– Taylor Swift

“Courage is getting up on that horse even when you are scared witless.”

– John Wayne

In 1990, I did the unthinkable by becoming a member of the human potential industry. Thirty years later, I have reached a few conclusions. While we contribute a great deal, the most corrupt practice in the self-help, human potential, motivational, and metaphysical industries is the sale of fearlessness. The only fearless people I’ve met have toe tags.

As a marketing strategy attached to flexible morals, the sale of fearlessness is brilliant. The entire fear mechanism is part of our biology, so it is not going to go anywhere soon. When triggered, there is often discomfort. When we sell the notion that fear can be mitigated and if you didn’t get “the cure” you can enroll in the next seminar, Advanced Terror 202.

America is going through a long list of challenges right now. But, the one that has caused the most significant turmoil of all is the one we don’t talk about:

Underemployment.

When we were touting a 3.8% unemployment rate, about half of our country’s workers characterized themselves as underemployed. But, instead of showing the way forward and giving our citizens guidance, both of our dominant parties make promises to bring back jobs.

Oh, Cher, “If I could turn back time.” One of our boldest superstars who has been dealing with crippling stage fright her entire life. All of her assistants have signed a contract requiring they drag Cher to the stage door, even when she threatens their well-being.

We live at a time when political leaders make promises, and human potential leaders put down fear.

By the way folks, I am not suggesting to torch my profession but to have a thoroughly objective and informed view of our strengths and weaknesses.

There are hundreds of human development leaders devoting their lives to helping others. At one end of the spectrum, we find precision with the mission, the delivery system, and a devotion to ethics in a world that doesn’t require them. At the other end of the spectrum, let’s sell people something they cannot live without.

Here are two examples.

Napoleon Hill, the world’s first commercially successful human potential leader, was a con man. He had a long history of visiting one American city after another to offer investment opportunities that did not exist. Time and time again, he had to pack up his belongings and flee just as law enforcement was about to arrest him.

Hill’s commercial turning point was his book, Think and Grow Rich, which became a bestseller for years. Napoleon based his book on his interviews with one of the world’s richest and most celebrated men, Andrew Carnegie. During these interviews, Mr. Carnegie gave the world his secrets for success. The thing is, Mr. Hill never met Mr. Carnegie. And yet, that book spawned the motivational and human potential industry.

Years later, a young man named Jack Rosenberg was commuting into San Francisco, where he worked as a used car salesman. He had been unhappy with his life for quite some time. Consequently, he enrolled in Scientology and was in the midst of their costly auditing process. As he pulled onto the Golden Gate Bridge, he began to “get it.” By the time he reached the other side, he had made a life-changing series of decisions.

He changed his name to Werner Erhard, abandoned his family, took the Scientology auditing curriculum, and repackaged it into a group program named EST. The man built an industry centered on fearless living.

Today, he lives in Switzerland, which is the one country that outlaws Scientology. It appears the man is afraid of something.

Full living these days requires full courage. It is the state where the action is always more important than fear.

Courage is a decision. With courage, we go for it whether we are trembling or smiling, cursing or speaking with love, whether tears are flowing down our faces (utterly my thing), or sweat is ruining our make-up (not my thing).

My thinking about fear began to change after meeting Robert Maurer. He is a highly respected behavioral scientist at UCLA Medical School. Bob has devoted much of his professional life to studying the behaviors common to succeeding in every vital area in their lives. His fans run the gamut from physicians to college students to the creative community including a stint with Stella Adler.

One of the four behaviors Bob identified is that,

“Successful people are used to the experience of fear and when frightened, reach out for comfort or education.”

In other words, successful people don’t run around with the notion that being afraid is shameful. They do not construct their lives to avoid fear. Just as importantly, when they get frightened they get comfort from the right people and if the fear comes from a persistent problem, they find someone to teach them a solution.

Why comfort? Most of our children have not had this vital behavior purged from our system. When they get frightened, they come running to us for comfort. We pick them up and hold them. The alarm mechanism shuts down, and they move on with their lives. Like it or not, these forms of comfort are the only two healthy ones we can find.

Other attempts to find comfort while frightened include eating a layer cake, watching too much Television (the average is 3 hours and 58 minutes per day), becoming mean spirited, taking drugs (our country consumes about 80% of the legal and illegal drugs in the world), hide, move, stop what we are doing, lie, and more. But, the one statistic that gets me the most is that America’s average screen time with computers, smartphones, tablets, and TVs is 10 hours and 39 minutes.

On a biological level, we never outgrow the need to be comforted, and screwing around with our biology has pushed us to pay a terrible price. It is usually referred to as mediocrity. We sit in the shadows hoping things will change when the answer is to change our mindset.

Without fear, I wouldn’t get far driving on the streets of Los Angeles. Cars come up behind us at the speed of sound with a driver behind the wheel yelling, “move it lard-ass.” We have 80-pound women in 6,000 -pound sport utility trucks with the left hand on the wheel and the righthand texting. We periodically take bets that someone is or isn’t behind the wheel.

We live in a time where work is undergoing restructuring so significant that it makes the Industrial Revolution look like a cookie bake. Far too many people are getting swallowed up because they don’t know how to change. They are missing some excellent news.

Rapidly advancing technology gives us the freedom to do what we want, live where we want, embrace work that matters, and apply meaning to how we make a living.

We have the phenomenon of active learning, of having access to so much information that we now have millionaire children and teenagers. The era of exploitive business is being elbowed aside by the social entrepreneur movement. It is a community devoted to making billions by curing disease, cleaning up the environment, improving education, and solving millions of other problems.

To summarize the point.

If, for one moment, you believe you need to deal with your fear before taking action, find a purpose that is so compelling that you take action now.

The post Why We Will Never Get Over Fear appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

As I listen to their kindness, commitment, empathy, care, watchfulness, and contribution, I realize this is what most of us need to move forward.

Calling each other stupid isn’t cutting it. Always believing in scarcity is what it is:

Not enough for all of us.

A couple of years ago, I met my birth father for the very first time. I spent the day with him and his lovely wife. Then, I flew home. After settling in, one of my partner’s first words were, “What are their political views?”

I looked at him just a little surprised and said, “I don’t know.”

We talked about the values that exist above politics. At that moment, I realized how much I craved that kind of world. It is one where we respect each other’s beliefs, values, and outlooks. Of course, some of you are already feeling cynicism and contempt over this message. But, the real purpose of cynicism and contempt is to kill off change.

At the very least, I had to let go of cynicism and contempt and replace those filters with humility. It isn’t the brand of humility that requires falling to the ground and berating myself; it is the commitment of openness and receptivity to growth.

Much of my adult life was spent getting rid of the white-male-pissed-off God of my childhood. Today, when someone prays, I know he or she is praying to my entity.

During my first book tour, an evangelical radio station kept bringing me back for more interviews. One morning, one of them asked me to describe my spiritual philosophy. I respond, “My outlook is that I cannot differentiate my ass from a hole in the ground.”

