The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II* tell the story of a young man rising in the family business. Sure, maybe the Corleone family business is more liable to RICO prosecutions than the average business, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few things from the movie. So, grab some popcorn, throw in the DVD, and watch the movie with an eye toward the lessons it has to teach about work ethic.
You can't spell "hard work" without one or two of the letters in "The Godfather."
“Because this is the business we’ve chosen.” – Michael Corleone
If ever a movie quote more brilliantly illustrated our message about Acceptance, I haven’t seen it. Remember: When employees accept jobs, they’re making an agreement. They’re saying, “I will do A, B, and C in exchange for X dollars.” Included in A, B & C are following the rules of the business. And sometimes that means doing distasteful or disgusting things. Like cleaning drains. Or folding the same t-shirt again and again. Or whacking Fredo.
OK, hopefully not that last one.
“Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your daughter’s wedding… on the day of your daughter’s wedding. And I hope their first child be a masculine child.” – Luca Brasi
So this one maybe doesn’t have quite clear-cut path from A to B that the other one does, but it’s one of my favorite lines from the movie, so I had to work it in. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that its obscure relation to A Game values means it’s irrelevant.
On the day his daughter is married, Don Corleone cannot refuse a favor. He cannot say no. In short, he is providing customer service. Even after the undertaker asks the Don to do murder (this, he cannot do), Corleone still finds a way to honor the request for justice.
Instead of telling young people that the customer is always right (so often we see that they are completely wrong), try telling them to provide customer service like it’s the day of their daughter’s wedding.
*Please note that we do not recognize Godfather III as a Godfather movie. As Joe Pesci put it in Get Shorty: I’ve seen better film on teeth.
We talk a lot about attitude, attendance, appearance, ambition, accountability, acceptance, and appreciation here at The A Game. And there’s a good reason for that: those are the fundamental values that form work ethic. And while work ethic is a necessary condition for success in the workplace, it alone cannot guarantee you much more than opportunity. Skills, connections, leadership, and even luck all play roles in success, and there are a multitude of great resources out there to discuss those issues.
But one of the most commonly overlooked workplace requirements in all of this is safety. And that’s not really a surprise. You can speak and train endlessly to improve leadership. It’s an in-demand skill that’s hard to find and takes years to properly develop. But safety is a bit dry. It’s deceptively simple. And it’s all-to-easy to think that you’re doing it right. And that seems to be the view from the C-Suite, all the way to the store level.
And with the view that pervasive in management, the natural teenage tendency to move the opposite direction of authority, safety, prudence, and procedure only makes the problem worse. So, if you’re addressing teens about the issue, you’ve got to hit them where it counts.
Right where it counts.
That’s probably a large part of why workplace accidents are a major problem for employers of teenagers. The statistics are damning – it’s a major problem that no doubt costs businesses buku bucks. And that’s why the Texas Mutual Insurance Company decided to put together a campaign called One Wrong Move to talk to young employees about their safety at work.
I encourage you to take a look at the site. It’s a great example of ways to reach teens when you’re talking about an important subject that doesn’t have the sex appeal of Facebook or video games.
When you look at the posters and ads, pay attention to the way that the campaign uses real-life examples that will matter to teens. Rather than focusing on time lost at work or the costs to the company, the campaign focuses on the time away from work that will be affected by a bad decision at work. Whether it’s having makeup done embarrassingly or missing play time at sports, the consequences the campaign discusses are painful and very real for a young person.
Additionally, the campaign has a great aesthetic feel to it and it attacks via multiple media, with an online quiz, posters, billboards, a movie theater advertisement, and a radio spot. These are all elements we paid close attention to in creating The A Game’s certification and curriculum materials, so I know how difficult it can be to go through the process of creating a product that speaks to teens in their language and still communicates important messages.
One thing I’d like to see that I don’t see is an element that incorporates text messaging and a little bit more social media (the primary means via which teens communicate), but it’s overall a very well thought out and executed campaign aimed at reaching teenagers. So, whether you’re looking for some inspiration when it comes to reaching teens, or if you need to talk to some of your young employees about safety, or both, take a look at the One Wrong Move campaign.
TJ Wihera is the Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. The A Game helps youth learn that work isn’t a bad thing so that they can lay the foundations of great careers.
So, you’re sitting with your padawan, trying to get across a difficult abstract concept. Unfortunately, the youngling is struggling to grasp the concept, and you’re at your wit’s end to find another way to say it.
