15 Management DO’S and DON’TS

1. DO: Treat your employees or subordinates as human beings and colleagues.

DO NOT: Treat them as units of production or inferiors.

- No one likes being treated like a mind numbed robot or a beast of burden.  We’re all human beings with our own struggles, hopes, dreams, friends, and family who want to live up to our full potential.

2. DO: Treat your employees or subordinates as volunteers.

DO NOT: Treat them as slaves or indentured servants.

- Slavery and indentured servitude are illegal.  Your employees volunteered to work for you, so treat them as volunteers who could voluntarily go to work somewhere else. When you take away people's freedom, it denigrates them.  Don’t hold their job security, salary or benefits over their heads to motivate them.

3. DO: Serve others.

DO NOT: Expect others to serve you.

- Management is really about serving others: employees, subordinates, colleagues, superiors etc. Being a manager does not make you Lord of the Manor.

4. DO: Ask people.

DO NOT: Tell people.

- Asking others rather than telling others is in keeping with treating employees as volunteers and not indentured servants. Taking away someone's self-determination denigrates them and ultimately lowers productivity. You'll get the best work out of people if you allow them to make their own choices.

5. DO: Love people.

DO NOT: Love money or things.

- History is full of examples where people's love of money and things led to their downfall. Nothing good comes from putting money and things ahead of people.

6. DO: Lead your employees.  

DO NOT: Manage your employees.

- You can manage things, but you must lead people.  Get your employees to want to follow you; get them to want to take a bullet for you. When you reach that point with your followers, they'll give you their best work.

7. DO: Praise and expect the best from your employees.

DO NOT: Criticize, complain, condemn, judge or expect the worst from your employees.

- The Pygmalion effect is the psychological phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.  Whereas, the opposite of lower expectations placed upon individuals leads to poorer performance.

8. DO: Be honest and forthright with your employees.

DO NOT: Be dishonest or disingenuous with your employees.

- No one likes being lied to. No one likes being played.  You’ll lose the trust of your employees if you’re anything but honest.  If you need to keep something confidential, simply tell them you’re not at liberty to discuss that with them. They'll understand.

9. DO: Keep secrets and confidences.

DO NOT: Betray someone’s confidence or spill the beans.

- No one will confide in you if you’re known to spill the beans or betray their confidence.

10. DO: Set realistic and attainable goals and deadlines.

DO NOT: Set unrealistic and unattainable goals or deadlines.

- No one likes being pressured to perform.  Good work takes time, so give it time.  If you need something completed quickly, consider adding more people to work on the task, or rolling up your own sleeves and pitching in to help. Remember that prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

11. DO: Be humble, honest, ethical, and moral in everything you do and say.

DO NOT:  Sacrifice your soul for profit, possessions, power, position, prestige, privilege, popularity, pride, or pleasure.

- Always seek to do the right thing even if it hurts you personally.  Goodness and virtue always triumphs over evil and vice.

12. DO: Be forgiving of others and seek forgiveness for any hurt you’ve caused.

DO NOT: Hold grudges, give into anger, be vengeful, or be unforgiving of others.

- When you forgive others, God will forgive you.  So forgive and try to forget.  Bless those who hurt you or slander you. Always take the high road.

13. DO: Work passionately, enthusiastically, and confidently with humility.

DO NOT: Have a poor work ethic.

- You owe it to yourself and many others to work hard.  Hard work is good for the soul.  Laziness is nothing to be proud of.

14. DO: Keep your priorities straight.

DO NOT: Put work and your time ahead of your family.

- You owe it to your family to make them a top priority in your life.  If you have to consistently work overtime, maybe your organization needs to hire more people, or share your workload with others.

15. DO: Build a safe and supportive work environment.

DO NOT: Use fear and intimidation to motivate your employees.

- Numerous studies have shown that building safe and supportive work environments leads
to higher productivity and loyalty. Managing by fear and intimidation will work in the sort
term but never in the long term.

