Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking about some of the intangible traits that define “who we are” or “who our company is.” We’ve been looking at Rule #11 from my Rules of Attraction: Who we are is more important that what we do.

In my last few Business Updates I wrote about Integrity, Vision and Enthusiasm. Today I’d like to look at another trait that makes up “who” we are – selflessness.

Henry Stimson, Secretary of War during World War II once said, “no one who is thinking of himself can rise to great heights.” It sounds nice. It looks good in quotes. But the reality is that this statement runs counter to what most people truly believe and how we live our lives. In fact it is the opposite of what most of us are taught as children. That is, we must FIGHT for what is ours. Even in school we teach our children evolution. We beat into their little heads – the survival of the fittest. Only the very best make it to the top. We make no bones about the fact that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Where is selflessness in all of this? Don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that I live up to this trait. I am ashamed to say that I often fail miserably at being selfless. I do think it is necessary that we illuminate the fact that those who have molded their character to a selfless mindset ultimately create attraction and bring about change.

There has already been much written on the lives of those famous selfless individuals who have changed the world. People like Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. I will not dedicate extensive discussion to their accomplishments in this book but as point of illustration allow me to touch on them briefly. I think you will see that their selfless actions did in fact create massive attraction. I will attempt to demonstrate that this type of character-based attraction, like integrity, vision and enthusiasm can be implemented in a powerful and genuine way by regular folks like you and I.

In his youth Gandhi was a regular guy. In fact the name Gandhi means “grocer.” Educated as a lawyer in England he ultimately managed to lead his people to freedom from British rule by practicing nothing BUT selflessness. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether against the British, or against each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased. Independence, when it came in 1947, was not a military victory, but a triumph of human will. 

Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta from 1931 to 1948. However the suffering and poverty she saw outside the convent made a profound impression on her. She asked for permission from her superiors to leave the school and devote herself to working with the destitute and dying in the slums of Calcutta. Although she did not have a single penny, she relied on Divine Providence, and began the first school for slum children without even a building. Her selflessness attracted volunteers and eventually financial support. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries.

While selflessness is indeed a rare commodity today, I think we can all give a bit of ourselves for someone else. We don’t have to be Gandhi or Mother Teresa to help another person. I think this is as relevant in business as it is in our personal lives. How often do we place our own interests before the clients? How often do we let our egos get in the way just because we can? If I had to answer that I’d have to say, TOO OFTEN!

What would happen if we took the long view, overlooking a confrontation in favor of a selfless approach? Do you think it would create attraction? I’d be willing to bet my bottom dollar on that. In a society that focuses on gratifying ourselves, imagine the impact we can create with our clients, shareholders and team members when we take our eyes off ourselves and look to a brighter future.

In 1961 John F. Kennedy put forth the idea of sending a man to the moon and bringing him back safely before the end of the decade. The American people were no doubt moved by this vision. But frankly he received much opposition from Congress due to the Cold War and the fear of technological failure.

A team of legislators were sent to Cape Canaveral to determine whether the funding should be allocated for the project. One day Florida Senator George Smathers, a member of this team, was touring the facility. He slipped away from the group of dignitaries for a moment to get a drink of water. Attempting to rejoin his group he became lost and found himself wandering the halls. The place was immaculate. It looked to be sanitized. Suddenly he came upon a woman sweeping-up and he explained his situation to her. She seemed to know her way around the complex and quickly told him how to rejoin his party. Smathers, impressed with the woman’s knowledge asked her, “What is it that you do here?” He was astounded by what she told him: “Why sir, I am part of a team helping to put a man on the moon and bring him back safely.”Smathers went back to Washington with a renewed fervor in his heart for the lunar project. He told his colleagues, “If the janitor at Cape Canaveral has this kind of sense of mission, what might the scientists and astronauts be like?”This simple cleaning women understood her humble job of sweeping-up to be far more than it appeared to an outsider. She was an important part of the Apollo project. Do you think that, as a result she was far more committed to her job? Do you think she went out of her way to do an extra great job of cleaning up? You bet she did. Her answer showed her deep understanding of her “personal internal vision.”Please understand I am not talking about a corporate vision or mission. Not that a corporate vision/mission is not necessary. On the contrary it is the first step in organizations developing their personal internal visions. But today many corporate visions or missions have become more like slogans than anything else. A PIV, or “Personal Internal Vision”, is a one-on-one relationship between you and your job. For that cleaning women that might have meant having the floors shine, the porcelain gleam and the corridors sparkle. What is it for you? Or if you’re a business owner or manager what does it mean for each one of your people?The purpose of a PIV is to give people the freedom they need to succeed. It allows them to take full responsibility for their choices. This is really the only way to create an environment of accountability. When a company asks their people to develop their own personal internal visions, they also give them the freedom to break the bonds of authority and excel beyond what might be expected from management.The fact is that accountability and responsibility lies with those closest to the task. Owning their job and future allows someone to let go of the idea that they need someone to look to for direction or control. It allows people to be responsible to the entire organization and the customers rather than their manager or supervisor. It takes the focus off of doing things right or by the book. It puts the focus on doing the RIGHT things. This improves decision making, performance and productivity.Improved performance and increased productivity aren’t the only benefits of a PIV program. Implementing PIV allows people to improve their skills by taking personal risks that will benefit the organization. They become more trustworthy and more trusting of others. They tend to hold themselves to higher standards and operate with greater integrity. They are often willing to put the interests of others above their own. This makes sense if you think about it. When their OWN success is at stake rather than some stranger’s company, do you think they will make better decisions and operate with greater commitment? Of course.In fact, in the coming economy, the only alternative to implementing a PIV program will be increased employee turnover, continuing resentment and ultimate stagnation. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the folks at Southwest Airlines, Harley Davidson, Nordstrom, Dell Computers and the list goes on. The bottom-line is that having a PIV program can be the difference between achieving your company’s goals in terms of financial growth, manpower development and customer satisfaction.If not for that cleaning women’s PIV, might there be a Russian flag on the moon today?I hope that this “Business Update” has been helpful in assisting you to improve the performance of your organization. For more information on how the Small Business Advisory Network assists companies in improving their performance, please feel free to contact us at 310-320-8190 or email mark@markdeo.comMark Deo

