How to Be a Great Employee And a Greater Manager Read online

  How to be a Great Employee

  (and a Greater Manager)

  By Robert Villegas

  How to be a Great Employee (and a Greater Manager)

  By Robert Villegas

  © Copyright 2017 by Robert Villegas. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the copyright holder or his legal representative/s.

  ISBN-13: 978-1977907219

  ISBN-10: 1977907210

  LCC

  www.robertvillegas.com

  Published by Document Services International

  www.documentservicesinternational.com

  Email the author: [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  You have a Job

  How to Survive

  What is Production?

  Attitude

  The Hines Story

  Don’t be a Marxist

  John Paul Getty – the Three Rules to Riches

  Discovering Concepts and How to Use them in Business

  Free Will

  How to Think

  The Importance of Focus

  Logic

  Cause and Effect

  Forms of the LOGICAL THINKING

  Induction

  Deduction

  Decision-Making

  Decision-Making Worksheet

  Problem Solving

  Problem Solving Worksheet

  Pragmatism

  Generating New Ideas

  How is Your Vocabulary?

  Dealing with Conflict at Work

  A Boss You Don’t Like

  How to Get Your Boss on Your Side

  Conflict with the Boss

  Gossip

  Inspiration

  Dedicated to

  Roberto Villegas III

  A Great Employee

  And

  A Greater Manager

  Introduction

  You have purchased this book because you want to be a better employee. Or someone has given you this book because they thought you might benefit from the principles it teaches.

  Great bosses and managers start out as great employees. In fact, it is as employees that they demonstrated their management abilities. They realized that when they benefited their company and its customers, they proved their worth. There is no getting around it.

  This book is based on my years of management experience as well as my years as an “employee”. I started my work career in the Army as a private. I served in Korea during the 1960s. Later, I spent 27 years at United Parcel Service and eventually became a manager running my own department. I even travelled throughout Europe for UPS installing computer systems for call centers in Germany, England, Singapore and Spain. I designed computer software that saved UPS millions of dollars and I was rewarded for my efforts.

  Yes, I was once a young man who had to make his own way in the world. Like you, I had to learn to survive. And that is where we begin this book.

  You have a Job

  First, we’ll assume that you have a job and that you want to get beyond this job to bigger and better things. You want to climb the ladder of success, so to speak. But you don’t know where to start because this seems like such an unimportant job, entry-level and, well, you feel like a freshman in high school again. What’s next?

  The fundamental truth is that you cannot be a great manager or business owner without first being a great employee. And this is something that requires learning, experience and attitude. The attitude comes from you but the learning and experience you should acquire through diligent study and practice. Everything you do as an employee must be looked at as preparation for management and the more you apply yourself to that preparation, the sooner you will be able to bridge the gap between being an employee and being a business owner or manager.

  A good place to start is by finding out some important things:

  Who is the business owner?

  How did he start the business?

  What does the business do?

  What are the company mission and vision statements?

  How does your boss work? Is he or she a doer or a delegator?

  What is the boss’s work day like?

  How does he or she treat the people who work for him?

  Is he or she easy to approach or is he a long-distance manager who works through subordinate managers?

  What are his goals for him- or herself?

  What are his goals for the company?

  How does he discipline errant employees?

  There are, of course, some simple matters to which you should attend. The first is getting along with people. You’ll never be successful if you can’t take simple instructions from your boss and “do it”. You’ll also need to be proficient at using the spoken word to communicate with other people. This isn’t something you just “get”; you should study English communication and English grammar for starters. If you didn’t go to a school that emphasized these skills, you can enroll in a college course or free course of some type. However, this isn’t something that you can simply ignore. It is critical to your success.

  In the meantime, you must also work on convincing your boss that you bring value to the company. Simply put, if he doesn’t make money from your work, if he doesn’t get back from you the money he spends on you, well then, you aren’t worth much. So, you need to address your job requirements with full focus and ensure that you do your job to the best of your ability. You cannot get around this issue.

  For the future, it would be a good idea to look at the skills you will need for the jobs that are higher up on the ladder of your success. Look at these positions in the company and determine if you need to develop new skills which you presently do not have and schedule some time to take classes, read books, etc. so that you know those skills.