Pope Francis' suggested New Year's resolutions

Pope Francis’ suggested New Year’s resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Cindy Wooden

(CNS/Paul Haring)

VATICAN CITY — When Pope Francis met before Christmas with Vatican employees, mostly lay people with families, he asked them to do 10 things. The list sounded remarkably like suggestions for New Year’s resolutions:

– “Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship with God, because this is the backbone of everything we do and everything we are.”

– “Take care of your family life, giving your children and loved ones not just money, but most of all your time, attention and love.”

– “Take care of your relationships with others, transforming your faith into life and your words into good works, especially on behalf of the needy.”

– “Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of offensive words, vulgarity and worldly decadence.”

– “Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgiveness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medicating the wounds we have caused others.”

– “Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm, humility, competence, passion and with a spirit that knows how to thank the Lord.”

– “Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative feelings that devour our interior peace and transform us into destroyed and destructive people.”

– “Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance; for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia; for pointing the finger at others, which leads to pride; and for complaining continually, which leads to desperation.”

– “Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker … the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”

How Much Are You Worth?

How much are you worth?  Well maybe that would depend on the amount of wealth you've accumulated in your lifetime.  Or maybe it's your earning potential?  Or maybe it's your intrinsic worth?  Just how do we define what a person is worth anyway?

The entire healthcare industry, which is dedicated to healing the body and the mind, places a very high value on human worth when you account for the billions worth of infrastructure (hospitals and clinics etc.) and equipment (beds, monitoring devices, diagnostic imaging devices etc.) dedicated to healthcare, and the high qualifications of the people who work in healthcare (surgeons, doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, etc.).

Religious and charitable organizations, who are dedicated to healing the soul and providing for the poor and needy, place a very high value on human worth when you account for the billions worth of infrastructure (churches, buildings, etc.), the legions of paid and unpaid volunteers, and the direct assistance given to those in need.

Law enforcement and public safety organizations (police, firefighters, rescue etc.) place a very high value on human worth when you account for the billions worth of infrastructure (police stations, fire stations etc.), equipment (police cars, fire engines, ambulances, helicopters, etc.), salaries, and the sacrifices made to keep our society safe.

These are just some obvious examples of the value our society places on human worth.  Unfortunately many people don't see or appreciate their own human worth. They could be unemployed, down and out, poor, homeless, very old, sick, or a war veteran.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that after cancer and heart disease, suicide accounts for more years of life lost than any other cause of death in America.

From God's point of view, each and every one of us is priceless!  And there's nothing we can do (good or bad) which would lessen our value to God.  In fact, God loved us so much that he sacrificed his own Son to redeem us (John 3:16).

You cannot earn your human worth by what you do.  It's a false sense of self-worth when you base your human worth on accomplishments.  Achievements can bring you satisfaction but not happiness or increased human worth.

Further, you cannot base your human worth on your physical attractiveness, talent, fame, or fortune.  There are plenty of famous suicide victims who can attest to this grim truth.  Fame and fortune are just bubbles that eventually burst.

Moreover, you cannot base your inherent human worth on love, friendship, or the approval of others.  Only your own sense of self-worth determines how you feel about yourself.

So what do you have to do to have human worth or improve your self-esteem?  Why absolutely nothing!  You don't have to do anything worthwhile to deserve human worth or have high self-esteem.  You're already priceless in God's eyes.  All you have to do is just believe it!


During my research for this article, I ran across a couple of interesting web sites that I though you'd get a chuckle out of: 1) How much are you worth alive? and 2) How much are you worth dead?

American Management Explained

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the St. Lawrence River.  Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.  The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat.

A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommended appropriate action.  Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.  So, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.  They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder.

It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program”, with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower.  There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices, and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments in new equipment.  The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.

Source: http://www.tickld.com/x/american-management-explained-this-guy-nails-it

When we do not adore God

The Pygmalion effect

In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a statue of a beautiful woman out of ivory and named her Galatea.  He fell in love with his statue Galatea and secretly wished for a bride as beautiful and as perfect as her.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, granted Pygmalion's wish and the ivory statue Galatea turned into a beautiful real woman after Pygmalion kissed her.  Pygmalion and Galatea were married and had a handsome son who they named Paphos from whom that city in Cyprus is named. 

