Nobody Cares

Does anybody really care?

Don't take this in the cynical sense - take it as a healthy barometer to improve productivity and your professional life.

Look at all of the facets of the work that you and your team do; in each case, ask yourself honestly - "Does anyone care?"

• "We generate this report every single week - does anyone use it?"
• "This is a regularly scheduled meeting - but would people be better off getting that time back and is there a better way we could communicate the information?"
• "It's time (once again) to do the company newsletter - does anyone really read it?"

You get the idea - critically look at every function, every process, every product and ask yourself - if it failed to exist tomorrow - would anybody care?  Or (gasp) would people's lives be even a little bit better without it?

We all work in cultures of history.   Processes, paperwork, meetings all layer on throughout the years like sediment. . . to the point of choking productivity and reducing team member satisfaction.  If team members are spending their team producing things that nobody cares about - how inefficient (and disheartening) is that?

If you can give up clinging to "the way that things are done" and refresh your outlook - you may find that "Nobody cares," can be a really freeing thought.

Early in my career, I spent over a decade and a half at a company I believed in.  I had grown my professional career at this company and invested thousands of hours in its success.   Times, however, had changed.  The company had not.   Toward the end of my tenure, I had to ask myself that acid question - what would happen if the company closed tomorrow?  Immediately I knew the answer - nobody, not a single customer, would care.   At that freeing moment it was clear to me, I had to move on.

If nobody cares - it is time to step forward and make changes to create work that people really do care about.

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Keywords:   caring about work, caring about the team, passion in leadership, passion in work.

Brent Frerichs is the author of "Courageous Questions, Confident Leaders," available for e-readers, tablets and PCs on Amazon Kindle.