Einstein used to stand in the front of a classroom, and he drew a circle on the chalkboard. Inside it, he wrote the word “known.” Outside the circle, he wrote the word “unknown.” Then, he drew a much larger circle with the same terms and pointed out that every time our circle grows, we become more aware of all that we don’t know.

When we protect our circle of “known” no matter how small it might beT, we will never know just how big we are.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post The World Above Politics appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

A world-class interview is not about you.

Here’s why:

Human beings are hard-wired to be able to think about something other than themselves for about 15-seconds.

For most hiring managers, this means they will not be that interested in your story, resume, bio, and wonderful qualities. Ultimately, they are looking for one outcome:

Fulfilled expectations.

Most hiring managers have received little education on how to conduct a good interview.

Many will begin with a request:

“Tell me about yourself.”

In many cases, this is where the interview goes into the weeds. When we open our mouths without any clarity in what that manager wants to cover with the available time, success is a bit light shooting at targets wearing a blind-fold.

Great interviews are collaborative, connective, insightful, and comforting.

Here is a possibly better response.

“I’m happy to tell you about myself. However, I have a lengthy and rather dense work history. If I could ask you a few questions before we get started, I will be able able to share the parts of my story that are most relevant and be more respectful of your time.

What do you want to accomplish during our conversation? In other words, what are the two most important insights you need to hear from me?”

“How much time do we have to discuss that?”

The question might seem trivial, but it isn’t at all. How many times have we been in a conversation where we assumed we had an hour only to discover, it was 15 minutes?

Always go into an interview with questions that will help you learn more about what the manager and the organization are looking for. Give them room to ask plenty of questions as well. Listen intently. Ask clarifying questions to deepen the conversation. But, never, ever ask close-ended (yes or no) questions, which essentially stop the discussion. The only time we use a close-ended question in a sales meeting or interview is when the manager is wasting time with a lengthy and sometimes irrelevant story.

An example, “You sound disappointed and upset about what happened. Is that the case?”

Before you set foot in that interview, learn everything you can about the manager and the organization. One of the most common questions I ask a candidate is, “What do you know about us?” If someone hasn’t taken the time to gain as much insight as possible before the interview, I don’t have much interest to continue. Today, we have access to the kinds of information that can allow us to ask the questions that demonstrate just how much we have learned about the organization and the manager sitting across the table.

Learn or teach yourself how to gather relevant information from LinkedIn, Facebook, Glassdoor, Indeed, Google, and the local Business Journal. The more informed you become, the more prepared you are to have a brilliant interview. Here is just one question, that provides an example:

You point to the award.

“You are the only person outside of academia to have earned that award. How did that change your life?”

Write a set of questions for every interview you have. The more that you know, the more you increase the probability of success.

Here are a few examples:

• How do you feel about the current state of our industry?
• In the months ahead, what kinds of challenges would you want me to resolve?
• How would you describe the most important characteristics of your culture?
• This team that I would manage, how in sync are they with the expected culture?
• It is my understanding that my predecessor was a rock star. With her departure, what would I need to do in order to establish even greater enthusiasm?
• We are having lunch two years into the future. After sitting down, you tell me that my being here led to a series of unexpected breakthroughs. What are those breakthroughs?

Does preparing great questions help? Absolutely. One of the biggest payoffs from asking great questions is it is more comfortable for everyone. Socratic (question-based) sales calls are far more comfortable because it is no longer about us, we are there to find out with as much detail as possible, in how we can best help them.

Last week, three of my individual clients received job offers with great organizations.

Two of them turned down these world-class job offers.

Why?

All of them have the capacity to fluidly and graciously connect with others. They have become robust active learners. Each one has engaged in the kind of self-inquiry that leads to clarity about what they want and the courage to turn down roles that are close, but not enough. Most of all, they have a brand of confidence that comes out of practice, self-awareness, and establishing clear personal standards.

An enormous portion needed to change before the pandemic. They probably had the notion that time was still on their side. Now, it is not only important to change one’s mindset about work, most of us need to learn how to better connect with others. Remember that the number one people fail today is isolation.

When we are uncomfortable with sales, interviews, connecting with others, and asking for help, we usually put-off learning these skills. As change continues to accelerate, sustainable careers require that we develop connectivity, a skill set that allows us to fluidly and graciously connect with others.

A huge portion of our country’s talent continues to deal with connectivity when they are in trouble. While learning how to build a community, sell our value, and inspire others to help us might be a stretch, this is the time to stop thinking about it and to develop these skills. The good news is that technology is making the entire mindset easier. Even the shyest people have access to technology that makes connecting with others far less hair-raising.

Now, the most important investment of all ought to be focused on becoming far more informed about the opportunities ahead, the changes we simply must orchestrate within our selves, and the awareness when we have made the investment to become informed and aware of how we meet the needs and expectations of the new workplace.

The work of the future is already here. There has never been a more important time to raise our standards about work and to define what we most want to accomplish. As we remove task-work from the workplace, ambivalence about our work is no longer enough.

Think of someone that you love with all of your heart.

You would do anything for him or her. Right?

Now, think of the work that you love with all of your heart.

You would do anything to make the relationship you have with your work successful. Right?

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

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Many of us have not yet had someone close to them fall victim to the Coronavirus. Two and a half weeks ago, Terrence McNally, one of our country’s most influential playwrights, passed. Anyone who knew Terrence not only thought of him as a literary force of nature, he was a magician in bringing the human experience to life. As a role model, he showed so many of us what it means to choose kindness, no matter the circumstances around us. His departure was the moment the health crisis became very real, random, and utterly disrespectful.

My spiritual journey is unlike anyone else. But, I also believe that everyone’s true spirituality is unique.

I come from a childhood that featured a white-male-pissed-off-God. That merciless and inhospitable God was so violent that many of the followers were also violent and merciless.

For years, I dragged around a big expensive set of luggage that contained all of the billing from therapists and the remnants of that violent childhood. But, finding my life’s work changed everything.

I delivered the first Inspired Work Program in 1990. Nothing prepared me for what took place in that room. The curriculum caused people to fuse their spirituality, emotions, and critical thinking into an answer to that all-important question, “What do you want to do with your life?”

My internal bias towards others became extraordinarily painful. As people from all walks-of-life walked through those doors, I hid my bias behind a poker face. I would imagine that someone I just met would be the last person on earth to transform his or her life. Invariably, they would be the first ones to have a mind-bending breakthrough.

So, my spiritual journey has led to an outlook that no matter the religion, we are all praying to the same entity. And, the actions we take toward helping others often determine whether we reach our real potential or not.

Here is one of my most favorite examples:

I have served an organization that reaches out to the homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles. A few years ago, I met a wonderful woman who was throwing her all into making it back to her community and family. There was a time where her drug addiction had led to living under a freeway overpass. There, she developed an infection that destroyed all of her teeth.

Despite her circumstances, she always smiled, even though it embarrassed her to do that! She was usually the first to help others. The day arrived that surprised all of us. She walked in the door with a mouth full of beautiful new teeth! As I watched her, an image came into my head. I have learned that many of those life-changing opportunities arrive and if we take action, everyone wins. So, I walked over to her and lowered my voice.

