Who are you creating value for?

When you work at a bank, who are you creating value for? Your customers? Eh.. not really. Where does the money come from that pays your salary?

When you work at the Gap, who do you create value you for? The company and the customer. Where this gets messy is when you think about what needs to happen in order for you to create more value.

How do you create more value at the Gap? You sell more stuff. You make displays look nicer. You make people want new things more. You encourage consumerism.

The question is, do these things align with your value system?

If you are a marketer for and iPhone case company, success looks like more people knowing about your product and thus more sales. You create more value by achieving this success, but is it worth it? Have you made the world a better place or have you just increased your salary?

It’s not inherently wrong to do something that doesn’t make the world a better place. We all need to pay the bills at some point. But when you’re at the beginning of your career, when you’re about to decide what to do, why don’t we pick an industry that makes the world better?

Social enterprises still pay employees. Maybe not as much as they pay on Wall Street, but it’s still a salary and more importantly, it’s a passion.

The question is who are you creating value for? Really think about this. Trace it back more than one step and find at the end of the day, the person who is going to take home the value.