Working smart over working hard?

Working Smart or Working Hard?

‘Be the hardest worker in the room’

This is a phrase you will continually hear a lot from company owners, motivational speakers, and all the other forms of personal trying to eek everything out of an employee.

My mantra has always been to work the smartest in the room.

I am a big believer in ‘busy fools’ and dislike the ‘hustle’ era of trying to promote, win business, and conducting yourself in this manner as an individual. If you are innovative, unique, providing value, and can get this across in the clearest,  most concise way possible, I think this always wins over ‘daily grind’.

At Apple under Steve Jobs, if employees had a task that took 3 days to conduct, the employee who took the full 3 days and provided a perfectly good solution was of little interest. The employee who does something else for 1 day, visually messes around for the other but then on the 3rd day miraculously clamors around and hits the deadline just in time was always of more interest.

What was it he did to perform a 3-day task in just 24 hours? Innovation, a technique that could potentially be applied in a wider capacity?

My first employment role was with a company I won’t name, but they are a rental car company, have a green and black logo and it begins with an E. I joined on a Graduate Scheme (1 in 200 applicants were successful) and on my first day got hit with the news of an 8-6 working day, not including the travel which during times of my tenure was an hour each way. Un-paid, mandatory overtime, once until 1am! (I am sure that is illegal) Over-zealous, pushy managers who tried to brainwash you, as they had been themselves that this was the most important entity in the world. I was thrust into the Corporate world big time and was swept away before I knew it.

Having masses of hard-working dedicated staff is a tactic and has lots of positives. On the negative spectrum, it leads to rubbish job retention, dismal workforce happiness, and countless other issues. But as a tactic where you have the funds and the capability to re-hire (students come through on the preverbal tap), it certainly works.

Looking back it was a fantastic life lesson, and the customer service training I still use today, it was an American company with Customer Service (ESQI was the measurement) absolutely everything. It completely stifled innovation, you were always tired, made bad decisions because of this and eventually, no matter how hard you tried got burnt out and left. I would say I met more talented people at the company than anywhere else I have been, which is staggering considering the level of pay discrepancy in the following jobs I took.

My approach has always has been and always will be the Steve Jobs way.

Of course, the perfect candidate works smart and hard. But if I had a choice of the two I would choose smart all the time and try to nurture a work ethic and commitment to the cause. The genius or innovation in people you can not teach. I also don’t think you can particularly teach a work ethic, but with the right personal motivational incentives, you can coax them into it.

If you are looking for a job and have the working smart factor – I would love to hear from you.

P.S bonus if you are hard-working too!!!

This applies to everything we do at Samuel Dawson Property. Technology is in all we do. We are fully digital and paperless. Employees need to be available 24/7 to meet client demands, this was more prevalent with Off Plan Dubai as we would be dealing with clients in different time zones, so it is not unusual to be getting out of bed for a zoom meeting with a client in LA at 1AM. But in our local shops, we will have opening hours but our clients can contact us any time digitally. On the same hand if an employee needs to go and do the school run, has an appointment, or simply fancies the day off to re-charge this is fine too. Flexibility is key.

We are fluid, always adapting, changing, and seeing how we can do better.

Innovative.

Working Smart.

Samuel Dawson

Managing Director
Samuel Dawson Property

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