“I hope you don’t take this personally. I have been so impressed by your joy and willingness to help others. Now, you have this big gift, and if you are open, I would like to treat you to a makeover.”

She threw her arms around me. A few days later, I took her to our hairdresser and asked him to give her the whole thing, hair, makeup, manicure, and pedicure. I left two outfits, got in my car, put down the roof, and waited at the beach. When I returned, I tiptoed through the back entrance and peeked around the corner. David, our Scottish hairdresser, had her turned away from the mirror. He saw me and signaled that I stay quiet. But, I was so astonished by her beauty the tears were already flowing. He spun her chair around and she looked at herself, totally overwhelmed, and said, “I look beautiful.”

I cannot recall, with any detail, my visits to church during Easter or Christmas. When I think of anything that remains transfixed in my head, it usually involves a transformative moment when someone’s life changes or when someone did the same for me.

The actions that are taking place today, the reset that could be playing out right now, isn’t about dogma, it is about either doing the right thing or being aware of how each one of us can change someone’s life just by allowing us to step into possibility and compassion.

There are still people on the streets of Los Angeles. We can help them.

There are millions of people who are not dealing with stress in healthy ways. We can call them.

For those of us who declare that service isn’t valuable unless it is selfless, I say bullshit.

Service makes all of us happier, healthier, and more connected with our spirit.

Here are just a few possibilities:

1. Make a hot meal, put it in a bag, and give it to someone who needs it.
2. Call the friend or family member who is far more isolated than you. Check-in on his or her welfare. Listen.
3. If you wanted to go to your church, synagogue or temple, but you have changed your mind. Call and ask if there is anyone in the congregation who needs food, a makeover afterward, or simply a call.
4. Visit LinkedIn right now. Wait, you might be reading this on LinkedIn! Visit the profiles of the very people who supported you and made your life better. Write a recommendation that is generous and from your heart. It turns out that praise is one of the better behaviors to help others be healthy.
5. Buy someone a bag of groceries, pay their utility or phone bill, or solve one of their problems.

The Coronavirus became real to me when a friend passed away. This “thing” is so random. This man influenced our culture in profound ways. He was one of the kindest human beings that I ever met. On the same day, LA’s Mayor Garcetti held a press conference and said that our staying at home might be better realized if we treated it as an “act of love.”

I am not telling anyone what to do, nor am I holding myself up as a role model. Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am as deeply flawed and imperfect as the next person.

What I do hope my readers hear is that gratitude transforms our lives, service makes us better and healthier people, and we do not have to leave our home to make someone’s life better.

Look, I cannot control what people will do on Sunday. I would just like to suggest that taking action that protects us from illness and using our time to help others could contribute to the spiritual makeover of our country, the one it so deservedly needs.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

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Peter Diamandis – Co-Founder, X-Prize

History has long demonized wealth and the rich. The problem with blaming the rich is that the very people who point their fingers in disdain have already reduced the possibility that wealth will ever come their way. More troubling is the fact that putting down wealth distracts us from social entrepreneurism, which is the practice of making sustainable solutions to world problems wildly profitable. Today, the best talent coming out of schools will often make a commitment to only work for an employer that is making our world a better place to live.

Shortly after launching Inspired Work, I met Dr. Robert Maurer. He is the head of behavioral science for the Family Residency Program at UCLA Medical School. Bo has said, “We learn nothing of value by studying dysfunction.” Extending that thought, if we want to become happy and successful business owners, study the best and brightest entrepreneurs. What are they doing that is different from the rest of us? By and large, they have a clearly defined mission, vision, and purpose. They don’t run from risks. They build strongly effective support systems. They respond to fear with courage. As a result, they take the very actions that make them successful.

Today, we are in a bit of a perfect storm with our national workforce. Rapidly accelerating change is forcing the need for all of us to change. But, without meaningful and directive leadership, about 50% of our workforce view themselves as underemployed. As task work crumbles, many people don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know where to look for answers. When our leadership, on both sides of the political fence, promises jobs, they wait, hoping it is true. The problem with hope is it does not require action.

American optimism is one of our country’s most precious assets and yet it is under attack from cynicism, contempt, aimlessness, resignation, and frenzy. As change accelerates around us, it can feel easier to seek comfort in these filters, but ultimately, we have to take action.

The world needs a lot of help. The challenges facing all of us grow with each day. While non-profits play an enormous role for the good in our world, they are limited by models based on scarcity. The world is exploding with non-profits devoted to dealing with climate change. But social entrepreneurs are making green energy production more profitable than producing petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Green energy technology is becoming cheaper by the day and easier to find. No one knows this more intimately than Al Gore.

What has happened to Al Gore?

Vice President Gore produced two documentaries and received an Academy Award.

Gore is well on his way to becoming the richest ex-Vice President in the United States. Forbes recently updated Al Gore’s net worth from $200million to $300million in one year. After bringing world attention to the growth of greenhouse gases, Gore has been teaming up with venture capital partners such as Goldman Sachs and Kleiner Perkins to fund viable green energy start-ups. But, instead of giving away easy money, they have extraordinary business standards that must be met. Marching on Washington? Thank you, Jane Fonda. But, while she is getting arrested on behalf of climate change, fortunes are being made only to prove this is where we can go.

For those of us who are of a certain age, do you remember the one previous attempt to launch a new automobile manufacturer? In the 80s? Do you remember John Delorean doing a cocaine deal to keep his car alive? He had a bad business plan!

12 years ago, I was driving on the Santa Monica Freeway only to see a Lotus Elise overtaking my fast car. It sped past us. On the rear was the name, “Tesla.” Elon Musk had gutted the Lotus and installed an electric drivetrain. The first one was recently shot into space for publicity. Just 3 years later Tesla’s S class was released and wealthy neighborhoods began replacing gas hogs with the future of driving. In the last two years, their more affordable 3 series is replacing BMW as the tony entry-level luxury and sports car of choice. And, while American fat ass car makers have arrived late at the game, Tesla has become America’s single most valued automobile manufacturer.

Take a moment to think about this. If you had world-class talent, would you want to work for General Motors or Tesla? One of my clients made such a move. He describes a dramatic shift in employer culture. Before, his sole role was to increase shareholder value. Today, his role is to help change the world.

What’s next? It’s Boring!

Whenever someone puts down Los Angeles, I reply, “If it’s so bad, why do we spend hours in traffic?” Seriously, traffic can be so gridlocked in LA that I suggest bringing a picnic lunch and a catheter. Musk’s new adventure is in building underground tunnels with elctro-magnetic drives. Cars will be able to park on an elevator, be lowered into the ground, and flash through Los Angeles at over a hundred miles per hour.

So, my friends, let’s return to the beginning. Money is not the root of all evil. Standing in a pile, money has no morality. However, social entrepreneurs are bringing morality to how money is invested and made. I really cannot suggest a brighter way into the future of work.

While technology is disrupting all forms of work, it is also offering us freedom from monotonous and mind-numbing work. After spending 300 years at workstations, many of us are not thrilled with the specter of having to change everything. We need new mindsets, new skills, and new values. It is no longer enough to just settle for a job. Finding the work that you love will give you the fuel to push through the discomfort of change.

