It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Unengaged workers was a growing problem long before I wrote Who Cares in 2011and it has escalated since then. The results of a January Gallup poll show 67.5% of US workers are unengaged and the reason at the end of this post still holds true. Read other Golden Oldies here.

I’m hearing the same lament from a lot of managers these days; the words and circumstances are different, but it boils down to the same thing—s/he has the knowledge, but doesn’t do anything.

It’s not just younger workers, but all ages.

The current term is “unengaged” and the problem is rampant.

Most managers who call don’t use that term, they complain that people just don’t care. They don’t care about doing more than the minimum; they don’t care about doing great work, instead of just adequate; they don’t care how the company is doing; the list of ‘they don’t care’ goes on and on.

They all see this as a problem with the people they hire.

They ask me where to source good candidates; how to better interview, so they can hire “people who give a damn.”

Some complain that the so-called entitled attitude of Millennials has spread to all ages.

These managers are a disparate group; they come from different industries and range from management newbies to senior executives, but they all have one thing in common.

None of them sees “not giving a damn” as a result of the way they manage, but 98% of the time it is.

So the next time someone you know (or you) complains about people not caring, suggest they ask the only person who really knows the answer—the one they will find in the mirror.

The old adage “you reap what you sow” holds just as true for bosses and companies as in any other circumstances.

Flickr image credit: antkriz

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

 “I look back on my career and I didn’t change the world as an entrepreneur; I did as an educator. So I’m a little wistful. Now, my charge for twentysomething entrepreneurs is, do you want to be known as the guy who makes the next porn app or fart app or do you want to put men on Mars?” –Steve Blank

In light of Blank’s question above, you might want to take time to ask yourself ‘what am I doing’?

• What value am I adding to my intrinsic worth as a human being?

• Does my product/service make even a tiny portion of the world a better place in any way?

• How will my kids describe/explain me to their kids?

• What legacy will I leave behind?

• How will I be remembered?

• Will I be remembered?

Now write down your thoughts/answers.

Reread them over the next several days/weeks.

If you don’t like the profile that emerges it’s time to pivot your life.

Not randomly, but with the same consideration and planning you would use to pivot your company.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I do brand outreach for my long-term associate NTR Lab, which includes working with Yana (always a pleasure) on its blog. Today’s post originally appeared there on January 28.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and investor Bill Gurley, among many others, believe that 2016 is the year that many unicorns will morph into unicorpses as valuations tumble amidst tightening money.

So does that make 2016 a bad year to start your company? No, in fact, just the opposite.

According to Jason Calacanis, angel investor and founder of Inside.com “Great companies are like great captains; they make take advantage of smooth sailing times like now, but are not afraid of rough seas that eventually show up.”

Jeff Grabow, EY Americas venture capital leader says, “If you talk to venture capitalists, they’ll all tell you the best time to start a company is in a downturn.”

And Mike Abbott, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made a great point when he said, “We’ll stop seeing particular folks starting a company for the sake of starting a company, because they see it as this romantic endeavor.”

But it was CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal who said it best, “While it’s ‘fun’ in a schadenfreud’y way to claim some absurd number of unicorns will falter in 2016, it misses out on the fact that 2016’s climate may force many of these unicorns to become RABBITs.”

Rabbit? Who wants to be a rabbit? You should. Being a rabbit is much like Andrew Wilkinson’s horse that we mentioned last week.

Image credit CB Insights via Business Insider

 The biggest difference going forward means that your valuation will be based on real revenue as opposed to funding rounds — more like Apple / less like Uber.

You’ll learn to do more with less and will stretch not only your dollars, but also your pennies. And your team will learn along with you.

For those of you who haven’t experienced a tighter economy or worked through a real downturn the actual experience can be off-putting, if not downright frightening.

Click for a cornucopia of ideas and resources to do more with less.

Image credit CB Insights via Business Insider

I loathe Walmart; in fact, it is the only thing I have ever completely boycotted. I’ve never purchased anything there and only set foot inside once, because I was with a friend.

Even when I was in a deep financial hole I found what I needed elsewhere or went without.

I’ve written about Walmart before, but their latest move is truly disgusting.

A few years ago Walmart announced a major expansion into small, rural towns. They claimed their low-cost model would save residents money and create jobs.

