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Employees will hate where the world is going.

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Hire Stakeholders (they’ll love it)

We’ve talked a lot about the cultural damage of the Industrial Age. New studies are jumping on board suggesting that the workplace is headed in directions that will make “employees” and Industrial Age companies very unhappy.

The Evolving Workplace: Expert Insights is one such study. It has a technology bent to it, but does a great job of identifying where “work” and the “workplace” are headed. Some thoughts from, and about, the study:

Trend #1: Crowdsourcing and Crowdsource service – people will work from all over and some will never meet. Just-in-time labor will reduce the number of permanent employees. Productivity will become more important than hanging around the boss. 30% of Japan’s workforce is already crowd-sourced. The big elephant in the room is that kissing up to cover up for lousy productivity will be much harder for employees to do. The lazy guy w/ a great personality might actually have to start working.

Trend #2: Productivity measured in outputs, not hours – we call this a Results-based culture vs. Time-based culture. In our company we have no office hours, and no vacation or sick time. We expect people to produce, and then go play with their dog (or vice versa). This study says the whole world is moving in that direction. We believe it is because the Industrial Age taught us to trade time for money, but that in the post-modern economy, time is the new money. People want freedom from the 9-5 and will produce more if treated like adults who are in charge of their productivity.

Trend #5: Values versus rules – this trend highlights the importance of hiring people who reflect your values and who you can trust (since you’re no longer measuring time, but results). Stephen Covey conducted research which showed that employer/employee trust is one of the most valuable factors in someone being productive. Values, which guide and encourage personal initiative, will be more prevalent than Rules, which box people in, dull their thinking and keep them from innovating.

Trend #7: Employee-led innovation – when we lead with values and not rules, we turn employees (children who need to be told what to do, when, and where) into Stakeholders (adults). Stakeholders will take responsiblity for their time and will produce results without being monitored, and more importantly, will take responsibility for helping the company improve. They will come up with great ideas on how to move the company forward. Management won’t be telling employees what to do, the Stakeholders will be the innovators that move the company forward.

My favorite funny line from the report: “Strong resistance is expected from many parts of the labor force [to measuring output instead of hours]…. The gap will widen between the best workers and the worst in terms of opportunities and earnings, contributing to greater income inequality and therefore potential social unrest.”

In other words, a time-based culture lets people appear productive by simply having a car in the parking lot, and they will protest having been exposed as a drain on the company.

Going to work vs. working; Time-based vs. Results-based
The future doesn’t bode well for Industrial Age employees who don’t mind going to work (time-based), but don’t want to actually work while they are there (results-based). But it looks very bright for Stakeholders who want to “make meaning”, not just money, to take ownership, and get a life at the same time.

The world continues to shift in favor of those who want to do something, contribute, create, innovate, make meaning not money, and own their lives. It will encourage all of us to move from being employees to Stakeholders.

He who makes the rules wins.

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Make Your Own Business Rules.

As I was writing my new book “Making Money is Killing Your Business” and getting feedback on it, a lot of people told me that some of the principles in this book are things they’ve never heard before. I’ve frequently heard, “I’ve never been given permission to think that way.” Allow me to set the record straight. I’ve never had an original thought in my life and I’m pretty sure no one else has either.

Picasso said “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” There is nothing new under the sun and when I hear people claiming they have an amazing new way of doing something that no one else has ever thought of, it usually turns out it was all just marketing.

One of the big re-discoveries of old truths for me was that a business is supposed to throw off three things for us, time, money and significance. But for some reason we only expect it to give us one: money. And because we focus on just making money, our business never gives back time or helps us have a significant impact in the world around us. We’re too busy making money to get to the important stuff.

As a result everything is backwards. We build a business and take whatever lifestyle that business happens to throw off for us, which at best usually involves having money, but rarely a lot of time, and almost never significance. This isn’t surprising because “he who makes the rules wins,” and we too often let our business and the business world around us make the rules for us. Making Money was written to help us take hold of our business and re-make the rules in our favor so that our business finally becomes our servant to do our bidding, not the other way around.

On Monday, I’m able to head to London, Belfast, and Nairobi Kenya largely because I’ve been committed to making my business live by my rules. I have to rein it in every day of every week, but simply being committed to do so has made all the difference. Working for free with business owners in Kenya is a great reward for having made the rules in my business. I’m looking forward to a lot more time, money, and significance to come as I force my business to live by my rule: Live well by doing good.

Are you making the rules or reacting to your business? He who makes the rules wins.

From Hostage to Prisoner – the business road to more freedom

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Just about every business owner I know is a hostage to his or her business. How do we break free? By first becoming a willing prisoner in your business.

