As we were talking, it quickly became clear to me that we were having two different conversations. His focus was on profit. Not just the idea of making a profit, but maximizing profitability. My focus was making profit as well, but not maximum profit. Instead, my perspective was one of balancing profit with loyalty and commitment.
This is where I began to really enjoy this conversation. These opportunities to have two approaches or ideas trying to share the same space at the same time are learning moments for me. My friends perspective was based on books by Dan Kennedy. He writes the "No B.S." books about management, sales, and other topics. Mr. Kennedy is an author whose books I will be picking up because he does cut out the "B.S." and gets straight at the reason businesses exist: to make profit. This last point is what my friend brought up. His business exists to make profit. It is definitely a point I appreciate. I started a number of classroom conversations at Southwest Airlines by asking the group, "Why do we exist?" The answer is profit. SWA doesn't exist to provide great customer service, to have parties for employees, to sing the PA's on the flights, or to transport bags for free. All of those things are tools it uses, very shrewdly I might add, to make profit. So, Mr. Kennedy is onto something and my buddy has caught that wave.
Admittedly, I haven't read Mr. Kennedy's books. Based on the description from my friend and info from his website, though, it seems as though most of the motives for decision making and actions are based solely on profit. My friend's description was pretty specific in detailing how the books say that employees are adversaries to the goal. Workers don't care about profit, they care only about their own lives. It is here that I tend to disagree. I believe that description does have some validity in the real world, in other words we can find examples of that being true. I see it, however, as those being manufactured conditions-they aren't the normal state. I believe we get to that place when Leadership allows it to happen. I also believe that Mr. Kennedy is about making profit, and that he realizes that a high percentage of people are not well prepared to be Leaders, so by describing their "pain" as a natural state, he sells books. Lots of books. If that is accurate, Mr. Kennedy is walking his own talk and he is, himself, as shrewd a businessman as I give him credit for.
What I am understanding Mr. Kennedy to say, however, at least based on the words of my friend and what I can glean from the website, would cause any Leader to have to work much harder to get to their goals (for an explanation of this, click here) and sustain them for the long-term.
So, I am committed to ready a Dan Kennedy book or two. Hopefully, I'll learn some valuable lessons. If nothing else, I'll have a good grasp on what some of my clients' perspectives (who might also be Kennedy readers) might be and can meet them where they are and help walk them to where they need to be or desire to be in my consulting and training practice.
For me though, profit is only one part of any business--even though it is the reason for the business to exist. In saying this I am not diminishing its importance. Nobody starts a business simply to make a stranger smile when they walk in the door. No, when people start businesses, they say, "I know how we can make some money!" So, let's be clear, I'm not against a business being profitable--I'm all for it. Nevertheless, there is the entire people-side of the business that successful companies have both risen and fallen with. We ignore it at our own peril. To invest in a great, enthusiastic employee and to ultimately have to let that employee go when their enthusiasm wains is a waste on many levels. Yet, that is exactly what happens when we believe our employees to be at odds with our goals. We lose the knowledge they've built and have to bring someone else in and tolerate their learning curve. That costs money.
We have choices, as Leaders, that create conditions where people want to do what we need them to do. We can create conditions, as Leaders, where employees are willing to sacrifice for their Leader. When we are attentive to this side of the business, we create a condition where employees are proud of where they work and who they work for and they want the organization and their Leader to succeed. This is what loyalty and commitment are all about. Loyal and committed employees believe in the goals and they want to stay with the organization. When we have more people than the person (or a select few people) at the top caring about attaining goals, maintaining a great organizational culture, and being profitable...well, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts in these cases. When only one person (or a select few at the top) cares about those things, the level of success is always limited to how far that individual can carry the organization.
Profitability is an end-goal. There are many ways to get there. Short-term thinking is simply about maximizing profitability today. Long-term thinking dictates that we identify ways of making much more over time, in a sustainable way, instead of recreating the short-term wheel over and over. Loyalty and commitment are two of the the long-term, sustainable means to the profitability end.
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I agree absolutely. I see it as balancing the value of the dollar with the value of your time.
ReplyDeleteRight! The real challenge is that if we don't spend the time getting people to a point where they WANT to do what we need them to do, then we wind up with only one choice...find a way to FORCE them to do what we need them to do. If we are creating that condition, then when we aren't present to apply that force, things don't get done.
ReplyDelete-Scott