As recently as 2014 they claimed these stores were a huge success.

What they were most successful at was forcing long-time grocers to close.

The Town’n Country grocery in Oriental, North Carolina, a local fixture for 44 years, closed its doors in October after a Wal-Mart store opened for business. Now, three months later — and less than two years after Wal-Mart arrived — the retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no grocery store and no pharmacy (emphasis is mine).

Oriental residents now face a 50-minute round trip to buy groceries.

Residents in these small towns are often seniors, but fear not; Walmart cares (see sign upper left).

And that scenario is being repeated all over the country.

Oriental is hardly alone. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Jan. 15 it would be closing all 102 of its smaller Express stores, many in isolated towns, to focus on its supercenters and mid-sized Neighborhood Markets.

But never fear; Walmart still cares.

“In towns impacted by store closures, we have had hundreds of conversations with elected officials and community leaders to discuss relevant issues and we are working with communities on how we can be helpful,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Brian Nick.

I’m sure the residents really appreciate those conversations when they are reconfiguring their budgets to account for the additional gas required to drive 50-plus minutes to shop.

But the efforts to burnish its image have never been brighter; the TV ads that brag about how they are investing in their greatest asset — their people — will bring tears (of laughter) to your eyes.

And for those of you who believe that these actions are required to provide the best return to shareholders, consider Walmart’s stock is down 29% in the last 12 months.

Walmart’s stock is $65.8, while Costco, its complete antithesis is $147.02.

Or, as Kyle Murau, a self-described “ruthless, rightwing, baby-eating, blood-sucking capitalist Republican,” said  on Quora, “…this just goes to show that publicly traded corporations aren’t, in themselves, evil. It depends how the company’s culture works.”

Flickr image credit: Mike Mozart

What drives a company’s success as it grows?

Its people.

What drives a company’s culture?

Its people — all of them from CEO to entry-level grunt.

Since Southwest started in 1971 has grown to 47,000, but what is truly amazing is its employment record over those 45 years.

The most astonishing factoid about Southwest is that it has not had a single layoff in its 44 years—a stunning accomplishment in an industry that leads the economy in bankruptcies, re-organizations, mergers and companies that have disappeared. Think Eastern and Pan Am.

SWA was number 13 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2015 and nearly 180,000 people applied for work. What criteria does SWA consider most important?

“We have a passion for what we do and we look for people that share that passion. Our mantra is, we hire for attitude and we train for skill. Since our early days we seek people who don’t just have the skill, but also have the passion and the attitude to take care of each other and to take great care of our customers. We work hard to identify that. Many people want to be a part of a team like this. But many times we’ll have employees that say, “You know what? This just isn’t for me and it’s not the right fit.”

Southwest’s CEO Gary Kelly has been with the company for 29 years, the first 15 as CFO, but doesn’t claim hero status.

In an eye-opening interview Kelly talks about the importance of SWA’s culture as a competitive edge and how it’s been maintained over the decades.

If you’re going to have a team, you’ve got to invest the time to create the relationships. The bigger the company gets, the more effort it takes. We use a variety of techniques to do that. Right near my office is a group called Internal Customer Care that keeps track of important things happening in our employees’ lives. (…)I get a pile of thank you notes and in turn I send out thank you notes. It’s creates a very human connection. It’s basic, but very meaningful. That’s why we put the heart symbol in our logo. We’re not the American Heart Association, but our employees believe in the heart and when we deviate from living by the golden rule, people call each other on that. It makes for a very powerful culture.

In short, management spends time walking as opposed to time talking.

Read the interview. While you/your company may not have the money to match Southwest’s benefits, you can certainly create the relationships.

Flickr image credit: Keith Laverack

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time. I recently read an article in Inc. on a better way to move yourself forward then setting goals or making resolutions and it reminded me of something I wrote back in 2009. Same idea; different language. Read other Golden Oldies here.

I write and talk a lot about what happens when you choose to change your MAP through awareness and the resulting boos to your energy and creativity.

What I can’t remember sharing with you is a critical ingredient in the change sauce that I call the Philosophy of ER.

I consciously developed it formally and have shared it for decades to offset all the talk about failure when people are working to change.

