You Must Produce and Do Quality Work

At Toyota’s headquarters in Tokyo, one of the most striking things you see when you first enter is a collection of three pictures. The first is of Toyota’s founder, the second is of Toyota’s chairman, and the third, which is much larger than the other two is of W. Edwards Deming. The company believes Deming is the man whose teachings and philosophies made the company what it is today.

Deming taught the Japanese about quality and how to continuously improve quality. In fact, the success of modern Japan after World War II as an economic and industrial power is largely based on the Japanese march towards continuously improving their quality, versus the typical focus of American corporations:

1. Short-term profits
2. Mobility of management
3. Running a company on visible figures alone
4. Relying on technology to solve problems

Japanese goods used to be the laughing stock of the world in terms of their quality. Today, they are considered among the best, and the phrase “Made in Japan” is considered synonymous with quality. As the quality of Japan’s goods has increased, so too has its standard of living and status in the world. The drive towards quality has served to elevate the country of Japan and its people. If quality can do this for a country, imagine what it can do for your career.

Incredible quality does not just change nations, it can change your life as well. The more you stress quality in your job, the better you will do in everything you attempt. You cannot avoid doing quality work and bringing improvement to your life. This is the lesson Deming brings to the way companies and countries are run, and your life.

The better you perform your job and the better the quality of your work, the more you will be valued by your employer. In addition, the more you concentrate on doing quality work, the more you will continuously improve. It is rare for people who produce the very best work and demand perfection to ever be out of a job or ever have a hard time finding a job. They get exceptional references from their previous employers, and current employers try to hold on to them, even in the worst economies. Producing quality work is something very rare and, because it is so rare, it is something that’s valued in every marketplace all over the world.

We seek out and value the people who are the best at their jobs. The best employers want the people who produce the highest quality results to do work for them. When you produce quality work, you typically do not have to worry about job security, raises, or what other people are doing.

When I started practicing law with my first firm, I found myself working 15+ hours per day, seven days a week. I was not working this hard because I thought it necessary. In fact, many of the people I was working with at the firm had the same amount of work I did. I was working so hard because I knew the work I was doing could always be better. I knew I could make the same point in fewer words in a document I was writing. I knew I could make a more persuasive argument by finding better support for it. I knew I could stay a little bit longer and make something the best it possibly could be. I gave my all. The great thing about my continuous quest for quality is, the better I did, the more the most important attorneys at my firm started having me do all their work. In addition, I continued to get better and better at what I did.

I will never forget when I quit working at my first firm and decided to go to work for another. For several hours the most important partners in the firm, one after another, came into my office and tried to convince me to stay. At the time I did not know they rarely, if ever, did this when someone was leaving the firm. After the third day of this, I asked one of the younger partners why they were trying so hard to get me to stay.

“We want you to stay because you do really good work and you care about what you are doing,” he told me. “You also continue to get better and better and show incredible promise as a litigator.”

I was young at the time and those words sort of went in one ear and out the other; however, I remembered them years later when I started to employ people and observe their work ethic. I realized the effort I had been putting in was something quite rare. It is one thing to simply work hard at what you are doing and another to make your job your passion and set out to continuously improve.

A year or so later, when I wanted to come back to that firm, I asked the head of the firm if I could return to work. He said “yes” right away. For various reasons, this did not work out, but the fact is the good work I had done made an impression on the head of this firm and on the people in it.

In your job the most important thing you can do is make an incredible effort and do the best possible quality of work. When you do the best work you can, you are behaving like a professional, like someone who makes a difference in your company or firm. Your co-workers will also respect you more. You have employment security and, even if the firm you are working for goes away, your employer and co-workers will always recommend you to others. It is a wonderful thing to be known for the quality of your work.

Following World War II, the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers invited Deming to come to Japan and give a series of lectures on how management could improve quality. The Japanese told Deming they would follow his instructions. Deming predicted within five years Japan would be competitive economically, and consumers all over the world would be demanding the products the Japanese produced. The Japanese followed Deming’s suggestions and, within eighteen months of Deming’s first lecture, saw huge strides in both the quality of their goods and productivity.

I predict if you start doing everything you can to improve the quality of your work, in less than a year you will start getting promoted and find yourself in a different place than you are today. People who do good work are management, CEO or high-earner material. All you need to do in order to really advance your career and life is improve the quality of your work. Once you do this, everything else quickly falls into place.

When Deming initially arrived in Japan after World War II, Japan’s goods were considered shoddy and cheap throughout the world. They were made from the cheapest of materials. They were among the worst products in the world. Today, their goods are considered the envy of the world, whether the products are electronics, cameras, automobiles, or computers.