  It does you no good to have a conflict with your boss if you aren’t first doing your job with skill and diligence. If you can’t be productive, if you can’t give value, then it is not his responsibility to give you more money than you are worth. This is a simple fact of reality. Forget about the ideology of social justice. If you can’t perform your work, ideology means nothing. Why burden your boss with the chore of having to be fair to you when you are not being fair to him through your productivity?

  Of course, your boss will never tell you this. In fact, I’ve never heard a boss of mine tell me this important simple fact. You must work and you must produce or you will not be able to feed, house and clothe your family.

  The principle that works best in business is “value for value”, mutual trade to mutual benefit. You must do everything you can to bring value to your company or boss; and you must do it fairly and honestly by knowing what your boss expects and doing it to perfection. This is not too much to expect.

  To give an example, I once had a job as a marketing manager for my company. I saw that my company was struggling to get new business, so I took it upon myself (on my own time) to do some research. I found that there was an online source of information about available projects for which my company could apply. Asking a few questions around work, I discovered that my senior management had no idea about this source. There was an opportunity here. I began to look through this source and discovered that a local company was beginning to take up a project to use railroad easements to offer fiber optic and cable communications. I forwarded this information to my immediate manager and within a few weeks the company signed a $9,000,000.00 contract to develop this property. That’s how to bring value (and it helped me get a raise). Afterwards, my research became

  part of my daily job and I
was allowed to send what I uncovered directly to the company CEO. That got me noticed.

  So, having a job is more than just punching a clock. It is more than just doing a mundane activity exactly as it is supposed to be done (although sometimes this is a value too); having a job is about bringing value to your company and the more value you bring, the more critical you are to the company’s success, and the more money you will make and the sooner you will be promoted and be able to buy a nicer house for your family. You see, it is not about telling your boss to take his job and shove it. That job is a goldmine and you should treasure it. Change your attitude and you’ll change your life.

  How to Survive

  As a child, you survive by the work of your parents or caretakers. They provide you with the food, clothing and shelter that will keep you alive, healthy and secure. You survive because they love you. The more successful they are, the more resources they can bring to the task of raising you well.

  But had you never been born; your parents would still have needed to survive. They would have had to take actions that led to their securing food, clothing and shelter. Whether they were working to exchange money with an employer or living on their own in the wilderness, they would have had to engage in some type of action that led to survival.

  Survival is not accomplished in a vacuum. You must identify your needs by looking at reality and choosing the values that you will pursue, then you must take direct action to accomplish them. The more assertive and/or aggressive you are at taking these actions, the better for your survival. This starts by recognizing what you need to survive and, as we discussed above, taking some sort of action. If you live alone on a desert island, then you must produce these values for yourself. If you live in an advanced society, you can decide on a good specialization and trade what you produce with others who have their own specializations.

  Over many thousands of years, men have created a variety of tools to make survival easier. Early on, someone invented stone tools for striking other things into desired shapes. These tools helped man obtain food, make his own clothing and build his own shelters. In modern times, man has taken the primitive forms of food, shelter and clothing and automated the processes to such a degree that few people are required to make their own food, homes and clothes. This is advanced society and it makes life easier.

  One of the most important institutions in advanced society is the phenomenon of capitalism. Capitalism is a way of organizing society around a specific principle which we call “individual rights”. Every individual has the freedom and the responsibility to create his own survival according to the free use of his mind; according to reason. This is what makes capitalism such an efficient system. The combination of millions of people each using their minds to make the right decisions about what they want creates an efficient mechanism where demand is met by supply and everyone is benefited. The profit motive is the principle that makes capitalism efficient compared to socialism which violates supply and demand (as well as individual rights) continuously.

  Yet, capitalism is also attacked and criticized today. Karl Marx, the famous anti-capitalist, was only the beginning. Before Marx (who lived during the 1800s), many religions denigrated the practices of usury and commerce as evil. They were thought to be forms of theft and anyone who made a profit was considered ungodly and malicious.

  I disagree with the anti-capitalist viewpoint. In my view, capitalism is the most efficient system in history especially when it comes to alleviating poverty and giving people a chance to survive well. If people want to have a bright future, then it is only capitalism that will bring it.

