Street Smarts: The Employee Mentality

Learning to accept that people have a life outside the business.

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Street Smarts

There's an important lesson you have to learn when you own and operate your own business: your employees don't think like you. No matter how closely you work with them, no matter how well you treat them, no matter how hard you try to develop team spirit, your relationship to the business is fundamentally different from theirs, and so is the way you approach your work. Employees have one mentality, and owners have another -- and that's all right.

Many people have trouble accepting that reality, particularly in the early stages of a business. The start-up experience is so intense, and the owners are so dependent on the people they work with, that they naturally assume everybody cares about the company as much as they do. When the owners find out that's not true, they become frustrated and upset.

Consider my friends the Stones. As longtime readers may recall, Bobby and Helene Stone have a computer-supply company, Data-Link Associates, that I helped to get up and running in the early 1990s. (See " How to Succeed in Business in Four Easy Steps," by Bo Burlingham, July 1995.) The business has grown steadily since then. This year it's on track to do more than $2 million in sales.

That growth has been possible because of the addition of two salespeople. In 1997 the Stones brought in their son, Steven, to sell along with Bobby. Their daughter, Jennifer, joined as the third salesperson in 2001.

The biggest problem facing their company right now is inadequate support staff. In addition to Helene, they have an employee who works part-time, handling various administrative chores, but with leads pouring in from the Internet and the fax machine, the salespeople wind up doing much of the paperwork and computer tasks themselves. Steven seemed particularly unhappy with the situation when I met with the Stones recently.

"I'm working more than 50 hours a week, and I still can't get everything done," he said. "I could make twice as many sales if I could focus on just selling, but I'm responsible for dealing with the Internet stuff and answering all the E-mail correspondence. When I come in on Monday morning, I have 10 problems to straighten out. On top of that, the fax machine is always busy, so I have to wait in line to use it. When am I supposed to sell?"

"What about the part-time person?" I asked. "Can't she do more?"

"She's available," said Helene. "She asked me for more hours."

"Is she competent to do the faxing or to deal with the E-mail?" I asked.

"Yeah, she's competent to do all that," Steven said, "but there's a problem with her. When it comes time to leave, she leaves."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, it's just a job for her," he said. "She does good work when she's working, but she only works her hours. She comes in 10 minutes early and sits there, drinking her coffee. She doesn't ever start until 9. And when her time's up, she leaves, even if the work isn't done."

Helene laughed. "Steven, you're describing yourself five years ago," she said.

That was true, but I understood Steven's frustration nonetheless. Even when I worked for someone else, I couldn't get used to people leaving at 5 p.m. sharp with problems still lying on their desks. In the early days of my own business, that just didn't happen. I expected everyone to work long hours. We were a team, after all. We were all trying to build a good business together. How could someone leave when the phones were still ringing or the work wasn't done?

Then one day I had a revelation. The business was about two years old at the time, and our sales were skyrocketing. I was working with one of our salespeople, Vicky, on a proposal we had to submit the next morning. At 5 o'clock she looked at her watch and said, "Oops, sorry. I've got to leave."

I blew up. "What the hell are you talking about?" I said. "We have to finish this proposal. You can't leave."

"Hey, Norman, I've got another life," she said, grabbing her coat, and she walked out.

I was furious at first, but when I calmed down, I thought about what Vicky had said and realized she was right. She did have another life, and it wasn't centered on the company. That was my life, not hers. I was the one who lived and breathed the business, and I stood to reap the biggest rewards if we were successful -- or to suffer the biggest losses if we failed. Vicky was there just to earn a living. She was a good salesperson, and she worked hard from 9 to 5, but when she walked out the door, she left her work behind. From 5 p.m. on, she lived her other life, her real life, and didn't think about the business until the next morning, when she came back in and did her best for us once again.

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