For American and European firms that used to control the world in these fields, the transformation brought about by Deming’s philosophies has been nothing short of catastrophic. In the electronics industry, for example, nearly all components – such as computer chips, transistors, and semiconductor chips – were American inventions. The Japanese advanced so quickly in this field by the 1980s most American television and radio manufacturers were gone, and they rushed to Washington begging for help. The same thing happened with the American automobile industry; as the Japanese gained market share, American companies rushed to Washington and elsewhere asking for help.

In my studies of Deming, one of the things that stands out for me is a video of him made shortly before he died in 1993. In the video he offers the words, “It’s all about the quality.” Everything is about the quality. Think about how much different America would be today if we had the same quality of goods the Japanese produced. We do not make the same quality of goods because our emphasis is on other things, such as short-term profits. If our emphasis was on quality, everything else would be falling into place.

Deming’s philosophies are quite simple. He believed organizations must create ever improving products and services. The more the product or service improves, the more loyal the customers of the business become. Loyal customers will brag to others about the product or service they are receiving and create new customers. Profits from a sale to a loyal customer are often six to eight times the profits from another customer. The company with the most loyal customers typically has much higher profits than the average company.

The results of ever-improving quality are profound. For example, if you are an attorney, you make your writing better and more persuasive. If you are a manufacturer, you make your product better. You never stop questioning and improving to make your product as good as it can be. According to a famous account of Deming’s work:

Dr. Deming’s teachings and philosophy can be seen through the results they produced when they were adopted by the Japanese, as the following example shows: Ford Motor Company was simultaneously manufacturing a car model with transmissions made in Japan and the United States. Soon after the car model was on the market, Ford customers were requesting the model with the Japanese transmission over the USA-made transmission, and they were willing to wait for the Japanese model. As both transmissions were made to the same specifications, Ford engineers could not understand the customer preference for the model with the Japanese transmission. It delivered smoother performance with a lower defect rate. Finally, Ford engineers decided to take apart the two different transmissions. The American-made car parts were all within specified tolerance levels. On the other hand, the Japanese car parts had much closer tolerances than the USA-made parts-i.e., if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus 1/8 of an inch, then the Japanese parts were within 1/16 of an inch. This made the Japanese cars run more smoothly and customers experienced fewer problems. (From Dr. Deming by Rafael Aguayo, pages 40 & 41.)

According to Deming, as quality is increased, costs decrease. This sets in motion the following reaction:

1. Better quality leads to higher productivity and lower costs
2. The firm with lower costs can pass along the savings to consumers in the form of lower prices
3. When a firm has lower prices and better quality, customers are happier
4. The firm captures market share and hires more people
5. The firm stays in business and grows its market share

Under Deming’s philosophy, when you improve the quality of what you are doing, everything simply gets better and this happens rapidly. What does this mean for you?

I believe one of the most fundamental and important lessons in the development of a country and an economic power come from the experience of Japan. I believe the philosophies of Deming are profound and can make a major and important difference in your life and career. The more you work on the quality of what you are doing, the better you, too, will get and the better your career will get.

When looking at employers, you should also concentrate on working for those whose quality is getting better and better. Employers who strive to create outstanding quality are the same ones likely to be around tomorrow. The better the quality of the product the business is producing, the more opportunities they are likely to have in the future for you. The better the quality of your work, the more opportunities you are also likely to have in the future. Make quality your first priority.

Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security

The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before.

The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible.

Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked.

-Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain the sealant out. After a few years, I did so much asphalt sealing work I had a trailer custom made to hold 550 gallons of the sealant.

From the beginning of my second summer through my third, I had two people working for me whose job was to assist me in putting down the sealant. Their names were Larry and Jake. Larry was Jake’s father. Jake was mentally disabled but not overly so. He understood what was going on and followed instructions. He never really said much, however.

Neither Larry nor Jake cared much for the work they were doing. While they had decent work ethics and put up with me literally walking into their homes and getting them up for work each day, they were not extremely concerned with the quality of the work they were doing. They frequently cut corners and I needed to watch them pretty carefully. Larry was a guy I remember and respect a great deal because I think deep down he was a really good person. On Sundays, I used to have to wait in front of his house until he got back from church with his wife and children. Larry was a smart man who had made some mistakes throughout his life but worked when he could. He was hungover every day, and I bought him Gatorade after Gatorade at convenience shops to keep him going.

