斯考特·格里菲斯

Zipcar董事長兼首席執行官

????我是癌癥康復者。十五年前，我一結束與醫生的通話。獲悉自己組織切片檢查的結果后（格里菲斯被診斷為2期霍奇金淋巴瘤），我給我哥哥打了電話，告訴他結果不好，我需要做9個月的輻射和化療。他說：“我知道你能戰勝病魔，完全康復。”但“你必須想想，經過所有這些后，你希望自己成為什么樣的人。想想等到這一切結束的時候，你已經是另外一個人了?！碑斠晃患彝コ蓡T說出這些時，至少就我而言，我是非常認真地對待的。這個人對我的了解，幾乎無人能及。如果你比較敏感，你可能會說，“我現在這樣有什么不好嗎？為什么等這一切結束時，我要變個樣?”但我的理解是，這是一件改變人生的事情。一個人在很年輕的時候就被推到了懸崖的邊緣，在這之后，你想怎樣實現你的人生？

????當時我住在波士頓，在從貝恩資本（Bain）剝離出來的Parthenon Group做咨詢工作，單身，大概35歲。像大多數非常注重職業發展道路的人一樣，我已經上完了商學院，我的職業道路從各方面來看都非常完美。我沒有回家，去了阿斯彭滑雪。我想，當時我的人生確實沒有什么使命感。哥哥一語驚醒夢中人。我把它寫了下來，越來越篤信，自此人生應該完全不同。

????它敦促我建立了一套個人的核心價值觀。我開始關注周圍，自問我身邊的這些人有我這樣的激情嗎？有我這樣的價值觀嗎？我開始自問，我加入俱樂部或做這些事情的理由——我先看什么文章，為什么？我開始進行內心的反省，決定離開咨詢行業。我希望回到腳踏實地的工作。我總是對交通、科技和城市有著一股激情。我在匹茲堡長大，我上中學時這個城市簡直是個災難。我開始對“城市為什么會變成現在的樣子”這個問題非常感興趣。我想，我能不能找一份工作，融匯我對科技、對顛覆性商業模式以及對城市的激情，將所有這些都放到里面？當我進入Zipcar時，我感覺這就是那份工作。就是我要找的工作。這與我哥哥的建議或許是殊途同歸。當我從癌癥中康復時，我工作以外的很多事情都已經發生了變化。但將激情與職業聯系起來，一旦你真正這樣做，這個信念就變成了你的生命。這是為什么每天早上我依然精神抖擻地從床上爬起來。

Scott Griffith

Chairman and CEO of Zipcar

????I'm a cancer survivor. Fifteen years ago, I had just gotten off the phone with the doctor who did the biopsy. [Griffith was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkin's lymphoma.] I called my brother and told him the results were bad and that I would need nine months of radiation and chemotherapy. He said, "I know you'll fight this and you'll survive." But, he said, "you have to think about the kind of person you want to be when you're done with this experience. Think about coming out of this a different person than you go in." When a family member says something like that, at least in my case, I take it a lot more seriously. Here's someone who knows me like almost no one else. If you have thin skin, you might say, "What's wrong with me now -- why do I need to be a different person when I'm done with this?" But the way I internalized it was, This is a life-changing event, you've been forced at a very young age to go to the edge of the abyss, and what do you want to do with your life after this?

????I was living in Boston at the time, doing consulting at a Bain spinoff called the Parthenon Group. I was single, in my mid-thirties. Like most people really focused on a professional track, I had been through business school and by all measures was having a pretty good career path. I was skiing in Aspen instead of flying home. I don't think there was really any mission to my life. What my brother said to me was this lightning-rod moment. I remember writing it down, and it just started to sink in more and more that life should be different after this.

????It forced me to develop a set of my own personal core values. I just started looking around. I asked myself, Do the people around me share my passions? My values? I started asking myself the reason I joined clubs or the things I read -- what article was I reading first and why? I started doing some soul searching and decided to leave consulting. I wanted to get back to real jobs. I always had a passion for transportation and technology and cities. I grew up in Pittsburgh, and when I was going to high school the city was a disaster. I became very interested in how cities get that way. I thought, What if I can find a job that would combine my passions for technology and game-changing business models and cities and put that all together? So when I stumbled into Zipcar, I was like, This is the job. This is the one I'm looking for. It sort of doubled back to that comment my brother made. There are a lot of things outside my work that have changed since I went through the cancer, but this idea that you connect your passions to your career -- when you truly do that, it becomes your life. It's why I still pop out of bed every morning.