START AS SOON AS YOU CAN

There is no reason for you to wait until you are a senior leader to make a difference outside your organization. Just as becoming a values-based leader is not limited to people with certain job titles, you do not have to wait until you are at a higher level in the organization to make a difference. People in junior positions are able to make a significant impact when they champion a cause—for example, organizing a food drive or rallying support among their teammates for a volunteer project in the community. With their passion and commitment, junior people can inspire others—including senior team members who wish they still had that enthusiasm.

All too often, however, people who are just starting their careers say to themselves, “Boy, I'm pretty busy right now. I'm finishing up graduate school, I'm in a training program, and I'm in a serious relationship. It will be much easier for me to get involved later in my career when things calm down.” The fact is, things are never going to calm down. When you go from managing two or three people to hundreds or even thousands, life will become more, not less, complex. For a senior person, the demands can be relentless: a meeting every fifteen minutes, frequent travel, and a broad scope of responsibilities. Junior team members who make a commitment to social responsibility early on will carry that priority forward. As they progress in their careers, making a difference will be part of what they do as values-based leaders.

Admittedly, as a junior person you may not be involved in a cause at a leadership level. Instead of being invited to become a board member, you might be a volunteer, or asked to join a junior or associate board or task force. Your contribution is still very important. The sooner you get involved, the more you'll learn about how boards work and develop your network. Many of the people who today are chairing boards or running a foundation started as apprentice or associate members. Through the process, you'll learn more about both the problems and the possible solutions that are most effective.

If you still need inspiration for contributing early on in your career, consider the story of Andrew Youn, who graduated from Kellogg in 2006 and whom I mentioned in the Introduction. With his education and experience, he could have easily landed a job at a major firm. Instead, Andrew decided to take his Kellogg MBA and go to Kenya, where he founded One Acre Fund. His mission was to help local farmers increase their crop yields and sell their harvests at better prices. To prevent farmers from having to pay exorbitant rates to transport their goods to market, One Acre Fund bought a fleet of trucks. In very real and tangible ways, One Acre Fund is helping improve the lives of the farmers in Kenya on a continuous basis.

What I find so inspiring about Andrew's story is not just the tremendous impact he and his organization are making every day, but that Andrew did not wait. He did not say to himself, “I'll go work for a big company for five years and then pursue my dream.” The dream came first and became his vocation.

Unless you make social responsibility a priority early in your career, you will find it difficult to focus on it in a significant way later on. It won't make it onto your list of life buckets, as we discussed in Chapter Two. But if you start your career by making time for projects and issues about which you feel most passionate, you will most likely continue to do so as you progress in your career.