I skim, read and study hundreds of books each  year. Here are seven that will improve your leadership in various ways:

Ross Shafer has written a short but provocative book called Grab More Market Share. Read it if that’s what you want to do.

A classic I’ve referenced before and still in print is Fred Smith’s You and Your Network. Get it, read it and share it with your kids when they enter the world of work. It is packed with wisdom (I’ve given away dozens of copies).

Think work ethic is dead? And what can you do about it? Pre-order Reviving Work Ethic by Eric Chester. (I’ve read an advance copy.)

Do you get tired of boring meetings? Or are you guilty of holding boring meetings? Read Jon Petz’s book Boring Meetings Suck. It provides lots of ideas for  making your meetings better.

Bob Burg and David Mann have written It’s Not About You. This leadership fable reinforces key leadership principles I believe in.

The Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World was just released by Harvey Mackay and if you sell, or lead sales professionals, you’ll enjoy this story-driven book of advice.

And my last “favorite” is from Joe Calloway, Work Like You’re Showing Off. This is a fun read that will most likely reinvigorate you.

Eric Chester is a long time friend and valued colleague whose work I greatly respect. He’s spent years looking at generational difference in the workplace and how to manage and lead younger employees. His focus has shifted significantly and he is focusing on what many would consider the loss of traditional work ethic and how to get it back. Eric has written a terrific new book called Reviving Work Ethic. The trailer for the book is itself a crash course in understanding what has happened to work ethic in the United States. The following guest blog will challenge your thinking about how we think about work in contemporary culture:

Ask a friend or colleague what’s the first thing that pops into their head when they hear “Labor Day” and they’ll say “the last day of summer,” “a street parade” or, most likely, “a day off.”

Few Americans actually understand the historical significance of the first Monday in September, the national holiday that dates back to the late 1800′s. The U.S. Dept. of Labor website notes, “Labor Day is a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

Why celebrate labor when it’s not supposed to be enjoyed? My wife’s most challenging hours were those she spent in labor. When something is extremely difficult, it’s said to be labor-intensive. Dangerous criminals get sentenced to hard labor.

There’s no way around it…labor is work. And as Mark Twain once quipped, “Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”

(Ironic, isn’t it that Twain worked so hard to achieve his success?)

But hold on…isn’t work what got us where we are? Isn’t work what has made America great?

Unfortunately, work/labor is not as celebrated or revered as it once was. When polled and surveyed with the question, “What’s the first thing you would do if you won the lottery?” the overwhelming majority of American’s respond, “Quit my job.” This is further evidenced by the result of workers who have already quit their job but failed to notify their employer. As a consumer, consider the poor quality of the products you buy and the lack of customer service you receive in the marketplace.

Made in America used to mean the best you could get, but now wouldn’t you opt for the import? Remember when you used to call customer service and get a friendly voice on the other end? Now it’s an endless series of automated commands, long hold times, and hoping you can be connected to a human being you can understand.

Can you imagine how different you would be now had you grown up knowing only this kind of socio-economic climate? You’d have no understanding of what service really looks like and no reverence for words like hard work and labor.

Time Out. Just because you value work, it doesn’t mean those who work with you and for you share your affinity for it. And if the reality of this brings on feelings of anger as you wonder why they act entitled and don’t take pride in their work…chillax, dude.

While the work ethic that was instilled in you through your adolescence has made you successful, it also serves as a lens by which you judge others. That’s not necessarily a good thing and it can work against you.

When you plan ahead for the rush hour and arrive on time and they’re late and blame traffic, or when you go the extra mile to dazzle your customers and observe them sleepwalking through another lifeless transaction, don’t get angry…get busy leading. Realize they haven’t walked in your moccasins and they’re not operating from the same owner’s manual. So they need you to teach them what they should have been taught at home or at school, but weren’t.

Managers post policies and give orders. Leaders develop people. And that comes down to face-to-face coaching.

Sure it’s easier to hire people who already possess the same core work ethic values that you have, but that assumes you’re fishing from a talent pool that is fully stocked with people like you. And as you have surmised, that pool is dangerously low. So the future belongs to leaders who are able to attract and hire the best, but who are equally committed to developing the rest.

Take a sheet of paper and draw a line separating it into three vertical columns. In the far right column, list the specific attributes you demand from the people you work with including terms like reliability, positive attitude, honesty, cheerfulness, etc. In the first column on the left, list the attributes that you feel are common among most of the people you interview or those that comprise your front line. Those adjectives for many employers include the polar opposite of the items in the third column.

The column in the middle is what ultimately determines your value as a leader. That’s where you fill in the specific action steps you are going to take to move the people whose attributes you have described in the left column into people who consistently represent the adjectives in the right column.

No, the challenge of reviving work ethic throughout your organization is not an easy one, There are no silver bullets, simple steps, and presto-chango formulas. And taking on the added responsibility of instilling core work ethic values in your emerging workforce is not one that your boss had when she hired you. It’s not fair!

So now that we have that out of the way, are you ready to get to work?

(My long time friend and colleague Eric Chester, an expert in generational differences in the workplace, has just launched a game changing new teen and young employee development program called The A Game. He’s written an interesting and insightful article I’ve posted below.)