We would fill up five-gallon pails from the barrels and then walk the sealant over to an area of the asphalt we wanted to seal. Then, we would spread it around on the asphalt with either squeegees or a large brush. Without going into a lot of detail, this was excruciatingly difficult work because the sealant gets on your skin and burns. You are also outside, and the sun burns you because you are on black asphalt all day, and the sealant is a very heavy tar liquid that you need to pull off your skin at the end of each day. It often takes layers of your skin off when you remove it and needs to be removed with gasoline and a steel wool-like material.

As this business grew, I started getting better and better equipment for it. I will never forget the moment I purchased and installed a pumping system and sprayer on the tank. With this new pumping system I was able to pull up to any parking lot or house and, after blowing all the debris off the driveway or parking lot, turn on this spray machine and complete sealing the asphalt without hardly getting dirty at all. Best of all, I did not need to fill up the five-gallon buckets. I simply needed to turn on my sprayer and walk up and down the driveway.

One day I pulled up to a driveway that Jake and Larry were working on around 5:30 in the afternoon and turned on the sprayer. They were in the middle of working on the driveway and, by the looks of it, would be working for at least another 35 to 40 minutes. I told them to stop. Then, wearing khaki pants and a fresh shirt from the dry cleaner, I completed the entire job in less than five minutes.

I could see they both looked somewhat astonished. They also looked frightened because I think they believed this new sprayer was going to put them out of a job.

“This thing does not give as good of a coat as doing it by hand,” Jake said. This was the first time I had ever heard Jake say anything about the quality of the work we were doing.

“Yeah, it does not look as good,” said Larry.

The strangest thing happened over the next few weeks. Weird things started going wrong with the pump and we never made it through a full day. Belts would suddenly fail. Start switches would break off and disappear. I began to suspect after a week or so of this Larry and Jake were sabotaging the pump because they knew it could put them out of a job. After a few weeks of this I insisted I be the only one allowed to operate the machine, and I made sure I was. While I still have no proof of it to this day, I think Larry and Jake were sabotaging the machine.

Change is something that creeps into every single business, and the objective of every business is to lower costs because lower costs mean more profits. This means they are always looking for ways to eliminate your job. That’s right. Your very job is a threat to your company and its profits.

When I started in the Internet business in the year 1999, the world was a far different place. One of the most interesting things I witnessed involved computer programmers. In the late 1990s through 2001, computer programmers were like gods to companies in the United States. They could demand six-figure salaries and jumped around between companies at an alarming rate. Everyone wanted to hire them because there were so many Internet companies and businesses believed the Internet was the next great frontier.

At our small company we practically needed to beg programmers to work for us. We would offer them pizza and other incentives when they were not on other projects. In some cases, we would pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work, and then they would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was “boring.” Some of the programmers I interviewed even requested stock options just to show up for work. I was baffled by the programmers I worked with and my inability to get the programmers to do any work really held me back.

Due to the difficulty surrounding this issue, we started building an office in India. We had no problem getting people to do the work there. In fact, people were enthusiastic about getting the work and wanted more of it. While there were lower costs associated with the work, the real reason for getting the work done abroad was that people were enthusiastic about doing the work. All we wanted was to get the work done.

After the dot com crash and the events of September 11, 2001, all of a sudden those American programmers were out of work. Tens of thousands of American programmers were let go in a very short time, and Internet companies dropped like flies.

I remember putting an ad out in late 2001 for an in-house programmer and getting overwhelmed with applications. I received so many applications, literally, one every few seconds, that I had to make changes to the settings in my Microsoft Outlook. I ended up hiring one person to work in our Los Angeles office who had just received a PhD from Caltech. I practically could have hired anyone I wanted in the world. There was simply no work for programmers. It had all dried up.

The economy did eventually recover. However, I still did not grow our base of programmers in the United States. I had such a bad experience the first time and, in the interim, had built a large group of programmers in our company in India. This was all I needed. I cannot imagine how many jobs went to India due to this.

Our company is not alone. Many companies do all their programming in other countries now. It simply makes more sense for them from a financial standpoint. They are not interested in doing work in the United States anymore due to the cost, hassles, and the fact the people are not as enthusiastic about doing the work.

There are tons of jobs in the United States and around the world right now that are under fire and are likely to disappear in the near future. There are many reasons jobs disappear, but the main one is because they can be done cheaper elsewhere. Every company and organization is constantly striving for greater efficiency. If your employers can do your job cheaply elsewhere, then they will.

There is no reason for them not to. The more cheaply they can produce a product or service, the more they can potentially sell of that product or service. The more of the product or service that’s sold, the more the company will grow and expand.

