Theft Proof Your Staff - The 3I's

All right, let's get ready to dive into today's episode on strategic leadership. Strategic leadership, music used to help you accelerate your strategy fast and efficiently. So one of the keys that we talk about in our Dimes strategic leadership training is the E, engagement. How do you engage your stakeholders, engage anyone that has anything to do with implementing your strategy, achieving vision, accomplishing goals? How do you engage them? And you know, right? One of the most critical demographics or stakeholders that you're going to have to engage are going to be your team members. Employees at all levels of the organization, right? Um, including those that work in your— including those that work in your spa, you know, like the Mar-a-Lago spa. You got to engage everybody, right? Now we're going to come back to that whole Mar-a-Lago, Mar-a-Lago staff issue here. But just hold on. This is Walter Murray here at Strategic Leadership News, SLN. News you can use to help you accelerate your strategic leadership fast and efficiently. So talking about engagement, I'm going to use a case study, a real-life case study, and I'll protect, I'll use pseudonyms to protect the guilty. Yeah, to protect the guilty. You know, people talk about using fake names and pseudonyms to protect the innocent. Well, in this case, I'm going to use some pseudonyms to protect the guilty. So these two guys, they've been buddies, right? For years they've been buddies. We'll call one DJ., and we'll call one Epstein. DJ and Epstein were buddies. Both had separate businesses, doing pretty well by all accounts, millions, even billions of dollars, thousands of employees. But one day DJ got pretty pissed at Epstein because Epstein stole his employees.

I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. For years, I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn't talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, stole people that worked for me. I said, don't ever do that again. He did it again, and I threw him out of the place.

Yeah, no, no, no, mind you, that ain't even a real crime, right? The only time that that could potentially become a legal matter is if you have employees that have signed, um, restrictive covenants, non-competes, etc., etc. And I'm pretty sure that people that work in a spa don't sign restrictive covenants. But nonetheless, DJ got pissed at Epstein because Epstein stole DJ's employees. Unless there was something like conscious interference, right? If someone intentionally causes your employee to break a valid contract, like a non-compete contract or a restrictive covenant, then there's really no crime called stealing employees. And like I said, there's pretty zero chance that DJ had his spa employees to sign restrictive covenants. So let's move past the legality of the DJ's allegation. Now, nobody likes to lose key staff. If you're a strategic leader and you have a team that's geared up and working towards a strategic vision, you don't want people to fall by the wayside, whether they intentionally choose to leave or whether they get stolen. Let's talk about this stolen thing because it's interesting, right? People, staff members, are not chattel property. You can't really steal a person. I mean, when a leader refers to his employees being stolen, it could be revealing a mindset, subconscious mindset, of how he perceives the people that work for him, not as people but as property. I mean, I don't know, I'm no psychoanalyst, but I'm guessing that there is some hint in that statement when an employer says people stole his employees, that he is kind of lumping his people in with his property. But be that as it may, for someone to be stolen Right? They have to either be kidnapped against their will and taken to work in another place. That didn't happen. The other option is that they were convinced and persuaded that going to work for F.T. was a better work environment than staying and working for D.J. Now, unpack that, right? Unpack that because We know the kind of work environment and company culture that existed over in the Epstein Island. It was a culture where women were abused, perversion and perverse conduct was just everywhere, right? Pedophilia, rape, crime. That was the Epstein organizational culture. Why would someone leave DJ DJ Incorporated, a woman at that, and go to work for Epstein where women were known to be abused. I just want to think about that for a moment. Hmm. Well, maybe because— I'm just spitballing here, I don't know, I'm just throwing some stuff out— could it be because the DJ work environment was more abusive to women than the Epstein work environment? I mean, is it possible, right? I don't know. I'm just, again, no psychoanalyst here, but is it possible that working for Epstein was better than working for DJ? Well, you go figure it out. But anyway, but this is the crux of the matter in strategic leadership. How do you keep your team from going to work for Epstein, right? It's simple. People make decisions based on where they're going to be most comfortable. You know, sometimes people think that money is the greatest motivation for someone taking a job or staying on a job, but that's actually not true. One of the things that research has shown is that employees appreciate being appreciated more than they appreciate getting a raise. There's actually data on that, and I'll find the data study and post it on this blog here. So you don't have to worry too much about people stealing your employees, enticing them to go to work on the island, right, on the Epstein Island. If you provide an environment that challenges them, that grows them, and appreciates them. The best way to keep people on your team as a strategic leader, the best way to keep key people, to keep people all the way down the organizational chart is simply create an environment where people just love to work for you. For you, with you. Don't treat them like property. Don't refer to them as though they are objects to be stolen. Recognize them for their humanity. You do that, you are more likely to keep your strategic leadership team intact and pursue and reach your strategic leadership goals. This is Walter Murray here, Strategic Leadership News, news you can count on to help accelerate your strategy and your leadership.

