Love productivity.
Love efficiency.
Love engagement.
Love it when people are engrossed in their work.
Love it when people come in early because they love what they do.
Love it that employees are working in tune with colleagues and not going home in frustration to start a divorce.
Here is the paradox of our time, the single unifying theory of the business world, the point where the poles meet, where the lion lays down with the lamb and where the centre meets the rim.
It’s the point where the most heartless of chief accountants exhales an icy breath, looks out at the pallets loaded with happiness suspended above the anxious faces of the company’s employees before trembling his horizontal thumb into the up position releasing tons of multi-colored joy over the shocked but suddenly grateful masses whilst over beside the corporate counting-house the barometers of profit and return-on-capital employed and company share price turn black, shooting millions of greenbacks simultaneously up their wide tubes till they overflow at the top like frothing geysers into the waiting arms of always-hungry shareholders and pension funds.
The laws of physics have been suspended. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, they say.
But when we build teams that work, teams where every member’s power station of natural strengths and talents are not only brought to the surface and engaged but also connected up to every other member’s power station of natural talents and the whole team struggles into life, real life, not the drowsy half-power life we used to call work, then we get back more than double what we put in. Somehow the power of the natural strengths we were born with, long ignored and misunderstood, drive us forward with a super-human energy that overcomes any obstacles in our way.
We were made to team with others. That’s why we have sports teams, clubs, associations, boards, task forces, armies, committees, churches, governments and companies.
Lots of teams don’t work. It’s because people who are in the wrong role for their talent are working with other people who are in the wrong role for their talent. None of them are motivated.
Teams that work, on the other hand, are made up of people whose natural strengths and talents have been surfaced and recognised and who are working in a job where those talents are put to use every day. That’s when you get motivation, happiness, enthusiasm, quality, perseverance and a job done well. And a job done well is a job that brings value, worth, lustre, high price, desire and profit.
Love profit.
Love happiness.
Bring out your inner heartless accountant. Survey the corporate balance sheet and let yourself go misty with love. With an upward flick of your thumb you can bring happiness – and profit.
Love your people. Love your bottom line. Build teams that work.