What does this mean for you and your job? It means the best use of your time and skill is finding jobs and employers where your role is one of increasing the efficiency of the company’s work. You always need to embrace efficiency and increase the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you fight efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth. If this happens, you will most likely be looking for a new job shortly.

In the past there have been a number of phenomena I’ve watched with great interest:

-The emergence of China as a major economic power
-The massive decline of the American automobile industry
-The rise and massive success of various American companies like Intel, eBay, and Oracle
-The huge rise of jobs in places like India

China emerged as a force to be reckoned with because they can produce goods more cheaply. People will work for less money in China, and this makes it cheaper to produce products there. Incredibly, it is still cheaper to produce products in China even after accounting for shipping the products on boats all the way to the United States. All over the United States, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to the emergence of China as an economic power. If you are someone working in a factory in the present economy, you need to realize your job could be replaced very, very easily.

The American automobile industry has experienced a long and steady decline. Cars can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. American unions have set wages and benefits higher for American workers than for competitors. This has given competitors a huge advantage and also given American automobile companies less money to invest in improving their products. The products have continually gotten worse and worse. The companies able to produce the product at the lowest cost are winning.

The companies that have done the best in the United States over the past several decades are the companies that are increasing efficiency. While I could go into considerable detail about this, companies like Oracle, for example, creates database software which allows companies to save money by operating more efficiently. The efficient operation of these companies creates huge value. A company like eBay creates efficiencies by allowing people to trade goods without having to travel or do extensive research. This, too, creates efficiency. Companies like Intel make microchips that have not only aided the rapid spread of personal computers, but have also enabled companies to use computers which allow them to operate more efficiently.

India has been absorbing many American jobs for decades. They have call centers, programmers, and even legal work is being done there. The country has a lot more people than the United States and a corresponding level of talent. There is another advantage: people are willing to work more cheaply there for most jobs. It only makes sense for American companies to hire people there.

These are all examples of efficiency in action. You need to understand the world and your job are constantly being pushed to be more efficient. When you take a job at any company, you are entering an environment where you are at war. You are at war with the fact your employers are doing everything within their power to make their businesses more efficient. That means they want to save money on you and your work to the maximum extent they can.

The smartest thing you can do in your career is find companies that are increasing efficiency in the market and go to work for them, or find a company where you can increase the efficiency of what is being done. You need to embrace efficiency. If you fight efficiency, you will ultimately lose your job. We are not secure in our jobs and cannot be secure if we don’t embrace efficiency. The war for and against efficiency is something that is going on in every company and every organization. The employees and people who win this war are the ones who fight to make things more efficient.

If You Want to Earn More, You Need to Be Worth More

Your financial requirements and what you would like to earn have nothing to do with what you are worth in the market. In running my various organizations, I have hired superstars from the very best universities with the very best work histories who ended up contributing next to nothing to the organization. I have also hired people who started out making close to minimum wage, and whose contributions were so great their salaries doubled, and in some cases even quadrupled. Several years ago, the contribution of one of our departments, which was then around 10 people, was so great I literally doubled each and every member’s salary in one short 15 minute meeting.

Are you someone who contributes so much to your organization your salary merits doubling? Or do you merely have a sense of entitlement and feel you are worth more than you are paid?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard statements like the following:

“I made this much four years ago; therefore I should be making more right now.”

“My wife told me that I need to get a raise.”

“I think it is really important that I get this car because it will show some outward sign of success.”

“I know of someone who makes even more money than this in [some other city] and, therefore, I need to make that much as well.”

“This is an expensive city, and I need to be paid that much to live well.”

“I would like to have some extra spending money for travel and other things, after paying the mortgage on my house.”

“I need to make enough money to afford to send my kids to a private school.”

These are actual statements I have heard from people over the years. The sense of entitlement that drives people to make these sorts of demands needs to have a basis in reality.

Again, your financial requirements have nothing to do with how much you are worth in the market. Unless you are truly indispensable, your employer simply does not care what those requirements are. You are paid a certain amount based on your ability to generate value for your employer, and, with very few exceptions, that value generally must be far greater than what you are paid. Your contribution to any organization must generally be at least three times greater than the reward you are seeking.

Far too many people fail to realize what they are paid is based on the company’s profitability. Organizations have overhead, such as rent, advertising, and the cost of manufacturing the products or services they provide. Organizations need to have reserves in order to pay you when money is not coming in. Organizations need money for research and development. Organizations need money to pay for your health benefits and social security taxes, to print brochures, pay for office machine maintenance and more.

