More on 3 Miseries of Job
I just finished reading Patrick Lencioni’s “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” and it lived up to my expectations. The fable format gave some good real life examples of how the three miseries are played out at work. To refresh, the miseries are 1) immeasurability–not being able to measure whether you have done a good job or not, 2) irrelevance–not understanding how your work affects or contributes to anyone else, and 3) anonymity–not being appreciated for who you are as a person.
Lencioni says that the three miseries are not caused by the job, but by the way you are treated by management. He pointed out how highly paid executives, sports figures, and celebrities can feel just as miserable in their high-paying jobs as those in a low-paying jobs if these three factors are ignored. In fact, he includes a variety of work examples at the end for illustration beyond the story.
I plan to incorporate these ideas where I can in my coaching and training with management as it reinforces what I have already been espousing, which is that the most important long-term motivators are about more than money. I welcome your thoughts on this.
Here’s a great story that goes right along with your topic, except it is about selling.
There are 2 words that put a new car salesman in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling more cars than any other person in the history of the car business. If you wanted to buy a car from Joe you had to make an appointment at least two weeks in advance. The average new car sales person sells around 10 a month. Joe’s sales were 6 cars every day!
What are the two magic words that Joe used?
The words were “THANK YOU.”
Here was one of Joe’s secrets. Every time someone bought a car from Joe they went on his thank you mailing list. Every month Joe would send a card to everyone who ever bought a car from him. As his business grew he hired a
staff to address and mail his cards. When his mailing list got too big to do it by hand he hired a mailing company to manage it for him.
At the beginning of each year Joe hired a graphic artist to design 12 highly attractive cards. His customers actually collected the cards and even put them on their fireplace mantel.
When Joe retired (a multi-millionaire) his monthly mailing list was 20,000 cards. He said “thank you” TWENT THOUSAND TIMES each month!
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