Is freedom frightful? Only because we have to change.

Our home is filled with dachshunds, These willful little dogs that do not have human owners or companions, they have staff. When we brought our first dachshund puppy home, she had been living in a crate about two and a half feet square. We brought her home in one of those little carry kennels. When we opened the gate, our little puppy came out with terror on her face. For a bit, she walked in the same dimension as the crate. Then, she looked up and was shocked to see a wildly bigger world. It didn’t take long for her to be running through the house. Soon, she would turn the tables and boss us around.

But it is the same kind of energy that drove America to go west, to build roads, create breathtaking technology hubs, and to strive towards more than better, we find our best when we reach towards the impossible. Of all our political leaders, John F Kennedy personified that ambition more eloquently than any of us. Today, some politicians are decrying Kennedy’s mission to place humans on the moon. That money could have built more schools. What a lack of imagination. That mission turned the United States into the world leader in technology.

There was a moment last year where a client summarized the whole ethos of the social entrepreneur. He is one of the world’s leading bioscientists. His team is working on an actual cure for cancer. One day, he took me into his lab, turned towards me, raised his arms and said,

“Welcome to my temple of hope.”

If life is short, why settle for less?

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

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Ralph’s has a superstore within 50 yards of our front door. The employees are hairy, sweaty, and the men are worse. Kidding aside, the place is so disengaged that customers feel like intrusions. Most of the cashiers don’t give eye contact to customers and many of them talk with other employees while practicing the mindless frenzy of entering barcodes into the system. The disengagement at the front of the store is matched by the back. The worst of it is bringing home meat, poultry, and produce that gets rotten in 24 hours.

We typically visit the store with “ingredient emergencies.” You know, guests are coming and we forgot to buy coffee. For every dollar we spend at the store next door, we spend ten dollars with the competition. We willingly drive a few miles just to find people who work with pride. Gelson’s and Whole Foods are far better. But, the best? Trader Joe’s.

But, for every dollar we spend there, we give another ten dollars towards Gelson’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. Rather than walking 50 yards, we usually drive a few miles. Next door, asking for help is typically greeted with a blank stare, disinterest, or irritations. It is the only store where meat, poultry, and produce often get rotten in 24 hours.

At all of these locations, there is only one person responsible for the encounter:

The CEO or the business owner.

When a CEO or business owner places shareholder value and C-level income above the interest of customers and employees, mediocrity always prevails. The trance of disengagement begins at the top. But, as a neighbor and a consumer, grocery stores are special. The quality of these stores helps define our neighborhoods. A couple of months ago, I wrote a letter to the Chair of Yucaipa Companies, which owns Ralph’s as well as a number of other large chains. In the midst of writing this letter, it dawned on me that over the course of 30 years, I have not had one bad buying experience at Trader Joe’s. Here is a store that provides low prices, high-quality products and employees who treat customers as precious assets.

Joe Coulombe, the founder of Trader Joe’s, worked his way through Stanford by holding a part-time job at Rexall. After his graduation, Joe opened up a small chain of convenience stores. But, as the market changed, he saw an opportunity to build a business with unique value. His concept centered around two game-changers:

• Don’t sell other people’s stuff. Control the quality and profit through private labels.
• Develop the best talent in the grocery industry.

Today, Trader Joe’s is more than profitable, it is a cult brand with the kind of fanbase that brings in new members of the tribe every-single-day.

One the employee side, how successfully did Joe Coulombe meet the target?

Did you know the average tenure of a Trader Joe’s cashier is 19 years?

While I was writing The Workplace Engagement Solution, one of my advisors gave me this figure and it boggled my mind. But Joe built a talent philosophy that many stunted CEOs can’t seem to comprehend. The philosophy is common-sense. If you want to retain good workers give everyone a wage that allows them to meet the most basic living standards of the communities they live in. Even as the business grows, stay connected to them. For years, Joe visited every store and asked what they wanted and needed to be their best. Then, he gave it to them. Even the Hawaiian shirts came out of a conversation where employees brought up the notion of wearing fun and comfortable clothes.

I read quite a few stories about what it is like to work at Traders. But none of them summarized the culture better than one of our favorite cashiers, Jessica in Westwood. She’s always recognized us and called out to us by name. I told her about the book and asked how the company has produced such long-term loyalty. She flashed a radiant smile and said,

“19 years is for new people. I’ve been here for 24 years.”

I asked, “What do you attribute it to?”

The smile grew.

“The leadership of Trader Joe’s is amazing. Many of us call it a democracy because everyone is respected. No one pulls rank. Here’s an example. The other day, I was the second person who showed up before the doors opened. Our General Manager was already here. He was in the bathrooms mopping the floors and taking out the trash. We are a family! Everyone is expected to be generous. If I had been the first one in the door, I would have been scrubbing toilets.”

As I studied the Trader Joe’s culture, one of the words that kept coming up was generosity.

Since Joe retired, he has been succeeded by Theo Albrecht, Marc Benioff, and their current CEO, Dan Bane. Each has mirrored Joe’s ethics and values about employees and customers. There is a recent story about Dan with his decision to stop selling bananas in bunches and simply charge $.19 for one banana. They used to weigh the bananas by the pound and then package them at the warehouse. Dan watched an elderly woman walk around a pile of the bananas looking at most every package. But, she walked away without buying anything. He ran after her and asked,

“Why did you not buy any bananas?”

She said, “I’m so old I might not live long enough to eat the fifth banana.”

Trader Joe’s culture of generosity includes a story of one young man that was going through a particularly rough time in his personal life. The stress was beginning to show up at work. The manager walked up an aisle and asked that he join him behind the store. Of course, the guy assumed he was about to be reprimanded, perhaps even fired. But, the manager handed him two cartons of eggs and instructed him to throw eggs against the wall until he felt better. Every day when he worked, that manager greeted him with empathy and provided a safe place for him to live through his challenges.

I came across an article from Katherine Baker from Spoon University. She earned a graduate degree in behavioral science, found a good job in the field only to discover it made her feel stressed out and emotional all of the time. She felt she had lost the game with the “adulting thing.” She took a part-time job at Trader Joe’s to help catch up on student debt. Soon it was a full-time gig. One night, her sister asked if she liked her job at Traders. Surprisingly, she responded, “I think I do.” Katherine continued, “I found myself while mopping floors, preparing hummus samples, and putting jars of cookie butter on the shelf. I remembered who I was, got in touch with what I wanted in life, and learned how effing important it is to follow your dreams – or at the very least, find the things in life that make you happy and unapologetically pursue them.”

The most engaged workers are drawn to employers just like this. Our country’s greatest talent doesn’t take jobs where they have to smother their light just to walk through the front door. There isn’t anything elitist about giving every single worker and customer generosity.

As I finished the letter to the Chair of Yucaipa Companies, I thought of how he might respond. Within a few days, the manager of the local store called me. Panic was in her voice. She begged us to come back and gave us a gift certificate for $50.00. I asked what was she going to do to make the store a better experience. As she responded, it was clear she was not telling the truth. Perhaps she didn’t even realize that the promises coming out of her mouth were what she was supposed to tell us.