Since I am a legal recruiter, I would like to share with you some information about how partners are traditionally compensated in law firms. There are numerous compensation systems. However, the one I am about to share with you is the most prevalent.

When many young attorneys graduate from elite law schools, they tell themselves when they join equally elite law firms they will one day make astronomical amounts of money. About 10 years ago, I remember the number young attorneys my age were throwing around was $1 million. How does an attorney make $1 million a year?

Remember: any amount of money you are paid will have to add much more than that to the firm’s bottom line. Typically, the rule is that for every $1 a partner makes they have contributed at least $3 to the firm. That means that the partner is lucky to receive only 33 percent of what he or she brings in as business to the firm.

How does a partner contribute a total of $3 million to the pot for a firm? The partner brings in loads of business, works extremely hard, and then collects the money that has been billed. The partner also has associates doing work, he ensures their work is getting done and that all invoices are getting paid.

If partners in the world’s largest law firms are lucky to receive only a 33 percent return on the contribution they are making, you should understand you will need to make a giant contribution to any organization you are part of in order to justify the amount you would like to be paid. In order to justify a high salary, it is important you begin concentrating on what you can do to make your contribution even greater than it is now.

You need to make yourself indispensable to your employer by virtue of your hard work and contribution. There are certain people within any organization who are indispensable, and others who are not. These employees usually don’t last very long in organizations.

I want to tell you a quick story about one of the worst hiring mistakes I ever made. It involved hiring a manager to lead a small company I was starting at the time. In order to try out for the job and show me what he could do, I asked the man to put together some financial figures that took into account the potential performance of the company and what he believed he should be paid if each milestone was met. Since it would take several hours to go over these figures, I agreed to meet the man at my home on a Sunday afternoon to go over them until we could reach an agreement.

After three to four hours of reviewing these figures with him, I realized there was absolutely no way the company could make any money and that, no matter how well or how poorly the company did, the man would end up making plenty of money from the business. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I saw immediately this man was not interested in making a contribution to the company. He was only interested in taking money from the company as quickly as possible.

There were many warning signs I should have noticed early on. The man was extremely flashy in the way he dressed. He bragged about always getting stuff for free. His car had been modified, and was very over-the-top. Basically, the man made me feel uncomfortable.

By 10 p.m. that Sunday, I realized I could not reach any sort of agreement with this man. Instead of offering him the job to lead the company, I offered him a commissioned sales-type job in another company. The man had stellar qualifications and had formerly been the leader of a large division of a national company.

The man responded by telling me how he had a home in Beverly Hills with an expensive mortgage payment, a nanny he needed to pay, a private school he sent his daughter to, and that his wife really liked to shop for expensive shoes. Therefore, he told me, he needed to bring home a certain amount of money every two weeks to pay all these extravagant expenses. I told him I understood and I agreed to loan him a massive amount of money against his future commissions over the next several months, as he started his job.

This man ended up being the worst performing salesman in the company’s history. He failed like no other and disappeared with all of the money he was lent. To this day, I still do not know where he is.

The primary mistake I made here was not paying attention to the various signs this man would make an extremely bad hire. Mainly, he was entirely focused on what he believed he deserved, and not at all focused on what he could contribute. The most revealing thing was his business plan, which basically did not permit the company to make money and survive.

In order to thrive in your job, you need to be the sort of person who over delivers and provides incredible value to your employer and organization. You need to focus on over delivering in order to be worth more than the other people who are doing similar jobs.

I am from Detroit and an interesting subject to me is the decline of the American automobile industry. I remember in 1984, when I was 14, my mother purchased a Honda Accord. Before she purchased the car, we went and looked at numerous other, American cars. Even then, I realized that the quality of the Honda far surpassed any American car in the same price range. You could tell by the way the car started, the way the doors closed, the way the lights clicked when you turned them on, the way the radio fit into the dashboard, the hue of the paint, the tightness of the ride, and more. As a young teenager, I thought someone would have to be an absolute idiot to purchase an American car in the same price range.

At the time I did not even know about things like resale value, how long the car would last, and overall brand reliability. Purchasing the Accord would actually be even more valuable to someone in the long run, once reliability and resale were factored into the equation. In this respect, it made even less sense to purchase an American car. Ten years later, I sold that Accord to a classmate of mine for around $4,000. If it had been an American car (assuming it were still running), the sale price would have probably been around $400.

