create connections

1—-Steve Job’s formula for success included: doing what you love, so make sure your time is being utilized on what you genuinely want to do, make an impact on people’s lives rather than focusing too much attention on maximizing profits, create connections with which ever product you are in the process of establishing, decide not only what to do, but also what not to do, and think into the future. All of these formulas are essential in order to strive for optimum results in achieving success.

Jobs began taking his top 100 people out on retreats each year and believed in narrowing things down into 10 things that should be getting done and then narrowing that down even more to eventually come up with the top 3 things that need to get done. Jobs also had a lot of drive to convince people that they are able to accomplish things that they believed were impossible. Steve Jobs colleagues would call this a Reality Distortion Field. Jobs’ ability to impel his guidance on others is a key factor in what has contributed to his success.

The personality trait that I personally identify with the most would be his ability to distinguish what works and what does not work. Whenever I come up with a plan, I always create a list of pros and cons and utilize this to come up with a decision in deciding whether the idea should be taken into action or if I should continue brainstorming on more useful ideas. I have always been this way because before proceeding with an action plan there are always risks that should be taken into account, but this does not necessarily mean that you should not initiate a plan because a risks, what this does is spend more time on tackling plans that can actually work well. I almost always utilize a work smarter, not harder approach just like Steve Jobs.

2——-SAS has been successful in cultivating and enhancing employee skills through strategic human resource management. SAS tries to understand both current and future employees’ needs in order to increase productivity and inspire imagination, which they do so by providing health club memberships, day care programs, free health care services, golf course, tennis court, etc. SAS prioritizing employees’ well-being and endeavoring to provide effective workplace for them helps ensure job satisfaction leading to reduction of turnover which saves them costs of recruiting and training. Although some companies would be successful in adopting the SAS approach, some companies may not as organizations vary by organizational culture, structure, financial situations, etc that can affect capability of implementing equal strategic human resource planning and management as SAS.

3——SAS has been very successful in cultivating and enhancing employee skills by reducing their turnover, giving their employees amazing fringe benefits, and helping them to fit in with the company the easiest way possible. By giving their employees everything they need to allow them to have a stress free life helps improve the companies overall rate. SAS has the lowest turnover rate of 3% compared to the normal 20%-30%.

SAS’s organization has targeted home-life needs to reduce their employees stress. SAS provides their employees with medical care and offices with a shorter waiting time, preschool for their little ones, a work/life center that helps high school graduates find the perfect college, a country club and more. By providing their employees with all of these benefits, they are creating and improving work ethics. These work ethics are showing much improvement due to a lack of stress and worry over the smallest things such as daycare. SAS does it all. In the end, this allows SAS to have their employees needs met as well as the businesses needs met at the same time.

If other companies were to adopt the “SAS” approach, they’re company turnover, employees attitudes and customer satisfaction would improve drastically. The only problem is that it is extremely difficult to succeed in right away. The company trying to adopt the “SAS” approach would need lots of patience and commitment. But I do think it is possible.