Do work that excites you

Two years ago, when I was at the crossroads in my career and wondering what to do next and how to choose a job out of the offers that came my way, I approached several friends for advice. Many of my friends responded wonderfully and gave a lot of useful guidance. But, still I was finding it difficult to arrive at a decision. Then, a senior and experienced friend told me something which I remember till date. She simply said, "Do work that excites you". No permutations and combinations of what might happen in future or what is more relevant to the community or which field is likely to have a lot of scope in future or which job is likely to pay more. Just a simple and sensible way to take a decision in the development sector.Two years down the line, I am so glad that I took the advice and followed it.

But, the reason for writing this note is not to talk about my career. It is to try and explain why it is important to do work that excites you, especially in the development sector. Issues in the development sector are complex and require a of perseverance and creativity to address them. Things are the way they are because the people involved in a situation think and work in a certain manner. So, for change to happen, this established pattern has to be broken and something new must be introduced. And this new element must last otherwise the situation would return to the original state after the new element is gone.

Therefore it is important for development workers to work with the current situation as well as challenge it in substantial ways so that the situation reaches a higher level of development and continues to stay there. This may require new institutions to establish a new marketing system that challenges the pattern of exploitation of primary producers or an institution that creates a level playing ground for local communities to effectively prevent corporate interests from taking away their rights.

At a personal level, it is important for development workers to have some special quality - say entrepreneurial talent, or tremendous will or perseverance to go the extra mile or a never-say-die attitude or a strong conviction - something different that will introduce change in the situation in which they are working. That's one reason why development workers who are excited about their jobs probably have a better chance at developing the communities they work with than people who work with one eye on the clock and another on the calendar(salary date!!) or something else. As the Chinese say, one man fighting with conviction is equivalent to ten thousand men fighting for a salary.

NGOs and The need to excel

Every job has certain tags attached with it. Thus, a software engineer is obviously well educated, smart and intelligent and has a good life - friends, parties, work, foreign trips etc. A government officer - works as per rules, comes back home on time, hands are clean or not(You know what I mean) etc etc. However, when it comes to someone working in an NGO, you face all sorts of impressions - Adhe NGO chor aur baaki kaam chor (Roughly translated Half the NGOs thieves and the rest useless).

It is pointless to even try and defend NGOs. My argument is not that NGOs are as good or as bad as Software companies or Government Offices. WHat is crucial to note is that there is very little structure or rules that define an NGO, unlike a software company or Government office which have well defined structures and work as per certain rules. Registering an NGO does not tell you what to do, how to do or anything of that sort. It is entirely left to the people in the NGO to define their own rules and live by them.

The most important aspect in NGOs is freedom to be anything. Thus, there is a wide spectrum of NGOs from the extremely corrupt to the extremely honest , totally useless to the very effective and all shades and colors in between.

What is important for people working in NGOs to understand that unlike people in software companies or Government offices, they dont have the luxury of a good brand name. It is half due to people's tendency to generelise what cannot be generalised and and the reality that NGOs inherently offer very little structure and rules for you to afford to relax.

In this situation, people working in NGOs need to apply their skills fully to their work and aspire to do the best continuously. In my opinion, Only excellence will lead to satisfaction and fulfillment of what one set out to do by deciding to work in an NGO.