The best job lessons I ever learned

The San Francisco Chronicle Examiner recently called me to participate in a story on “What job taught you the most lessons?” I had 100 words or less, which is pretty tough, especially for someone like me.

I had to think about that for a while since I’ve only had a couple jobs in my adult life. My first job out of college was for another envelope company, where I toiled for nearly five years. I learned plenty in that job, of course, but most significantly, that I wanted to own my own company. In 1959 I bought a failing envelope company, and the rest is history. I learn something new in this job every day.

After giving it some thought, I realized that the job that taught me the most was possibly when my father, who headed the Associated Press Bureau in St. Paul, Minnesota, encouraged me to sign up for a paper route at age 10. I learned many valuable lessons at an early age.

Here are some of the lessons I remember learning:

• Hard work. Seven days a week, I had to get up at 4 a.m. when it was pitch dark and possibly snowing or raining, and deliver my papers by 6 a.m. There were no days off. And nine months of the year I had school to look forward to after my route. Child labor laws would probably prohibit this now, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t hurt me.
• Focus. I knew I had to get up early every morning, so I knew I had to get my homework done and get to bed early. I’ve always felt that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.
• Persistence. I dealt with all kinds of people, including many who didn’t like to pay their bills. But I had to keep after them. I learned that there are good days and bad days at work, but you work on all of them regardless. Pretty soon the bad days get better.
• Customer service. I learned how to deal with people face-to-face on a paper route. Also, sometimes I had to apologize for things that were out of my control, which is a tough thing to teach to anyone, especially a 10-year-old. But when newspapers were late in getting to me, I was in turn late in getting them delivered. It wasn’t my fault, but I still had to personally apologize to my customers. And then there were other elements like the weather that can cause havoc. Who likes a wet newspaper? We didn’t have little plastic bags to put papers in back in those days. It was also important to remember who wanted their paper between the doors, in the milk box, or under the mat.
• Accountability. I was accountable for my route to make sure my customers received their newspapers in a timely fashion and paid their bills. That’s pretty cut and dried, especially when you are a one-man show.
• Handling money. Collections and keeping financial records were also important, as well as learning how to handle money. A 10-cent boo-boo then was as important to me as a 1,000-dollar mistake is to me now. The adding and subtracting end of the business also helped with math class.
• Salesmanship. Most importantly, I learned my number one skill . . . the art of selling. If people paid in advance, I earned more. If I could get my customers to pay for the newspaper one or two months in advance, I was in candy heaven. Likewise, if I could get people on my route or within my sales territory to start subscribing to the newspaper, I made more money. That should be a good incentive for anyone. I learned that I loved to sell and knew it would be my life’s work.

Now after working with another kind of paper, I can honestly say that the job that launched my career was pivotal. Everyone has to start somewhere. You never forget your first job.

No matter where you go to work, you are not an employee—you are a business with one employee . . . you. Nobody owes you a career. You own it, as a sole proprietor. You must compete with millions of individuals every day of your career. You must enhance your value every day, hone your competitive advantage, learn, adapt, move jobs and industries—retrench so you can advance and learn new skills.

It’s as simple as having a paper route.

How not to ride a dead horse

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. That’s a no-brainer if I’ve ever heard one. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, although I’m not sure why. Among the possibilities:

• Buying a stronger whip.
• Changing riders.
• Saying things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
• Appointing a committee to study the horse.
• Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
• Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
• Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
• Comparing the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
• Changing the requirements, declaring that “This horse is not dead.”
• Outsourcing contractors to ride the dead horse.
• Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
• Declaring that “No horse is too dead to ride.”
• Providing additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
• Doing a cost analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
• Declaring the horse is “better, faster, and cheaper” dead.
• Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

If any of these ideas sound remotely familiar, it’s time to make a few large-scale changes. No amount of CPR is going to save that horse, and every minute that your staff invests in trying to change the situation is costing your company money.

First, run your staff through a session on identifying the central issue. What we have here is a non-productive, non-salvageable, soon-to-be-stinking mess that deserves a swift and merciful end. Imagine what other serious work you could be doing, rather than just postponing the inevitable. The dead-end projects in any department should be acknowledged for what they are, and should be put in the big “learning experiences” file.

Second, hold your managers accountable for projects. Suggestions like the pathetic efforts above indicate a serious lack of leadership. The biggest mistake a manager can make is failing to provide guidance to subordinates. As Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus put it: “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right things.”

Third, demand results, not excuses. Excuses don’t do much for the value of your company’s stock. Following the big break-up of AT&T, Bell Atlantic made it clear that excuses were not an option: the company established a structure where each department was required to bill other departments for their services. Before this practice, the information systems department could easily respond to requests with excuses such as “we can’t do that,” “we don’t have time,” or “we don’t have the money/staff.” With the new plan in place, and the information systems department needing to show a profit, the response changed dramatically, because excuses were not an option.

