Watching for Waste in Your Job

What You Will Learn When a recession is at hand, or when an industry is experiencing a contraction, companies look to save themselves as much money as possible. They look around to see who is working hard and adding value, and who is not. In your job, you need to ensure that you are providing as much value as possible. People who do not put in an extra effort, or who cause lots of waste in the company, may find themselves jobless when a recession or restructuring hits.

Several years ago I was moving from one house to another, and I hired three day laborers from outside of a U-Haul branch, where I had rented a truck. One of the workers was a man with a strong European accent, who seemed very intense. He worked as fast as he could–practically running as he moved things out of my house and into the truck. He also frequently burst out in a paranoid type of shouting at the other two men, talking about how they needed to be more careful or they might scratch or dent a piece of furniture. In a nutshell, this man was trying to save me money by working faster and trying to prevent damage to the furniture. At the end of the day, I paid him much more than the other men. I also knew that I would hire this man again for any future work, given the chance. I appreciated that he wanted to save me money by working efficiently, and that he was willing to protect me. This is the same thing your employers are looking for.

In a tough economy there are many forces acting upon us, and most companies are forced to cut back. Businesses often start by cutting advertising and other non-essentials, such as company lunches and expense accounts. Finally, companies start looking towards your job. Employees cost lots of money, which means that eliminating jobs can save a company a substantial amount of money. This is why unemployment numbers rise whenever the economy gets tough.

I know the owner of an answering service, who also worked on phone systems during his spare time. I was speaking with him after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. economy was starting to slow down severely. I asked him about the status of his business. My estimate was that his answering service would be experiencing a dramatic slowdown due to the stress on the economy, believing that in a rough economy people would simply no longer have a use for answering services and would cut back.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “My business is going through the roof. Every business owner that walks by a receptionist and sees her filing her nails instead of working quickly realizes that’s not money well spent. If he gets rid of her and transfers all of the calls to an answering service, he’ll see savings very soon.”

This is the sort of thing I have been seeing in companies across the country, as we go into another economic contraction. This has a real relevance to your job, and it is career advice you need to understand. It is the difference between people who survive in recessions, who do well and stay employed, and those who end up being cut.

I want to digress for a moment and share with you a quick image. If you have ever been to Germany and watched workers in factories, you know that it is an amazing sight. As you may be aware, German factory workers are among the highest (if not the highest) paid workers in the world. What is so interesting about German factory workers is the incredible intensity they bring to their work. They are so serious in their day-to-day work that the difference between them and the typical American factory line is staggering.

However, the Germans also charge more for their work.

When a recession is at hand, or when an industry is experiencing a contraction, companies very quickly look to start saving as much money as possible. They look around to see who is working hard and adding value, and who is not. When my parents were in their prime, working in the late 1960s through the 1980s, most people would join a company and stay there for their entire careers. The United States at some point grew very arrogant, and its manufacturing, agricultural, and information technology sectors were pretty well isolated from the rest of the world–and from serious competition. Other countries in Europe and Asia still had a lot of catching up to do, while this country was awash in wealth and major waste.

My grandfather used to say that you should only buy cars made on Friday because the men on the line were typically still hung over from the weekend on Tuesday. This is literally something people used to request when purchasing cars made in the United States. This is an indication of how fat the United States had allowed itself to become during this time period. It is hard to believe, but true.

My parents lived in a world in which it was almost impossible to get fired from a job. When you joined a company, you typically had major employment security. There was a ton of money going around the United States, and it was obviously just a different time and place.

With the Internet, computer programming can be done anywhere in the world. Phones can be answered anywhere in the world. Designs can be done anywhere in the world. Engineering can be done anywhere in the world. Legal work, incredibly, is now being done everywhere in the world. This country is no longer isolated from the rest; it is now forced to compete with people from areas of the world where there are drastically lower cost structures. Americans’ jobs have become expendable in many respects.

