Naturally, money is important. But I said salaries.
Do you need a salary?
What if you could make your money doing something completely different than what you earn your livelihood today? Would you do it?
Do your kids care how you make your money? No, they just want, well..want everything.
If you didn't have to go to work Monday morning, what would you do instead to make money?
The NFL, and NBA as well, are arguing about who gets not just millions, but in the NFL's case, billions of dollars. Indeed it puts ones own salary in a whole new perspective, unless you work for a handful of wall street financial firms.
The NFL teams business offices may also close if they strike. Why?
There is no money? Nope they have money of course.
Because these people are the problem and make millions? No and many make only average wages.
The owners don't care about them? Quite likely. They treat them this way astonishing as it may seem when these people are what holds it all together. But management is letting them know they don't care about them. Nice, real nice. The owners better be giving them raises when this is all over.
Why do teachers get paid so little to educate your kids? If this is not the most important job a person could have, not sure what is. Many of us can not home school because of our salaried jobs or maybe because of lack of knowledge. You get what you pay for and is it any wonder private school tuition goes up as does enrollment? Who can afford all this is a whole other post.
Why do companies stop paying for training, insist it is not needed or can be done online by someone on their own? If repetition is how we learn, are businesses being short sighted and short changing themselves and their employees? As adults do we not need to still learn like we always did? And why do we have to do it on our own time? We may like our jobs but do you need to spend 3 hours a night doing your training because your boss won't let you do it on company time?
What matters?
If no one needs to learn, why do our kids go to school? Why do some people pay $20,000 or more for elementary school or even high school education? Did you ever ask the teachers what they get paid? I have and was not surprised it is not really much more than when I was in school back in the mid 80's. So where does all that money go? 12th grade for me cost about $4,500, it now costs over $15,000. 300% increase in 25 years. Did teachers salaries go up that much? Average salary was $20-40,000 back then. Now $30-50,000. Not a big increase is it?
So the public school system treats our teachers horribly, pay them worse, then blame them because they teach in bad districts and come up with some crazy way to figure out if you are a good teacher because of grades students get on standardized tests. Okay, so your boss just fired you because you did not meet your targets, no matter that you had no support, no marketing money, lack of training in sales or the product line and were supposed to do a bunch of things on your own time.
And that encourages teachers to help your son or daughter how? Does it encourage you to keep working for a salary?
Likewise in business, management has some odd ideas about who to fire, promote or provide proper salaries. During economic issues everyone gets hurt, well, unless the government bailed you out and you then gave whopping bonuses to your key executives...who did NOTHING to earn them in most cases. Who did much of the work? Yep, the people who got fired.
Yes, some will be dead wood or bad fits or just not necessary, but when a company lets go of numerous people with 20+ years at the company, makes it hard to imagine they were all so bad to have lasted all that time. Maybe they didn't make the executive track, but you kept them all these years because they were good at something. But now, this year, they no longer are? Okay. Thanks, no gold watches, you understand, it's the economy.
So in this era of $0.99 apps, a whole new meaning to the dollar store franchises, how does one make money? Salaries can not be solely supported by selling cheap applications. Or can they? Maybe in large quantity of numbers this works and there lies the key.
If the consumer side, where else can one find such large quantities of people buying ANYTHING, is where he money is going, why would an organization wish to focus only on selling to companies..instead of the people who work in those companies? Sell both sides and win big. It worked for Microsoft and appears to be finally working for Apple.
Salaries do not matter.
Money matters. So does your health and your family.
Everything else is extra, but what will you do Monday when there is no more salary? You may love your boss, love your products, but the company may not love you one day and then what will you do?
Speaker, Blogger, Author. Posts about HCL Digital Solutions, HCL Software, Lotus, Management, Collaboration, Competitive Intelligence and Strategy, Productivity, CRM and B2B Marketing.
Attitude and perspective matter. When we look at ourselves as small businesses and not employees, we have a stronger position and more productive perspective on all employment relationships. I would hope that in our modern age, we would be better students of history and realize that to a degree, we are all in it together. If we are so sure of equality, we should try thinking like we have it rather than demanding it and then leveraging any perceived threat to it against our business partners. All too true, though, hindsight is 20/20 only when one bothers to turn around and look back. Nobody is doing that these days and so we have labor unions and management at eachother's throats and the rest of us are perceived as "employees" or "workers" or "associates" and allow ourselves to be as such when in reality, we are each a small business that simply needs to be about the business of pursuing life, liberty, and happiness. A change of perspective could make all the difference.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you, it is about your view of the world.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem is you can see your self in a way others do not. Or you may find yourself not making any money because no one respects what you have, or may not know you exist.
The down side of this economy and era is from young to old everyone is affected.
Well, like they say, nobody cares about what you know till they know that you care. Small business success, like any success, is based on building and maintaining relationships. I think the down side you are speaking of is perpetuated by this shadow of self imposed gloom many feel. Because we see ourselves as "employed" and hence "owed", we stop doing the part of the business relationship that is our responsibility and keeps it going. The present era shift from 'what can i do for you' to 'you owe me for what I have done' is a deep sickness which is killing the global economy.
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