Posts Tagged ‘work ethic’

Labor Day: Re-Building American Work Ethic

Monday, September 6th, 2010

This Labor Day the United States is embroiled in what could, very easily, turn into a double dip recession. Millions of Americans are receiving umemployment benefits and millions more find themselves under employed or working in jobs that don’t reflect their skill-sets. Some estimates place the real unemployment rate at 22%.


It is telling, that on Labor Day number 12 on Alexa’s top 30 search terms was ‘Make Money Online.’ The point is that Americans are desperate for work. The fact is that millions of Americans want to work and are perfectly willing to do any number of tasks, but after 80 years of relative prosperity we may simply be unable to remember how.


According to Wikipedia, the purpose of Labor Day was originally outlined in 1884 as “[a holiday] to exhibit to the public ‘the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations.’”Since then, membership in trade and labor organizations (which once stood at nearly 40% of the American public) has fallen to just over 12%. Clearly, the esprit de corps of working class Americans is lacking something.


As the son and grandson of union members, I propose that what is lacking is a common understanding and acceptance of the values that once made working class Americans the most powerful influence in the United States and the world. What is lacking is work-ethic.


Work-ethic is more than just a willingness to work. Work-ethic(s) are those values that make it possible to work for, with and to the benefit of others. In The A Game’s last post our President, Matt Smith, recounts his observation that the problem resides not in the older or younger generations, but in the middle generation where, as parents, we have failed to instill appropriate work-ethic values in our children.


As parents we’ve taken our work-ethic values for granted and neglected our responsibility to give our children the best educations we can. As true leaders, our first responsibility is to admit it when we simply aren’t adequate to a task because we lack the skill, knowledge or time to complete it. We cannot begin to re-build America’s work-ethic and economy without first acknowledging that we need help.


The A Game is designed to be a resource for parents, educators, workforce advocates and employers who recognize that re-building the American work-ethic starts with leaders like them; it starts with a desire to help our children bring their A Game to work.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Great Work Ethic | No Comments »

Memorial Day- Remembering Work Ethic

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

I have to admit that Memorial Day ranks pretty close to Christmas as a favorite holiday in my book.

Other than the sun, I do believe in the significance of Memorial Day.  It’s a time to honor those who work to tirelessly to preserve our freedom and died fighting for us.  While a little bit of R & R is nice, the weekend really drives home the how hard others have worked.

On Saturday afternoon, I was outside washing my wife’s car and was able to observe three generations of men hard at work on our neighbor’s yard.  My neighbor was out with his father (grandpa) and his probably 8 year old son.  Watching the modern family ‘work’ together made me think about the time honored traditions of hard work and what, sadly, could be in store for the future.

To make the story short, the grandfather was doing most of the heavy lifting and had the vision for the project.  The dad was doing a great job at ‘supervising’ as he watched his son and father toil with heavy loads of dirt, pecking away at his Blackberry.  The son, while he was doing a good job at shoveling dirt, told Grandpa that he was doing a poor job and called him stupid at least 4 times in the 35 minutes I watched.

This may be an isolated incident, but it made me sick to my stomach to see a father stand by while his son belittled his grandfather and didn’t even say thank you to his dad for helping all day.  This same father told his 8 year old son that he could be done working after about ½ an hour (I think because he was annoying him) and let him go play with friends.

I know this isolated incident gave me a few reminders we can use at home or at work to help ourselves and others work:

  1. Respect for Elders is a Lifelong Value-  They may be old and not understand our technology, but their wisdom will always surpass us.  At work or at home, an elder holds a special status they have earned.  Show them respect and learn from them.
  1. Rewarding Poor Work Doesn’t Create Good Work- Letting employees off the hook because you can do it better yourself is no excuse.  Hold them accountable for working until the job is done right.
  1. Hard Work Breeds Hard Work- Model the behaviors you want people to follow.  Pick up the darn shovel, spatula, garbage can, whatever and help!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Great Work Ethic | No Comments »

Using The Godfather to Teach Work Ethic

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

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"

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.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Teaching & Training The A Game | No Comments »

The Discipline of Work Ethic – Do You REALLY Have it?

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

In my last post, we (and I really mean we, not the collective we) launched a full out academic war on defining work ethic and I feel confident that my initial thoughts on the definition along with your comments lead us to something that really works.  Simply put, we defined work ethic as, “The discipline of living values on the job.”

Here’s the tough part, at least for this guy.  Do you really have the discipline to live your values and have a positive work ethic on a monthly, daily, and even hourly basis?  My assumption, speaking from personal experience is no.

general_patton

Unless you’re this guy.