This brings me to your career. In your job, you need to ensure that you are always providing as much value as possible. If you see waste occurring in your job, and you know the work you or others are doing can be done in a more efficient way, you need to point this out to your superiors. If you come to a realization that there is no way your employer can make money from the work you are doing, you should be concerned. This is not something that is in your best interest, especially when you think long-term.

In my career, I have seen plenty of people who have managed to constantly force themselves out of jobs. People who talk their bosses into one raise after another when times are good may find that, when the economy turns and the company realizes it can hire someone at half the cost, they will be out of a job. People who do not put in extra effort, or who create lots of waste in the company, may find themselves out of a job when a recession or restructuring hits. You need to ensure that you are always creating value–far more value than you are worth.

I once spoke with someone once who was telling me how everyone who did a certain type of recruiting received an annual salary of $80,000, plus a commission. When I did the math, I realized that it would be impossible for any recruiting company to make money while paying recruiters that much. Absolutely impossible! Why would any firm do that? However, assuming the firm did actually pay its recruiters that much money, it was certain that these would be some of the first jobs to go when times eventually got tough.

The people who become most impressive during downturns and who grow within companies are the people who point out cost-saving measures and capitalize on financial opportunities that benefit the company, not just themselves. I would encourage you to be one of these people. If you are a manager, you need to ask yourself if you can get more work done with fewer people. This will make your supervisors happy. If you are an extremely successful salesperson, you need to ask yourself if you can show other salespeople in your organization how to sell like you, and how to be more successful.

If you look around at your workplace, I’ll bet you can see numerous ways you could increase efficiency and save your company money. This is exactly what your employer needs to see you doing.

Watching waste and being vigilant about efficiency impresses employers and justifies your continuing, successful role in the company.

The Power of the Positive

What You Will Learn If you can believe in something it is quite possible that you can achieve it – think positive. You need to believe religiously in your abilities, your strengths, and the strength of the market. Do not listen to negative news about the market or surround yourself with negative people at the office. You need to be in a positive space – this is where you will find jobs, money, and happiness.

I believe that one of the most powerful things in the universe is the mind. Through our minds we can change the world. Skyscrapers, rocket ships, submarines–everything that exists has been conceived in the minds of men and women. If you think about this, you will quickly realize the power of thought and how profound it is to your life. If you can conceive of something it is quite possible that you can achieve it.

I would like to tell you a couple of stories about the power of the mind. Much of this is personal and related to human interaction, but when it comes right down to it I believe that it can apply directly to you and your job search. I also believe it may be some of the best career advice you ever receive.

Throughout my life I have been an observer in many respects more than a participant. I enjoy observing people and how they interact. I enjoy learning what types of people seem consistently happy and what distinguishes these people from those who are not happy. I have friends I have kept in contact with for 25 years or more, and some of these people are extraordinarily happy, while others are not. For our purposes today, I would like to focus on the happy ones. The happy people are those who have been consistently healthy, consistently employed, and have had lives that most of us would envy.I remember first speaking with one of my oldest and dearest friends over 20 years ago. I noticed the strangest thing every time I would speak with him. If I brought up a piece of negative news, or criticized something while talking to him, he would immediately end the conversation. If we were on the telephone he would say he had to go. If we were speaking in person he would walk away. This was how he acted; however, he was very polite about it. He did the same thing in large social situations. If we were in a group of people speaking and negative news came up, he would excuse himself and do something else.

Throughout the years I have seen many people like this. These are people who simply do not want any part in any negativity. They do not want to hear negative news about other people, and they are not at all interested in negative news of any kind. It does nothing for them, and they have no desire to participate.

There is something special about these sorts of people. I have known some of them to be smart and others not so smart. I have seen people like this who are driven and not driven. But one thing I know is this: These people are always well liked, wherever they go. They rarely lose jobs and they are almost always successful. The thing about these sorts of people is that they do not allow negative thoughts to enter their mind. They are, almost universally, only concerned with positive thoughts and spreading goodwill. As a consequence, people really like being around these people. Employers are no exception.

