Service Is The Foundation Of All Lasting Growth

If our goal in business is to make a solid return on investment, to end up with more value than we began with - in other words, make a profit - then what does it take to do this in a way that builds lasting wealth, not just temporary "fun with numbers"?

The short answer is rather simple, but you may not like it: You are going to have to become a better and more effective servant. Our most powerful goal is to be involved in enabling others to become proprietors. Servant leaders produce a spirit of proprietorial ownership in others.

This is the heart of the difference between someone who builds a business by hiring wage slaves who make the owner rich and someone who is satisfied only when employees transform into proprietors who become partners in the business and prosper in it themselves.

True Leaders Produce Fellow Proprietors

Our goal as business owners must not be to merely end up with more money that we started with - a shallow and weak definition of profit. Rather our goal is to exponentially increase our value to our customers and prospects by building a business that builds proprietors. Multiplying proprietors is the focus; financial increase is but one of the by-products.

Anybody can find an employee who will work - as long as a high enough wage is offered. The employer is merely buying his employee's time and efforts. But industrial age employees or "wage slaves" are not the road to true wealth. It is about partners, associates, and proprietors. It is about people who have a stake in the business that goes beyond their weekly paycheck. It is about transforming people from employees to co-owners, from orphans to heirs.

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Why the Vision Is So Important

A short-term, riches-oriented vision can be satisfied by merely gaining employees. A long-term, servant-oriented vision strives instead to facilitate other people becoming proprietors themselves. The best way to make a business successful financially is to have as many proprietors and as few employees as possible. Proprietors generate maximum value.

Proprietors work harder, longer, and smarter out of a sense of ownership and involvement. That's why profit sharing works. To put it simply, people naturally care more about what belongs to them than they do about what belongs to someone else. Here's the real question: How are you going to implement these truths with those you lead?

What Is a True Servant Leader?

All too common is the notion that servant leaders do everything for everybody. But doing everything for someone would merely make that person lazy and dependent. Real servant leaders serve by enabling others to fulfill their highest calling in their area of responsibility and beyond. Understanding this can lead to a dramatic drop in customer service gripes and drama at your business!

Good Leaders Gradually Share More and More Responsibility

If we are to build strong families, strong communities, and strong businesses, then we must share authority and responsibility incrementally. We must be open and explicit about how this process takes shape. And we must be diligent to foster this process with as many in our company as possible.

Good leaders must draw their people into a partnership giving them increasing amounts of responsibility matched with authority according to their job function, ability, and dedication. Your primary job a a leader is to help those who work with you to discover what their best trajectory is. In other words, helping them to see where their life is headed and how working with you supports their best interests. There is no greater leverage or motivation than a vision clearly stated that empowers someone to be their best.

This implies an ethic for business that is not money driven but service driven. But it is precisely this sort of business that will also, in the long run, generate the most wealth. When all the people in an organization are working in alignment with their best trajectory (having become proprietors) and the strategic vision of the company, they will be not only happy and fulfilled, but also very productive.

The Bottom Line

We should not seek the financial results of this as an end unto themselves. Real profit, profit that goes through the roof, is generated by whomever serves the best. And an organization that out serves its competition will generate money, value, meaningful work, and a future of growth and lasting wealth.

If we in business are going to live with real balance and long term success, then we have to start taking a strategic view of the manner in which we work.

Start creating a better business...today!

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Next Play (July 2006): "Seven Keys To Killer Sales!"

by Jeff Timpanaro

It's Your Business...Take Control Now! www.TotalIntegrationNow.com

The Business Owner's Playbook is a monthly strategic resource that concisely equips today's business owner with instantly usable tools that produce lasting solutions for common challenges. Based on the principles in the Total Integration Program, this tool is provided for the betterment of you, your people, and your customers.

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