For the last 13 years, we have been on a mission – offering ideas, strategies, trends and opinions to provide you with ways to make your working experience more satisfying and productive.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or bureaucrat, chief executive or office manager, salesperson, dockworker, bus driver or line cook – you who put in your energy, dedication and individual spirit to be the best you can be at work have been the primary interest in our weekly effort.
With an equal dose of happiness, sadness, pride and humility, we now say “mission accomplished.”
In bringing the column to its conclusion today, allow us to leave with you a summary of our vision – the foundation, the values, the qualities and ideals of the ultimate workplace.
It’s an elusive and perhaps unachievable nirvana, primarily because it has nothing to do with machinery, technology, productivity, quotas, goals and profit or loss, and all that Wall Street treasures.
It has everything to do with infusing work with a heavy dose of humanity – a complex and difficult endeavor.
As you proceed with your daily work, over the months and years that remain pursuing your careers, our wish is that you work toward creating or surrounding yourself with these qualities as you go about taming the workplace.
Seek to work in or lead an environment that:
* Is free of egos, where daily effort is guided with the sense that all employees are considered valuable, capable and respected, where consensus rather than orders drive initiatives, where violence, conflict and individual competition is absent, where bosses and co-workers are fair, adhere to reasonable rules and support one another.
* Doesn’t just hire, but invests in people. A place where people are selected beyond their experience and qualifications by a team that includes both management and staff whose primary job is to assess which candidate best fits into the culture.
* Embraces flexibility. Continues to offer long-forgotten and often management-resisted programs such as telecommuting (remember?), setting personal work hours (within operational necessities, of course), to feel in control of your life whether at work or at home.
* Never stops training. From the executive suite to the mailroom, a minimum of 70 hours annual training is budgeted for each employee, three-quarters of it for direct on-the-job improvement.
* Has leaders who lead. Where CEOs and senior managers earn their paychecks not by currying favorites to investors or stockholders, but by legitimately rewarding and recognizing good work of employees. And, when failures occur, they take responsibility without blaming others.
* Has lots of fun. The axiom is this: When employees enjoy what they’re doing, they smile, their spirit radiates to customers, their co-workers, their bosses, their community and success follows. Like, who cares if the sales manager takes the staff to an afternoon movie matinee if she knows it will build camaraderie?
* Refreshes workers. How many of you work for an employer who insists that you take your vacation? People in Europe don’t have to be told to take their average six weeks off, yet we know dozens who somehow find it hard to take off more than seven days. Sabbaticals? Let’s achieve a full month off for all American workers first.
* Doesn’t lay off. Three of the most successful businesses in America, Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson and Fed Ex, have official no-layoff policies and stick to them. Highly successful European companies such as Airbus are bound by and follow the unthinkable government requirement to achieve reduction in force other than by layoffs.
* Is open and honest. In good times and bad, has an open communication with everybody. If hard times come, who says an employee won’t come up with the ultimate solution?
Rarely, if ever, will any of us find the work nirvana we seek. It is up to us all, whether in school, ensconced in a career-building job or even nearing retirement to maintain a life balance that’s healthy and good.
If working doesn’t feel right, it’s up to you to change your career path. No employer will help you. That’s the reality of today.
After 13 years, we have gone on long enough.
To all, best wishes for a good life, and good work.
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