There is one story being spinning in my mind since past few days. I can’t remember getting this story from which source, either book or somewhere online but here is the story.

One day, in a small village, there is a father and his two sons, they have farm with goat.
Everyday they’re selling goat to the villager or whoever is willing to buy its product including milk and meat.

The business is good and growing fast.
His sons are both involve in the company as worker.
Both of them has been helping him since the beginning, and both are capable of running the business.
Until one day, he his health is failing, and he need to pass over the business to his son.

He decide to pass this company to his second son.
So, he called his elder son.

“Son, I have decided to give control of this company to your younger brother.”

The elder brother was furious and ask “Ok, but I want to know why you decided to give to him instead of me.”

The father said, “OK, if I explain you might not able to understand, let me demonstrate to you instead.”

So, he begin:
“We are having shortage of supply at the moment.
There might be a sudden surge of demand coming from the villager soon.
I want you to check from the nearby village’s farmer, if they have any extra goats. So we can be prepared.”

Come back to me after you’ve done.

So, the first son goes to next village and find one farmer that have goats in his farm.
“Do you have extra goats?”
The farmer replied :
“Yes, we have two extra goats in the barn at the moment.”
“Ok, thank you, that’s all I need to know.”

and he goes to the father.
Confident that he has achieved the mission. He said
“I’ve found out that the farmer in the nearby village got 2 extra goats.”

“Good job.”
Ok, let ask your younger to do exactly the same thing.
After explaining the same task to his younger brother, they both waited while his younger brother goes to the nearby village to check again.

After a while, his younger brother is back.
and he explain.
“Yes dad,I can confirm that the farmer in nearby village got extra 2 goats at this moment.
And the price of them is RM800 for each goat.
Once paid, we can just take the goat.
No need to book or anything.

But if we were to buy both of them the total price is RM 1500. And they’ll able to deliver to our home in just 30minutes using their cart.
We will not need to carry them ourselves.”

The younger brother then continue :
“And if we are not urgently need to get the goats now.
I think we better wait for next week to get this extra goats. According to the owner, they will be receiving more than 50 goats next week, when their other branch sending them re-supply.
They said if we can wait until new stock to arrive, they will be able to give us 10 goats with just RM 500 each.”

The father then replied:
“Excellent.”

And the father turns to his elder brother.
“Now, can you see why I am choosing him to lead the company?”

According to some research, the above scenarios can be related to our workplace today too. They’re two type of employee today. Most of them is having similar attitude as the elder brother, and we rarely found the one with younger brother’s attitude. And employers treasure and hold dearly for the 2nd type of employee.

We can choose to be either like the elder brother or the younger brother in every single task assigned to us by our superior.
Whoever that is, either our managers, our bosses, or even our clients.

From the perspective of elder brother before the enlightenment, his younger brother may just be “lucky”.
But in fact he know his younger brother is putting extra “efforts” to be lucky and thinking one step ahead of the game rather than delivering whatever minimum to satisfy the need of the job.

So, the take here is up to us, to decide which one we prefer to become.
Taking extra miles to deliver a great jobs in daily task does matters in a long run.

One wise man said “How you do ONE thing, is how you do EVERYTHING”.

Pick your destiny and START today !