What Makes us Important

This post originally appeared at petechristianbooks.com

What makes us important is a lesson I learned early in my career.

It was a normal day at Air Products and Chemicals. I was in early like usual to get things done before most of my co-workers arrived. As I was tooling away, a good friend, Ravi stopped by. Ravi was an early-bird like me.

He asked me to stand up and come join him at the window. The flag pole was outside and the flag was at half-staff. Ravi asked me if I knew why. I didn’t, so he explained it to me. Leonard Poole, the founder of Air Products had died. In memorium, the company lowered the flag to half-staff.

I never met Mr. Poole, but I knew he had built a multi-billion dollar company from nothing.

By the time I started working for the company he was not involved in the operations. Despite this, his presence was always there. Everybody knew about him and what he had accomplished.

Ravi pointed out to me that despite Mr. Poole’s passing, the company would go on. Everyone would show up to work. They would do what they normally did. We would continue to make air products, chemicals, and the equipment that made and stored them. We would do all this, even though Mr. Poole was no longer around.