I thought of the last time I had any kind of a problem with Trader Joe’s. The only one was a problem of my own making. I have this pair of high-end sunglasses. Over the years, I’ve spent a small fortune in replacing expensive sunglasses that got lost or destroyed. I had waited until I felt I had the emotional stability to get a nice pair of glasses and keep them. One day, I left them somewhere in the Trader Joe’s store and ran to the manager’s station. They had not been turned in.

As I drove home, the phone rang. It was the manager. He said, “Mr. Harder, we just found your sunglasses! Please come back and I’ll give them to you personally.”

I laughed and said I had such low expectations at stores but that Trader Joe’s has become a special place for us.

He laughed and said, “We’re here to make everyone happy. Thank you for being such a valued customer.”

So, just what is the point?

Among my clients, there are a number of senior human capital executives. In many cases, my role is to help them find great opportunities and avoid the misery that comes from a bad fit. The two most common and vital questions include:

Who is the boss?

Does the CEO lead the culture?

If the CEO assigns culture to human resources, I suggest they either turn down the position or take it and keep their bags packed. Every single day, human capital executives are shown the door because the CEO didn’t want to be bothered with people. How can you possibly build an engaged workplace if the CEO is disengaged?

How does that work?

Has it ever worked?

Sure, I realize that is the norm.

But, how does it work?

If you have any doubts, go talk to a cashier at Trader Joe’s.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2019, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post Why Do Trader Joe’s Cashiers Stay for 19 Years? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

The sole purpose of a democracy is to make everyone relevant. If a CEO ever hopes to solve the employee engagement challenge, then he or she must lead the culture. For starters, how could we expect to have any improvements at all if the supreme leader isn’t engaged?

Building an engaged culture is quite possibly the most critical activity for a CEO or business owner. It might even seem counter-intuitive to do this. After all, the Jensen and Meckling papers of the 70s suggested the sole purpose of an organization is to deliver shareholder value. In so doing, CEOs got a big break from doing the best possible job. If the shareholders needed more money, we laid off a few thousand workers. Quality quickly took a back seat to cut expenses. We can see the difference at the next auto show. Cadillac, once the “Standard of the World,” builds OK cars but go sit in one and then try anything from BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, and Audi.

I just returned home from another shopping experience at Ralph’s Grocery. For every dollar we spend at the store right next to our home, we spend twenty dollars with competitors that are several miles away. Today, my cashier never looked up and never said hello. He was engaged in a highly animated conversation with a colleague in the next aisle. He regularly turned his back on the customer in front of me while trading jokes. By the time I was in front of him, he had said, “Did you find everything you wanted?” He never looked up. Then, he stopped everything he was doing and began texting on his phone!

Only the world’s most enlightened CEOs and business owners recognize that to lead a category or to have sustainable success; we have to rise and deliver shareholder value, fully engaged talent, and loyal customers.

Before dismissing the notion, there are only so many hours in the day, let’s examine one of the most well-known organizations on the face of the earth. The Executive Committee, McKinsey, and many other leading organizations recognize The US Marines as the world’s most exceptional example of leadership development.

A few years ago, one of our partners referred Major General Melvin Spiese into our program. He had just left the Marines, where he headed up training and development for 22 years. He walked in the door with all of the concerns we find in someone who grew up in one place. He arrived before the other participants and turned out to be one of the brightest people I’ve ever met. But, his disarming humility made him especially memorable. During our chat, I brought up that I was writing a book on employee engagement. He smiled and said,

“Employee engagement isn’t a problem for us at all.”

I laughed and said, “I guess disengagement would be a big issue in the middle of a war.”

“It would kill many people.”

Mel joined the Marines as a teenager. At the time, he felt he was leading a mediocre life. The young man walked into a local recruitment station drawn to the promise they would turn him into a leader. His thirst to excel fueled high performance, and he earned progressively more responsible roles.

In our program, there is a magic moment when someone’s eyes and body language indicate it is all about to come together. I could see that just a little push could become Mel’s tipping point. So, I asked him a question.

“You birth people. Is that correct?”

He nodded and said, “That is what I do.”

“Thus far, how many people have you birthed?”

“Over three-hundred thousand.”

There was a collective gasp in the room. I added,

“Who in this world would be able to have that answer? What are you going to do with this enormous gift?”

That was the moment in which Mel took flight.

His words came out with quiet force,

“Marines are not born; they are made. We cannot afford to send disengaged people into battle. The casualties would be intolerable. We teach values, a code of conduct, and living. There is no negotiation. They practice and live by our values, or they leave.”

After that weekend, Mel and I developed a business and marketing plan for Leaders Can Be Made. His organization teaches and embeds the values of engagement for everyone. They serve organizations that want to develop authentic value-driven cultures all over the world.

What are the values?

Take a moment and consider what would happen to your organization if everyone practiced:

Honor / Courage / Commitment / Dependability / Decisiveness / Enthusiasm / Initiative/ Integrity / Judgment / Justice / Knowledge / Tact / Unselfishness / and Loyalty.

Every Marine is expected to live by these values. As a result, they don’t just build leadership from high potentials; everyone is treated as a high potential with the same opportunity to shine. Developing cultures around values are common-sense, but how common is this?

Long-term excellence doesn’t necessarily require a long list of characteristics. One word can suffice. In Los Angeles, there is a legendary restaurant in the Santa Monica Mountains called Saddlepeak Lodge. It is a large and elegant former hunting lodge that features refined food, extraordinary service, and beautiful views. In the summer, we sit on the terrace looking through canyons towards the ocean. During the winter, nothing is better than having dinner next to a roaring fire. Recently, I had lunch with Ann Ehrenger, the owner of Saddlepeak, a longtime professor of Business Management at USC and Trinity College. I asked how she was able to lead a consistently magical environment. She smiled and said, “It is quite simple. Everyone is expected to practice one thing from the moment they walk in the door until they go home. They are expected to practice kindness.”

Moved by the role modeling from Ann and Mel, we developed the values of an engaged culture.

Everyone: 

Participates

No one is exempt from learning how to become more connected, more effective in managing change, and awakened to everyone around them. Being a democracy, everyone is relevant. A disengaged cashier can turn customers against your company. A careless meat department manager can kill them.

Practices Regular Self-Inquiry

Our programs have produced great success by helping people learn how to access and organize their truth. In so doing, they make meaningful changes in their professional lives. In a world where change accelerates every single day, we must develop the capacity to learn new skills, let go of old ideas, and reinvent themselves. Our clients learn how to use 5-minutes of self-inquiry to get far more out of the day ahead of them.

Pursues Change Before Change Impacts Them

For most of us, personal change is uncomfortable. We find the consequences of avoiding personal change has led to a culture where about 50% of America’s workers now characterize themselves as “underemployed.”

Demonstrates and Practices Enthusiasm for Learning and Growth. 

