Right now, and I’ve been watching all these people who say, you know, American workers are the hardest workers on the planet. Oh, come on. We’re not the hardest workers on the planet.
The only thing we’re best at is consumerism. We use up more of everything, of the world’s resources. We use up more of the world’s resources than anybody else, but we’re not the hardest workers.
Most people work just hard enough so they don’t get fired. And most companies pay you just enough so you won’t quit. That’s what it comes down to.
And that’s why we’re in part of the mess we’re in right now. We’ve set up unfair expectations of the people who work for us. We’ve told them they got to love what they do and be happy and passionate and all that.
No, folks, you just got to do what you’re hired to do. Now, that’s our fault because we didn’t tell them ahead of time what was expected of them. We didn’t manage to the expectation, and we didn’t let them feel the consequences of not delivering what we expect from them.
Next idea. We do people a grave disservice by telling them that work is anything but work. It’s a disservice to tell people that.
And so what we’ve done is we’ve created our own problem. We’ve told people that, and we’ve set up unfair expectations. We’ve told them that this is a great place to work.
We’re just one big happy family. Let me ask you this about your family. Is your family one big happy family? Or do you have that idiot brother-in-law that comes to Thanksgiving, you just go, holy crap, I wish he would just go away.
That’s probably what your family’s more like. Anytime I deal with somebody says, oh, we’re just one big happy family here at XYZ Corporation. You’re a mess, and I know it, and I can see it.
And chances are that guy doesn’t like his inbred cousin over there who sits in the next cubicle. You know, the reality of the situation is anybody who thinks that they work in a place where it’s one big happy family, they are delusional. The reality is we work with idiots every single day.
You know, my dad worked for Sears Roebuck for 47 years. That’s a long time. He made a deal with Sears Roebuck when he was 17 years old.
47 years, by the way, 17,000 days. This is the deal he made. I’ll show up with the work.
You show up with the money. For the next 47 years, Sears showed up with the money, which means he had to show up with work. That was the only deal he made.
It was a very simple deal. The deal based on integrity and honesty, and it didn’t matter whether he was happy or motivated or found his passion or his purpose. None of those things matter.
He was hired to work. He did. He worked every single day.
And yet, this is my point. Every single day, he worked with, for, and around idiots. Don’t you? Of course you do.
Every single day, he had customers who were idiots. Well, don’t you? Of course you do. The reality of every business is that we all work with idiots.
What we also have to understand is we’re the idiots. Sometimes we’re the idiots. That’s the key.
It doesn’t matter about all the people you work with. And that’s what I’m talking about. We’ve lost our focus.
We need to remember that we work for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to keep our company profitable. The way we keep our company profitable is to serve others well. The way we serve others well, the way we serve each other well, the way we serve our customers well is by, through hard work and delivering excellence at every opportunity.
You see how this all ties together and how really it is pretty simple? You see, we’ve lost the simplicity and we can’t. So, here’s some things I want to talk to you about. Some things that cover a wide variety of areas of business.
And here’s the first one. Results. I’ve already talked about accomplishment and all that sort of thing.
Results. Results are what you get to measure when you’re dealing with your people. You measure results, not whether you like them, but whether they deliver the results.
Your company is about results. If you’re not getting the results you want, you’ve got to figure out what’s keeping you from getting those results. You’re going to hear me say a lot through this series that my whole approach to business success and my whole approach to personal success, in fact, my whole approach to life is based on a very old joke.
The very old joke is this. You’ve heard it. Man goes into a doctor, says, Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
And the doctor says, don’t do that. All I ask is that you look at your business and determines what what hurts and then stop doing that. And one of the things that hurts you in your business is that you’ve lost focus.
You’ve lost priorities. You haven’t communicated effectively. You haven’t set high expectations, all the things we’ve talked about.
And you forgot that your business exists for one reason, and that’s results that make you more profitable. We got caught up in a lot of little things. So I want you to always be focused on results.
Results. Results. Results.
What are we getting done? And are our results making us more profitable? Next is this, is that we need to teach our people how to become invaluable. Right now, we have a lot of people losing jobs. Job losses are rampant.
And if you’re looking at a company, working in a company that might be downsizing, if you’re in an industry that’s in trouble, and a lot of people are, then you need to make yourself invaluable. You have to ask yourself every single day, what can I do to be amazing at what I do? That’s the best job security you can ever come up with. What can I do to make myself absolutely critical to the success of this organization? What can I do? And a janitor can do this.
A receptionist can do this. A warehouse person can do this. How can I make myself the kind of person that other people count on? The kind of person that my boss can’t live without.
The kind of person that my co-workers go, I’ve got to have them. I count on them. The kind of person that the customer says, I need that person within your company.
