The seed of opportunity

A successful businessman in East Asia has been in charge of a company for over 20 years and is looking to retire from his position. He holds a meeting in his office and invites many people from his company to join him.  Once everyone is in the room, he starts explaining why he has brought everyone together.

“Hello everyone, I have asked you all to join me today so I can tell you that I will be retiring in a year’s time. I would also like to mention that the person who will take my place is standing in this room.”

The men anxiously looked at one another and all stood up a little straighter to await their boss’ announcement, but instead he walks around the room and gives each person a seed.

“ Each of you has been given a seed—take it with you and plant it, make sure that you take care of it—one year from today, we will all meet here and I will decide who did the best on this assignment. Whoever does the best job, gets to take my position with the company. Good luck to you all.”

Everyone is very excited and can’t wait to tell their families about this amazing opportunity. One of the men went home and planted the seed, excited about the possibilities that can come with this potential job. He and his wife can finally afford to start a family and move into a new house, if he were to complete this assignment to his boss’ satisfaction.  Everyday, the man watered the pot and made sure that it got enough sunlight for it to grow, but days and weeks went by without any progress.

Months pass and everyone at the office is bragging about their beautiful plants, but the man is embarrassed that his plant hasn’t even grown a little.  The man still did as he was told and took care of the pot of dirt that held his seed. On the night before the big meeting he spoke to his wife about this problem.

“I don’t know what is wrong but I think that this plant is defective, it won’t grow even though I try everything I can to give it the care that it needs. I’ve come to the conclusion that I will lose this opportunity if I don’t get a different plant. Everyone at work already has beautiful plants and mine hasn’t even grown!”

His wife looks at him lovingly and says, “You have tried your hardest and done everything the boss asked of you, be truthful and show him what happened.”

The next day, the man went into the office and saw that everyone had a beautiful plant beside them—large flowers and ferns grew everywhere. Embarrassed, he stood next to his plant while others laughed at his misfortune.

The boss walked in a moment later and greeted everyone with a smile; he then proceeded to look around at everyone’s plants before he returned to the front of the room.

“Thank you all for bringing in these beautiful plants, it seems that you have all taken care of them well. I would however like to speak with one individual, the gentleman in the back of the room. Please bring your pot and come to the front.”

The man walked up to his boss like a child waiting to be admonished.  He placed the flowerpot in front of his boss and lowered his head in shame while others around him tried to hold in their laughter.

“ Congratulations, you are the one who will be taking my position here!” said the boss.

The laughter instantly died away and everyone looked shocked, including the man with the empty flowerpot.

Their boss continued on “I gave each and everyone of you a seed a year ago today. Each of those seeds was cooked and could not have possibly grown to become these plants that are before you. I value the truth and I know that I can trust someone who isn’t afraid of being honest.  I choose for him to take over my position, because I know he will do the job correctly and with integrity.”

The moment that all of the other people decided to disregard the instructions given by their boss and try to fool the system for a ‘quick victory’ was the moment that integrity was thrown out the window. There are times in our lives when we have to make decisions of whether we do something the right way or the wrong way, it isn’t up until we imagine our success do we understand the importance of integrity.  It is better to have integrity than to have a victory that is based on dishonesty, because then it isn’t really a victory.