That's his life now. He bought a factory with 50 workers, and he
has four em-ployees in
Oakland. The bags and leather goods are not
a big operation. He rents half his Oakland building to a tenant,
and the factory in
Costa Rica still has all its customers, only
Mike is now the owner. When he quotes poetry, it's hard to imagine
he was once a pushy salesman.
None of this would have flowered if he hadn't challenged himself to
write down the standards by which he wanted to live, and then let
that guide him.
ALL STORIES ARE UNIQUE
There will always be those who say it's impractical. But to call it
impractical is a cliché and ignorant of the economy we live in
today.
While writing this book, I was invited by
Michael Dell to be on a
panel at a gathering of the Business Council, a group of CEOs from
some of the biggest companies in the country. Together they pretty
much are the economy. Before our panel, the podium was turned over
to Dr. Lawrence Summers, the
president of
Harvard and a noted
economist. He reviewed some frightening demographics that showed
that the economy has grown since 1980 largely because the number of
people participating in the economy has grown.
Looking ahead to the next 20 years, we can expect no growth in the
number of workers. The percentage that are minorities and
immigrants will increase by 50 percent, and there will be no change
in the fraction with a college education. Unless these trends are
changed - or unless there are unforeseen boosts in productivity per
worker - the economy won't grow much, if at all.
Could the most powerful CEOs in
America change something about
that? That's what this conference was for. The entire next day's
schedule was devoted to education reform. The notion was, it would
be up to the educational system to transform the unproductive and
uneducated into productive consumers.
The question our panel was asked to address is, "What do employees
want?" What would it take to get more commitment out of them, more
ideas out of them, more value out of them? The panelists chipped in
with ideas about ben-efits, flextime, day care ... At this point
the conversation was passed to me.
I leaned forward in my seat. "What do people really want?"