As we begin a new year, I want to thank all our government customers and RESPECT partners for their continued support of our mission - to employ people with disabilities. With your help, we will continue to provide the highest quality, competitively priced goods and services to government entities.

In thinking about our mission and how we interact with our partners and customers, I realized that even though we work in different organizations, we are not so different. As author Studs Turkel said, "work is a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread." We all want to find meaning and purpose in our work. We need to feel a sense of contribution. Naphtali Hoff recently wrote of a story told by John C. Maxwell. A man came across three bricklayers busy at work. The man asked the first bricklayer what he was doing. "I'm laying bricks," the worker replied. He then asked the second bricklayer the same question. "I'm putting up a wall," he said. He then asked the question to the third bricklayer. This response was: "I'm building a cathedral."

 

Here are three different workers doing the same task but for different reasons. The first was probably working strictly for the paycheck. The second was more motivated by a sense of completing the task and proud his bricklaying would result in the construction of a wall. But the third was driven by a desire to help create a structure that would bring glory beyond his years. He saw each brick as step towards that grand vision.

 

For those of us in government or in the nonprofit world, if we are motivated only by a paycheck, things can grow stale quickly. If we have a desire to make a difference, even the smallest contributions feel larger and more important.