And that’s when it hits you: You don’t have to tell it – you can show it. All you need is a prop.
Props are great tools for training and teaching for a number of reasons. Primarily, they’re great because they can be used to illustrate concepts that are otherwise difficult to explain. But they also contribute a great deal of value to hands-on learners – those of us who learn best when we handle something and play with it. Props can also add variety and fuel engagement with material that would otherwise be challenging.
So, for anyone interested in discussing, teaching, or training young people, props are a must. And when you’re covering a subject that is as abstract and challenging as work ethic, competing against smart phones and iPods for attention, you’re more likely than ever to need props.
Following is a list of five props that everyone teaching or training young people about work ethic should have handy to help make those tough points.
4. Duct tape
“How is duct tape like The Force? It has a dark side, a light side, and it holds the world together.”
It’s universally recognized that duct tape can solve any problem. (I once used duct tape to explain protein synthesis to a classmate in high school.) Keep some handy, because you can demonstrate all kinds of things with a bit of tape. Need a rectangle to illustrate XXXXXX. Bam! Pull off a piece, and you’re there. Need things to hold together to demonstrate the value of teamwork? Bam! Use a piece. Need to show which portion of your customers are repeat customers? Bam! Make a pie chart out of a ring in the middle. The applications are endless.
3. Two candy bars
So, when you’re talking about the real basics of workplace behavior, one of the issues that has struck a chord with young people for quite some time is appearance. (No, this is not a new phenomenon. Five Man Electrical Band wrote “Signs” in 1970.) So, when you’re trying to explain to young people why they ought to dress appropriately and mind their hygiene, you’re already fighting an uphill battle. One of the best ways to really get young people to understand the importance of their appearance is to let them realize just how much appearance matters when we judge something. What you’ll do here is keep one of the candy bars in pristine condition, and really make the other one look disgusting. (A short visit to the microwave is a good start. Then tear the wrapper a bit, and cover it with dryer lint and pet hair.) Ask your charges which they would prefer, then ask them why.
2. A cash register and a mirror
Eye contact is an important part of customer service, and cheerfully serving customers is an important part of service positions. When you’re trying to teach a young person about providing good customer service, set the mirror up in front of the cashier, where a customer would be standing, then let the young person see what it looks like when they’re looking customers in the eyes instead of staring at their register.
1. $$$ Cash $$$
Occasionally, you will meet someone who wants to learn for the pleasure of it. But more often, and particularly when you’re dealing with a topic that has less sex-appeal than how to make flamethrowers, you’ll be dealing with a captive audience. This means that you’ll need to sweeten the pot.
The bottom line of work is that we go because we get paid. Sure, many of us are lucky enough to do something we enjoy, but if we couldn’t get paid doing it, we’d have to get out there and find something that did pay. So, when you’re trying to teach young people about the virtue of hard work, there’s no reason to remove one of its great rewards from your tool box. Even if you’re not giving out the money, using cold, hard cash to demonstrate a point is always going to garner more attention than a bar graph.
TJ Wihera is the Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. The A Game helps youth learn that work isn’t a bad thing so that they can lay the foundations of great careers.
At present, there is a major national push to create sustainable jobs, sustainable business practices, sustainable products, sustainable lifestyles, and all manner of other sustainable tangibles and intangibles. The idea is that if people and businesses use resources at a rate at which those resources can be replaced, the practices are sustainable.
This post has nothing to do with that.
Hippies: Not a sustainable staffing option.
Instead, I’d like to discuss sustainable workers. You know, the ones you never turn over. The ones who put in hours and hours and hours of quality hard work. The people who call in sick only if and only if they’re on their death beds. The ones you would pay a million dollars to hire and another million to keep. The people whose job safety will always be guaranteed because their work keeps businesses going. The members of your staff who create more than they cost, thus sustaining their careers and your business.
That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about sustainable employees.
But the good news is that the principles that apply to other discussions of sustainability can be applied to the discussion about sustainable employees. Here are a few guidelines you can follow to be a more sustainable employee, or give to employees you want to teach about being more sustainable:
Reduce: Don’t use more than you need.
Conspicuous consumption is extremely fun until you’re paying for someone else’s consumption. Just ask any company that has ever realized that its employees are using its resources irresponsibly. Using just what you need, whether it’s office supplies or food portioning, is an important way to show employers that you aren’t just concerned about the business. It shows them you can be trusted.
Here at The A Game, we call unquestionable honesty “Accountability.”
Re-use: Do it over and over again.