Finally, acknowledge mistakes, and then move on. Everybody, every company, makes mistakes. Do not be too hasty to equate mistakes with failure. One dead horse shouldn’t mean you lose the farm. At the same time Babe Ruth held the career record for home runs (714), he also held the record for career strikeouts (1,330 times). Henry Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first car. Thomas Edison once invested more than $2 million (the value in his era, not ours) on an invention that turned out to be useless.

Don’t let a mistake keep you from doing great things. But don’t let a mistake take on a life of its own either. If you are dealing with the same mistake you dealt with last week or last month or last year, identify the central issue and deal with it. You’ll be glad you did.

Discipline is the order of the day

Most people aim to do right; they just fail to pull the trigger. For whatever reason, they just don’t have the wherewithal to finish the job. They are lacking discipline.

“Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure,” said the late motivational speaker Jim Rohn.

It doesn’t matter whether you are pursuing success in business, sports, the arts, or life in general. Hope is not an option. The difference between wishing and accomplishing is discipline.

Bob Knight, one of college basketball’s winningest coaches, said: “It has always been my thought that the most important single ingredient to success in athletics or life is discipline. I have many times felt that this word is the most ill-defined in all of our language. My definition of the word is as follows: (1) Do what has to be done; (2) When it has to be done; (3) As well as it can be done; and (4) Do it that way all the time.”

Julie Andrews put it a little differently. She said, “Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.”

Arthur Rubenstein, one of the greatest pianists of all time, said: “If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days of practice, the critics notice it. If I miss three days of practice, the audience notices.”

Discipline is all about sitting down and setting goals, figuring out a schedule to achieve those goals, and then following your plan.

It’s the old adage: the more you put in, the more you get out.

“You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good,” said Jerry West, the former Los Angeles Lakers great who was nicknamed “Mr. Clutch.”

Health and fitness clubs get very busy at the beginning of each year. New Year’s resolutions result in large numbers of people joining, wanting to get fit or lose weight. What happens in February, March, and April? The number of people at the club starts to thin out, but the well-intentioned folks who lacked discipline didn’t thin down.

Good intentions aren’t enough. People have good intentions when they set a goal to do something, but then they miss a deadline or a workout. Suddenly it gets a lot easier to miss again and again and again.

Golfing great Byron Nelson said: “The only way one can become proficient at anything is self-discipline and dedication. The people who succeed are the ones that really do not let personal feelings get in their way from giving their all in whatever they choose to do. The superstar golfers are people who are willing to do and give a little bit more than the others who do not succeed.”

The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi maintained: “A player’s got to know the basics of the game and how to play his position. Next, you’ve got to keep him in line.”

That’s discipline, which is a trait that every good manager must have. It’s not enough as a manager to teach your employees how to do the work. You also have to provide the motivation that keeps them moving forward. Perhaps most importantly, a good manager must model self-discipline.

To me it is better to prepare and prevent instead of repair and repent.

I like the way Jim Rohn described discipline: “It is the bridge between thought and accomplishment . . . the glue that binds inspiration to achievement . . . the magic that turns financial necessity into the creation of an inspired work of art.

“Discipline is the master key that unlocks the door to wealth and happiness, culture and sophistication, high self-esteem and high accomplishment and the accompanying feelings of pride, satisfaction, and success. Discipline will do much for you. More importantly, though, is what it will do to you. It will make you feel terrific about yourself.”

Winners set goals, losers make excuses

Ask any successful CEO, superstar athlete, or winning person what their keys to success are and you will hear four consistent messages: vision, determination, persistence, and setting goals.

A new year is a perfect time to set your goals for the year, for the decade, or for the rest of your life. After all, if you don’t set goals to determine where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

Remember the Italian proverb: You never climb higher than the ladder you select.

My friend Lou Holtz is a firm believer in setting goals. In 1966 while unemployed, Holtz listed 107 lifetime goals, most of which he has already achieved. He dreamed of having dinner at the White House, appearing on The Tonight Show, coaching the Notre Dame football team, and winning the national championship. And what do you think Holtz will do when he achieves all 107 goals? He’ll make a new list.

All of us know that it is easy to get sidelined or distracted in trying to reach our goals. One of the most common goals is to lose weight. But did you ever notice how your goal always seems to run into a snack?

Let me tell you a story about the fellow who used to wear the grapes in the Fruit of the Loom commercials. He became obsessed with losing weight and went on a crash diet, losing more than 100 pounds within three months. However, the dramatic weight loss left him hospitalized. After recovering, he decided to learn how to lose weight safely through good nutrition and proper exercise. He was so thrilled after learning this, he set a goal to share his knowledge with people who struggle with obesity, and he determined to make it fun and entertaining. Richard Simmons became a household name for his weight-loss crusade. He couldn’t have done it without setting goals and sticking to them.

