What can I do to help you?

A Kenyan national,Ms  Withira Wainana,81,is helped after exercising her right to vote during the 2017 General Election in Kiambu County in Thika , Kenya,in August this year.PHOTO|AFP

What you need to know:

We go through most of our careers focused on what we can do to better circumstances around ourselves, but the question we should be asking more of is “what can I do for you?”

Martin Luther King Jr once said life’s most urgent and persistent question is “What are you doing for others?” Though this question was posed many decades ago, it is still valid and persistent today.

We go through most of our careers focused on what we can do to better circumstances around ourselves, but the question we should be asking more of is “what can I do for you?”

How many times have we encountered circumstances,where our leaders or colleagues have asked this question? For most of us perhaps the answer is never. The question that we seem to ask most often is ‘what can you do for me?’ Yet, our productivity would benefit and spike if we had more of those around us seeking to help and contribute to making progress easier and faster.

One of the values that I find most attractive in my current service is the network’s commitment to seeking ways in which solutions to problems that are globally troubling us can be found. In essence, the perennial drive revolves around the question how can the network help make lives of people around the world better? This commitment to focusing on “what can I do for you?” has a magnetic like power that draws positive contributions to the various causes. I cannot fail to add my belief that this focus is drawn directly from His Highness The Aga Khan’s enduring commitment to common good and enriching the lives of people around the globe. It is truly admirable and very motivating for those of us, who serve in various institutions that fall in the ambit of His Highness.

Now one may argue that in your circumstances you are too small and too little to make a difference, but I am emboldened and encouraged by Prof Wangari Mathai’s story of the hummingbird and it’s endeavour to repeatedly carry drops of water from a stream to the forest in its little beak to put out the forest fire. The story of the hummingbird is, but a story however it makes a powerful point that, if the hummingbird with it’s little capacity did better than the king of the jungle in the particular story, what stops you from following the same footsteps?

Retired President Barack Obama in a recent forum organised by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation addressing the ‘Goalkeepers’ make a crucial point, when he said we often underrated the value of better. He reminded us that better was good any day because better meant progress.

Theodore Roosevelt said in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

If we must endeavour to always do our bit however small, the question becomes how comes we find that we still suffer from paralysis of doing nothing? Is it because we are so afraid of doing the wrong thing? Or is it because we are so focused on “me” to have time to think about “other”?

There are multiple reasons that may bring this paralysis, but the undeniable fact is that we are all better, when we focus more on what we can do to help because in so doing we collectively progress and become better!

In so doing, we embody values that necessitate a focus on ‘all’ as opposed to ‘one’ and in the long run sustainable gains.

How can we then break the paralysis and contribute more so, when we feel like we are just a little me, with a little beak, how can we possibly extinguish the forest fire?

Well, I humbly submit a few ideas:

Crucial is a paradigm shift to the belief like Obama that better is good. Little gains accumulate and consolidate to become huge steps. Great initiatives like crowd funding are informed by this principle that numerous small contributions amount to big changes.

Be ready to roll up your sleeves. The progress we desire in and for each other comes from each one of us being willing to step up, get our hands dirty and do our bit. It is true that opportunity always comes dressed in overalls.

A persistent and committed focus on the common good requires evaluating our actions and contributions against the test of what is best for society and the community around us.

Finally, we can practise asking the question ‘what can I do to help you?’ in a genuine manner, where we truly look to contribute and focus on ‘other’.

The author is a senior manager in the Human Resources Department, East Africa Aga Khan University.