It sounds nuts. How am I a hostage, and how does becoming a prisoner put me on the road to freedom?

Shrinks tell me that six months as a hostage has more lasting negative effect on someone that a number of years in prison. Why? A hostage has no idea when they will get out, the rules change every day, things that got them relief on one day get a whole different reaction the next day. It could all end badly tomorrow without notice. Everything is up in the air all the time, chaos reigns, and the lack of any knowledge about the future makes it all seem futile and endless.

Sound like your business? Most business owners are hostages to their business with rules that change daily, a reactionary way of doing business, and no end in sight.

A prisoner knows exactly how long they are in for, what the rules are and even how than can get out early for good behavior. It’s difficult for a hostage to be encouraged and have hope because the future is a big unknown. A prisoner always has hope and can be encouraged that every day is a step closer to freedom by just doing the right things.

You need to become a prisoner on the way to freedom in your business and here’s how:

He who makes the rules wins.

Most of us let our business create the rules for us and we simply react to everything coming at us. To fix this we need to believe we can start setting the rules for our business and have it start reacting to our needs.

The only way I know to do this effectively is put in place the biggest thing that differentiates a hostage from a prisoner – an end date, or what I call a Business Maturity Date. Decide what your Ideal Lifestyle looks like and when you want to be there. This is the first step to moving from hostage to prisoner to business freedom (see other posts here on picking a Business Maturity Date).

Working toward a date at which your business will begin to be mature can change everything in business for you. Without it you’ll just be a hostage for decades to come.

But what if I “fail” to get my business to maturity (the business can make money and function without me while I’m on vacation) on that date? The only failure is to not try. If you decide you don’t want to take the risk to build a mature business by a specific date, you are ensuring a 100% failure rate for ever getting there.

A man still finds his destiny on the path he chose to avoid it.

Pick a business maturity date, move from being a hostage to a prisoner, and that will ensure you will get to freedom.

Is Your Business Making the Rules for You?

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He who makes the rules wins. The problem is your business is probably making all the rules for you and beating you up at every turn.

We have it all backwards. We build a business intending to work hard and make money at it, and then we just take whatever lifestyle the business is willing to throw off for us. We live in reaction mode – reacting to everything our business needs us to do in order to make money this month.

Every business should throw off three things for us – time, money and significance. We only expect it to generate money so that’s what it does. But a healthy business grows up and gives us all three.

Let’s get it right. Figure out what your Ideal Lifestyle is and what it will cost you to live there. Then intentionally build your business to produce that lifestyle. Stop taking whatever your business will give you, take control and start making decisions that will bring you time and significance as well as money.

He who makes the rules wins. If you’re in charge then make the rules and build a business that responds to your direction, not the other way around. Do you own your business or does your business own you? Who’s really in charge?

It depends on which one of you is making the rules.

Guidelines vs. Rules – Creating Wildly Successful Employees

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Employees have changed. Rules don’t cut it anymore. The newer generation isn’t sure it even wants to go to work and has in some ways decided to retire BEFORE working. They’re out there “gigging” instead of working. How do you as a Business Owner respond to this new world?

How is the new world different than the old industrial age employee world? The old world had rules the employee needed to live by. The new world has guidelines that create ownership, freedom, teamwork, and creative involvement for the employe:

Employee Guidelines (principles) → → Employee Rules (laws)

  • Provide Framework → → → → → → → → → Box to live in.
  • Gives you a “floor”-minimum → → → → → Gives you a ceiling – “maximum”
  • Encourages innovation → → → → → → → →Encourages conformity/sameness
  • Frees up employees to win → → → → → → →Creates fear of losing
  • Emphasis on effective result → → → → → →Emphasis on process/procedure
  • Emphasis on employee ownership → → → Emphasis on we/they blame games
  • Encourages participation/innovation → → Encourages hiding/work-arounds.
    Examples of each:
    Apple Computers → → → → → → → → → → U.S. Government

A Key Objective in creating happy employees: Create “ownership” of their job, and help them see how it fits into the bigger picture (process mapping is a great way to do this.)

How do you lead in the new world? By becoming a Servant Leader. The best leaders have always led this way, but if you don’t lead this way in the new employer world, you won’t keep your employees.

Leaders do not exist to be served by those “under” them. They do not have the right to have others make them look good. Having a title on a door does not make you a leader. Leaders are focused on how they can make everyone else around them more successful (the servant leader). Employees are very clear that the leader’s job is to champion them and give them the vision, environment, resources, training, and connections to be wildly successful. The smart leader knows that if everyone around them is successful, they won’t have to worry about their own visibility or success.

Be a servant leader – create ownership among your employees for their positions, and focus your energies on making them wildly successful. You’ll have a great business and make more money in less time as a result.