For some of high school I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, and attended an international school where the students were from pretty much every country–Sweden, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, you name it. At the end of ninth grade, students had to decide whether they would enroll in something called the International Baccalaureate Program (IB), or stay in the school’s regular course of study. The IB program was much more difficult, and fewer than 10 percent of students enrolled in it.

One day I was speaking with one of the smartest girls in my history class, and I asked her if she was going to enroll in the program. She was from Sweden. “No, of course I am not,” she said. “That program is only for people who are going to get into good schools when they graduate.” I kept asking different people this question and, one after another, very intelligent people (people I believed were much more intelligent than I was) all told me that they simply were not intellectually equipped for those higher level classes. The significance of this was profound. In many European countries the students not enrolled in the IB program were basically setting themselves up for attending trade schools (rather than universities), and working in mediocre professions. Choosing this “regular” course of study did not have this serious of an impact in the United States, but it certainly did over there.

Many were staying away from the IB program, despite their intelligence, because somewhere along the line they had come to believe they were not intelligent enough to handle that course of study. They were, in effect, allowing their own negativity to make their decision for them.

It should also be noted that the converse was also true. Many students were selecting themselves for the IB course of study, who did not seem qualified. These students were allowing their positivity to influence them. These were the sorts of students who always believed they would find a way. And these were the same sorts of students who were not interested in negative conversations.

A couple of years later I was attending a private high school in Michigan and I had a teacher who I also picked as my advisor. This teacher was really exceptional, and most of the students he advised ended up going to very good colleges. I noticed that he too was always extremely positive. He spoke to the students closest to him in terms that only allowed success. For example, he would tell a student that he was confident he or she would get As in every course for the next semester, as if he already knew this would occur. The student might be only a B student, and would therefore look at the teacher incredulously. Nevertheless, the student would end up getting As the next semester.

Nothing has more power than telling someone “I see you doing this,” or “You are this kind of person, and you can do this.” There is a special kind of energy involved when this happens. You can literally change the course of people’s lives based on the sorts of expectations you set for them–whether those expectations are positive or negative. Do you ever have people around you who are setting low expectations for you? How do you perform when this occurs?

Our capacity to achieve starts within our minds, our conception of self. We have to think positively of ourselves in order to do well. We also cannot let negative thoughts enter our minds. This may be easier said than done, but I have known numerous people who are able to do this consistently. It works, and it is an incredibly powerful thing when it is done correctly.

All this brings me back to you and your job search. Regardless of whether the market is thriving or in a meltdown, you are employable. You are the type of person who always manages to find an opportunity. You are very good at your job and people can see this. You are perfect for every job you are applying for.

You need to keep thoughts like this going through your head at all times. These are the only thoughts you can afford when you are searching for a job. No other thought matters. If people around you are saying negative things about the market, do not listen to them. Walk away, or hang up, and avoid them. Negative information does you absolutely no good. Negative energy depresses. You need to be up.

The happiest people and the most successful people think positive thoughts. You need to believe religiously in your abilities, your strengths, and the strength of the market. Like attracts like. Positive attracts positive. I want you to succeed and be all you are capable of being. Do not listen to negative news about the market. Do not surround yourself with negative people at the office. You need to be in a positive space. This is where the jobs, money, and happiness are.

You deserve it all.

Your Perceptions Will Control Your Outcome and Life

What You Will Learn How you feel is determined by how you direct your mind. You need to control the meaning you give things and the meaning you allow things to have. The rewards for managing your states are happiness and the ability to control your destiny. You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you. Take charge of your mind to have the career and life you are entitled to and deserve.

When I was in middle school my girlfriend announced to me she was going to be trying out for the cheerleading squad. Our relationship consisted mainly of us riding our bikes to school together each day.  Occasionally, I might call her after school.  The cheerleading squad in our school cheered for the basketball team.  I attended a public high school in middle school and the basketball team was the most important one in the school.  The entire gym filled up with students, parents and teachers every Friday night.  Everyone was very enthusiastic about it.