The "Pygmalion effect" is the psychological phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. The opposite of this is the "Golem effect".  It's the psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals leads to poorer performance.  Both of these phenomena are forms of a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Good managers will use the Pygmalion effect to get the best out of their employees.  Good coaches will use it to get the best out of their athletes.  Good Teachers will use it to get the best out of their students.  And good parents will use it to get the best out of their children.  Ironically, economist tend to use the Golem effect when trying to predict the economic behavior of people.  (Go figure?)

When my son was born, a Catholic nun gave me a copy of a beautiful poem that really sums up the Pygmalion effect.  The poem is called Children Learn What They Live by Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D. (1924 - 2005).  The poem really helped me to be a good parent to my children.  And eventually I realized how the same concept could be used for other vital relationships.  So when you read the poem, substitute employees or students or managers or spouses or parents or siblings or friends or colleagues for children and you'll see how the Pygmalion effect can help you change your world for the better.

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

Virtuous Capitalism

Virtuous Capitalism
by Bryan J. Neva, Sr.

In an early television episode of the science fiction series Star Trek the Next Generation, the crew of the USS Enterprise recovered an old, unmanned late 21st-century spacecraft carrying the cryogenically frozen bodies of dozens of people.  Rather than have their bodies buried, their families chose instead to have their bodies cryogenically frozen and sent into space in hopes that in the future there would be medical cures for the diseases they succumbed to.  Fortunately for them, the ship’s doctor managed to revive many of the deceased patients using advanced 24th-century medicine.

As the story unfolded, a man who’d been quite wealthy back in the 21st-century desperately wanted to reclaim his entire fortune (hopefully with interest).  But he was astonished to discover that in the 24th-century all forms of monetary economic exchange were now obsolete, and people no longer had to work for money to support themselves because all their human needs were met through technology, which costs nothing!  People only worked for altruistic reasons such as to improve themselves or help society advance.

But this story is only optimistic science fiction and unfortunately, in our lifetimes we’ll probably never live to see that day.  Life’s sad reality is that the natural law of scarcity decides how big of a piece of pie each of us will get in life.  Some will get more, others less, and some will get none at all.  

“Survival-of-the-fittest” is a famous phrase attributed to a man named Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a contemporary of Charles Darwin.  Spencer was a proponent of a popular 19th and early 20th-century belief call eugenics.  Eugenics is a social philosophy which, among other things, tries to justify economic and social inequality on the basis of inherited traits.  Spencer, and many others of his day believed that if we just allowed the rich to get richer that it would be good for the whole of society because it would discourage the poor from having more children and ultimately surviving.  In the 19th century it was called "laissez-faire capitalism," but today it has been re-packaged under the name "free-market capitalism."

In the 19th century, the economic abuses of laissez-faire, free-market capitalism gave birth to the disastrous economic philosophies of socialism, communism, and fascism.  And when you examine the differences between laissez-faire, free-market capitalism and these opposing economic philosophies one thing you’ll discover they all have in common is their oppression and economic slavery of their workers.  Essentially they’re different sides of the same coin.  On one side, large multinational corporations control the means of production whereas on the other side the government does.  Since the 19th century, most developed economies have regulated capitalism in order to prevent a repeat of those abuses.

The famous economist Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006) of the University of Chicago was a big proponent of an unfettered, laissez-faire, free-market form of capitalism with little government intervention.  In an influential article he wrote for The New York Times Magazine in September 1970 titled The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, Friedman makes the case that nothing other than the profit motive should drive business decisions.  Not altruism, not the good of employees, not the good of society, not the good of any other business stakeholder should be considered other than what is good for the shareholders (or owners) of the company.  And what is good for the shareholders is simply maximizing profit.