Discipline is a hard thing to wrestle with.  There are so many things we could be doing that it can be overwhelming sometimes.  Do I check my twitter feed? Call a prospective client, check e-mail, write a blog post, or develop a new training program? We all face an onslaught of tasks and decisions that involve discipline daily.  It’s also a hard concept because it usually has a negative connotation.  Discipline is NOT doing what I WANT to do in this moment for a long term payoff.  This is completely counter-intuitive to the way our society runs.

So, how do we discipline our daily lives to live the values of work ethic?

Here’s a few simple ideas to start with and I’d encourage everyone to add their top thoughts to the list…

  • Discipline Your Schedule-  Jim Collins, in my mind the most prolific business thinker ever, holds such a disciplined daily schedule that he carries a stop watch in his pocket and charts his time on an excel sheet to make sure that he is living true to the priorities he values.  While we don’t all need to carry an extra watch, what about shutting off e-mail, facebook, twitter and just focusing for the first hour of every day on what we value most?  Knowing priorities is a good 1st step.
  • Discipline Your Relationships-  No, this isn’t giving the people you care for tough love, it’s making sure that you share your priorities with people who will hold you 100% accountable for those priorities.  Openly share your goals and challenge close co-workers and friends to hold you accountable for meeting them.  It will eventually manifest itself into holding yourself accountable.
  • Discipline Your Gratitude-  Something we all can easily forget is to say thanks to those that help us and show appreciation and willingness to serve.  To live a life of constant appreciation, we need to discipline ourselves to show it more than we get it.  Use any opportunity to show someone how much you appreciate them or simply give them a smile.  Get up and talk to someone vs. texting/sending an e-mail.  It’s not tough to show people you’re here to serve.

How do you discipline yourself to live with great work ethic?  If we want to change others, we need to start with ourselves.

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.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Accountability, Appreciation, Attendance | No Comments »

New Report Slams the Work Ethic of Millennials

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Guess who’s slamming the work ethic of the emerging workforce now?

(Hint: It ain’t the cranky old ‘workaholic’ boomers.)

Answer: It’s the members of the emerging workforce.

According to this story in the Washington Post, the millennials that were interviewed openly confessed that work is not that important in their life, stating that Gen X’ers and Boomers value work significantly more than they do.

In the 80’s and 90’s when Gen X’ers were first coming into the workforce, they were branded ’slackers’, a label they both denied and worked to overcome. But Gen Y’s don’t appear to be fighting their ’slacker’ label; in fact, they’re tattooing it on themselves with pride.

Only 5 percent of those 18-29 surveyed in the latest study be Pew Research claimed that  “work ethic” is something that is a distinctive characteristic of their generation, about the same percentage of respondents chose “clothes” as a distinctive characteristic.

I’ve stated many times that the most frustrated managers in the workforce are Gen Y’s who are supervising people their own age; they don’t understand why their peers won’t work as hard as they do. This Washington Post story features a 22-year-old asst. manager of a pizza restaurant chiding his direct reports for their shabby job performance.

With so many examples to the contrary, it is grossly unfair to characterize everyone under the age of 30 as lacking in work ethic. However, when both the loudest critics and the proudest proclaimers of that description come from the very cohort being labeled, then it’s time to move the dialogue from a debate over it’s fairness to one where we are examining outcomes and searching for remedies.

Eric Chester is the founder and CEO of the Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative. Contact him via e-mail, or check out www.theagame.com. Whether you are a manager who needs better employees, a workforce development professional or teacher in need of curriculum, or a parent who wants to prepare your children for their future, The Bring Your A Game to Work Initiative has tools to help you develop work ethic in youth.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Will Smith Always Attributes his Success to his “Ridiculous” Work Ethic

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Eric here;

Like him or not, it’s hard to argue with the enormous success of Will Smith, now listed as Hollywood’s highest paid actor.

I’m a big Will Smith fan.  I don’t always like his movies, but most are worth seeing.  Moreover, I like the way he handles himself. Aside from being a devoted husband and father, he’s down-to-earth, honest, and likable.  But what’s gotten Will to the top of music, television, and the box-office has less to do with talent than it does his work ethic. And if you want proof, check out this video to see a 10 minute montage of his media interviews over the years to see how many times he credits his ’sick, ridiculous work ethic’ for any and all success he’s had.

Will Smith is a poster child for how to “Bring Your A Game to Work!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Great Work Ethic | No Comments »