“You should try out for the basketball team,” she told me.

I had never been good at basketball.  In fact, it was my worst game and not something I really enjoyed.  However, the more I started hearing about this basketball team and what a big deal it was, the more I realized I needed to try out for it if I had any hope of hanging on to my girlfriend.  It was a little bit more complicated than that. 

I had just left elementary school and come to this new school and, because my girlfriend happened to be popular, I was meeting a bunch of new guys and sitting at the right table in the lunch room.  Unfortunately, I realized all of the people she was friends with were also basketball players.  I am not sure how it happened, however, I was hanging out with the basketball crowd.  We were all very clean-cut and got good grades and sat at lunch looking like good kids. These kids were pretty boring compared to the sorts of kids I would eventually be friends with, but I was tolerating it.  Their mothers typically packed their lunches, for example, and they bought milk in the cafeteria. Their sandwiches would be neatly wrapped in wax paper or little plastic sandwich bags and they would have an apple and maybe some chips . My mother had never packed lunch in my life.  I would sit there at lunch with a couple of Ho Hos I bought from the vending machine with some change I’d scooped from the bottom of my mother’s purse.  I have no idea how I fit in with these kids to this day.

I went home and told my mother about this dilemma. I told her I needed a basketball net built immediately over the garage because tryouts were in three weeks.  My mother grew up in a town where athletics were very important, and she had a strange history with obscure sports. I think she’d actually been a state champion in ping pong when she was younger

My mother reacted in a way I’ve never seen when I told her I needed a basketball net.  For example, once I told her I needed a desk in my room and she told me that was nice but I could study on the floor or on the kitchen table.  When a spring came through my mattress that was a hand-me-down from my mother’s mother after she died my mom told me to flip it over.  The basketball net was different.

“Oh my!  There is no basketball net for you to practice on?  We need to fix this right away!”  She grabbed her cigarettes, made a drink, and started calling her friends to get recommendations for contractors and so forth.  She found one that would come over in the afternoon.  I was incredulous because I had never seen my mother react to anything this way.  I went to my room to watch re-runs of Three’s Company.  An hour or so later she popped her head in my room:

“Hurry!!  The sporting goods store closes in 30 minutes.  Let’s go.”  I’ve got some blue collar roots and my mom was very aware of what was important in life.  When we got to the store she purchased me the most expensive basketball backboard they had.  The next morning I got home from school and there was the most professional contractor my mom had ever hired putting the finishing touches on the basketball backboard.  He was going around with a leveler and making sure it was perfectly installed.  My mom usually cut corners with contractors but not this guy.  I was old enough to know he was really good at what he did.

My mom came home from work early to make sure the backboard was installed properly.  She even demanded the contractor install some lights so I could practice at night.

For the next couple of weeks I must have practiced at least three or four hours a day.  I hit shots from every direction I possibly could, I practiced layups and every conceivable type of shot.  I was getting really good at making shots and starting to really enjoy basketball.  Meanwhile, not only did my girlfriend make the cheerleading squad, she was chosen to be the captain.  She rode her bike over to see how I was doing with my practice one Saturday afternoon.

“We’ll both be captains!” she told me with approval.

When the day of the tryouts for the basketball team finally arrived I felt I was ready.  While I had gotten very good at making shots, the thing I had not prepared for was the fact that none of my shooting abilities mattered if I could not make it to the net.  Basketball is as much about footwork as it is about making shots.  The most damaging aspect of my tryouts came when I was running defense against a very good player and instead of slapping the ball I slapped his nose by mistake with the palm of my hand.  Hard.  He fell down to the gym floor with blood pouring out of his nose.  After that I realized I probably would not make the team.  Kids thought this was funny and word of this quickly got around the halls of the school.  I remember walking to class and people jokingly getting out of the way like I was going to clock them in the face.  The guy I had hit showed up with a giant piece of tape across his nose the next day.  I did not make the team.