Active learners not only stay ahead of change; they make the best changes happen. Today’s active learner adds value to the intelligence of their employer, and they will always be the last if ever, to get laid-off.

Tells the Truth and Practices Transparency

The world has reached a tipping point where everything that we do, say, and hide comes to light. If that news is really bad, it spreads like wildfire.

Live with nothing to hide. Run our organizations in the light.

Practices Courage

Develop a culture where we reward others for practicing courage when they are frightened. Build an environment where taking action is far nobler than “flying below the radar.” Someone with courage will take immediate action while someone who is working on becoming fearless is on their 5th self-help book.

In Summary

Let’s be clear. I am not on the warpath with shareholder value!

All of us ought to have issues with leadership that creates this one value while growing mediocrity with the talent and the customer experience.

On the other hand, isn’t it time we tell the truth and highlight the fact that if a CEO let’s customer relationships suffer and employees to stagnate, he or she isn’t doing their job.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2019, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post Want Employee Engagement? Join the Marines! appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

The importance of American labor could be summarized in how we won World War II. Late to the fight, our workers played just as much of a role as soldiers by producing unprecedented quantities of ships, guns, planes, and vehicles. As the war concluded, workers had indeed, earned our deep respect.

In the 50s, we shifted our manufacturing capabilities by building the best cars and products in the world. We gave Veterans “first-in-line” access to jobs, and we created millions of homes at ridiculously low price-points. Through the sheer value of America’s talent, we became the world’s superpower.

In 1976, two famed economists at Harvard published a paper that would change virtually every aspect of running a public company. It is our collective illiteracy about this event that causes so many people to blame others without actually knowing how we got here. Michael Jensen and William Meckling published the now-legendary paper,

“Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure.”

In it, they argued that corporations needed to align the interests of manage­ment and shareholders. To put this bluntly, they proposed the sole purpose of a corporation is to deliver and grow shareholder value.

For CEOs and shareholders, this was as healthy as leaving a ton of biscuits in a room with two dogs. For corporate executives, stock-based com­pensation became the alignment mechanism of choice. Consequently, their incomes skyrocketed. In the 1970s, CEOs of large, publicly traded companies earned less than $1 million in today’s dollars. Today, that average has grown to $11.4 million. The new model motivates CEOs to incessantly focus on stock value rather than enhancing the real, longer-term performance of the company.

During the past 40+ years, the entire investment market shifted from long-term investment in building organizations and markets to realizing as much out of stock value as possible and to reach that in the shortest period of time. Investment banking turned into a multi-trillion-dollar industry. CEOs and hedge fund leaders became the foundation for how we dealt with workers in large organizations. With stock value becoming the number-one pursuit, American businesses and CEOs traded the long view for volatility, thus shifting the dynamic interests between capital and labor. As providers of capital push CEOs for greater and quicker returns, cutting back on labor is now the easiest way to signal they are ad­dressing corporate financial performance.

Many workers were quite supportive of the American dream. But during the last 40 years, the average income has stagnated while hourly compensation dropped. Workers witness venture capitalists taking advantage of financial deregulation to buy companies, take out loans on the assets, and pay huge dividends to themselves. Many of these ac­quisitions went bankrupt as employees lost their jobs, health insurance, and pensions. These financial barons are often celebrated and admired, but it has also resulted in mass income inequality at an alarming trend. Was this done intentionally? I believe it was done blindly.

Many of America’s workers have watched their job, and financial security goes up in smoke. Anger, contempt, and cynicism turned into raging fires as they read stories of greedy CEOs backdating stock options and pushing the envelope to unethical, and sometimes illegal, degrees. But perhaps it was amorality that angered them the most. In many organi­zations, the underlying message was that when needed, workers mat­tered. However, the cycles of hiring and laying people off reached such dizzying heights that we now have a labor force that views work as a temporary assignment.

The single-minded pursuit of building shareholder value has weakened the strength of our country. There was a time when shareholders, employees, product quality, and customer satisfaction were equal. Sadly, by making shareholders primary winners of an organization’s profits, we now produce large quantities of cheap stuff. We often treat customers by examining how much irritation they will put up with before moving on.

As a post-war country, Cadillac was the “Standard of the World.” But after the Theory was embraced, GM began pulling every dime that could be turned over to management and shareholders. Materials infamously got cheaper. Instead of innovation, Cadillac built the Seville on a Chevy Nova frame and charged as much as an E-class Mercedes. Lee Iacocca famously revived Chrysler with the “K” car while his Pinto turned out to be more threatening than a hitman.

Everything became cheaper. The results can be experienced by sitting in any Cadillac model and then moving over to an Audi, BMW, Lexus or Mercedes. The late Lee Iacocca celebrated the fixation on shareholder value by building such notable products as the “K” car and the Pinto.

Today, our country faces a variety of significant challenges. Underemployment impacts half of our workers. Accelerating change is kicking far too many people to the curb. In the last 2 years, we have witnessed California’s utility companies cutting expenses so close to the bone that hundreds of people have lost their lives to fires. Even in the face of bankruptcy, they have paid their shareholders fortunes and kept millions in bonuses for themselves. The state’s governor Gavin Newsom is courting Warren Buffet to buy the land rights to our utilities. Perhaps this is a good time to understand that Warren never takes shortcuts. He rigorously upholds bringing integrity to every aspect of organizational practice.

I do not believe that change will come from anyone who is benefiting from the Theory. We will also not break out of the current state if most people don’t understand how we got here. Instead, But, I have great faith in our children and young people because they will not put up with this crap.

A few years ago, I flew into Calgary to deliver a keynote on employee engagement. My time in the flight was invested in reading the biographies of the CEOs and business owners attending the event. The vast majority of them were in petroleum. At the time, delays in the Keystone Pipeline and a downturn in the global market had turned Calgary into something of a ghost town.

At the beginning of my presentation, I said, “While flying into your beautiful city, I studied your backgrounds and your organizations. Since many of you are laying off thousands of employees, perhaps we could discuss self-change rather than employee engagement.”

The response was enthusiastic. Later, during Q & A, I suggested the possibility that many of the leaders in that conference would do well by investing in the future rather than waiting for the past to spring back to life. For example, we have many energy firms making that shift because they take the future seriously. But the room turned a bit dark when I said, If we don’t progress, our children will do it. Because they will not put up with this.”

Isn’t it time to declare Theory of the Firm a failure?

In terms of excellence, it has turned into a shortcut for reaching mediocrity.

Ironically, most of the people upholding and protecting the Theory of the Firm are in their 60s to 80s.

Perhaps our children actually are here to save the world.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2019, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post How Shareholder Fixation Built a Culture of Mediocrity appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

Through a series of events, two organizations began sending hundreds of employees through the program. This experience allowed us to realize how we could speed up the process.

Let’s start here: Change, for most of us, is uncomfortable and perhaps even frightening. From a very early age, we learn how to kill all forms of internal change on-the-spot.

Just one question!

Do you wear sunglasses?

Picture this. A physician helps with your birth. Moments after you arrive, she glues a pair of sunglasses with a beautiful blue lens over your eyes.

