps them be more productive and achieve more. It gives them a sense of belonging and that the effort they are doing is for a bigger cause. The effect is often that they get significantly better at everything.
The purpose has to be sincere. Smart people know when you are faking it and you have to really want them to succeed even if that means they may leave you someday to go pursue greater opportunities.
One of the hardest jobs I have as the CEO of Toky is to keep people motivated and wanting to continue fighting for our cause. I can’t fake enthusiasm so the only way I can convey it to the team is by finding a way of never running out of it. This, of course, hasn’t been an easy task as I felt let down, doubted myself, and got tired on numerous occasions over the years but the practice of remembering what’s our purpose helped me continue fighting.
The awesome team that made Toky successful that Oscar (my co-founder) and I were able to assemble stayed with us because we all genuinely believe in the cause. We all have the same purpose and it’s 100% sincere.
We oftentimes talk about the future and what’s next and how the things we do and learn today by solving the hard problems of building Toky will make us better professionals.
We want Toky to be the platform our team uses to succeed in life and although that means we may have to say goodbye to one of us eventually, we realize this is part of the natural cycle of life and that is my job to make Toky continuously motivating and challenging to keep our team happy so that we can compete for their talent.