The biggest disease this day and age is that of people feeling unloved.–Author Unknown

 The software engineer put on Nirvana’s “In Utero” as he did every evening when he got home from work, took his gun out, loaded it, and tried to garner enough courage to put it in his mouth and squeeze the trigger.  This was a ritual he had played out every night or the past year.  While successful at work, he was miserable.  He felt no one cared about him as a person- he was just another programmer, doing what programmers did, living a solitary life with no friends.  Then one day, out of the blue, his boss sent him a personal e-mail- not related to code revisions, interface changes, or other work related items.  But one that expressed his thanks and sincere appreciation for the work he had accomplished in the time he had worked there, and how he was valuable to the team not as just a programmer, but as a person.  He told this employee that he was glad he knew him as a human being, not just as someone who typed away at his computer all day.  That night the software engineer went through his daily ritual of putting on Nirvana, loading his gun, and for the first time- he was scared that he might actually go through with it.  He sold the gun, and with the proceeds bought his boss a gift- and told him the story of how that simple gesture had saved his life. This story was related to Mark Deo and I on the small business hour this week by Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App.  He is at the forefront of a new wave of business thinking- not one focused on numbers, but one focused on people.  His philosophy is that one must share three things in order to have a successful business relationship: knowledge, networks and compassion.   By doing so you can not only help your business, but you can help others as human beings, much as in the story above. How does one share their knowledge?  By staying informed reading about the latest trends in business reading about things that interest other people and then sharing that knowledge with people who are interested in it.  How do you know what you should be reading?  A great place to start is the list of books on our website www.smallbusinesshour.com.  Tim Sanders also maintains a reading list on his web site at www.timsanders.com.  Some publications that are excellent are business magazines such as Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Business Week, and Business 2.0.  By reading these books and publications you’re making yourself valuable as a walking library to people that you speak with.  This allows you to become a personal resource to others- someone who they can trust and count on for information.  This in turn makes you as a person more valuable. What do we mean by sharing your networks?  This is not some reference to computers and internet access- To share your networks you must take your personal contacts and instead of protecting them and hiding them in secrecy open them up to the world.  Share your contacts with others who might find them to be of use.  This can be a simple matter such as simply passing a phone number on to someone, or giving a referral.  Better still is personally introducing two people who can both gain some value from establishing a new relationship.  By doing so you become a business “matchmaker” of sorts- someone who helps others to achieve their goals through communication with people to which you introduce them.  How does someone show compassion in business?  It comes back to one of Dale Carnegie’s principles, “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Only by being interested in someone and showing that interest can you demonstrate that you care about them as people and not just as tangible resources.  People respond to being cared for- you never know how making a small gesture can profoundly impact someone’s life.  I encourage you to think of someone in your business life who you can show your love to this week.  Become genuinely interested in them as a person- not to try and gain something from them, but to find common ground you share.  Then discover what it is that interests them, and find some information about that topic that you can share with them.  Find someone in your network of contacts who also has interest in the same topics, and introduce the two.  You will be amazed at how that will endear you to both contacts, turning them from business relationships into personal friends.  I’d love to hear your success stories at mwalker@sbanetwork.org.  Have a great week! This Business Update was written by SBA Network Business Advisor Matthew Walker- for more information, please contact him at 310-320-8190 or mwalker@sbanetwork.org.

Small business represents more than 99 percent of all American employers, employs more than half of the American workforce, provides just a little less than half of this country’s sales, and represents 96 percent of all U.S. exporters. Yet fewer than 5% of all small businesses survive to see their fifth birthday.

Why?

Some say its due to a lack of knowledge, a missing skill-set or hyper-specialization. I agree that skills and knowledge are critical but sometimes I think this huge failure rate has a bit to do with overconfidence.

