In conversations over the last week, I’ve been shocked to discover how many of my friends hate their jobs. And I don’t mean vaguely dislike. I mean hate. With a passion.

A small percentage, however, are thrilled with what they’re doing. By and large, those happy few actually have worse jobs than the unhappy ones. Lower pay, less respect, more grunt work. The difference, it seems, is that my happy friends have a sense of where they want to be and how their job is a step in the right direction.

One happy friend, for example, recently realized that his dream in life was to become a restaurateur. Problematically, his experience in the field was mainly limited to occasionally eating out. He left a cushy investment banking job and is now working as a backup maitre d’ and glorified busboy. His hours are terrible and his pay a small fraction of what he made before. But he’s thrilled.

The rest of my happy friends fit the same mold: they’ve spent serious time soul-searching, achieved some initial clarity to their dreams, and taken concrete (if perhaps trivial ) action.

Tritely enough, they’ve followed their hearts. It’s clich

Today, in my pile of incoming junk mail, I noticed a ‘leadership skills’ newsletter featuring the oft-told story of the starfish-saving boy. For the sake of those spared years of ‘professional development’ seminars, the story in a nutshell:

Man walks onto the beach and notices a storm has washed ashore thousands of starfish. A boy is on the beach, picking up the starfish one at a time and hurling them back into the water. “There are too many starfish,” says the man. “You’ll never make a difference.” Boy throws another starfish, then replies “it made a difference for that one.”

Thrillingly inspirational, I know. And repeated perseveratively in leadership courses the world over. Frankly, though, I think the story sucks. It doesn’t demonstrate leadership at all; it demonstrates the shortfall of good intentions without innovation and organization. A real leader wouldn’t be standing on the beach chucking starfish. He’d be at the local diner, pulling people from their breakfasts and directing them to the beach, getting enough tossers involved to save every last echinoderm.

Of course, a real innovator would save himself and the breakfasters a bunch of effort. He’d rent a bulldozer and drive down the beach, rescuing all the starfish in one fell scoop.