September is considered Labor Day in the United States and Canada. With its roots in the labor movement in the late 19th Century, the day commemorates the workers with celebration and holiday.
Earlier this year, I completed a project started as an award by the Pollard Fellowship. My goal was to study the ServiceMaster Company and extrapolate principles for BAM startups. ServiceMaster was incredibly successful from 1930-2000, and became a model of a $6 Billion company which really did live up to their end goal: “honor God in all we do.”
Their second end goal was to “help develop people.” Former CEO Bill Pollard suggests that the reason behind the amazing growth and success of the company was its commitment to the development of its people. As we remember the workers of the world this week, let’s reflect on some of oft-quoted expressions of what the leaders of ServiceMaster lived out every day in company life:
- Our task is to train, motivate and develop people – to be better and better
- The true worth of the enterprise rests in the brains of its employees
- The strength of a nation is not in its technology, nationalism, or materialism – it is in its workforce
- People work for a cause, not just a living; they want purpose and meaning in their work
- Humans are to be treated as the subject of work, not the object of work
- If you don’t live it, you don’t believe it
- We need to help a person be before we help that person do
- “I can’t leave God in the pew on Sunday – I have to bring Him with me to work on Monday.
- The first objective leads to something everyone values: dignity, worth and potential of every person
- Values have to get to the behavioral level; an operational definition is needed
- Build on the ordinary and expect the extraordinary
- I want to have every person confronted with the question of God
- The workplace is not just where we get things done. It is also a place that can become a moral community for the development of human character
- We were becoming a community for the development of human character
- The global marketplace provides a wonderful opportunity for followers of Jesus Christ to live and share their faith
- My faith and the ethic of my life became a reality as I was able to serve those I led … and a platform to share my faith
- Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do
- When we are wrong or fail, we admit it. Truth cannot be compromised
- The results of our leadership will be measured beyond the workplace. The story will be told in the changed lives of people
- It is the whole person, not just a pair of hands, who comes to work every day, and it is the whole person God loves and in whom He sees His likeness reflected
- Management is “getting the right things done through others,” but what we are suggesting …is that leaders and managers cannot stop there. We also must be concerned about what is happening to people in the process
Larry W. Sharp, BAM Support Specialist, IBEC Ventures
Larry.Sharp@ibecventures.com