The reason companies take the time to create policies is that someone has tested them and determined that the practice is the best one for the business. The reason you get a job is to get paid. The reason you get paid is to execute policies. See how that works? As much as independence and creativity are virtues, there are a lot of times when companies are looking for employees who are able to execute policy flawlessly, time and again.
Here at The A Game, we call that “Acceptance.”
Recycle: Sure, they’re leaving, but you want to see them again.
When you buy a can of soda, you get the can. Once you’ve got the soda out of it, you can throw it away or you can recycle it. If you recycle it, some day, you’ll get a bit of that can back and get soda out of it again. Well, customers are the same way. Once they’re in the door, you’ve got their business for that day. But depending on how you treat them, you’re either throwing them away to never see them again, or your recycling them and get their business again and again.
Here at The A Game, we call that kind of awesome customer service “Appreciation.”
While sustainable jobs and companies may or may not find their place in the economy, there is no question that sustainable employees will always have a place where they can work and earn.
TJ Wihera works to sustain his role as Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. To learn more about the seven fundamental workplace values – including Accountability, Acceptance, and Appreciation – contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com.
And, no, this discussion will not be about the Fed, inflation, monetary policy, the hard costs of printing and minting money, or ask if money is the root of all evil.
Rather, I’d like to discuss the value of a dollar, and why that value means that it’s not the best tool for changing the behavior of the young people in your life.
So, what is the value of a dollar today?
To be honest, it’s not much. There’s nothing of appreciable value that a dollar can buy. In the grand scheme of things, a dollar doesn’t represent much. For a young person working at the federal minimum wage, one dollar is about eight minutes and twenty seconds of work. Now, in the internet age, that’s about eight times longer than the average attention span, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s an insignificant amount of time.
For young people a dollar is an inconsequential amount of money earned over an insignificant period of time that can only purchase only unimportant items. (And that doesn’t even try to account for the effects that doting parents can have when they give their children toys and trips the kid never worked for.)
On a practical level, this means the dollar isn’t much of a bargaining chip when you’re trying to change behavior.
So, you’re sick of the absences, the attitude, and the lame excuses for both? And you’re thinking that maybe if you see the offending young person on his terms, he might be willing to adjust for the right price? And now you’re worried that the dollar isn’t valuable enough to negotiate with?
If we can’t negotiate with the dollar, what can we negotiate with?
If that’s the question you’re asking, YOU’RE ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION. Employment is not a negotiation. Education is not a negotiation. Parenting is not a negotiation.
Hiring is a negotiation. Hiring is when you negotiate pay, benefits, job duties, and availability. Employment is the execution of the agreement that was reached upon hiring.
Enrolling is a negotiation. Enrollment is when you agree upon a set of lessons to teach and learn and the terms on which you will teach and learn. Education is when you teach and learn those lessons on those terms.
Providing an allowance, setting a curfew, and assigning household chores are all negotiations. Parenting is the enforcement of the rules that were agreed upon.
Booking airfare is a negotiation. Flying there with Shatner is awesome.
So, if we aren’t negotiating, what are we doing?
Short answer: We want to instill great values instead of negotiating.
Remember: Behaviors are the expression of values. When people make decisions, they decide upon a course of action based on the circumstances and their beliefs. When you negotiate, you’re trying to change the circumstances. Whether it’s by providing more money or new privileges, you’re basically trying to make the circumstances change so the person you’re negotiating with no longer wants to be late or cop an attitude or lie.
Unfortunately, this is an ad hoc way to deal with problems. Each time a slightly new circumstance arises that makes someone want to skip out or be a jerk, you’ll have to change the circumstances. Again. And that will continue ad infinitum.
But if you change the decision-making process underneath the behaviors, you will no longer need to renegotiate every time circumstances change a bit. Instead, you’ll be able to depend upon someone who wants to be on time, be pleasant, and tell the truth, not a mercenary who’ll do it for the right price.
Sure, it’s harder to change values, but it’s worth it. (Especially if the dollar keeps decreasing in value.)
For more on the value of the dollar, read Francisco’s speech about money from Atlas Shrugged and then make it required reading for the young people you care about. (I would post it here, but the troubled waters of copyright law are not a place in which I wish to fish – or swim.)
H/T to @thelance for leading me to the money images above with this link.
TJ Wihera is the Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. The A Game instills teens and young adults with the values of attitude, attendance, appearance, ambition, accountability, acceptance, and appreciation.