Since the publication of Friedman’s article, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that the shift in focus to maximizing profits for shareholders has led to a profit-at-any-price mentality by business managers.  And today many academics, politicians, and pundits believe that we should return to the laissez-faire, free-market capitalism of the 19th century believing it will lead to greater economic prosperity.  They believe that if we loosen the reins of government regulation then businesses will prosper and the economy as a whole will improve.

So is the purpose of business to only make money as Friedman, and many others like him, believed, or is it something more than this?  Do we continue to follow this laissez-faire philosophy or do we develop new ones?  

In the July 30th, 2012 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray (of the American Enterprise Institute) wrote an interesting essay called, Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem.  Murray makes a very good argument that in order to be successful capitalism must be coupled with virtue.  He writes, 

“Historically, the merits of free enterprise and the obligations of success were intertwined in the national catechism.  The freedom to act and a stern moral obligation to act in certain ways were seen as two sides of the same American coin.  Little of that has survived.  To accept the concept of virtue requires that you believe some ways of behaving are right and others are wrong always and everywhere.  Correspondingly, we have watched the deterioration of the sense of stewardship that once was so widespread among the most successful Americans and the near disappearance of the sense of seemliness that led successful capitalists to be obedient to unenforceable standards of propriety.  Many senior figures in the financial world were appalled by what was going on during the run-up to the financial meltdown of 2008.  Why were they so silent before and after the catastrophe?  Capitalists who behave honorably and with restraint no longer have either the platform or the vocabulary to preach their own standards and to condemn capitalists who behave dishonorably and recklessly.  And so capitalism's reputation has fallen on hard times and the principled case for capitalism must be made anew.”

So let’s start by changing our paradigm of the purpose of business.  It should be to satisfy a customer’s needs as well as survive.  When a business consistently and successfully satisfies a customer’s needs then they’ll make a profit and satisfy their own need to survive.  So the heresy I’d like to propose is that profit is a natural byproduct of consistently and successfully satisfying customer’s needs and not the other way around. 

If companies were only in business to make money than anything they did to make more money would be all right.  For example, if a business did not honor their warranties they’d leave their customers with defective merchandise or poorly performed services.  Customers, in turn, would stop buying from them.  If a business consistently mistreated and indiscriminately fired their employees, they’d have a hard time keeping their employees and getting new people to work for them.  And what if businesses wouldn’t pay their bills?  Suppliers and creditors would stop doing business with them.  If a company’s only business is making money without considering the consequences to its customers, employees, suppliers, and creditors then it won’t be in business for long.  To survive, a business has to strike the right balance between making money and satisfying their customer’s needs.

So if you think about it, businesses aren’t really in business just to make money; they’re really in business to satisfy their customer’s needs.  And if they’re consistent and successful in satisfying their customer’s needs, then they’ll earn a profit and the firm will thrive and survive.  If a business doesn’t make a profit it’s an indication they’re not successfully satisfying the needs of their customers.

Unfortunately, over the past three to four decades publicly traded companies have been more fixated on only satisfying the needs of their owners, short-term investors, and managers at the expense of their customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, and distributors.  And all the businesses that have behaved unethically, immorally, dishonesty, and illegally over the past few decades are just a reflection of the American business culture today.  Just as the crime-rate in a city is a general indicator of the health of a community, so the crime-rate in business is a general indicator of the general health of the business in our society.  Where corporate scandals are high, so are greed, profit-at-any-price, and unfair dealings with customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, and distributors.

For the most part, companies meet the community’s moral, ethical, and legal standards because it is in their own best interest to do so.  The consequences of breaking laws or being sued by consumers are higher than the cost of doing the right thing in first place.  Laws are generally made to criminalize what is wrong but do not legislate what is right.  There are unenforceable standards of right and wrong.  Some examples would be that murder is a crime, but no law can be passed forcing someone to love their neighbor.  Embezzlement is a crime, but no law can be passed forcing someone to be generous with their employees.  Perjury is a crime, but no law can be passed forcing someone to be consistently honest.