Fast. For years, I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, I wouldn't talk because he did something that was inappropriate. Stole people that work for me. I said, don't ever do that again. He did it again, and I threw him out of the place.

So listen, Epstein and DJ would have been good friends today. They wouldn't have had to have this, this fracture in your relationship, right? I'm giving them some relationship advice here. If DJ had simply theft-proofed his employees, theft-proofed his employees, that way Epstein couldn't have stolen them even if he tried. Well, it's too late for DJ to follow this advice here, but you could. You could definitely do that. And not only could you, but you should. You should. So how do we theft-proof our employees? Well, 3 things. I call them the 3 I's, the 3 I's to theft-proof your employees. That way ain't nobody going to steal them from you. You with me? You ready? First I is impact. Second I is image. And the third I is income. Create an organizational culture, right? That gives your employees at every level, the bandwidth, the ecosystem, the infrastructure, the opportunity to do impactful work, to make impactful contributions. I can't tell you how frustrated I used to be as a junior staff decades ago when the managers would give me grunt work to do. Obviously meaningless, non-impactful work. Somebody's got to do it, right? But make it a habit and a culture where your employees are engaged in impactful work. What does that do for image? Well, as employees do impactful work, the first thing that happens with their image is that their image of themselves improves because in their mind they're thinking, wow, the boss thinks I could handle this? The boss trusts me to handle this? I must be pretty good. I must be all that was in a bag of chips and more. I must have messed up the cliché, but you see what I'm saying. Giving the staff impactful work improves their image. As they complete that impactful work, their image within the organization increases because now people are like, wow, That guy, that girl over there, that staff over there, they could get stuff done. They do important, impactful work and they complete it. So people begin, word begins to get around. So not only does the employee's image of themself improve, their coworkers' image of that employee improves. You with me? So to theft-proof your staff, to make sure Epstein doesn't come around and steal employees, give them impactful work that increases their image of themselves and increases their image within the organization. Now income. So here's how this works. Here's how the dominoes fall on this, right? When your staff completes impactful work and their image of themselves and within the organization increases, That has a marketplace repercussion because now the marketplace is looking at your organization as a whole and saying, "Those people over there do impactful stuff." The marketplace is saying, "I think more highly of that organization because that's an organization of high achievers, high performers. They doing good stuff over there." What does that do to the organization's income? It positions the organization in an advantageous position relative to your competitors who are not doing impactful work, who are not improving the image of their staff in the organization or in the marketplace. You with me, right? So as your staff does impactful work and the image of the staff increases, so does the image of the organization increase, and as image increases, so does the opportunity for income of the organization increase. Now if you're a fair employer, fair leader, you will what? Share some of that income with your staff. Give them some raises, give them some bonuses. Once an employee understands that he is in a infrastructure and a culture that promotes impactful work, improving image, resulting in improved income. Once they get that, and you have to preach that message, right? You have to make sure you know how to communicate that to them in a meaningful way and in a real way. You just don't give empty promises, but once an employee gets hold of that, I don't care, a million FDs couldn't steal them away from you.

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All right, so we've talked a lot about theft-proofing your employees, theft-proofing your staff, and I just want to leave that with you. One of the most, if not the most critical important resource you are going to have at your disposal is the talents, expertise, and experience of your staff. Walter Murray here. Strategic Leadership News. News you can count on to accelerate your strategic leadership fast and efficiently. And oh, by the way, keep the employees from getting stolen. Haha.