Guest Blog: Gross National Happiness by John O’Brien, CEO, NashTech
Hi everyone,
I am the CEO of NashTech, and joined Nash Squared a few months ago.
It has been a great experience so far – including two trips to Vietnam, one to India and making new connections with many incredible new colleagues around the world.
We are currently focused on building on the wonderful business that NashTech already is to drive future growth based on an updated business strategy.
I am delighted to be guest ‘under blogger’ for this week, and in the spirit of previous blogs, rather than focus on technology or business which is well served elsewhere, I thought I would offer some different food for thought.
Gross National Happiness
Bhutan is a small Himalayan kingdom situated between India and China. I was fortunate enough to visit there recently – it is a relatively short trip from Delhi... into a truly different and enchanting world.
Bhutan is a place where they have a mission to enhance ‘Gross National Happiness’ – measured by a survey of all inhabitants every few years. They call this ‘GNH’, a similar acronym but somewhat different to the much more commonly used ‘hard measure’ of ‘GNP’ or ‘Gross National Product’.
What does this mean to us?
Well of course ‘hard’ measures matter; as a growing business Nash Squared has clients to win and delight, bills to pay, pay cheques to write – you can’t run a business without that. But ultimately what drives us is something beyond this, which we shouldn’t lose sight of.
This reminded me of a quote from Robert Kennedy, speaking in 1968, “…Yet the measure of Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion… it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
I think that this is a wonderful sentiment and worth reflecting on from time to time.