Work
’Äì Just Another Four-Letter Word?
Work. Do
you consider it just another four-letter word, or is
it something from which you derive satisfaction, fun,
and fulfillment? In a national survey of 180,000
American workers, 80% indicated a dislike for their jobs. What
a sad reflection on an activity that takes up a major
portion of our lives.
I’m
sure that at one time or another, we’ve all received
that e-mail that assigns a numerical equivalent to each
letter of the alphabet and then proceeds to ask “What
makes up 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?”
The
e-mail continues to evaluate various aspects of giving
100%, such as hard work, knowledge, and attitude, with
the numerical equivalent of each being 98, 96, and 100%,
respectively. But then the e-mail evaluates other characteristics
found in the work place such as buttering up—which
totals 153%. The moral of the story, according
to the e-mail, would seem to be that hard work and knowledge
don’t equate to giving 100% to your job and so
aren’t worth the effort.
We
work in a service industry, and while our work product
isn’t measured in the same manner as say, Motorola
or Nike, we sometimes hear the same workplace attitudes. “That’s
good enough for me” and “the customer/my
employer doesn’t expect more.”
Did
you know that there are actually some contemporary firms
who have sought to hold error rates to just 1/10th of
1 percent—or 99.9%? Now ask yourself,
is that good enough?
If
99.9% is good enough, then—
- 12
newborn babies will be given to the wrong parents daily.
- 114,500
mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped each year.
- 18,322
pieces of mail will be mishandled every hour.
- 2
million documents will be lost by the IRS this year.
- 2.5
million books will be shipped with the wrong covers.
- 2
planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport
will be unsafe every day.
- 315
entries in Webster’s Dictionary will be misspelled.
- 20,000
incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year.
- 880,000
credit cards in circulation will have incorrect cardholder
information on the magnetic strip.
- 103,260
income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during
the year.
- 5.5
million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat.
- 291
pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly.
- 3,056
copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will
be missing one of the three sections.
Maybe
it’s time for a conscious renovation of our thoughts
about work. Life is a choice. We can choose
to view work as drudgery in the same manner as King Sisyphus
from Greek mythology (he was condemned to Hades and spent
his day pushing a boulder up the mountain, only to have
it roll down at the end of the day) or we can choose
to adopt Will Roger’s attitude, “In order
to succeed, you must know what you are doing, like what
you are doing, and believe in what you are doing. “
1. Know
what you’re doing—winners in life are willing
to do the things losers refuse to do. This principle
is ingrained in the employees who know what they are
doing. Winners prepare, study, train, apply themselves,
and work to become the best at what they do.
2. Like
what you are doing—the secret to happiness, success,
satisfaction, and fulfillment in our work is not doing
what one likes, but in liking what one does.
3. Believe
in what you do—Successful people are not in a job
for something to do; they are in their work to do something.
The
philosophy of Art Linkletter summarizes what it takes
to turn good into better, boredom into stimulating activity,
and discontent into commitment:
Do
a little more than you’re paid to do;
Give
a little more than you have to;
Try
a little harder than you want to;
Aim
a little higher than you think possible; and
Give
thanks to God for health, family and friends.
What
do you want out of your life’s work? What
are you willing to do to make it happen?
Glenn
Van Ekeren, The Speaker’ Sourcebook.
Edward Sannell & John Newstrom, The Big Book of
Presentation Games.
