Successful, or significant? The question can be put to just about any human endeavor.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management

"MR. BIG, YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED A LOT IN your life and with your business. No question, you are financially successful. But ask yourself: Are you financially significant? Would you like to be financially significant? What would that mean to you?"

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I was having lunch with a young man, Brett Derosier, because we have a common interest in airplanes. Our conversation wandered as these things often do, to each of our businesses. His has to do with helping high net-worth individuals manage their particular minefields. He told me that the above concept was one that often motivated such people to do great things ... build hospitals and universities, create scholarships, fund museums, etc.

One can be financially successful without being financially significant. The only way to be significant is to give something back, to help someone else be better off than they would have been.

Not very many of us will struggle with turning our financial success into significance. But we can certainly apply this idea to other areas in which we would like to be "significant."

Management: A successful manager is one who runs a group that makes its numbers, is efficient, has below-average turnover, is accurately budgeted, has a good grasp of the future and has a plan for it.

A significant manager does all this but also gets the best possible work out of the people in his/her charge by leading them to become their best selves. This can only be accomplished by taking the time to find out the individual goals and aspirations of each member of the team and framing their job so that they can realize their goals along with those of the company. Those being managed get as much or more than the company.

A significant manager also will create a model for management excellence that lasts for years to come in the company.

Sales: In addition to those things...