James Dale - The Obvious - Everything You Need to Know to Succeed

Chances are there are some jerks where you work. At the mortgage company, the biotech lab, the remodeling firm, the moving and storage company, the travel agency, the school, or the government agency. Be nice and just imagine how good you could look by comparison.

People – even people whoare skeptical and cautious and cynical – have trouble maintaining their doubting attitude toward someone who is polite, asks how they’re doing, respects their time, keeps promises, responds openly, treats them with dignity. It’s just so … reasonable. You’ll find you actually get your way, achieve your goals, make your sales, sign your deals, get hired, get promoted, make more money, by being equitable, kind, decent, and fair.

Playing fair doesn’t mean you give in when challenged or automatically compromise. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. On the contrary, it signals your strength. It means you’re sensitive, mature, sensible, open, intelligent, rational, consistent, and firm when necessary. Could anything be better? And besides, there’s no downside.

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, offers on-site childcare. Why? Investment banks aren’t known for their short hours so this way the company makes it easy for parents to maximize output and minimize guilt.

Law firm Arnold & Porter lets associates spend six months at public interest organizations; has ombudsmen to handle employee issues, and a peer committee to give lower-ranking lawyers a voice. Do these policies make Arnold & Porter a bunch of patsies? No, they just know what it takes to make better lawyers and keep them.

At American Express, women hold nearly 57% of managerial and supervisory positions and make up 40% of executives and senior managers. Minorities hold more than 18% of positions at those levels. Diversity is a stated policy and value on the AmEx Web site. Are they acting out of social pressure or good business? Both. Sensitivity is smart. Qualified women and minorities have their pick of jobs. And of credit cards. The more they pick American Express, the better.

Google, the company that has changed or discarded almost all the old rules of business, not surprisingly operates under a very non-corporate-sounding motto: Do no evil . Not only is that their guiding principle in business practice, but it has resulted in a wholesale redefinition of the term “employee benefits.” At Google, benefits include onsite medical and dental care, a $500 allowance for take-out meals for new parents, child care, adoption assistance, shuttle service, at-work dry cleaning and haircuts, and a fuel efficient vehicle incentive.

Playing fair works. And it doesn’t mean you’re a pushover … unless a pushover is smart, sensitive, evenhanded, sound, and strong.

Every year Fortune Magazineassembles a list of the best companies to work for. Take a look at a recent sampling. They’re of different sizes, categories, parts of the country and the world, seemingly with little in common but the fact that people like to work for them. But, in fact, there is a pattern, their management practices:

Ikea– This Swedish furniture retailer gives employees extraordinary opportunities. They’re encouraged to take international assignments, with employment opportunities or tuition allowances for spouses.

Pfizer– World-class benefits are offered at this huge drug company, including on-site childcare at four locations (parents pay on a sliding scale based on income) and an elder-care program that includes counseling.

Men’s Wearhouse– Company execs gave away 113 trips to Hawaii at holiday parties in 2003. For those who didn’t score tickets, a three-week paid sabbatical is available after five years; 619 employees took one in 2003.

General Mills– This food company makes it easy for employees to get smart: It reimburses tuition at 100% up to $6,000 per year, even for new employees. And if the employees leave afterward, they need not repay the money.

Proctor & Gamble– Now here’s an innovation: The consumer-products giant pairs junior female employees with a senior manager for reverse mentoring to help the mostly male higher-ups understand the issues women face.

In every case, management has been responsive, even pre-emptive to employee issues. These CEOs, COOs, and CFOs could have simply ignored the human needs of their workforces, rationalizing that each worker, whether on an assembly line or in a windowed office, was getting a paycheck and if any of them wanted different conditions or benefits or understanding, he or she could simply work elsewhere. Instead, these managers determined that they would get a much greater return by being reasonable, kind, decent, fair … that is, nice. And the attitude filters down through the ranks, through every level of management, perpetuating itself throughout the organizations. As it turns out, by and large, these companies are also highly successful, year after year, in up and down economies. Coincidence? Hardly.

Do business the way these kinds of corporations and executives do and you’re in good company. Do business as a jerk and you’re not. Either way, you can probably make money. But when it comes time to hire or win new customers or just look at yourself in the mirror, whose company do you want to keep?

Every day your jobis to solve impossible problems: unhappy clients, over-worked employees, rising costs, falling quality, late shipments, broken products, broken promises, fierce competition, out-sourcing, down-sizing, shrinking margins, inflation, deflation, interest rates, overheads…

But the fact is inside most business problems is a solution trying to get out. It’s just that we’re usually making too much of our own noise – selling, pitching, assuring, assuaging, talking, talking, talking – to hear the solution.

Stop talking! Start listening! Your customer, client, vendor, shipper, contractor, supervisor, boss, competitor, whomever is trying to tell you the answers if only you’d pay attention. As they teach young medical students, “When you hear hoof beats, don’t look for zebras.”

Listen twice as much as you talk and you’ll learn twice as much, and solve twice as many problems.

It’s hard. When youhear a problem, you want to make it go away. With words – Let me explain. It’s really like this I promise. Got it. Done. No problem . But the problem is still there. It’s just buried under a barrage of language. Next time you face an issue, next time your reflex reaction is to say something … don’t. Not a sentence, not a word, not a grunt. Just imagine you have a mute button and push it. Close your mouth. The mere silence will communicate that you’re taking the issue seriously. What isn’t said can be as powerful as what is.

McDonald’s is famous for their all-powerful ad campaigns – slogans, songs, promotions, in every medium, 24/7 – based on the belief if they sell hard enough and loud enough, we’ll all buy it. They should have lowered their volume enough to hear the stampede to the salad bar, granola bars, yogurts, fruits, and bottled waters. They’d have realized sooner that some people in the family, the car, or the office group don’t want deep-fried, high-fat, super-sized, mega-meals. And if you don’t have something else for those people, you run the risk of losing the rest of the people. So they had to play an expensive game of menu catch-up.

A simple test:You’re invited to present your product line to a new customer. Before you even begin, he tells you his last vendor’s goods often arrived late, didn’t measure up to specs, and came in over budget. Then he tells you that all salespeople over-promise. Your lips part, your tongue is poised, your brain is composing rebuttals: Not us. Not my company. Not my products . Whoa. Close your mouth. Look him in the eye. Wait. What’s the message? You hear him. You’re not like other vendors. Not talking, not selling, not promising, and just absorbing the situation, the issue, or the problem is the first step to solving it.