The give a shit factor

I’m going to start this one by refusing to apologize for the scatological title. I thought of using give a darn or give a hoot but… well… this is how I talk. Sorry if this offends anyone. Sort of.

Anyhoo, in my business there are certain factors that serve as early indicators of how successful the customer is going to be. Most of them are the standard business factors – do they have certain processes well defined, are they following the processes and are those processes effective, how do they respond to issues that arise?

I look at planning and delivery of training and at the strength of supervision and of course, the quality of the goods or services being produced. But the most important single element to my mind is the give a shit factor. When it becomes clear that the people in an organization really care about the mission and objectives of their collective enterprise, I can pretty much figure we’re going to make progress together. It also frequently means I’m going to learn as much from them as they will from me.

If the perople care about the job and about each other, we can fix just about anything else that's not going well. And if they don't, we're sunk from the get go.

Today, I was in a room with about forty people whose give a shit factor was as high as I believe I’ve ever seen. They included job coaches and managers and rehab engineers and working supervisors and vocational specialists. They ranged from early twenties to maybe sixties and from a few months’ experience to a lifetime in advocacy.

And every single one of them is devoted to the cause of erasing employment barriers for persons living with severe disabilities.

I have the best job in the world.