How we feel about ourselves is all due to what we tell ourselves certain things will mean.  I told myself if I did not make the basketball team my girlfriend would no longer like me.  I told myself my friends would no longer want to be friends with me if I did not make the basketball team.

When you are thinking about your life you need to ask yourself a few things:

1. Is how you feel determined by the economy?
2. Is how you feel determined by how others treat you?
3. Is how you feel determined by how you think others perceive you?
4. Is how you feel determined by the things you own?

The truth is how you feel is determined by how you direct your mind.  The ability to direct your mind and control your emotional and psychological states is about the most important tool you can possibly have. Very few people have the ability to control their minds and their states.  You need to be able to control how you feel about yourself and your emotions.  I read the papers every day and most of the human interest stories I read are about people who are not able to control their minds and their states. Lately I have been reading a lot of stories about people who have been committing suicide due to dire economic circumstances.  These people are not controlling their states.  We also continually hear stories about stars and others who die due to drug overdoses.  These people are using drugs to try and control how they feel, and it ends up killing them.  When I think about people like Chris Farley and Marilyn Monroe, I am thinking about people who, despite an incredible amount of success, could not control how they felt.  One of the best writers of all time, Ernest Hemingway, ended up killing himself.  He, too, could not control how he felt.  Despite a wonderful world around him he did not care.

You really need to control the meaning you give things and the meaning you allow things to have.  The meaning you give things will control the quality of your life.

When my girlfriend found out I did not make the basketball team she did not appear to care at all.  She was really nonchalant about the whole thing and told me she was sorry about this. Unfortunately, the meaning I gave this was quite severe. I immediately assumed she would no longer like me at all.  The next day I told her that I needed to go to school at a different time and did not ride my bike with her to school.  At lunch I felt really out of place with my new friends who had all made the basketball team.  That was all they talked about at lunch.  In class, several of my teachers started talking about the first game.  Despite some decent friendships, I started to feel like I did not belong with this athletic crowd because I hadn’t made the team. I felt like I’d failed horribly. I started blowing off my girlfriend more and more.  I started sitting at other tables at lunch and associating with different sorts of kids.

My girlfriend broke up with me.  I did not really like her all that much so I was not too upset.  I knew it was coming.  I had allowed myself to get really depressed when I did not make the basketball team.  The real low came about a week after the breakup when she called me one day after school and told me she’d bought me a Christmas gift when we were dating and still wanted me to have it.  She showed up at my house with half the cheerleading squad who all watched me open the board game Yahtzee.

“Wow Yahtzee!!  I have always wanted this.”  What a pathetic sight it must have been seeing me open that board game.  I could not hug her.  I could just stare at this board game with 6 gorgeous cheerleaders standing in my messy bedroom with my ex-girlfriend looking on smiling.

In retrospect, I now realize that not much would have changed with my friends, my relationship, and more if I had not told myself my failure to make the team represented something it did not.  Like people who kill themselves because they cannot control their emotions, I, too, could not control my emotions and what I was telling myself.  The thought that crossed my mind was the head of the cheerleading squad would only want to be with someone who was also the captain of the basketball team.  On yet another level, I thought the basketball players would only want to be friends with someone who was also a basketball player.  The more I thought about all this the less worthy I felt and the more I felt like I needed to fit in somewhere else completely.

Within a short time of not making the basketball team I had made new friends who were not athletes and who were more dedicated to getting into trouble than anything.  My grades plummeted and were so bad the next year my parents enrolled me in a different school.  Most of this happened because of what I told myself not making the basketball team meant.

I remember one public high school I attended had a small enclosed courtyard where students were allowed to smoke between classes.  These kids wore jean jackets or leather jackets and grew their hair long.  These were the bad kids.  They also would get stoned out there, and the school must have known about it.  These were all kids who at some point probably had dreams, too, but gave up somewhere along the way and looked for a way out of their presumed failure.  They started smoking and using drugs and living a life of which they could never be proud. Who knows what sent them over this edge.  It could have been a bad grade in an important class, it could have been the divorce of their parents, it could have been a nasty breakup. What I do know is that in the year I attended that school I witnessed kids who were normal and clean-cut go over to the other side and join this group in the courtyard. 

