A company philosophy and how it affects me.

[Shaggy Jenkins]

Here's a story we can all relate to...

Does your company reward laziness? Does it encourage people not to achieve? Does your company secretly sabotage itself through how it handles conflict?

Here's a little story for you all:

Back in high school in Bessemer City, I had a teacher Lewis Carpenter explain how society works and why it was important for me to work against that grain. He told me:

"Son, the way the world is now, we reward stupidity. We reward laziness. We shun progress. Now before you start givin' me a lot of lip about it, let me explain.

If you constantly worry over the feelings your employees or like me, students, have on a day to day basis. YOU ARE WASTING TIME. You don't have the ability to make not one damned one of them happy, sad, angry, or depressed. Only they do.

If you constantly tell the others AROUND that one person to keep quiet, not excel too much for fear of harming that person's feelings, or actively seek to enforce some sort of unnatural equality: You are stunting the growth of your business. There HAS to be a best one, as well as there has to be a WORST one. The ones in the middle should never feel that they are encouraged to work less than WORST one cause nothing will every get done. They have to be made to believe that each one of them are as special as the BEST one, and that through effort and hard work, they too can achieve what perks is enjoyed by those at the top.

The second you encourage someone not to excel, they won't. You have begun rewarding laziness and stupidity and thus making those things the staples of your company and yourself. You have chosen feeling good over progression. You have chosen to turn a blind eye to the one constant in this universe: CHANGE. You'll never excel, and the people under you will be lazy and stupid and it'll be nobody's fault but your own.

Now could you imagine if Henry Ford had walked out years ago and told all his workers only to make what they felt like making? There would have been no assembly line, there would have been no cars on all the streets we have today... because no one would be motivated to excel. Remember that"

And I did remember that. The older I get, the more I see us becoming lazy and stupid because that's all we reward now. We don't call people stupid when they do stupid things...thus, we encourage them to continue being as such. We don't shun elements of our society that are too risky, too blind, too hurtful to the progress of others around them. We reward them by dumbing down our schools, our government, our society, and our culture.

So, if there's ever a chance for you to look inward and figure out "Do I reward laziness and stupidity?"

IT'S NOW

[Samantha]