Have A Freakin’ Vision
“Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.”
Redefining Work
Did you see the video from earlier in the week where Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs was talking about the importance of work?
If not, here it is again:
Mike discusses how Wall Street and Madison Avenue have helped us define work into something it is not really. This is one of my favorite Ted talks.
My wife and I run two companies that sell knowledge. And we like to think these companies are changing lives. We are passionate about what we do and often do it some 12 hours a day. Our dining room, where we work, doesn’t have nice little place settings on it. It looks more like a war room where Jennifer and I bang out creative ideas, discuss (sometimes it is a hot debate) how to serve people and is our part of the world where we bring value to those around us. Would we like more time off? Sometimes. But we are quickly learning that our abilities to add value to others lives and change those whom we come in contact with can not be accomplished in 40 hours. Actually, Congress passed a law that created the 40 hour work week. How can they define the intimate part of our life called ‘work’ with a law? Silly.
Work needs to be redefined in our world. It doesn’t happen in neat 40 hour weeks, just like learning doesn’t stop when you leave school (often times it doesn’t even happen in school). You don’t have to control people who do the work, and you don’t have to control how people do their work. When you have the right people in your company, work can become a passion. A passion you use as a vehicle to change those around you. Your pursuits are holy, and we have to start thinking and acting like this is true.
Abolish Time
We need to abolish the false belief that time = work. Spending time somewhere does not necessarily mean you have accomplished anything for your customer. Time does not equal effectiveness or proof that you should be promoted at your job (i.e., you work the most, so you get a promotion). Time is the passing of our lives, something we can’t stop and we must make the most of it. The passing of time is precious. But it can’t be the basis by which we price those we serve. The beautiful function of work can be done anywhere, with any tool, at any time and is performed differently by every single person on your team. Abolish time, give dignity and freedoms back to your people and watch their work become noble again.
Create Real Value
Time does not necessarily equal the giving of Value. If you are in a profession that assumes the passing of your professional time equals value being given to your customer, then you have believed something false. Now it may be true that you can deliver value over an hour of time, but don’t confuse that with those who believe working one hour equals value enough to a customer that you send them a bill for your time. Who determines value? Only one person, and they are not found in your company. It is your customer. When our companies become hyper-focused on our customers, then we will hear and finally see what true value looks like. It’s time to create real value and ask our customers how we can change their lives. There is no other reason to be in business. Profits are not the reason for our business pursuits. They are a result of our good work, but not the pursuit of our work.
We must pursue our customers. To do this, we must redefine our work. Equating our time with what our customers want is a foolish pursuit that often ends in frustration for us and the customer. And believing that the passing of one of our hours has created value for a customer is also foolish. The customer, not our time, will let us know when we have been valuable. When we discover that intimate exchange with our customer, they will gladly pay us to continue the process of changing their lives; and in exchange we will feel the rush of knowing that our work is valuable to others!
ROWE and Real Results
As with anything, you find out the real gems behind new initiatives AFTER you actually implement them. That is, when you think of a new strategy, the execution part is where all of the good stuff comes out. I’ve found that to be true with ROWE.
What is a Grok?
I enjoyed the most recent creative conference I attended in Greenville, SC. Started by my friend and long-time client, Matthew Smith of Squared Eye and now Zaarly, I wanted to see why over 125 people would come from all over the country just to ‘have a conversation.’ Look what I found out…
What is a Grok? from Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC on Vimeo.
See what my friend and design thinking architect, Joel Van Dyke, thought of the Grok conference.
Thanks to Rachel J Blumer for her video expertise!