In the same way, many companies have rules set out in inspiring mission statements, guiding principles and value statements, but when push comes to shove their real mission and goals are to meet the shareholder's earnings expectations and to drive management bonuses (which are usually based on short-term profit goals).  And many times this is done at the expense of the other stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, and distributors) who really do add the most value to their organizations.

So companies focus on short-term profitability while keeping regulatory and liability issues in their peripheral vision. They avoid doing what is absolutely wrong, but their corporate culture does not focus on doing what is right.  Corporate America, in general, has become greedy and short sighted because most business leaders have lost their moral and ethical way. Without a moral and ethical foundation, people naturally choose what makes them feel good, or look good, but not always what is good.  They choose the least painful or the most profitable solution, and they use situational ethics because they have no absolute standard of what is right or wrong. There are only acceptable or unacceptable options in any given situation.

By developing a more virtuous form of capitalism by following tried and true moral and ethical guidelines we can define standards of conduct that will prevent moral and ethical lapses in business.  Just as the founding fathers of America applied Judeo-Christian values to our Constitution, yet separated religious organizations from civil affairs, so too can businesses apply these same Judeo-Christian moral and ethical teaching to create a culture of doing what is right while not infringing on anyone’s personal religious beliefs.

Fostering a business attitude of consistently and successfully satisfying customer’s needs is a legitimate profit strategy because it helps companies focus on what’s really important: their customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, and distributors.  These are the stakeholders who really do add the most value to a company.  If a company satisfies the needs of these important stakeholders it will ultimately be more profitable, and this will satisfy the needs of the other important stakeholders: the owners, investors, and managers of a company.  And society, in general, will benefit from a thriving business.  Warren Buffett said it well, “If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.”

It’s essential that a company makes a profit otherwise it will go out of business and not survive.  Rather than narrowly focusing on profits, companies should focus instead on satisfying the various needs of its primary stakeholders: the customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, and distributors.  Doing this will not only make a company more profitable, it will produce much better results, prolong its life, and provide its employees and managers with a more fulfilling livelihood.

Profit, after all, is a natural byproduct of consistently and successfully satisfying customer’s needs.  Over the long run, working and doing business in an honest, ethical and moral fashion will be more profitable and professionally rewarding.  Whereas giving in to short-term, expedient solutions is actually more expensive in the long run than doing the right thing in the first place.

If living in a utopian world like that of the fictional 24th-century Star Ship Enterprise is something we all dream of, then changing our paradigms on the purpose of business will bring us one step closer to realizing that dream.   

Thanksgiving Day - the True History by Fred E. Foldvary

The Thanksgiving Day that millions of Americans celebrate, with turkey and stuffing, is a myth. The true history was forgotten long ago, and even most of the history books have it wrong.

The Pilgrims landed in 1620 and founded the Colony of New Plymouth in what is now Massachusetts. They had a difficult first winter, but survived with the help of the Indians. The usual story in the history textbooks relates how in the fall of 1621, the grateful Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving Day and invited the Indians to a big Thanksgiving-Day feast with turkey and pumpkins.

There was indeed a big feast in 1621, but it was not a Thanksgiving Day. This three-day feast was described in a letter by the colonist Edward Winslow. It was a hunting party with the Indians, but there was no Thanksgiving Day proclamation, nor any mention of a thanksgiving in 1621 in any historical record.

The history of the colony was chronicled by Governor William Bradford in his book, Of Plimouth Plantation, available at many libraries. Bradford relates how the Pilgrims set up a communist system in which they owned the land in common and would also share the harvests in common. By 1623, it became clear this system was not working out well. The men were not eager to work in the fields, since if they worked hard, they would have to share their produce with everyone else. The colonists faced another year of poor harvests. They held a meeting to decide what to do.

As Governor Bradford describes it, "At last after much debate of things, the governor gave way that they should set corn everyman for his own particular... That had very good success for it made all hands very industrious, so much [more] corn was planted than otherwise would have been". The Pilgrims changed their economic system from communism to individual enterprise; the land was still owned in common and could not be sold or inherited, but each family was allotted a portion, and they could keep whatever they grew. The governor "assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end."