Thirty years later, someone asks, “What color is the world?” It’s blue for you. But, from a global view, nothing could be further from the truth. It is being proven, right now, time-and-time again that human beings can believe anything they want. Many of our peers and loved ones are shaping new and strange beliefs to justify the others that are on the verge of getting disqualified.

Back to the basics! What are the Five Killer Filters?

Cynicism 

Oh, come on! Are we a cynical culture?

Cynicism, most often associated with distrust and pessimism, causes us to question our motivations, undermine our best intentions, and talks us out of taking any action. Cynicism is similar to contrari­anism, which is where we always argue the opposite position, even to the most positive mission, vision, and purpose. In the workplace, cyni­cism shows up in messages like the following:

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“We don’t have the time or money to change.”

“I don’t have the time to learn something new; I’m barely keeping ahead of the work as it is.”

In the career development space, it can show up similarly:

“I could never make a living doing that.” 

Contempt 

We call this one the “assassination filter.” When someone is partic­ularly frightened by change or transparency, they often use a distilled version of cynicism to kill progress and change on-the-spot. It is more intense and drastic. Sometimes, we even get run over by the Packard.

The Oxford Living Dictionaries’ definition of contempt makes the point: “The feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn: he showed his contempt for his job by doing it very badly.” I often tell leaders that if someone comes after you with contempt, they are more than just fearful; they are terrified.

A few years ago, poet and performance artist Gary Turk created a video called “Look Up,” which quickly went viral. It shows two alter­nate scenarios. In one version, a young man is so fixated on his cell phone that he misses the life he was meant to have. In the other version, he “looks up” and meets the love of his life. They marry and raise a fam­ily, and he holds her hand in old age as she passes away. Turk’s perfor­mance piece is a rather eloquent message about what we lose when we use our technology to “check-out.”

Mr. Turk’s message sparked much contempt when you see some of the reactions:

“I don’t know whom I find more galling—Gary Turk, who wrote this one-dimensional preachy fluff, or the millions of sheep sharing it on social media.” 

“Thanks, Helen! Every time I read it, I just want to rip it apart line by line—I’m glad someone else has the energy to do so.” 

Oh, my God! I think the last one might have just cut me off on the 10 Freeway! You know, the one glaring in the rearview mirror with a cell phone in the left hand and the middle finger reaching for the sky on the right.

When an entire team falls into cynicism over change, the most dominant and contemptuous colleague is selected to kill the message and perhaps the messager as well.

Aimlessness 

More than 80 percent of America’s workers don’t like what they do for a living, which means the majority of our workforce is in a state of aimlessness or just going through the motions. It is life without a defined mission, vision, or purpose.

For years, many of our larger organizational clients wanted us to deliver our leadership and development programs. But, when I suggested that our original program is the best solution for team engagement, the pushback was surprising. “Oh, no. If we get them to tell their truth, they will pack up their bags and leave.”

Many of those same companies are getting hit with the transparency provided by using Indeed, Glass Door, Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook. In an ever-accelerating workplace, truth is the most critical driver behind an organization’s success.

How do we get past the filters?

Point them out!

Before we identified the mechanism behind pushback or failure, some of our participants consumed more energy and time from all of us. However, when we discussed the filters early in the program, the filters lost their power.

Resignation 

“I’m too young, too old, too fat, too thin, too stuck, too angry….”

“I can’t take care of my desires and needs; I have three kids to get through college.”

“We don’t have the resources to change, so why should we bother?”

Resignation is the file cabinet that stores all of the “evidence” we have compiled to prove we cannot and will not change.

Some of us would characterize resignation as a lack of hope. Still, it is a lack of optimism, an unwillingness to believe in ourselves, or that decisive action will make things better. Often, we present our problem as a form of bias: “These companies are only hiring young people. You know how it is when you turn 60.” That form of resignation overlooks the fact there are scores of people in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s who are making a big difference in the workplace.

Frenzy 

Dean Schabner of ABC Television, recently stated that “today’s full-time employees work an average of 49 hours per week, about six days out of seven days.” Since 1993, the average full-time American worker has given up over a month of leisure activity because they are now invest­ing part of the weekend to work.

We work harder than any other indus­trialized nation, including Japan, where workers who used to die from stress received a hero’s funeral. About 3.6 million workers in the United States spend more than three hours per day commuting. According to Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post, our annual commute time for just one year, if added up nationally, could have built the Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times over.

Smartphones have opened the door for employers to reach employ­ees at all hours of the day and night. In many cases and with increas­ing frequency, we are not allowing employees to renew themselves and replenish their energy. France has recognized the problem and even passed a law making it illegal for employers to email employees during off-hours.

I’ve often had to work with busy professionals in drawing boundaries without sounding like a slug, bastard, or bitch. But, many employers mindlessly push people to the edge of crashing and burning because someone else is doing it to them!

Frenzy is separating parents from their children. It is getting in the way of taking care of our selves. Frenzy has turned out to be as reliable a method for checking-out as hard drugs but with none-of-the-fun.

A Recovery Program

When you are looking at taking action or asking others to do the same, if there is any potential risk or discomfort involved, pay attention to your words and their words.

If you want to change your life, be sensitive to how these beliefs can show up and take over. If you are working with people through extensive change, pay attention to them. If someone tries to blast your mission out of the water, talk to them about it. It is far healthier to get clear on the fear rather than getting bogged down with behavior where the sole purpose is to end the discomfort by not taking action.

Be vigilant. Humans have a par­ticularly creative way of running the filters and biases at a completely unconscious level. Dig into these filters. You then can better anticipate and understand pushback when we actively lead change. Be ready. But treat them with kindness because all of us do this.

Practice what we preach and you might just end up with a kernel!

The post The Killer Filters – 5 ways we destroy change before it happens! appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

For so many CEOs and human capital executives, employee disengagement continues to undermine targets of the business plan, customer loyalty, productivity, and retention. To move beyond the problem, we must identify how the past continues to haunt work culture today.

The Industrial Revolution has had an iron grip on our culture for the past three centuries. Clearly this era was over by the end of the 20th century. Even Y2K now seems like a distant and quaint memory. The changes in front of us collide with the beliefs about work that our parents, grandparents, and many employers offered up as absolute truth.

Prior to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a change took place at a far more glacial pace. People spent most of their time and money growing or buying food. Making even one garment by hand took days. Industry resided in cottages. Child mortality was so high that many people had large numbers of children hoping that one or two would survive. Education was reserved for landowners, nobility, and the religious elite. The rich and powerful did not pay taxes while poor people paid rent and taxes.

The first great turning point in the world of work took place almost three hundred years ago. At that time, the British called the shots for how the rest of our world functioned. It was the most studied country on the face of the earth. In 1733, an English watchmaker named John Kay invented the simple machine called the Flying Shuttle. Its purpose was to improve the productivity of weaving. One person was now able to do the work of three. Fueled by riches, this innovation tipping point quickly turned into a tidal wave. Water and steam power moved the textile industry into high gear. The first inexpensive process for the mass production of steel was invented. We moved from the scarcity of food to storehouses of abundant supplies. Now producing more goods than any other country, England needed to find ways to get these products to other countries. Roads were built and boats got steam engines. Rails were laid. Landowners became industrialists. The banking industry was invented to grease the skids and the UK developed a world of consumers.

