The number one determinant of happiness is a good job.
I’ve long quoted this statistic from a Gallup poll of people in 155 countries around the world. Here’s another Gallup quote with resonance, this time from a recent column:
…the great American dream is to have a good job, 近年来, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual’s primary identity, 他们的自我价值, their dignity — it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, 社区与国家. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen’s talents, 培训和经历, 推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜正在辜负伟大的美国梦.
推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜是怎么走到这一步的? How did our leadership 在商业 begin to fail “the great American dream”?
如果你看看工业革命, the beginning of mass production when Henry Ford started making Model T Fords, 大规模生产是关于大规模生产的. It was not about human dignity or human growth.
有很多经济效益. We give great credit to the Industrial Revolution for raising the standard of living in our country, 这不是坏事吗. Factories for cars, shoes and appliances came to small communities.
Henry Ford paid people fairly well, compared to what they could make on a farm. 但 we took a farmer who had a craft and a pride in his craft (though also an unpredictable income stream), 推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜给了他一份工厂的工作. He went from being a craftsman in his trade on the farm to an assembly line where he put on a hubcap every 15 seconds.
Then we measured how fast he put on those hubcaps, 推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜想, maybe we can get him to do this in 12 seconds. 为什么? Not to create a more meaningful role for this man or woman, but because we 想要ed to make more money. We 想要ed to get our costs down so people would buy more cars. We were enamored with mass production and the wealth it created.
和, because we were focused on wealth creation and not people, unions were formed to protect the people we employed because we were more interested in our product and our customers than our people.
在某一时刻, 公司开始赚很多钱, we could afford to be nice to people because we needed them to meet our market demand. We gave them vacation time and benefits because we had to compete for skilled talent. 但, 和以前一样, we didn’t do it to improve the lifestyle of the person, we did it because we needed them to produce product and wealth.
All of a sudden, in the 1950s and early 1960s, America started facing more international competition. 他们的价格比推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜的低. 一旦发生这种情况, we decided we couldn’t afford to give that skilled assembly worker $15 an hour in Evansville, 印第安纳州, 或托莱多, 俄亥俄州, 了.
保持推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜的利润和竞争力, we started moving good-paying jobs to places like Mexico, 然后去巴西. Factories in Evansville and Toledo were abandoned. Now we’ve moved those jobs to China because we’re constantly in the search of the person who would work for considerably less than the last person.
Eventually, those more price-competitive imports were of good or better quality. So we went overseas to study innovations in industrial process improvement like Lean. 但 again, it was never to enrich the person’s experience; it was to eliminate waste. It was never about allowing people to express their gifts fully.
That’s the piece business has missed and that’s the piece we’ve found on our journey at Barry-Wehmiller. 人 are capable of doing amazing things if we just give them the environment in which they can discover, 开发, 分享并感激他们的礼物. Creating opportunities through which they can realize their potential and be appreciated for it is how we, 在商业, 能修复破碎的美国梦吗.
A quote from a recent CBS News article offers great perspective:
According to a December 2014 New York Times poll, the number of Americans who still believe in the American Dream is slipping. 2009年初，这一比例为72%, 在金融危机最严重的时候, 去年12月，这一比例为64%, in spite of the improved economy… The flip side of the news that faith in the American Dream has slipped to 64 percent, is that 64 percent — nearly two-thirds of Americans — still DO believe in an idea that is often about much more than making money.
人 想要 相信. It’s our responsibility as leaders to make the American dream a reality. We can do this by moving away from the singular focus on shareholder value and working towards leadership practices that create a "safe" environment. An environment where people feel valued for who they are and what they do as we collectively aspire to a vision that creates value for all stakeholders. Business could be the most powerful force for good if it simply cared about the lives it touches.