Just about lunch time today, one of my friends from high school time sent me a short message to have lunch together with some other friends at Lau’s Kopitiam. The name of the place reminds me about a subject that for some weeks ago has been in the back of my mind that I would like to write and share with you readers when I sat in another outlet of Lau’s Kopitiam waiting to give management coaching session; it’s about coffee and our life.
Coffee, just like many other agricultural commodities, has been traded in many different forms. We seldom realize that similar to coffee and other commodities, we have often just simply priced our life at the lowest value without a desire to make the best out of it. Coffee beans when made into instant coffee, its selling price would be up to 20 times the price of its original form, beans. At the farm like many other agricultural products, coffee is being sold in tons. At retail stores or supermarkets, it is being sold in kilograms. But when coffee is made into instant coffee, people buy it in many different bottle sizes or even in sachets which normally measured in grams. And at places like Lau’s Kopitiam or Starbucks where they sell coffee by cup, the price will even soar further.
Similar to coffee, steel increases in value as it is converted into different shapes. The same piece of steel converted into engine block of a car will have much higher value and when it is molded into parts of expensive watches then its price would escalate even higher.
Why people spend so much for a cup of coffee or even for having expensive watches? Like the value of coffee bean or iron after some processing steps escalates considerably, what can we learn as human being from these two examples? As employees we can just deliver the standard work required. As business people we can just provide the products and services similar to others. As a person, have we considered some processes that are required to make our presence indeed more meaningful to our loved ones and also the community in general? The value of our talents depends upon what you do with them. Let’s be prepared to go through some processes that would make us not just like the coffee bean but very much higher so that other people could sense really different experiences and values from either being our customers, clients or friends.
5/12/2010
Husen Suprawinata
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1 comment:
Nice logic. Very reasonable and a self-motivating article. Thanks for the sharing...
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