In 1860, a lithographer by the name of Milton Bradley introduced The Checkered Game of Life to the nation. His game took players on a journey from infancy to happy old age, earning points for qualities like perseverance, honesty, ambition, and industry. Players lost points for idleness, intemperance, gambling, and a number of other vices.

Bradley wasn’t focused on making money with his invention; he had a much larger vision. He wanted to exemplify and promote the values his game espoused. And he had the right environment in which to do it: the late 1800’s were a golden age when it came to formulating America’s unparalleled, unabashed, uncompromising work ethic.
 
The old world view of labor as a distasteful practice best avoided by the upper classes had been replaced by the spanking new notion that a man could earn his place in the upper class through determination, discipline, and self-sacrifice. Parents, schools, and churches stressed the value of hard work and taught children how to live a virtuous life. Bradley’s game struck a resounding chord by perpetuating these principles.

It was not a coincidence that one hundred years later in 1960, the U.S. was one of the two international super-powers. A century of applied work ethic had seen the nation grow incredibly, and with this growth Milton Bradley became a highly profitable toy manufacturer. A hundred years after its original release, their signature product The Checkered Game of Life had been updated to reflect the prevailing mindset of the baby boom generation and was rebranded as The Game of Life.
           
The object of this revised edition was no longer to accrue points, but to accrue money. The ultimate destination of Happy Old Age was replaced with the wealthy neighborhood of Tycoon Estates. Losers didn’t gamble themselves to ruin or wind up impoverished as a result of their intemperance; they simply moved onto The Poor Farm.

The great religious and moral charges of the sixties—like the civil rights movement and the fight against communism— centered on the way individuals viewed others rather than the way they viewed themselves. Schools focused time on developing social responsibility leaving parents in charge of developing work ethic and virtues. However, the emergence of the dual-wage earning family meant less face-time for accomplishing this task at home.

The next version released in the 70’s and 80’s brought three significant ‘something-for-nothing’ changes to Life. A new “Share The Wealth” card enabled players to either steal 50% of an opponent’s cash windfall, or force them to pay half of their personal tax burden. Additionally, players were now ‘entitled’ to receive cash presents from other players for ‘life events’ like getting married or having children. “Lucky Day” spaces were also added to the game board offering players lottery-like cash prizes just for landing on them, with the option to keep the cash or risk it on a roll-of-the-dice gamble to multiply it. This was a far cry from the original version in which gambling was punished, rather than encouraged.

Revamped again in 1991, Life began to reward players for community service activities like recycling and helping the homeless, and there have been additional modifications since then. While civic-minded activities are certainly admirable, what is totally absent from the 1991 revision of The Game of Life is any reward for honesty, hard work, perseverance, and ambition. But when teaching and reinforcing these kinds of values and virtues are no longer a priority in our homes and our schools, why should they be tenets in today’s version of Life?

If you want to test this, go survey your friends and co-workers who have kids under the age of 25 and ask them what they want for their children.  Seriously, try this.  You’ll find out that the goals of Baby-Boomer/Gen X parents are to make certain their kids are safe, happy, healthy, and have a high self-esteem; not necessarily in that order.  Work ethic won’t be mentioned. 
           
It is into this environment that Generation Y has been born and nurtured.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years working with organizations of every size and kind and I’ve heard thousands of business owners, executives, and managers lament the resulting carnage that the absence of work ethic/values training has wrought. Employers demand it, and yet schools and parents don’t teach or encourage it.

Even if math and science scores improve dramatically for American students, I believe that we’ll continue to lose our global advantage if we don’t address the fundamental cause of the problem: our unwillingness, inability, or refusal to teach and reinforce the work ethic that made our nation great and our citizens strong.

Six years ago, I decided that I could either eulogize the American work ethic or take steps to restore it. Through the combined efforts of a great team, a stellar advisory board, and 18 leading educators and corporate trainers from throughout the country, what began as an idea that day has evolved into The A Game, a fully integrated work ethic training and certification program for teens and young adults.

Unlike Milton Bradley’s Checkered Game of Life, “The A Game” is not a game. It’s a comprehensive, fully integrated curriculum that can train and reinforce work ethic at home, at school, and in the workplace by promoting the seven fundamental values that are the prerequisite to success in every job and every career, in every field and industry.

Most importantly, the curriculum teaches the emerging generation to bring their very best (their “A Game”) to work, just as they would bring their very best to their recreational pursuits like sports, music, and video games.  Furthermore, The A Game is counterculture in that it destroys prevailing myths like, ‘work is a bad thing’ and  ‘do only the work you’re paid to do and nothing more’.  (Read the quotes to the right to see how legendary figures in business, medicine, politics, education, and entertainment view work.)

After a series of very successful pilot tests, The A Game is being officially launched this week, and you, the loyal readers of WhysNews, are the first to hear about it.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to tour the website and learn more about the A Game.  I’m confident that news of this revolution will spread fast as schools rediscover the importance of teaching students these indisputable values, parents recognize their role in preparing teens for success in the workplace, and employers discover how work ethic training of their front line will decrease turnover and increase performance, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

Join the movement to return work ethic as a centerpiece in the development of our nation’s youth. Hit the website, share it with two or three friends and ask them to do the same. With your help, we can show America’s youth that when they win at work, they truly do win at life.