Greed is good

This is a perilous world we live in. Everyone around you is a threat.

• The corporate CEO whose salary makes your company unstable. 
• The union boss whose strike disrupts your supply chain. 
• The neighbor whose foreclosed house blights your street. 
• The government whose taxes negate your hard work.
• The environmentalist whose regulations constrain economic growth.
• The customer service rep whose sense of urgency is non-existent.
• The driver whose mobile phone conversation slows your commute.
• The salesperson whose motive is to close the deal and move on. 
• The foreign country whose exports out-compete your industry. 
• And now some manager whose bonus is apparently singly responsible for The End Of The World As We Know It.

Those people are evil. They are clearly motivated by greed! But wait—aren’t we all? In his recent Wall Street Journal article, “Greed is Good,” Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, wrote:

“Selfishness—that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest—required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit. Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism.”

In short, greed is the very engine that drives your company. Greed creates ambition. Without greed, your company will fail. Don’t believe it? Prove it!

• Eliminate your system of paying salespeople commissions.
• Stop any profit-sharing payouts to your customer service staff. 
• Kill any performance bonuses promised to managers. 
• Eliminate perks for large-volume clients.
• Downgrade business travel lodging to bare minimum quality.

Those might sound silly, but that’s the point. “Rational selfishness” is hard to define, but generally it means you want to give enough to keep the other person happy but keep as much as you can for yourself. Sway too far in either direction and the whole system collapses. Why is this important? Because a big part of performance improvement is “ya gotta wanna.” If an employee doesn’t CARE about improving performance, it won’t happen. What motivates your staff? Is it money? (probably) Is it respect? (yes, according to recent AchieveGlobal research) Is it that you care, too? (definitely) Then give them what they want. Even in these troubled times—or maybe because of these troubled times—people look out for #1. As altruistic and high-minded as people want to be, they are selfish. And, apparently, a little greed is exactly what our economy needs.