June 16, 2006
Leave Things Better Than You Found Them
One of the key components to creating a Career of Continuous Improvement is creating value for your customers (internal customers are people you work with and external customers are people who pay for your goods and services).
A great way to become valuable to others is to leave things better than you found them. This is a simple concept that we all learned when we were kids (but that we probably forgot at some point along the way when we began our hectic careers as adults).
Here are five ways you can leave things better than you found them today:
Write a complementary e-mail. We almost never put complementary thoughts in writing. You can make someone’s day by telling them what a great job they did on that last project or how important their input is to the success of the company. Leave a relationship with a coworker better than you found it today by writing a complimentary e-mail. It will definitely increase your value in the eyes of others.
Pick up that piece of paper on the floor in the copy room. The condition of the “employee only” areas of the workplace speaks volumes about the character of the people who work there. If clients saw the condition of the copy rooms, break rooms and cafeterias of some of my clients, they would never do business with them. It is everyone’s responsibility to project a positive image of the company. That image starts from within.
Organize your work area before you leave for the day. This is similar to the point above. A clean and organized work area – weather it is an office, a cube or just a table in the corner – speaks to your thinking. Others perceive a person who has an organized work area to be an organized thinker. Organized thinkers are valuable.
Refill the stapler, the stamp machine, or the sugar bowl. Yes Mr. Executive, this is not your job. But it is your job to set an example. You can be certain that someone will need one of these items when they are pushing a deadline (or when they have a client in the office) and they will have to hunt for the supplies to fill them up. Do the right thing. If you use the last piece of anything make sure there are replacement items available.
Help people keep their dignity. Once again this is about leaving your relationships better than you found them. People screw up all the time. Good companies (and good bosses) hold people accountable for results. When someone screws up you can handle it two ways: 1) You can blast them. Tell them how bad the mistake was and tell them how much it will cost the company. You can really give them a hard time and make them feel like garbage. or 2) You can critique the action and not the person. You can discuss ways the situation could have been handled better and make it a learning experience as well as a disciplinary experience. People will respect you more if you separate the act from the person who committed the act.
Even when people commit an infraction that warrants job termination, they need to be allowed keep their dignity in tact. Good people often do stupid things. Take a moment to remember that the person you are firing is someone’s mother/father/sister/brother would you want a member of your family humiliated? Let them leave through the back door and not take the “walk of shame” down the hall in front of everyone. Pack their stuff up at the end of the day when most of the office has left.
Yes, I know, public displays set an example for everyone else. Trust me – when a coworker doesn’t show up the next day and his desk has been cleaned out, everyone gets the point. You don’t need to flog him in the town square. In fact, the way you handle this type of situation says more about you then it does about the person who was let go.
Each of these five work situations have a positive or a negative effect on the perception other people have of your value in the work place. They each require you to go out of your way, or above and beyond the call of duty. In they end, it is always worth it to leave things better than you found them – even if just for your own piece of mind.
Filed under: Value Creation
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