It’s a great skill to put straight “what you are doing and how’s it going to help?”

Deborah DiSanzo, now the CEO of Philips Healthcare and erstwhile Executive of  Hewlett Packard, was working on an incredibly complex system that was designed to deal with operating room procedures.
Bill Hewlett came to visit, and he asked to her, “So, what does this do?
She said, “Oh, it’s the most incredible technology and it’s really amazing.”
He quipped, “No, I mean what does it do?
She replied, “Well, it uses ideas to bring information. “
He asked with dissatisfaction, “But, what is it doing?”
Finally, after the fourth time, he said it very loud and sharply, “What does it do? “
And in desperation, Deborah said, “It saves lives.”
He said, okay, carry on. That’s a wonderful illustration of what it means to think about the end product of what you’re doing, not about how hard you worked at it, and the activities you’re going through.