I work for a living. It’s barely a living but, it is a living. I am a necessary catalyst for someone else to make a hefty living, a very good living.
My job performance is pretty good. My employer wants me to sell, so I sell. That is the number one reason for my existence on the job.
The structure of large companies allows for me, and others like me to keep selling so, the top person in charge of the company can make a more than comfortable living along with a few other chosen people ready to take the top seat, if necessary.
I am the catalyst that allows them a chair at a desk all day while I do the ‘real’ work. Their ‘work’ which consists of driving a car without ever gaining a license, is contingent upon my work where no performance is good enough. When it comes to Sr. Management bonus time, they could have gotten more if, only I had done more for increased profits.
I appear daily with a fresh attitude focusing on one sale at a time throughout my day. Total focus on the customer I am assisting until they are informed, and happy. It won’t be good enough if, Sr. Management does not receive their bonuses.
Many CEOs are college grads but, many times are merely average CEOs because they don’t know anything about what the catalysts have to do to get where they want them to be. It requires them to be, their own catalysts at least part time. Then, and only then can they begin to experience their own businesses. Then, and only then can they begin taking their public companies from $25/share to over $400/share.
As a CEO, why aren’t you awesome, remarkable, and revered? Somebody else did it. Why can’t you? Why don’t you?
How did Steven Jobs become one of the most revered CEOs in American history? How did he bring a company trading at $25/share to over $400/share? His whole career was as a catalyst. He worked every byte (no, I could not resist the pun) of Apple. He knew the work, and worked the work. That’s how he did it.
In knowing what the work was, Jobs rewarded some of his employees knowing his financial future got better because of them. He learned that much later in his career but, finally came to that realization. Many company CEOs see it differently. They see their employees as mere liabilities.
Jobs will continue to be missed as he built a one time only business model etched in history based on his vast imagination, innovation, and his activity as a catalyst.
It is a lesson often missed at the top, and a catalyst for a bonus missed at the top.