Bradford wrote that their experience taught them that for society as a whole, communism, or sharing all the production, was vain and a failure:

"The experience that has had in this common course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst Godly and sober men, may well evince the Vanities of the conceit of Plato's and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of propertie, and bringing into commone wealth, would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God."

Their new incentive-based economic system was great success. It looked like they would have an abundant harvest this time. But then, during the summer, the rains stopped, threatening the crops. The Pilgrims held a "Day of Humiliation" and prayer. The rains came and the harvest was saved. It is logical to surmise that the Pilgrims saw this as a was a sign that God blessed their new economic system, because Governor Bradford proclaimed November 29, 1623, as a Day of Thanksgiving.

This was the first proclamation of thanksgiving found in Bradford's chronicles or any other historical record. The first Thanksgiving Day was therefore in November 1623. Much later, this first Thanksgiving Day became confused and mixed up with the shooting party with the Indians of 1621. And in the mixup, the great economics lesson was forgotten and then discarded by the time the Plymouth Colony merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.

The Pilgrims recognized that the land itself would be their common community property, but that it is proper for the fruits of the labor of each person and family to belong to those who produced them. This was the great economics lesson about incentives that the Pilgrims learned, a lesson that so impressed them that they commemorated it every year thereafter. This should have been the day we remember their vital economics lesson, but this lesson was later forgotten in the mixup with the shooting party with the Indians!

This bitter lesson would be learned all over again by the people of the Soviet Union and other command economies, where socialism and communalism of production failed again. Fortunately the Pilgrims, a smaller community in simpler times, were able to switch quickly and realize the great prosperity that comes from applying the two principles of individual enterprise: sharing the benefits of land, and keeping what you individually earn.

Thanksgiving Day should be remembered not just as a day when we give thanks for our abundance, but more deeply and historically why we have this abundance. In our Thanksgiving Day celebrations, let us therefore tell one another the true origins of the thanksgiving and the great economic lesson that the Pilgrims hoped we would remember.

Noblesse Oblige by Allen Laudenslager and Bryan Neva (March 2013)

This Blog was originally published on Thought Leaders on March 13, 2013.  The longer I work, the more I see good people who are promoted into positions of authority in organizations slowly give into the temptation of pride and privilege. They forget their obligations and squander the opportunity given them to serve others in their organization and improve the corporate culture. 

“Noblesse Oblige” is an old French phrase that literally translates as “nobility obligates.” It means that those who have power and authority, or who are privileged, rich or famous have a moral responsibility to display honorable, charitable, and exemplary behavior towards those less fortunate or to those dependent on them.

In other words, whoever claims to be noble must conduct themselves nobly. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. summed it up nicely when he said: every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

The idea of “Noblesse Oblige” was created out of enlightened self-interest. The nobility had serfs who were dependent on them for land to farm, a place to live and protection from bandits. In medieval times all the land belonged to the nobility; the enlightened noble recognized that while he owned the land, without someone to plant and harvest the noble had no income. Seeing to the wellbeing of his serfs was his “noble obligation.”

The good old days of companies treating their employees as their most valuable assets have been set aside in favor of expecting them to work harder for the same pay and fewer benefits. In place of rewards they’re told they should be glad they still have a job. Corporate management has developed an entitlement mentality (like the old French nobility) by remembering their privileges (power, prestige, perks, and pay) but forgetting their obligations to their employees.  So what does this mean for you?

Loyalty always starts with the person who has the power and authority and is earned not given. Power is the ability to grant or withhold rewards, and authority is the power to influence the behavior of a person with less power. And there’s no authority without a counterbalancing responsibility.

Some use their power and authority altruistically; unfortunately, many others use it capriciously or unfairly. Lord John Acton (1834—1902, British historian and moralist) famously wrote: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what tends to happen is that those in power begin to believe their own press releases and act as if their power is a natural right and their authority is to be unquestioned. After all, they must be right or they wouldn’t have been granted the authority in the first place, right?