My main point is the Honda provided far more value than its competitors at the time. It was worth far more than its American counterparts, even though it was priced less. It is no wonder, then, the market share of Japanese manufactured cars has grown rapidly in the United States, while the market for American cars has declined. It is an issue of providing more value for the money.

Since your labor is a commodity to your employer, you should aim to become a higher-priced commodity that is worth far more than your competition. In order to merit raises and other employment related benefits, you need to shine and really stand out as someone who provides tremendous value. Do not expect to be paid a certain amount simply because it is what you want. Get paid more because you are worth more and because you deserve more.

Athens, Sparta, America and Your Job Search

What You Will Learn Be disciplined, practice self-denial, and possess simplicity like a ‘Spartan’ while on your job search. Do not surround yourself with luxuries and spend your time complaining like ‘Athens’. Appreciate the value of work. You need not quit your job if you are unhappy with the work conditions or you do not like your boss – Just make it work and accept only glory.

One of the greatest conflicts in the ancient world was between Athens and Sparta.  In fact, the history of ancient Greece was dominated by the conflict between these two different cultures.  Both cultures ended up leaving an important legacy to the world.

• On the one hand, the culture of Athens left a legacy of art, drama, architecture, philosophy, the enjoyment of wealth and opulence, the idea of a governmental democracy and a strong navy.
• On the other hand, the government of Sparta left a legacy of asceticism, military supremacy on land and oligarchy (rule by a few).

These two societies fought repeatedly between the years of 500 BC and 350 BC. Their clash was a fight between two civilizations in the fullest sense.  Each believed that their society and their way of doing things was the correct way.  They fought in different ways and they ran their societies in different ways.  Most of what we know about the Spartans comes from the writings of the Athenians, because the Athenians were the ones who spent their time writing and thinking.  And since the Athenians did not like the Spartans, the writing is somewhat biased.  I believe, and have always believed, that being a successful job seeker requires you to be more of a Spartan than an Athenian.  In fact, I would propose to you today that a great deal of what is wrong with our current economy is due to many of us approaching our careers and our jobs more like an Athenian would than a Spartan would.

I have been witnessing what appears to be a decline in a solid work ethic, job finding skills and the ability to do good work in the United States since I have been a young child.  It seems to me that this decline is just getting worse and worse.   Most people use all their sick days each year, even if they are not sick.  Many people who are not working spend years unemployed and refuse to take a job unless it pays as much as their last one. In the automobile industry, unions have contributed to a slow death among American automobile companies by demanding more and more benefits and less and less work.  Our government is bailing out companies and banks when they cannot make a profit.  Our leaders are intellectuals with no experience running armies or groups.

Worst of all, there is something developing in this country where we reward people for making mistakes. For example, between 2000 and 2005 hundreds of thousands of Americans made an incredible amount of money buying and selling houses. Now that the economy has started to slow down and they are no longer making money, we are stepping in to fix all of this.  It is like a child running back to their parent for help. Our health care costs are incredibly high compared to other cultures.  The people of our country are very unhealthy and do not watch their diets.  Our highest paid workers in the law and other disciplines form communities online where they spend more time complaining about what they are making than appreciating what they have.

Our jobs in this country have begun migrating to places where people can do them more cheaply and are hungrier for work.  With manufacturing, it happened already with jobs migrating to China.  In the information technology sector our jobs are going to places like India.  Our country is getting fat, lazy and developing a massive sense of entitlement. We are turning into intellectuals, as opposed to soldiers.  Our children spend time playing video games and not learning.  Our national test scores are going down on an almost annual basis.  We are innovators in many sectors, but something is changing.  We have a sense of entitlement about what we deserve and yet we are not delivering.  Much of the success we have experienced in the recent past has been the result of financial chicanery and financial manipulation.  The cultural icons of our youth are other kids who have never worked.  Some of our most popular shows at this point in time are of people who are not even required to memorize lines. Instead, a camera follows around young adults on shows such as The Hills, as they go on dates and socialize. Our country spends more than it saves.  Our government has a deficit and most households do as well.

There is something going on in this country that is more “Athens” than it is “Sparta,” and it is dragging us down.  I know there is not a lot you can do about what is going on–and I know you may not agree with me as well. However, what you can do personally is be more “Sparta” than “Athens,” and being more “Sparta” than “Athens” is something that can help you reap incredible rewards in your career.  As I will discuss below, being more “Sparta” than “Athens” will enable you to: (1) get a job more quickly, (2) be more effective in your existing job and (3) survive in all economic conditions.