People look for things outside themselves to help people control their states and how they feel. Many people feel like they cannot control their emotions and so they start looking for stuff outside of themselves to help them feel good. You pay a hefty price when you are not able to manage your states and how you feel about yourself.  There are huge rewards when you know how to manage your states.  The rewards for managing your states are happiness and the ability to control your destiny and what happens to you and your life.  These rewards are something that can pay huge dividends.

The problem most of us have is we tell ourselves something means something it does not.

• You may have lost a job and represented to yourself that the reason you lost the job was because you are a bad person.  You may have lost the job because the company had no money to pay you.
• A relationship may end and you may represent to yourself it is your fault when, in reality, the person who broke up with you is working through some psychological roadmap that existed long before you came along.
• You cannot find a job and you represent to yourself it’s because you are not good enough instead of the fact the economy in the area of the country you are in is horrible.
• High school kids become “stoners” because they represent to themselves they are losers instead of just normal kids suffering through problems.
• I sabotaged my friendships because I represented to myself that not making the basketball team meant I would be rejected by my girlfriend and friends.

Even if something does mean the worst, it does us little good to hold on to this representation.  Instead, we should represent the events in our lives to ourselves in a way that empowers us.  How could I have reacted differently to not making the basketball team?  I could have decided I was cool enough I did not have to play basketball every day to date the captain of the cheerleader squad.  I could have told myself despite not being a good basketball player, I could continue to be good friends with the most popular kids in school.  All of these interpretations would have empowered me.  Instead, I represented the opposite.

The meaning you give things is crucial for your career success.  Whatever happens to you in your career you need to choose meanings that make you stronger and not weaker.  Bad things happen to everyone and the messages we receive from the world are often not positive.  The most important thing you can do is choose meanings that are going to allow you to succeed and do even better.  This is what you need to be doing with your career and job right now.  You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you.

Don’t fail to reach your full potential or mistakenly classify yourself as someone who is not fit to succeed at the level at which you’re capable. This is not what you want for yourself.  You need to take charge of your mind to have the career and life you are entitled to and deserve.

Finding a Job in a Down Market

What You Will Learn Your state of mind can help you with your job search during a recession. It is important to understand that depression, anxiety, and other such states of mind will slow you down and prevent you from taking action.  You need to be enthusiastic, positive, aim to rise above obstacles, and believe your mind has the true power to decide your future.

I made a video recently called “Job Search Secrets for a Recession”, which discussed the best way to locate a position during a recession.  In my experience, the best way to find a job is and always has been to approach the widest variety of employers possible.

There is another aspect to finding a job in a down economy, however, which is even more important – your own psyche.  The psychological aspect of finding a job is what slows most people down in their search.  People get depressed and stop taking action.  This is not the right way to find a job. Finding a job requires a specific state of mind.

When you get hired, someone is spending money to give you a job.  People need to be inspired to spend money.   The person who gets hired is the one who is able to inspire the employer (whether it is for a government job, sales job, education job or otherwise). In order to be an effective job seeker, you need to put yourself in the right state of mind to get hired.  This means constantly thinking of all that is possible, and specifically what you yourself can achieve.

You must bring a lot of enthusiasm to your work, and you should picture and present yourself as being successful.

One of the best books I’ve read on this subject is Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This book makes very clear the true power our mind has over the circumstances of our lives.  You need to think and aim high in order to rise above and overcome the obstacles in front of you.

If you are employed and are dissatisfied with your current job, giving in to negativity is the worst thing you can do.  When employers are faced with a bad job market, the first thing they do is differentiate the people who like being on the job from those who do not.  

Employers tend to keep the people who have good attitudes and get rid of the people with bad ones.  My career advice is that a positive attitude can be your best asset.  In order to find that positivity, each day you should ask yourself what you are grateful for and concentrate on the answer.