19. Great work is work that makes a difference in people's lives, writes David Sturt, Executive Vice President of the O. C. Tanner Institute, in his book Great Work:How to Make a Difference people Love. Sturt insists, however, that great work is not just for surgeons or special-needs educators or the founders of organizations trying to eliminate poverty (贫穷)in sub-Saharan Africa. The central theme of Great Work, according to Sturt, is that anyone can make a difference in any job. It's not the nature of the job, but what you do with the job that matters. To prove this, Sturt tells the story of an excellent hospital cleaner named Moses.
In a building filled with doctors and nurses doing great life=saving work, Moses the cleaner makes a difference. Whenever he enters a room, especially a room with a sick child, he impresses both patients and parents with his optimism (乐观) and calm, introducing himself to the child and, Sturt writes, speaking "some words about light and sunshine and making things clean. "He praises on any progress he sees day by day ("you're sitting up today, that's good. ") Moses is no doctor and doesn't pretend (假装) to be, but he has witnessed hundreds of sick children getting well from painful surgery, and parents take comfort from his encouraging words. For Matt and Mindi, whose son McKay was bom with only half of a heart, Moses became a close friend. As Sturt explains, "Moses took his born talents (his sensitivity) and his practical wisdom (from years of hospital experience) and brought them into a powerful form of patient and family support that changed the critical﹣care experience for Mindi, Matt and little McKay."
How do people like Moses do great work when so many people just work?That was the central question raised by Sturt and his team at the O. C. Tanner Institute, a consulting (咨询) company specialized (专营) in worker recognition (认可) and rewards system.
O. C. Tanner carried out a complete Great Work study that included surveys to 200 senior executives (高管), a further set of surveys to 1, 000 managers and workers working on projects, a study of 1. 7 million accounts of award-winning work (in the form of nominations for awards from corporations (公司) around the world), and one-on-one interviews with 200 different makers. The results of the study showed that those who do great work refuse to be stopped by the constraints of their jobs. They are especially able to think about their jobs without any boundaries, they don't consider their jobs as a list of tasks and responsibilities (责任) but see their jobs as chances to make a difference. No matter, as Moses so ably exemplifies(例证), what that job may be.