In ancient Greece, Sparta had the most feared military force there was.  The Spartan soldier was, and still is, legendary.  A Spartan soldier’s training began at birth and the Spartan soldiers never lost a battle in the conflicts that waged between the small city-states of ancient Greece.  When a baby was very young, it was tested for weakness and deformity.  Babies were bathed in wine shortly after being born by their mother.  The babies that survived the bathing were brought by their fathers before a governing body of Sparta (a council of elders known as the Geousia). Babies that seemed as if they would be unlikely to become strong soldiers, or who were considered “puny”, were thrown in a gorge to die.  (If a baby made it past this stage and died in another manner later on, they were not even allowed a headstone.  The only Spartans who were allowed headstones were those of Soldiers who died in battle where Sparta was victorious, and women who died in childbirth or a divine office.)

For those who were allowed to live, the training of the Spartan solider was nonstop and savage.   Spartan boys began formal military training at the age of seven in what was called the Agoge system.  The boys lived communally, and were given grueling physical training and learned to work with weapons at a young age.  Men could not not live with their families until they left active military service at the age of the thirty (Spartan men remained in the reserves until the age of sixty).  Plutarch, a Greek historian and essayist, wrote that for many Spartan soldiers going to battle was a welcome relief from the grueling training: “For the Spartans, actual war was a holiday compared to their tough training.”

What is so significant to me about this early aspect of Spartan training, is the incredible focus that the young were forced to develop at a young age.  Their lives were all about their jobs and they were toughened and taught to be “warriors”.  Instead of being coddled by schools, they were toughened by schools.  They were pushed both physically and mentally in these schools.  The emphasis in the schools was not on being academic.  For example, while Spartan boys studied reading, music and and writing, the boys were punished if they failed to answer questions laconically (i.e., briefly).  The idea for Spartans was that they were to be warriors who were educated but did not sit around debating the nature of good and evil, for example.  The idea of intellectualism and debate was not something that was part of Spartan society.  A Spartan was trained as a soldier whose job it was to get something done.

While I am not sure I personally would be at all comfortable with the Spartan educational system, what makes it so interesting to me is that it emphasized utility and action over the converse. The idea that was being taught was that focus is what is important. By being focused, you are much more likely to reach your point then by talking around the truth.  The Spartans’ educational system was geared towards this focus.  In modern society, our academics will traditionally sit around debating this or that.  Our best students are often those skilled in the art of giving long-winded answers.  Lawyers spend a great deal of time debating this or that, and this makes up a giant portion of what goes on in our culture.  Students in school are coddled and given the sorts of learning environments that “nurture” them.  While I am not going to debate this in great detail, I would go so far as to argue that the nurturing of our modern educational systems gives people in the United States a certain sense of entitlement about what society owes them, instead of what they owe society.  This coddling ends up instilling a sense of entitlement that may go on in peoples’ lives forever, and continually put them in the role of being takers rather that doers.  This is not something that would have happened in Sparta.

In Sparta, failure was also something that was not allowed.  According to Thucydides, when Spartan men were going off to war their mothers, wives, or a woman of significance in their lives would present them with their shield and the statement “With this, or upon this.”  This meant that the solider could only return to Sparta having won the battle, with their shield in hand (“with this”) or dead (“upon this”).  Spartans who returned to Sparta without their shield were presumed to have thrown it at their enemies and then fled–something that was punishable by death or banishment from Sparta.  The entire Spartan culture was one that enforced incredible discipline upon its soldiers. For example, one Spartan legend discussed a man who ran away from battle and back to his mother.  Instead of comforting him, the mother chased him around the streets hitting him with sticks.

In our current society, failure is allowed.  While there is nothing wrong with failure, it should never be an attractive option.  Celebrities and well know figures repeatedly go into rehab for drugs and alcohol.  We quit jobs if we do not feel were are being treated as well as we could be.  We coddle people for failing and give them “easier” tasks to do if one task seems too difficult for them.  Our government steps in if people make horrible economic choices and does not allow them to fail.  We pay people unemployment who get fired from their jobs.  We bail out companies with government money that are making bad products that no one wants to buy.  When a Spartan went off to battle they had no choice but to succeed. There would be no warm homecoming for them if they failed.  Consequently, the Spartans did not fail and always won their battles among the city states of ancient Greece.

According to one commentator:

The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. The Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. They did not surround themselves with luxuries, expensive foods, or opportunities for leisure. And this, I think, is the key to understanding the Spartans. While the Athenians and many others thought the Spartans were insane, the life of the Spartans seemed to hark back to a more basic way of life. Discipline, simplicity, and self-denial always remained ideals in the Greek and Roman worlds; civilization was often seen as bringing disorder, enervation, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The Spartan, however, could point to Spartan society and argue that moral values and human courage and strength was as great as it was before civilization. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the simplicity, discipline, and order of Spartan life.