Let’s face it, making the transition from “employee” to “employer” is not as easy as it looks. As an employee we had it pretty good. The owners took all the risk. True, when business was good they bought themselves a new Mercedes but if business was bad, they took the hit and I still got my salary. I didn”t have to worry about workers comp, insurance, OSHA, labor laws, lawsuits, competition, soft-sales, rising expenses and a plethora of other issues.

As employees we were “dependent” on the owner to absorb the risk and compensate for any losses or downside. Some owners may feel this “dependence” translates to a form of employee entitlement. Yet the owner takes the risk and the owner enjoys the reward.

Many employees on the other hand have come to believe that they are owed more money, more health care, more retirement benefits-more of everything that is costly to the owner of a business. Business owners often feel as though they deserve to take as much out of their companies as they wish sometimes not fully funding initiatives which can create a difficult working environment for employees. How can this dichotomy be reconciled?

I think it is deeper than simply saying we all need to take responsibility. I think we need to change our mindset about independence and entitlement. And I think we need to teach our employees to think like owners. Some have gone so far as to actually make their employees owners.ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plans)

In 1994 United Airlines became the largest employee majority-owned enterprise in the United States, with various groups of employees mostly represented by unions – having purchased 55% of its stock in exchange for various concessions. The employees accepted pay cuts and made other concessions, but were also granted representation on the company’s board of directors. The case represents the potential of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), but not the full realization of that potential. It shows that an ESOP may be a necessary condition but certainly is not a sufficient condition for substantial changes in labor-management relations leading to improvements in company performance.

Rule #11 from my Rules of Attraction: Who we are is more important that what we do.

Last week we looked some of the intangible traits that define “who we are” or “who our company is.” We said the most critical are: Integrity, Vision, Enthusiasm, Selflessness and Identity. We spent some time examining the importance of genuine “Enthusiasm” and how it affects how we are perceived. Another trait that exemplifies who we are is “integrity.”

It has been said that our “character” is displayed by what we do when no one is looking. I believe that character is; “who we are – defined.” It is the values that we adhere to. Similarly the concept of “character” extends beyond a trait that defines a person’s temperament or disposition. What does character have to do with marketing, you may ask? I believe in this new era, character or “who we are” is more important than ever before in the marketing arena. In fact I would submit that character is far more important than what we actually do or say about our company, product or service. It is the evidence of our most persuasive claims. Who can deny that all types of products and services are becoming more homogeneous? Differentiating oneself is getting more and more difficult. Competition in every industry and profession is accelerating daily. Therefore “character” in many cases may be the deciding factor in attracting better clients, more committed team members and healthier relationships.

Integrity is at the core of our character or who we are. When we think of someone as having “integrity” we tend to think of them as being honest, loyal, fair-minded, trustworthy and respectful. Having integrity means that you do what you say you’re going to do, you try to do the RIGHT thing and you do it consistently.

When we think of the greatest military leaders of all time, we think of Patton, Eisenhower, and MacArthur. The name George C. Marshall has faded into the mist. Marshall, however, was the leader that made it possible for these men to dominate the history books. The fact is that Marshall was their boss! He was the Chief of Staff of the United States Armed Forces during World War II. He forfeited his chance to go down in history as the hero of the war and ultimately position himself as an almost certain a shoe-in for the White House top job. 

In late 1943, at the height of World War II, Marshall had convinced both President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that the best way to turn the tide of the war was to plan a cross-channel attack on Germany via France. The only question was… Who would lead the operation? Roosevelt knew that Marshall wanted to be the commander of the D-Day invasion. It would virtually guarantee Marshall’s place in history. Yet just as Roosevelt knew that Marshall deserved this honor, he also was aware that the man was so humble he would never ask for the job. The President’s problem was that he felt that Marshall was more greatly needed as the high commander of the entire war effort than he was as leader of the D-Day invasion.

So what did the President do? Like any good politician he hedged his bet. He sent a message to Marshall telling him that if the general wanted the position then he just needed to ask for it. What was Marshall’s reply? He sent a one line message back to Roosevelt saying:

“I will serve wherever you order me, Mr. President.”

In the end, the Normandy invasion, a virtual guarantee of glory, slipped from the hands of Marshall into those of Eisenhower who used it to make his successful play for the Presidency. Marshall demonstrated his integrity by having the courage and conviction to make the “right decision” for the country. Marshall knew that in fact he WAS more greatly needed in the role of overseer for the entire war effort than he was as D-Day invasion commander. Later when asked why he made such a decision, he told the media, “The issue was just too great for personal feelings to be considered.”

This is the kind of integrity that creates attraction. While many of today’s business leaders are shifting blame, slamming competitors and whining about fair treatment, those with integrity are willing to tell the truth, make sacrifices, do the right thing and do it consistently. Imagine the reputation your company can build in a marketplace hungry for products, services, companies and people with integrity.