Ideas to Execution through Sacrifice...

The road to success has many hurdles, they say. It should be clear to anyone having tried to do something on their own that most of these hurdles cannot be solved through money or time alone... they need something deeper and more profound... sacirifices...

The path from ideas to execution goes through sacrifices. As I discussed in my previous post -- sustainability is not just about being economically or environmentally sustainable. It is about being able to sustain through the seemingly endless sacrifices that one has to make to achieve the vision and goal at hand...

I read this article today morning. Moses touches a very deep issue.

""However, at the end of the day, the project didn't launch because no one from the management team wanted to move full-time to the region to live among the people the NGO wanted to serve. In other words, no one wanted to do the heavy lifting of starting a BoP venture. The management team thought, incorrectly, that it could simply manage the venture from the States – parachuting in and out of the region multiple times a year. There were a variety of reasons for this approach: family, comfort, lifestyle, and finances – to name a few.

The idea was great, but the commitment wasn't there to make it a reality.

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Success at the BoP has its costs. The challenge to many of us, myself included, is whether we are committed and willing to give up many of our comforts in order to live with the very people we are trying to empower.""

We all want to be in our comfort zones and help the world around us. Of course, it seems stupid to endanger ourselves in the quest to help others... maybe, we, who live in the comforts find it hard to give them up because we are afraid of the unknown... maybe we are just plain lazy... or maybe since we do not get any direct benefits from these initiatives, we do not want to sacrifice... maybe it is all for name/fame/money... maybe I am being too emotional and it is just a one-off case Moses quoted...

Would someone who directly benefits from such ideas be willing to sacrifice more than anyone who does not see direct benefits accruing? Maybe... would someone experienced help me understand this?

All this is not just about money or charity. Many of the initiatives and ideas that we can think about, do not and cannot succeed with a hands-off, top-down approach. We need to get our hands and maybe our clothes dirty as well... this is a fight against poverty and disease... this is a fight against the ills of the world... we want to create a better world to live in... do we think that these evils will give in easily?