In my small business, I come across “employees” on a regular basis. The varied perspectives I experience is sometimes inspiring, and at other times, depressing.
A touch of my perspective
To begin, let me say how thankful I am for my perspective. And for the sake of clarity, I guess I should explain mine in two sentences.
Nobody owes you anything, and if you want something you have to take responsibility and take action. If you spend your life blaming everyone else for what’s going on in your life, you’ll never grow, advance or have success.
A flawed perspective
I was in one of my condos, inspecting it to make sure it was perfect for our next guest. I do this often to keep my housekeeping staff on their toes, and just to get my eyes in all of our condos every couple of weeks.
While I was out, I ran into a member of the cleaning staff for the onsite company. We got to chatting, and I was told that it was companies like mine that were putting people like her out of a job. After prodding a little deeper I discovered that the company she was working for was losing owner-clients hand over fist and her cleaning peers were being slowly let go as the inventory diminished.
Sigh.
The interesting part was that in no way could the ineptness of the company she worked for be to blame for their falter; at least in her eyes. The sad part is that this perspective seems to be common among “employees”.
And when I say “employees” in quotes like that, I’m referring to a type of person that requires someone else to provide a job for them in order to make money. They have no skills/ability/confidence to ask someone for money for services rendered, they need a job, from a boss, doing one thing in particular.
I guess this isn’t her fault, really. I’m sure she has a great excuse for thinking this way. Not much of a great reason, though.
In order for a company to grow, or at least not shrink
So, what do you do if you’re a business that starts losing, well business? You figure out what’s causing all the bleeding, you stop it, and you make sure that the wound doesn’t happen again by being more proactive.
Let’s forget the figurative example and go with something more literal.
Let’s say you’re a rental business. A big one. You have tons of owner-clients. Suddenly, after a couple years, they start leaving you for someone else. Maybe you should ask them why they’re leaving. Chances are, if there are some leaving, there are many more that are considering leaving, or are at least unhappy for the same reasons.
What if making your owner-clients happy is a total business model change for you? Well, would you rather go through the hassle of changing your business model and STAY in business rather than not change, and go out of business?
The reality is, sometimes your customers/clients may not know what they want or need (in the spirit of Steve Jobs), but if they’re telling you you’re doing a bad job, you need to listen, or you’ll lose their money.
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