Sparta’s emphasis on military supremacy and a simple lifestyle was the major emphasis behind Plato’s book, The Republic, which was one of the first attempts to formulate an ideal community.  Was Sparta ideal?  In many ways I believe it was.  In our current society everything is just far too complicated.  Our emphasis on leisure and eating has made us a nation that is predominantly overweight.  Our ability to manufacture goods the world wants to buy continues to decrease.  As a group, we do not have discipline.  Our military is not valued and held in esteem by many of our highest leaders.  We surround ourselves with luxuries and more emphasis seems to be put on this for many of us than on the value of our work.

In contrast to Sparta, Athens was a very different society and far less rigid and militaristic.  In Sparta, the emphasis of the society was on the military and in Athens the largest emphasis was upon culture.  Some very important accomplishments were made by Athenians in science, art, philosophy and other disciplines.  For example, the philosophers Plato, Socrates, Artistotle and the playwrights of Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschculus all lived during Athen’s golden age in the fifth century BC.  Athenians believed that they were culturally superior to the Spartans.  The enjoyed luxuries and foods from all over their empire.  The homes of wealthy Athenians were very nice and had inner courtyards.  A good description of Athens also comes from Pericles famous funeral oration:

Further, we provide many ways to refresh the mind from the burdens of business. We hold contests and offer sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to drive away sorrow. The magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

In contrast, Spartan men were taught to get along with almost nothing.  Spartan citizens were not permitted to own gold or other luxuries.  These differences between the Spartans and Athenians remind me of a conflict I see today all around me. There are people who talk a lot about what they are going to do and read a lot about what others are doing and have done, and there are people out there doing things and actually getting work done.  Which are you?  I would encourage you to be on the side of action, self denial and create effective contribution, rather than on the side of those who simply talk and do very little.

One of the greatest conflicts I have personally witnessed in working with thousands of job seekers over the years has been a similar conflict–there are job seekers who are Spartans and there are job seekers who are Athenians. The Spartans are always the more successful in the long run.

When I was around 18 years old my parents stopped giving me money completely.  I did not have a traditional home to come home to where parents cooked and looked after me, either.  Without any money coming in and expenses that included car maintenance, gas for my car, clothes, books for school and other essentials I was put in a position where I had to work.  While I resented my parents for their personal situation which put me in this role at the time, it was something that I ultimately came to appreciate as I got into my 30s because I realized how much more scrappy it made me compared to others.  In ancient Sparta, the boys were intentionally underfed so they would always be hungry and so they would develop the skill of being able to steal food.  Here, without any money coming in, I needed to toughen myself and learn skills that other kids my age were not learning at the time.  I sold knives on the street.  I worked as a pizza delivery boy.  I worked in the school bookstore. I started a business doing asphalt work.  I worked on cars in my spare time.  I did not have the same luxuries and other accouterments as other kids had.  I also knew that I did not have any “backstop” if I failed.  If I did not have any money then I would simply not be able to function.  I needed to look out for myself.  This was something that personally toughened me up.  It made me quite self reliant and it put me in a position where I learned over time how to make use of existing resources, find the best deals for things and make the most of what I was given.  This is an incredibly valuable skill to have, and as a “Spartan” I toughened myself up quite a bit.

What this means for you and your job search is that you need to put yourself in the position of a Spartan.  If a Spartan were looking for a job today they would show up to an interview ready for work.  They would not debate the idea of retreat or running home if they did not get the job.  They would not debate the idea of quitting the job if they were unhappy with the work conditions or they did not like their boss–they would make it work.  They would only accept victory.  Moreover, a Spartan would go to work ready to work and would work very hard.

A lot of people enjoy sitting around and talking about things.  They are undisciplined when it comes to their job search and quite lazy.  Many may purchase a book or two here and there, and not do anything with it.  Others may lament the state of the market and cite accounts in newspapers and other sources that there are simply not enough opportunities.  They will sit around and try to see what benefits they are entitled to.  They will take all of their vacation and sick days.  Instead of working on their existing weaknesses and acknowledging them, they may move between jobs to find employers who will not bring to light their weaknesses.  None of this does them any good in the long run.

I think a lot of what is wrong with this country today is that we are too Athenian and not Spartan enough.  I would encourage you, in your job search and career, to be more Spartan than Athenian.