First, you have to understand that I don’t believe in failure; I don’t think that someone has truly failed unless they’re dead. As long as they’re breathing, the worst bums on skid row have the potential to change, i.e., the possibility is there, even if the likelihood is not.

For decades change has focused on setting goals and if they aren’t achieved as stated, then you had failed.

Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of people (including myself) whose self esteem was at best badly bruised, at worst like Swiss cheese.

They started by telling me how they had failed at this or that, but in more detailed discussions it turned out that, although they hadn’t achieved their stated goal within the deadline, the goals and deadlines (one or both) weren’t exactly reality based or had changed along the way and not been restated.

To be valid, goals must come with delivery dates, but those dates must be achievable—not easy, but achievable.

When you set goals without taking into account minor details, such as friends/family/spouse/kids/working/sleeping/eating, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Beyond being reality-based, we all need an ongoing sense of accomplishment, especially for that which can’t be done in a few days, to sustain the long term effort that big goals take—thus came the Philosophy of ER.

Over the last couple of decades I’ve ERed almost everything (even when it’s grammatically incorrect).

• I may not be wise, but I’m wisER.
• I may not be rich, but I’m richER.
• I may not be patient, but I’m patientER.
• I may not be skinny, but I’m skinniER.

You get the idea.

So start ERing today and tomorrow you too will be happiER, smartER, healthiER and successfulER.

Just keep reminding yourself that to err is human, but to ER is divine.

Try it. You can do a lot worse than adding some ER to your life!

Image credit: Warning Sign Generator

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Forbes had a a useful article bringing spotlighting a prime point abut crowdfunding that often takes a backseat.

Taxes.

This is especially true if you raise substantially more than your stated goal.

Sure, you will probably spend what you raise on development and operations, which eliminates the problem — assuming you have enough of the year in front of you.

Near the end, the article does you a serious disservice.

You may be able to sidestep the whole issue by claiming it was a gift. Here’s where the rules start getting funky, and unclear. That’s because if a backer gives you a lot of cash for a minimal reward, it’s arguably a gift rather a sale. Get a good accountant. (Any gift taxes would be owed by the giver, not the recipient.)

Don’t count on it. When it comes to the IRS, making assumptions in areas that are murky and don’t have clear rules can be a recipe for disaster.

And, as it does say, you need to deal with sales tax State by State.

There’s no question that launching and running a successful crowdfunding campaign takes focus and hard work, but it also requires special expertise.

Just as you wouldn’t ask your a programmer to design hardware, don’t assume that your own skill extends to the tax code.

The cost of a few hours of financial/tax expertise, with proven knowledgeable of the startup world will save you much more than money in both the short and long run.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Paul Graham is a poster boy for many of the things wrong in Silicon Valley — unlike Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

Graham says he won’t fund people with strong accents or women with young kids or who are planning on having kids, whereas Altman believes that eliminating gender bias is very important.

It seems that Graham’s arrogance knows no boundaries.

January 27, Graham took to Twitter to condemn Shark Tank, and shows like it.

Startups: Instead of appearing on Shark Tank, spend that energy fixing whatever makes your product so unappealing you think you need to.

 Mark Cuban, a Tank investor, was not amused.

@paulg you mean like the sense of entitlement and arrogance they get when they become part of a YC class ? It’s hard to wash it out

Chris Sacca, a guest this season, chimed in.

@paulg Yeah, because a free 10-minute pitch to 7 million Americans is something every startup should turn down.

Beyond the sheer arrogance, it’s obvious Graham has never watched the show. He also doesn’t believe time should be wasted on marketing.

The entrepreneurs aren’t just in tech; they span multiple industries and many of them have already built their business and are at the point that they need not just money, but enterprise-strength expertise, which the Sharks offer.

Cuban hit it on the head when he said “arrogant and entitled.” Not to mention where he sees Y Combinator’s future.

@paulg the real question is why does a startup become part of YC any more ? The good old days of YC are just that

Read the whole thread here.

Image credit: Sarah Harlin via Wikipedia

A mistake is simply another way of doing things. –Katharine Graham

I make a lot of them, I’m told, because I do it my way.

Flickr image credit: BK

The Leadership Development Carnival is alive and well this month at The UPwards Leader.

Click on over for some interesting insights.