Employees, the key is what motivates people. And they are not gonna be motivated about maximizing shareholder value. I can tell you that. You can make them all shareholders, and that will help. But they're—only gonna be motivated about a sense of purpose.
What do the best college sports teams do? Recruit the best players all the time! When a business is short-staffed, that is the worst time to recruit because you are desperate. It is much better to recruit and network all the time, so the pipeline is full when you need it. Just like college sports teams, when you recruit the best you get a reputation for excellence and great players (employees) want to be on your team. Recruiting gets a whole lot easier when you have a reputation for being a great place to work.
When you go back to your environment and you deal with employees... do you inspire people or do you make them feel fear? Do you make them feel confident or incompetent? I think that distinction really marks the leader.
I think re-engineering or restructuring or downsizing or rightsizing or whatever you want to call it, it's basically firing, has gone way too far. Employees, as I've talked to them across the country, feel that they are not respected, they are not valued, they are worried about their jobs. They simply feel that the company is no longer loyal to them. Why should they be loyal to the company, they ask me. Why should I go the extra mile? Why should I care?
I believe a balanced life is essential, and I try to make sure that all of our employees know that and live that way. It’s crucial to me as a manager that I help ensure that our employees are as successful as our customers and partners.
I also think that employees these days expect less of a separation of work and personal life. That doesn’t mean that work tasks should encroach upon our personal time, but it does mean that employees today expect more from the companies for whom they work. Why shouldn’t your workplace reflect your values? Why is "giving back" not a part of our jobs? The answer for us is to integrate philanthropy with work.
When I explain our company values and the foundation to prospective employees, they realize that they have an opportunity to do much more than change the way businesses manage and share information. When you take a workforce of smart, creative, dedicated people and say "take this company time to serve your community, and bring along your coworkers, customers, and partners" great things happen.
CEO Hal Rosenbluth chronicled the incredible success of his travel-services firm, Rosenbluth Internationl, in...
The Customer Comes Second.
Love that title!
Who comes first? Don't be silly, says King Hal; it's employees. That is -- and this dear Watson, is elementary -- if you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first.
I feel constantly the tension of the quarterly cycles, the drive to produce shareowner value at the cost sometimes of customer value and employee value. [But] if you take equal care of the employees, they will take equal care of the customers and then we will get an equal or better opportunity for our shareowners.
When you go back to your environment and you deal with employees... do you inspire people or do you make them feel fear? Do you make them feel confident or incompetent? I think that distinction really marks the leader.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Membership in the IBM family exacted certain standards of conduct. The reputation of the company was in the hands of everyone who worked for it, Watson insisted. Therefore, his employees were warned against doing anything, even in their private lives, which would be to the discredit of the organization.
Put First Things First! These four words cover an entire philosophy which can be applied with profit by every business leader, by every executive and by every employee.
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
How come you don't ever hear about gruntled employees? And who has been diss-ing them anyhow?
In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you see a bright light and hear dead relatives beckon.
Inscription in lobby of the S. F. Bowser & Co. office building, Fort Wayne, Ind.: I acknowledge God's great help in all things, of which this splendid office is one. One which all our office employees can enjoy. God help us to be grateful.
Unless a business can stay in the black over the long term, averaging the bad years with good, it cannot sustain itself. A manager may have laudable social intentions of providing security for his employees, better products at lower prices for his customers. But if he cannot keep the business going in realizing these intentions he is defeated before he begins.
Nominally, there is one executive for every eight [federal] employees, a ratio that would bankrupt many private industries.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Today's newest breed of employee is the self-manager. These workers are the ones who survived the recent. waves of downsizing, both by seeking and capitalizing, on new opportunities and by learning new skills. Because these employees increasingly possess the skills and technological tools to supervise themselves-individually or in teams-they are eliminating the need for layers of management. More executives will soon find their jobs redundant, while self-managing frontline workers become highly valued and virtually fire-proof. Everyone should strive to become self-managed. It is clearly the direction business is taking.
Thomas Edison devoted ten years and all of his money to developing the nickel-alkaline storage battery at a time when he was almost penniless. . . . One night the terrifying cry of fire echoed through the film plant. Spontaneous combustion had ignited some chemicals. Within moments all of the packing compounds, celluloids for records, file, and other flammable goods had gone up with a whoosh. Fire companies from eight towns arrive, but the heat was so intense and the water pressure so low that the fire hoses had no effect. Edison was 67 years old - no age to begin anew. His daughter was frantic, wondering if he were safe, if his spirits were broken, how he would handle a crisis such as this at his age. She saw him running toward her. He spoke first. He said, "Where's your mother? Go get her. Tell her to get her friends. They'll never see another fire like this as long as they live." At 5:30 the next morning with the fire barely under control, he called his employees together and announced, "We're rebuilding." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Oh, by the way, anybody know where we can get some money?" Virtually everything we now recognize as a Thomas Edison contribution in our lives came after that disaster.
IBM'S Basic BELIEFS AND FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Our beliefs, which should be well known to every IBMer, are: 1. Respect for the individual. 2. A desire to have the best customer service of any company in the world. 3. The conviction that an organization should pursue all tasks with the idea that they can be accomplished in a superior manner. In addition to these, there is a set of fundamental principles which guide IBM management in the conduct of the business. Each manager should consider them as a basis for his decisions. They are: 1. To provide intelligent, aggressive capable management. 2. To serve our customers as efficiently and effectively as possible. 3. To continually improve our products and our technology. 4. To provide a maximum degree of satisfaction on the part of our employees in their assigned tasks. 5. To recognize the obligation to our stockholders to provide an adequate return on their investment. 6. To play our part in furthering the progress of the communities in which our facilities are located.
We should place confidence in our employee. Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it, we will receive it. Any person in a managerial position, from supervisor to president, who feels that his employee is not as good as he is and who suspects his employee trying to put something over on him, lacks the qualities for human leadership-to say nothing of human friendship.
I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes. . . .
Without computers, the government would be unable to function at the level of effectiveness and efficiency that we have come to expect. . . . Today's government uses computers which are capable of cranking out millions of documents per day without any regard whatsoever for their content, thereby freeing government employees for more important responsibilities, such as not answering their phones.
American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors.
At IBM everybody sells! Every employee has been trained to think that the customer comes first - everybody from the CEO, to the people in finance, to the receptionists, to those who work in manufacturing.
The character and qualifications of the leader are reflected in the men he selects, develops and gathers around him. Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader. Therefore, to have loyal, efficient employees-be a loyal and efficient employer.
Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax deductible.