TJ Wihera is the Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail at tj(at)theAgame(dot)com, or check out www.theagame.com. The A Game helps youth learn that work isn’t a bad thing so that they can lay the foundations of great careers.
I subscribe to Google Alerts for the term “work ethic,” so I can stay up-to-date on the dialogue about work ethic. Well, after about a month’s worth of alerts, I was somewhat surprised by what I found. The following graph plots the number of stories discussing work ethic against the subject of the stories in which they appeared in my Google News Alert for “Work Ethic”:
Two Observations and Some Analysis:
1. There is a major skew toward sports. In fact, there are more sports stories discussing work ethic than all the other subjects combined.
I draw three conclusions from this observation:
a. Work ethic is a necessity for reaching the highest levels of achievement in sport. Furthermore: athletes, coaches, GMs, and fans are not afraid to admit that.
b. If you want your kid to learn about work ethic, competitive sports appear to be significantly better prepared to address the issue than politicians, bosses, or teachers.
c. This skew is partly a result of the fact that we are much more interested in athletes than business people. I can name half the Colorado Rockies’ roster, but I can only name one or two CEOs. We discuss athletes more often, so it figures that we will discuss their work ethic on more occasions than that of the people we don’t discuss. Regardless of why, though, if you want to discuss work ethic, you’re more likely to do it with sport than any other subject.
2. The graph skews heavily toward effects and away from causes.
The tall bars on the left represent conversations about sports, business, and people’s life achievements. These are areas in which a strong work ethic manifests itself in actions. Meanwhile, the short bars on the right represent an almost complete blackout in education and parenting regarding work ethic. But these are the times in which a strong work ethic is built. We are so focused on the symptoms of work ethic deficit that we aren’t even discussing the cause of the disease.
I welcome your thoughts and conclusions in the comments section.
TJ Wihera is the Director of Development for the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. The A Game helps youth learn that work isn’t a bad thing so that they can lay the foundations of great careers.
Starting my professional career on the academic side of the world brought with it a fair amount of writing, studying and doing anything I could to be knowledgeable on the lineage of research and practices informing the subject I taught. The area I focused my attention on happened to be (and still is) leadership development.
As with almost anything in academics, there is a time tested process to defining a subject area. First, you need to build a theory on what it the subject is. Second, you figure out what discipline it falls into. If it can be measured it becomes a science and if it can be actively pursued or expressed, it is an art. Lastly, you agree upon a definition and then you go about researching the ways in which it manifests itself in the world (research).
So, as this is my first blog post, it’s appropriate to do the same with work ethic. I set out on a rigorous exploration of the theory, discipline and definition of this illusive trait.
Let’s start with building a theory about work ethic. The term dates back to the Forefathers of our great country and Benjamin Franklin posing great questions and sharing lessons regarding “Protestant Work Ethic.” Oddly, though, the term is yet to be clearly defined or researched in modern application other than anecdotal sayings that usually come from the older generation saying the younger generation doesn’t possess the same work ethic of yester years. The fundamental writing on the subject still is based on the work of Max Weber in 1904.
The one thing most agree on in terms of work ethic is that it is comprised of a closely held set of values. These fundamental values come together to manifests themselves in daily habits. In the workplace, this theory holds true as companies and executives around the country share that the fundamental values that comprise work ethic are the most desirable traits in employees. Check box one in the research process complete, our theory is that work ethic is comprised of fundamental values that manifest themselves as daily habits both on and off the job.
Our next step is to look at the discipline that work ethic can be classified into. This is a bit more challenging. Is it a science, can you measure it? Or is it an art, something you can pursue or express? I would assert that it is really neither. While it can be measured, values don’t lend themselves to scientific methodology and while it can be expressed and seems like it may be a dying art, can you really be an artist of work ethic? Could it be a discipline itself? I would venture to say the answer is yes. Values only manifest themselves in life if a person is disciplined enough to live by those values, so work ethic is a discipline. A person can know the fundamental values, but if they don’t practice those values every day, work ethic simply doesn’t happen.
Now that we know that work ethic manifests itself as a set of fundamental values and is practiced as a discipline in life, our last step is to build our definition of the discipline.
Context is key in defining anything. In the context of this blog, work ethic is defined by how the values are exhibited on the job. One way of building a definition is to look at what something isn’t and compare what you think it is. To define work ethic most appropriately, I thought this to be the right approach. Here’s an equation that best sums up the definition.
