There’s an interesting article in the Winter 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review entitled “The Importance of Meaningful Work.”  The author is Christopher Michaelson, an assistant professor of ethics and law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I recommend the article to you, as well as the journal itself, and I’m not going to recap it here, but I would like to focus on one thing that I find interesting, though not surprising.

Basically, undergraduate and graduate business students were asked three questions (which I will paraphrase) along the following lines: (1) What do you think your job will be a year after you leave the business school?  (2) What kinds of jobs would you say contribute most to society (or to a  “general well-being”)?  (3) What would you really like to be doing in 10 years, i.e., what’s your dream job?

In general, the answers to the three questions tended not to overlap.  In other words, what they want to do, what they think would be socially responsible to do, and what they plan to do are all different.

Let’s shelve the “socially responsible” thing for the time being.  That’s a whole different discussion.

Let’s focus on the basic disconnect between what you want to do and what you plan to do.  What’s the problem?  Why not pursue your dreams?

It’s probably a matter of being pragmatic and giving up in the face of heavy odds.  After all, many of the dream jobs were things like professional athlete, film maker, etc.  I guess people think “I’d never be able to do that, so I’ll just settle for something less.”

Another dream bites the dust.

It reminds me of what Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter say in Rich Dad Poor Dad.  People avoid risks, they settle for less, they want security – being average is okay.

If that’s how you really feel, that’s okay.  Really.  That’s what 99% of us end up doing. I’ve spent over three decades working on computers.  But I never wanted to work on computers – not really.  I wanted to be an astronomer.  I wanted to be a CFO.  I wanted to be president!  Those were my dream jobs.  But I took what I could get (and I am very grateful to IBM for hiring me when no one else would).  But, honestly, I’ve spent a lifetime second guessing myself.  I can still remember the moment when I said to myself, “Enough.  Just get a job and get your life started.”

Dale Callahan and I take a personal interest in everyone who comes through the IEM Program at UAB.  We try to find out what their dreams are – or help them find out – and then just help them explore the possibility of pursuing that dream.  We can’t just snap our fingers and make things happen, obviously.  But of those 99 people out of 100 who just give up on their dream, I’d like to give them another chance to think about it – maybe we can cut that number to 98% or 97%.

Some of us were too quick to let our dreams go.  Maybe we can help a few people hold onto their dreams just a little bit longer.