Love your job but never fall in love with your company: I love this quote by Narayana Murthy that talks about our commitment to the job. Most times, we tend to associate more meaning with our jobs than it deserves. Our lives are richer and deeper than just a job or profession. It helps us find meaning and purpose for our time, but we ought to find a way to create boundaries.
We need to ask this question very consciously – do we have to fall in love with a company to do a great job? If you look at it from the perspective of a company – we are paid to perform a job. This job is measured by our outputs and the results that we deliver. Whether we fall in love with our job or not is immaterial to the company. In here lies an important point about not falling in love with the company.
Love your job but never fall in love with your company – Meaning
Jobs are fun and I’m guilty of falling in love with the job and company. I believe the idea of company loyalty has moved beyond one company for life to something skill-based. If we continuously update our skills and improve – it creates a demand-supply network in the market. In a simple economic sense, as long as you are good and have a relevant skillset, you’ll find a job. The best part of this thinking is that you’re not tied to a company or its limitations – but to your capabilities and can search for what works best for you.
Love your job, but never fall in love with your company because you never know when the company stops loving you
Narayana Murthy
The point in this quote is not about hating the company or anything of that nature. It simply is a way to embrace the reality that loyalty to a job might give better returns than that to a company. It gives you I believe that’s the beauty of this quote when Narayana Murthy says – love your job but never fall in love with your company. A company is too large an entity to influence sometimes. The crux of this quote is in focusing inward to make sure that you keep improving your value and contribution.
With your increased abilities, you can only make yourself more indispensable to the company. I’m not saying that you should quit your company, but build your capabilities to such a level that you’re not dependent on the company alone. In other words, you’re more dependent on yourself than the company.
Why should you not love your company?
The company’s mandate is to perform well and return value to shareholders. It is too difficult for a company to be employee-specific while managing the demand from stakeholders, giving higher profit margins etc. In such a case, even if you are the best performer, the company might not be able to do justice to your contributions. Hence the statement – love your job but don’t fall in love with the company. The moral of this quote is that your job is more dependable than the company. The most important or simple reason for this is that your job can be replicated elsewhere. This job alliance protects you in case the company isn’t doing well.
It feels a bit strange coming from a person who runs a business empire – Narayana Murthy. A natural inclination for someone like that would be to ensure there is employee loyalty and people falling in love with the company. But a true leader considers the employee first and then the company.
If you’re in a leadership role, you must recognise that some people outgrow roles. If a company cannot provide these opportunities, then the leader must encourage the employee to find other opportunities. This is just about being fair to the person you manage.
Loving work quotes
Loving work quotes talk about finding joy in professional life. These quotes remind us of the importance of pursuing work by our passion. Hating our job is one of the worst feelings since we spend so much time at work. Won’t it be magical if we love our work? These quotes about loving work talk about matching our interests to the job that we do.
I’m not entirely sure anymore whether loving work is the best way to go. Latest research has shown that maybe it is better to have work and things you love as two different things. Think about this – if the things you love becomes work, they stop being fun. Having said that we should enjoy what we do atleast to some extent or else it is very hard to find motivation to keep doing it right? Here are some loving work quotes to try and inspire us in this journey
Loving work quotesChoose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer
“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Mark Twain
“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Work is love made visible.” – Khalil Gibran
“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot
“Choose a career you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
“Success is not in what you have, but who you are.”- Bo Bennett
“When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” – Marc Anthony
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I think that it’s partially true. Because without loving your company how you can be a loyal, devoted and valuable resource. Love doesn’t mean any lifetime contract but still it make people mind to always think about there selves only not about company or organization who provided them opportunity, learning and remuneration.
That is so very true and why not it comes from a person with vision. In a corporate environment today, an employee and the organisation share a mutual relationship to deliver a job under a contract. One delivers and the other pays as long as that relation last and either one can terminate this as per the contract.
Gone are the days where one would think of retiring from the fist job and maybe the next generation gets into it like what we have seen in Bollywood movies.
Very interesting. I really like the representation in the form of a contract. There’s no concept of a lifetime job or company anymore. We work for a set of reasons – money, self actualisation and the joy we derive from the type of work we do. If company A does not provide this, there is a company B which can. Although companies don’t really enjoy this situation, it gives them enough motivation to treat their employees better. If they don’t , the employees have a lot of choice. If on the other hand there’s too much loyalty to a company, things can go awry when the company hits hard times or management changes or even goes through some financial struggles. Always a good choice to fend for ourselves and keep control within us. After all who cares better about us than our own selves?!
Can’t agree more, Give and Take is the way to go as long as it’s not one party who always gives and the other takes.
True Suman, I guess the company can always survive without a resource. If we treat the companies also as a resource with which we are fulfilling our goals, perhaps we are on an equal footing with them after all :)
I worked in the corporate world 8 years before taking the plunge into solopreneurship. I made the mistake of falling in love with the company instead of my job in my first job post MBA. I am glad that I moved on before I could become redundant after a change of my reporting authority
Thanks Sonia, nice to hear about your experience. I suppose these things are never easy. My previous stint was almost similar, it was an early stage company and I really liked it. But after a while it wasn’t doing much for my career. The company had me for its benefit, but the job wasn’t as exciting anymore nor was it fulfilling my needs. That led me to an MBA. Experiences have a nice way of offering us some great insight about ourselves. I’m glad to hear that you made a move when you did. It’s always easier to move forward from your own decision rather than a company offering a rude shock..
Curious to know though, what do you do in solopreneurship?
The company is the person who is heading it at a particular moment (Sadly the reality. Ideally it should be driven by corporate values) and his /her beliefs and priorities. Therefore the quote of Mr Murthy is spot on. You will do well instead to enhance your capabilities as a professional. which is more satisfying and lucrative in the long run….
You have a very strong point there Raj. It is unfortunately becoming an immediate manager. Although this is not the intention and there is supposed to be adequate flexibility that the company stays beyond a single person, it just is not as easy as it sounds.
An unfortunate thing with large companies is that people don’t seem to listen as often as they should. This makes them lose quite important resources. People have a lot of choices today. The company must strive to make the job interesting for them and do take some steps to keep the employee engaged and interested in their job. After all, their loyalty will be to what feeds their own personal goals. If the company fails to understand this, it starts losing its people right from the start. And in the end the company is left with a bunch of no good egoistic people who don’t have a lot in them to take the company forward.
This reminds me of a funny joke:
Finance Director: “Why are we spending so much money on training. What happens if these employees take all this training and leave?”
Manager: “Well, what happens if we don’t and they stay?”
That sums it up doesn’t it? People are very smart and clever. If you treat them right, they find reasons to stay. If not, they find reasons to leave. After all, not many people love a company for company’s sake anymore.