Intention

We all live extremely busy lives today. Almost everyone we know is constantly occupied with errands, tasks or social media (or do I mean downtime?). And that must be doing us some good, right?

Today, let’s evaluate our busy-ness, and try to identify whether this facet of life is contributing positively or negatively to our existence.

Intentional days create a life on purpose.

– Adrienne Enns

Let’s take a look everywhere around us, and at everyone we know. There is a common trend in today’s hyper connected, fast paced and productivity chasing world. Everyone has something or the other to do, at every point during the day.

Some people work during the day, and they have their evenings booked with chores. Others (like me), work nights, and have their mornings and afternoons booked with auxiliary activities. But everyone, without exception, is labouring towards something or the other

I am not going to compare our current working standards to the 1840s, where the average working hours per year ranged between 3105-3588 hours. However, we are working 7% more hours on an average as compared to even the hunter gatherer, whose survival completely depended on his ability to well, hunt and gather.

If you are working in a corporate setup, organisational structures are prominent concepts, and they catalogue employees into departments and tiers. At the tippy top of all the tiers, there lies the C-suite, or the people who handle the “strategic” alignment of the organisation.

Let’s look at some interesting stats in India. The average CEO earns between INR 3-5 Million. In contrast, the average entry level employee earns INR 450K.

As an observation, the CEO earns at least seven times more than the entry level employee, someone who is responsible for carrying out the operational activities in the business.

Now if you think about it, people in the “C-suite” is a way smaller number than the rest of any organisation. For any large company, the number would be within 1% of the total workforce. Interestingly, these are the people who are compensated the highest for the work that they do.

Now what does the C-suite exactly do for a company? Well, the C-suite decides the direction in which the org will move, how they will move there and what should everyone do to move in a specific direction. Essentially, they set the goals for the organisation.

Now this begs the question, why is the structure so? I mean, 99% of the workforce must be handling a larger chunk of the work, right? There must be an alternate explanation of why the pay disparity exists.

Well, an argument can be made that the CEO started (or inherited) the company, and hence gets paid the highest. However, comparing the amount of work being done by the collective workforce vs the C-Suite, I’m pretty sure the volume of the many outweighs the volume of the few.

Let’s compare hours as well. The average employee in India works around 47.69 hours per workweek, compared to an average of 48.7 hours for a CEO. The difference per workweek is marginal, at best.

Then, why is it that the C-suite gets compensated more than most of the people in the workforce?

Well, maybe, it isn’t about the volume of work that, but the importance of the work they handle. The conclusion we can safely draw out of this situation is that someone who does important work gets the higher reward.

There is something to be learnt and implemented in our personal lives as well.

Now I can imagine people mumbling, “what does all of this have to do with the price of tea in China?”. Businesses are very different than our normal, regular lives. How can we draw a parallel from something as robust and well structured as a large company into our lives?

The C-Suite sets up the strategy or said in simpler terms, the intention for the organisation. And what we have forgotten in this hustle filled world is

Intention almost always precedes deliberate action.

Abraham Lincoln famously said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This is not by accident. Except for the first few weeks of his presidency, Lincoln was very mindful of the intentions he set for his role as the leader of the now biggest superpower in the world.

Intentional living has great benefits, and there is plenty of evidence around us; benefits like reduced stress and anxiety levels, increased productivity and an overall general sense of happiness.

Now, coming back to the organisational narrative. You must have heard, “You are the CEO of your life”. Interestingly, you are the only employee of your own life as well, which we tend to overlook after receiving the great designation of a chief.

So, set your intentions as a CEO, and then act as a dedicated employee..

..because no one else will do it for you.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