The Industrial Revolution represented an intoxicating leap forward in the evolution of civilization. The architecture behind this revolution introduced goods and services that were previously available to only the wealthy. In a parallel to today’s work landscape, the Industrial Revolution resulted in the handing out of pink slips to virtually every worker from the previous era, but work didn’t go away, it simply changed. This phenomenon is also taking place today. As old structures and dynamics go away, we need to become more fluent in seeing where new structures and dynamics emerge, because emerge, they always do. The difference? Three hundred years ago, it often took decades to change. Today, it can happen in a matter of days.

The old revolution also developed an unquenchable thirst for workers. Industrialists developed a recruitment pitch filled with standards and beliefs that haunt us today:

“If you come to work for us, we will give you survival and predictability.” 

Over time, humans proved to put up with a lot in order to have that. The message played to our worst fears.

To most of those working on farms, hunting for food, or dealing with the day-to-day uncertainty of keeping that cobbler shop in business, the pitch sounded really good. Human capital nourished the machine, which took center stage in our work. Parents, schools, organized religion, and governments prepared a new labor force that fit into the assembly lines, plugging bolts into holes. A new economy grew based on making large quantities of stuff. This worked for several hundred years. And, as with all personal or cultural advancements, there was also a price.

Predictability and survival didn’t just become two in a series of standards. They became the standard. Although these standards made perfect sense at the time, consider how outdated they are now within our modern times. The fixation on predictability and survival dismisses joy, creativity, passion, engagement, full living, and connectedness to others. It often keeps us from new learning. Most profoundly, the old standards obscure the birthright of every man, woman, and child, which is to find and pursue what we were born to do. The growing awareness of this is also one of the seeds fueling today’s discord with work. But, there was another great price we paid.

In Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller quantified predictions he had been making since the mid-1930s. He warned the world that if we did not find ways to either eliminate or remove the poisons generated from fossil fuels and chemicals, the world would become uninhabitable by the turn of the century. Mr. Fuller must have died with a great deal of frustration because very few people listened to him. Most did not think about these issues because repetition produces a trancelike state. Fitting in, tending to our workstations, going through the routine became the mass trance of the Industrial Revolution. Most were happy for progress. Wages were small. Long hours were filled with back-breaking and repetitive work. Safety standards were appalling.

In many factories, children were sent in to tend machines because the spaces were so small. If someone was injured or killed, others were waiting in line to step in and replace them. In fact, some of the laws passed during the early days of the Industrial Revolution indicate just how barbaric many employers were during that era. For example, the Factory Act of 1819 limited the work of children to 12 hours a day. And in 1833, children under the age of 9 were banned from working in the textile industry and 10- to 13-year-olds were limited to a 48-hour workweek.

Ironically, England’s innovation also led to it losing its grip on the world. In the early days of the revolution, British leadership did its best to protect the country’s manufacturing technology. But that progress opened up channels to the rest of the world. As mass-production spread throughout the globe, other countries not only became more powerful, they turned into competitors. It wasn’t long before every developed nation was playing the same game. And for the next 250 years, the Industrial Revolution dictated how we lived, consumed, worked, competed, and got educated. As the promise of predictability and survival evolved, we added various employee benefits: vacation plans, a retirement plan for when we grew old, medical coverage if we got sick, and so on. The most talented embraced it all and worked their way up the proverbial “career ladder.”

On the shadow side, our ability to build stuff also fueled the bloodiest wars in the history of humankind. We leveraged wars with new technology and a powerful capability to snuff life out in dramatic fashion. This led to the most awesome victories, but at a terrible price. But as we returned from world wars, manufacturing supremacy led to jobs for life, a comfortable middle-class living, and what was, for many, a comfortable routine. We worked, we saved, and we retired. The Industrial Revolution had successfully disrupted and transformed a culture that had stayed relatively the same for thousands of prior years.

In 1943, England dropped its next disruptive bomb on the world of work. A British engineer named Tommy Flowers demonstrated the first programmable computer to a stunned, skeptical room of military leaders. He developed this machine to decrypt German military code. It worked amazingly well. Ten of these “Colossi” were completed and used to gather intelligence. On June 5, 1944, a courier handed Eisenhower a note summarizing a Colossus decrypt. It confirmed that Hitler wanted no additional troops to move to Normandy. Moments later, he announced, “We go in tomorrow.” The rest is history. The first computer may have actually played a bigger role in ending World War II than the first atomic bomb.5

Surprisingly, British leaders had the Colossi dismantled after the war. But, word of its power had gotten out. By 1946, the Eniac was invented and completed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania. The world’s first digital computer occupied 1,800 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighed almost 50 tons, and had less than half the power of a smartphone.

Whereas our first work revolution took hundreds of years, a new one was quietly birthed that day. This innovation would take just 50 years to completely change the way we live, work, think, learn, grow, and transform. The original wave from this technology would grow in ferocity and depth, disrupting virtually every work model we had developed over 300 years. In the mid-1990s, the wave made landfall and started to wipe out all of the promises and ideals of the industrial workplace.

Today, ever-accelerating technology is wiping out task-based work, dismantling mind-numbing jobs, and creating a new subclass of the underemployed currently hovering at 48%. If the numbers are accurate, a big portion of our remaining workers is in jobs that offer little meaning and enthusiasm.

Much of today’s turmoil emerges from millions of workers looking towards the future of work and having grave difficulty in finding just how they are going to make a living.

America’s political leadership, on both sides of the fence, is failing us.

Our educational institutions are not teaching people how to change.

Too many CEOs and business owners believe that transforming their worker’s relationship towards work is “not their job.”

Right now, only a handful of enlightened CEOs are hiring for potential and teaching their people how to grow.

We need more of them! Because if not them, who?

Technology is giving us freedom from tasks. As we accelerate into the future, the question isn’t, “How will I get another job, just like the numbing job I hated?” It is, “How will I use my freedom to live a life of purpose, of making our customers more engaged, of helping my colleagues find the support they need?”

I point towards business because it is doing a far better job than our government. They are doing more to improve civil rights, develop equal pay, teach people to progress, and help our world become a better place to live. I know that the culture of outrage, the need to blame others, and obsession over dysfunction will probably respond. But, before you contact me, please go online and study organizations like Salesforce, Trader Joe’s, Adobe, Marriot, Southwest Airlines, and many more.

This is the time to stop studying evil plots, corrupt organizations, crime-riddled politics, and chanting, “They took my job.” *

*Yes, this is influenced by South Park.

We are living during the biggest restructuring of work in well over 300 years. There has never been a better time to find work that we love. It has never been easier to start a business. We are in a time where our lifestyle and our work can live in harmony.

Our country needs as many business leaders, educators, and yes, politicians to step away from the culture of outrage and tell us how to change. I know this is possible because my business has helped thousands of people change their lives in just two days. We need more leaders to step forward and show us how to do that.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

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