Minimum Daily Commitment = MDC (what work ethic is not)
Minimum Daily Commitment is putting in just enough time, talent or energy to get by every day. People that show MDC regularly are the seat fillers, time watchers and process stallers in a business.
MDC + Work Ethic = MDC2or Maximum Daily Contributor
A Maximum Daily Contributor gives their best every day. They come to work knowing their priorities and leave only when they know they have done more than what was expected.
Having a positive work ethic can be defined as the discipline of practicing fundamental values that equal becoming a maximum contributor on the job every day or simply bringing your best to work.
This is just the beginning to our research journey together into work ethic. We will continue to use this forum to explore together how to discipline yourself to become MDC2 on the job, how to instill the discipline of work ethic in your employees and tips for how to practice work ethic daily.
What do you think about this definition? What would you change? What questions do you have about work ethic that you want to see us tackle together? How do you discipline yourself to have good work ethic?
Matt Smith is the President of the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. The Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative is a national workplace initiative aiming to rebuild work ethic in young people. Youth can earn mastery level certification to prove that they are work ready, and the adults who teach them, manage them, and care about them can help get them there.
When I’m feeling particularly existentially angsty, I wonder if working is worth it at all. After all, our lives are but fleeting moments that must inevitably end. Why should I spend some of that much-too-limited time toiling on things I don’t want to do? I imagine a number of young people you know are asking the same question.
Sad but true: This is the first Google image result for the query “existential angst.”
One answer I would suggest is:
“Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
Voltaire wrote that in Candide. And while it’s just one sentence, it offers three clear benefits of working. So, whether you know people asking “why work?” in the big-picture sense, or if they’re just having a tough time getting started for the day, share this bit of wisdom with them.
When I’m feeling like particularly hot stuff, I sometimes remind myself of the following facts:
Julius Caesar ruled the known world and was considered so important that he was able to add a month to the calendar in his honor. The Roman Empire survived for 450 years after his death.
William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and introduced 1,700 words to the English language. The performing arts, written English, and spoken English have soldiered on without the Bard since 1616.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr formed the greatest rock band ever and released the greatest album of all time. The music industry continued to make records after The Beatles broke up in 1970.
The company I work for now was here before me. It will continue to thrive long after I am gone. As indispensable as I may feel, there is always someone more willing, more able, or more motivated to take my place should I let him.
I had an epiphany over the Fourth of July weekend last year.
I was at the lake with friends, wake boarding and barbecuing. On the boat, I was talking with a girl I hadn’t met before. She was living in Switzerland, traveling, and in general making items from my bucket list into daily habits. I told her to stop before she made me jealous because I wished I could do what she was doing.
She looked at me and said, “You can be doing it. You just have to go do it.”
Way more fun than the time I learned about not touching hot surfaces.
If you had been there, you would have heard the sound of my mind getting blown. (It’s a sort of hollow, popping noise.) Since then, I’ve taken considerable time and energy to actually go try activities that I previously only thought about and said, “Geez, I wish I could do that.”
But the truth is that that lesson wasn’t learned from her saying those two sentences. It wasn’t even learned from the entire day’s conversation with her. Sure the breakthrough happened in the split second it took for two neurons to make a connection, but that moment was the accumulated effect of my entire life experience to that point.
And while I dearly wish lessons like that could be learned quickly, there is only one place that people can learn monumental lessons in a brief and manageable way: television.
In the course of 44 minutes, a character on a television show can learn a profound lesson. Maybe it’s about tolerance, addiction, relationships, friendship, or even himself. Whatever it is, an important question is asked, experience conveniently aligns to force growth, and a powerful lesson is taught and learned in those 44 brief minutes. Perhaps this acceleration shouldn’t be too surprising in a world where gunshots can heal in a week.
In the real world, we know gunshots don’t heal in a week. Likewise, important lessons aren’t that easy to learn. Off of a sound stage, the experience of a lifetime slowly gives definition to the gray areas, one day at a time. That’s why we tell young people to listen to their elders. That’s why we respect the opinions of those who have been there before us, even to the point of fallacy. That’s why we say “practice makes perfect.”
And that practice is not a luxury many people possess when they first enter the workforce, an environment in which many profound lessons will need to be applied. While understanding occurs in a single flash moment, learning is an involved process that takes time.
So next time you’re dealing with young people, ask yourself if you’re trying to get them to learn with the TV approach. If you don’t expect gunshot wounds to heal overnight, don’t expect the gaping holes in young people’s education to be patched overnight either.