  Capitalism is good and if you disagree, try living in a socialist or communist country. You’ll see that socialism or communism are poorly functioning systems that create poverty. Socialism or communism are based upon the idea of coercive management of the economy by the government. There is no freedom there; there is no possibility of good if the government is constantly taking from the productive.

  The question about whether capitalism is good or not is an important one. Why work in a system that you think exploits you? Why exploit others when the solution to human problems is production and trade? Should an evil system be abolished? What would be the result of abolishing capitalism?

  At some point, if you are to be successful at surviving, you will have to decide whether capitalism is good or evil. I think that all evidence points to the truth that free people deciding for themselves will always be able to create affluence for themselves, and, on a wider scale, in society.

  When we come to the issue of how you can survive, here are the essential principles that you must accept if you are to survive in a capitalist system:

  Survival requires production – the more production you accomplish, the better the survival; likewise, the better the product, the better the survival

  Survival requires law and order in society – good laws provide stability and enable production through the years

  Survival requires individual liberty – individual liberty means better decisions by individuals which means better production

  Survival requires moral living – morality means using your mind to decide correct action – the better the choices, the higher the morality

  Survival requires independent thinking – independence means relying on your own mind first which leads to better decisions

  Survival requires the freedom of speech – freedom of speech means freedom of the mind

  What is Production?

  Production is the act of making or creating the tools of survival and other values that enhance life. In order to produce, you must succeed in using your mind, your hands and your thinking to make the values that will benefit your life through trade with other human beings. The key here is to recognize that the more values you produce, the more value you are selling to your customers. A whole society of people dedicated to creating values benefits not only your life and those of your loved ones, but also the lives of your customers. Because capitalistic society protects people from violence and fraud, more members of society are able to focus on morality; on creating values. This benefits everyone.

  When you work in a factory, you are being productive to the extent to which you supply or exceed your boss’s requirements. To the extent that you fall short of his requirements, you are draining capital from his bottom line. In this case, you must either improve your production or lose your job.

  How does your boss create the conditions through which you are able to be productive? He does it by first identifying a product that will meet the needs of customers. Then he will learn about the tools and methods that will make the product. Then he invests money in factory and equipment designed to make that product. Then he invests in payroll to train you on how to use this equipment, produce the product, ship it and sell it to customers who will pay him more than his investments. You, as a producer, are part of this process and if you do your job properly, you should be proud of your accomplishments. You will collect a paycheck, put money in the bank, buy the things you need for survival and enjoy a good life in a good home for your family.

  This “social” approach to survival is far superior to the “desert island”

  approach in which you produce what you need to survive by yourself. Living in society can be a great benefit for you. All you need to do is hone your skills to the highest level and make monetary rewards by trading your labor or products with others.

  In both cases (social and desert island), it is the efficient use of the human mind that is central to survival. Yet, an advanced society makes it possible for you to create more abundance because it allows for cooperation among people with high skills. This allows for specialization which enables better products and services. Specialization is the key to an ever-improving society as products get better and better and prices for “necessities” progressively drop.

  I consider the “survivalist” (wilderness) approach to be flawed for the following reasons:

&nbs
p; The survivalist eschews advanced society as artificial, robotic and meaningless which is essentially a bias.

  This view eschews organized society and extols the virtues of a life lived in the wilderness but it relies on machines made in society.

  It extols the virtues of lower forms of technology which means lower forms of thought.

  It opposes capitalism in favor of barter which is a more primitive and less efficient trading system.

  It advances a whim-based morality where men live without reason and good judgment.

  A key flaw with survivalism is item #2 above; that it relies on capitalism for some of its tools. Manufacturers of food, guns, knives, etc. provide survivalists with better survival opportunities in the wild. They also use generators, automobiles and other technologies to espouse a life in the wilderness.

  In my view, the true survivalists are people who accept and exploit the benefits of capitalism and practice the morality of self-interest. In advanced society, the benefits of supply and demand, economic liberty, law and order and individual rights make survival truly possible. This is where an individual like you, seeking the best in life, can truly flourish.

  Now that we’ve established that production is necessary for survival, we will identify some of the key concepts that significantly affect your success in society.

  Attitude

  A good attitude is about positive living. When you seek to do your best and work to impart positive values into your company, you are doing so under the influence of a good general attitude.