You must stay focused on your goals above all else. Truly dedicated individuals won’t let anything interfere with attaining their goals. That’s why so few people become champions. It’s not easy.

Famed Boston Celtic coach Red Auerbach was one of the most successful basketball coaches in history. He believed that the basic principles for success are the same in business as athletics. At the top of his list was setting goals. Good teams always share common goals. When the goals of some members differ from the rest of the team, then the team will usually not do well. That’s why teams with outstanding individual talents sometimes do poorly, while others are able to blend average abilities into championships.

I witnessed this first hand at the 2000 Olympics in Australia when the huge underdog Lithuanian basketball team took the U.S. Dream Team to the final seconds before losing.

Goals give you more than a reason to get up in the morning; they are an incentive to keep you going all day. Goals tend to tap into deeper resources and draw the best out of life. Achieving goals produces significant accomplishments.

Most important, goals need to be realistic: beyond your grasp today, but within your reach in the foreseeable future.

I remember a particular Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown is having a bad day. He strikes out for the third straight time. In disgust, he says, “Rats!”

Back in the dugout, he buries his face in his hands and laments to Lucy, “I’ll never be a big-league ballplayer. All my life, I’ve dreamed of playing in the big leagues, but I just know I’ll never make it.”

Lucy responds, “You’re thinking way too far ahead, Charlie Brown. What you need are more immediate goals.”

“Immediate goals?” asks Charlie.

“Yes,” says Lucy. “Start right now with this next inning. When you go out to pitch, see if you can walk out to the mound without falling down.”

Ethics is about what is right, not who is right

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.

That pretty much sums up ethics.

Peter Drucker, management consultant and author, said: “As to ‘ethical problems’ in business, I have made myself tremendously unpopular by saying, again and again, that there is no such thing as ‘business ethics.’ There is only ethics.”

Ethics are more scrutinized today than in any previous era. That might be hard to believe for some, in light of all the corporate malfeasance and other ethical issues that seem so pervasive. We are demanding more and higher ethical standards than in the past, and ethical breaches become front-page news. Cheating, under-the-table deals, and hoping no one will notice are dangerous practices in the 21st century. The make-money-at-all-costs mentality of the 1980s and 1990s is now viewed as greedy, excessive, and just plain wrong.

Many companies are going beyond the usual degree of ethics. For example, Raytheon has a director of ethics compliance. All wrongdoings, difficult personnel issues, and ethical quandaries are reported to the same person. Honeywell also has a corporate director of ethics to try to make it easier for employees to detect what’s right and wrong. Companies can’t mandate morals, but they can surely ask employees to bring their ethics to work with them.

Many of us encounter an ethical dilemma in the workplace, whether it’s someone swiping office supplies or witnessing a coworker’s questionable actions. To guide you to make better ethical decisions, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it legal? This is a given, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t know local, state, and federal laws. Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.
• How will it make you feel about yourself? Ask yourself how you will feel about yourself if you do or don’t act in a given situation. Abraham Lincoln was once asked about ethics and he quoted an old man he had once heard speak at a church meeting in Indiana. The old man said, “When I do good I feel good; and when I do bad, I feel bad.”

  I’m reminded of Hall of Fame golfer Bobby Jones at the 1925 U.S. Open, where he insisted on penalizing himself a stroke when his ball moved slightly in the rough as the blade of his iron touched the turf. Nobody else could possibly have seen the ball move. The penalty dropped Jones into a tie with golfer Willie McFarlane, who went on to win the playoff.

  Golfer Tom Kite did the same thing 53 years later in 1978. The self-imposed penalty caused him to lose the Hall of Fame Classic at Pinehurst by one stroke. Reporters asked both men why they took the penalties. And both said essentially the same thing, “There’s only one way to play the game.”

• How do others feel about it? I have a “kitchen cabinet” of people I can talk to and bounce ideas off of. Two heads are better than one, and three heads are better than two. These are trusted friends and coworkers. Get their opinions on a situation. Don’t always trust your gut. You want to see all sides.
• How would you feel if your actions were made public? No one ever wants to see his or her name linked to anything bad. Conscience is like a baby. It has to go to sleep before you can. If you don’t want coworkers, family, and friends to know about something, then it’s a sure bet the action is questionable.
• Does the behavior make sense? Will it hurt others? Is there a hidden motive in your actions?
• Is it fair? Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.
• Will people in authority approve? What would your supervisor say? Get a manager’s opinion. We have an open door policy at MackayMitchell Envelope Company for employees to discuss anything with managers.
• How would you feel if someone did the same thing to you? The Golden Rule is always an appropriate standard.
• Will something negative happen if you don’t make a decision? Sometimes not taking action can result in harm to others.