The key to avoiding falling into the entitlement trap is simply by learning a little good ol’ fashioned humility. Start by walking over to your company’s customer service center and imagine there’s no one there to answer the phones, to take orders or to solve problems. You’re not going to sell anything.

Next, walk down to your company’s shipping and receiving department and watch the employees loading and unloading trucks. Now close your eyes and pretend that those workers aren’t there… your products are just sitting on the docks and the trucks are not getting loaded. How much money will you make if you don’t ship your products to customers?

It’s easy to think of all these workers as not being important because almost anyone could do these types of jobs. Answering the phones or loading and unloading trucks are cheap but also very critical. In other words, the labor costs are inexpensive but the work is valuable.

Now extrapolate these examples out to your entire organization. How much value are all your other employees contributing to your long-term success? Who really produces and who is overhead? Enlightened self-interest should tell you that without workers you’d have no income.

So while you may not be willing to pay much for a person working in customer service or shipping and receiving, enlightened self-interest should tell you that a relatively low paid employee might be critical to your long-term success and you should begin to treat that worker with the respect their contribution, not their cost, deserves.

No Man is an Island by Allen Laudenslager, A voice in the wilderness

No man is an island

No man is an island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as a manor of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

An emotionally satisfying poem, but what the heck does it mean to business? It means that your business, in too many ways to list, depends on the businesses around it and on your suppliers and customers.

A climate of success helps you to succeed while a climate of collapse makes it much more likely that you will fail. We have uncountable examples of towns that relied on a single economy. The farm and market towns of the midwest that were supported by the small family farms died with the advent of industrial farming.

Those large farms were operated by so few workers that all those support business that made the town exist weren’t needed.

We know of cases where small stores closed thru loss of business diverted to big box stores. Part of the problem is that the profits from a local store tend to stay in the community while the profits from big box stores tend to be aggregated in the financial centers of big cities.

This phenomenon constitutes a cash drain that eventually strips that small town of its cash and unless there is a constant influx of fresh cash then the community goes broke and the residents leave for richer ground.

If the cash is in the financial centers then that is where the cash gets spent and that’s where the jobs are. As the people collect where the money is those small towns slowly die out. Just like the gold rush ghost towns when the gold ran out.

We are witnessing the same thing on a national scale. As more and more products are made in far flung places the cash is being transferred from the developed nations to the developing.

The key here is that people who don’t have jobs can’t buy your product no matter how cheaply you can make it.

I can buy a life jacket for around 12 bucks but what is its value? If I don’t go out on the water I wouldn’t buy it at any price. When the boat sinks I might pay $100 for that same life jacket. If I don’t have even a single dollar, then I CAN’T buy that life jacket even if the boat is sinking under me.

The point to all this is that if you minimize your workers profits to maximize your  own, then they have less to spend with you. While it’s true your workers can’t buy enough of your product to keep you in business that money does circulate.

If your workers can’t buy from the local burger stand, the people who work in the burger joint can’t buy your washing machine or dish soap.

Every job you and your industry transfer to some far-away factory is one less local customer for your product. And when that transfer is to chase that last fraction of a percent of profit but is making your potential customer base smaller, are you really coming out ahead?

Once again, you are absolutely correct when you say that your business can’t make that big a difference and by yourself you are right. Add your choices to all the others making the same kind of decision and we have the current lingering recession.

Living proof that recessions are self-generated self-fulfilling  phenomenon. If business cut employees and/or salary/benefit packages than employees spend less and there are fewer sales.

Reminds me of an old Kingston Trio song, Desert Pete:

“You’ve got to prime the pump, 

you’ve got to have faith and believe

You’ve got to give of yourself 

before you’re ready to receive.

Drink all the water you can hold, 

wash your face, cool your feet,

Leave the bottle full for others, 

Thank you kindly, Desert Pete”

Allen Laudenslager, a voice in the wilderness, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2014