decency and respect

We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls….

There is one thing, my dear sir, that must be attempted and most sacredly observed or we are all undone. There must be decency and respect, and veneration introduced for persons of authority of every rank, or we are undone. In a popular government, this is our only way.

John Adams writing to James Warren (1776) 

As quoted in John Adams by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 2001. p.106

trial & beauty

From trial comes refined beauty.

H. Burke Peterson

“Adversity and Prayer,” General Conference. October 1973

he made kindness his specialty

George [Albert Smith] once said to a friend that he lacked the prowess to be an athlete, that he was too homely to win popular favor, and that his weak eyes prevented him from becoming a scholar, but he could excel in human kindness, so he made kindness his specialty.

Against the Odds: The Life of George Albert Smith by Mary Jane Woodger. 2011. Covenant Communications.

constant opportunities for improvement

Once Pal’s [Sudden Service - a burger joint] selects its candidates, it immerses them in massive amounts of training and retraining, certification and recertification. New employees get 120 hours of training before they are allowed to work on their own, and must be certified in each of the specific jobs they do. Then, every day on every shift in every restaurant, a computer randomly generates the names of two to four employees to be recertified in one of their jobs—pop quizzes, if you will. They take a quick test, see whether they pass, and if they fail, get retrained for that job before they can do it again. (The average employee gets 2 or 3 pop quizzes per month.)

“People go out of calibration just like machines go out of calibration,” CEO Crosby explains. “So we are always training, always teaching, always coaching. If you want people to succeed, you have to be willing to teach them.”

Bill Taylor

"How One Fast-Food Chain Keeps Its Turnover Rates Absurdly Low". Harvard Business Review. January 26, 2016.

hire for attitude and train for skill

The best companies hire for attitude and train for skill. Pal’s [Sudden Service - a burger joint] 26 locations employ roughly 1,020 workers, 90 percent of whom are part-time, 40 percent of whom are between the ages of 16 and 18. It has developed and fine-tuned a screening system to evaluate candidates from this notoriously hard-to-manage demographic—a 60-point psychometric survey, based on the attitudes and attributes of Pal’s star performers, that does an uncanny job of predicting who is most likely to succeed. Among the agree/disagree statements: “For the most part, I am happy with myself.” “I think it is best to trust people you have just met.” “Raising your voice may be one way to get someone to accept your point of view.” Pal’s understands that character counts for as much as credentials, that who you are is as important as what you know.

Bill Taylor

"How One Fast-Food Chain Keeps Its Turnover Rates Absurdly Low". Harvard Business Review. January 26, 2016.