When I was a child, the importance of togetherness was illustrated to me with a simple example. My mother would give me a single twig and ask me to break it, which I easily would. Then she’d give me two sticks and ask me to do the same, and with some difficulty, I could manage to break the pair. But then she’d give me a stack of sticks and ask me to have a go, and try as I might, I could never break them. Then she’d tell me, “Son, look; that’s how life is. In togetherness lies strength.”
Today, as an entrepreneur and leader, I myself have reams to write about the importance of togetherness. And that isn’t just societal harmony or general social cohesion whose importance I’m acutely aware of, but of collaboration at the workplace.
You see, a company is not made of similar people. Just as with any other congregation, a corporate setup too is a composition of diverse people with diverse minds and diverse backgrounds. We each have our individuality that makes us unique and different from everyone else. But we still find a point of convergence. And that is the jigsaw puzzle that a team is. And what’s better is that the pieces of this puzzle are not hard and set; they’re dynamic, changeable and soft, so that we can alter the outer edges of what we’re capable of, and mesh with each other superbly to make one cogent organism that surges ahead in the service of others.
And for that to happen, each of you needs to commit to going beyond yourself in the interest of a larger goal. Each of us is enough unto ourselves. But when we want to achieve something that none of us can do alone, we need to find commonality; that meshing edge which will complete the puzzle and make us indestructibly strong.
Have a cohesive month!