What can you do? Chances are it’s more than you’re doing right now. So you have to ask yourself every single day, what can I do to be more amazing at what I do in order to become invaluable? Because the more invaluable you become to your company, the better job security you will have. The next thing is this.
It’s called teamwork. In my book, it’s called Work for a Reason. I have a chapter about teamwork.
It’s called Teamwork Doesn’t Work. And teamwork doesn’t work. And I know that bothers some of you because you’re sitting around probably right now with your little team and you just love your little team.
Well, let me tell you right now, teamwork doesn’t work. Let me tell you why it doesn’t work and you will agree with me. Teamwork doesn’t work because somebody on the team isn’t going to work.
And as soon as one person on the team doesn’t work, then the team didn’t accomplish anything. What caused the job to get done was a handful of superstar employees who showed up and did the work while they dragged everybody else. Teams are primarily places for mediocre employees to hide among superstar employees who are actually getting the work done.
And here’s what’s most disgusting of all. When it comes time for the team to take the credit, the team steps up to take the credit, and there’s that guy who didn’t do a darn thing. And we all know he didn’t do a darn thing.
And he gets to share the credit. Let me tell you right now about superstar employees. They don’t like to share the credit.
The person who actually gets the job done, they want the credit. Which, by the way, let me give you a little aside here. When you hire somebody who says, I don’t care who gets the credit.
I just want to make sure the job gets done. I’ve heard that in interviews before. I would never hire somebody like that because anybody who says, I don’t care who gets the credit for the job getting done, never got the job done.
They never got any of the credit. If they’d ever gotten any of the credit for getting the job done, I guarantee you they’d care if somebody got the credit or not. And those people who say, and this, again, is just an aside for hiring people.
Those people who say in an interview process, I’m a people person. Don’t hire a people person. A people person is going to spend all their time talking to people, socializing, not working.
I don’t want people persons working for me. I want people who are focused on work. I want work persons.
People are focused on accomplishing the task. That’s what’s really important. The ability to get along with people, socialize, that’s important in some jobs, not all jobs.
But again, that’s an aside to getting the job done. That’s just a rant. Here’s really my last area that I want to talk to you on in the areas of business.
And it comes down to ethics. You see, to me, ethics is black or white. There’s no gray area ever.
And the problem is we’ve justified gray in our society, and we’ve justified gray in our business. Folks, it’s either right or it is wrong. There’s no gray.
It’s hello or goodbye, either in the way or on the way. That’s how it really is. And the trouble is in our businesses, we’ve let people slide, as I mentioned earlier.
We’ve created gray areas where we say, well, this time, there’s no this time. If it’s right, it’s always right. If it’s wrong, it’s always wrong.
How do you know? If you had to ask, it’s wrong. If you have to even ask whether it’s right or it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Because when you’re doing the right thing, you never have to ask.
So you always do the right thing, period, every single time. Now, doing the right thing might cost you money. It might embarrass you.
It might humiliate you. You may have to fall on the sword. A whole area, a whole array of things might happen to you when you do the right thing.
It doesn’t matter. You just do the right thing. That’s one of the problems we have right now in our whole country, in our whole society, is we let people buy with not doing the right thing.
You do the right thing, especially in business, I guarantee you, in the long run. Sometimes it’s the long run. The right thing always pays off.
But you do the right thing. Why? Because it’s the right thing. I’m a big believer in doing the right thing.
And in terms of ethics, let me tell you what. Getting a haircut on company time, that’s not the right thing. Taking a pencil is not the right thing.
Making copies is not the right thing on the company copier. Doing internet stuff while you’re at work, that’s not the right thing. Coming in late, it’s not the right thing.
Taking a long lunch hour, it’s not the right thing. Leaving early, it’s not the right thing. You’re not paid to do it, so you shouldn’t be doing it.
There’s no gray area in any of this stuff. It always comes down to doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Now, my number one rule for all success in business, and this is what I’m going to leave you with.
Do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it. That’s my number one rule for being in business. Do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it.
That’s a statement based in integrity. It’s a statement based in high ethics. It’s a statement that works in every single area.
All your employees want for you is to do what you said you would do it, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it. All you want from your employees is for them to do what they said they would do, when they said they would do it, the way they said they would do it. And let me tell you, more than anything, what your customers want from you It’s for you to do what you said you would do.
Keep your word. Make sure your product does what you said it would do. And they want you to do what you said you would do when you said you would do it.
They don’t want an excuse for why it has to show up a day late or why you’re two hours late for your appointment. They want you to do what you said you would do when you said you would do it the way you said you would do it. Folks, that’s just a handful of good ideas that I’ll guarantee you if you implement them can make your business more successful.
Thanks for joining me on this session of how to run a more successful business.