At Work, What is Important?

So, do you like what you do? Are you good at what you do? Does what you do excite you and motivate you to get going every day? Do you believe that you are actually accomplishing something? Do you sometimes think that because you care your going crazy? Or you wish sometimes that you would not care, but you cannot stop caring? Do you think you can change the world? Are you good at pushing water uphill with a rake?

Do you believe? I said, “Do you Believe?” Brothers and Sisters, “Do you Believe?” (just feel a little Southern Gospel, that Holy Roller kind of atmosphere). See yourself as Jake Blues (The Blues Brothers) in cheap sunglasses with the Light shining into your face through the church window. “Do you Believe?”
“You Got To Believe!”

Believe what you say? If you don’t know that already, the fire inside you has probably flamed out some time ago and you need to find some kind of work or activity that can rekindle the fire, or decide that it is not worth it and plod along quietly. But I think that most of you already know what to believe is, it’s inside you and it needs no explanation.

If your answer is, “Yes, yes, I believe!” (although I think Jake said, “The Band!”)
Then either your ready to, or are already “Living the Dream”. And you can say that and feel that if your day is going well or if your mired in the muck of your business day. My friend Bull would always tell us that he was “living the dream” because even in the muck, if he pushed through hard enough he could still create value and he believed he could.

That is the value you know you can create and the satisfaction of accomplishment will still emerge. Even on the bad days (and we all have them) when you go home, you know that you have done something of value.

That is “Living the Dream!”.

Some others don’t look for that level of intensity. They want to work their day, get paid a fair wage and go home and live life after work in all kinds of activities. That is good too. Business needs all kinds of people do accomplish its tasks. We should be thankful for those who do it differently than we do whatever that is. Its not better or worse, higher or lower just different.

If you want a fire, someone must cut the trees and someone else must stack the wood. Different tasks, risks and rewards but both needed for the fire. Some people are happy not to have ever growing responsibility and the stress that sometimes comes with that. God Bless them, we need them, and in fact they are usually the people who really make the money in our companies. They execute the customer’s order, build the customer’s product and touch the customer every day unlike those of us who like to think we run the place and sort of do, but we really are overheads and don’t directly generate revenue.

And the final group are those that don’t like what they do. Never happy and probably not too good at it either, or good by default but cannot wait to escape. These folks either never had a fire, or it has gone out and there is not interest in restarting it. If you are in that group, find something else or stay home!

Life is too short to go through it in bitterness and bad attitude. If you are a manager who stays familiar with the details you will find the people in this group as they will stand out either through poor performance or attitude or disciplinary problems, Once you find them and validate they fit in this group, you need to escort them to the door. They are a disease that you do not want to spread in your company.

Though many of us are intense about what we do, we cannot take it so seriously that we lose our sense of humor. Life is short and we need to be able to laugh at ourselves in the midst of success or failure. If you can’t have fun while you are doing your work, stay home. That’s right, have some fun or stay home