The Newkirk Axiom
Success is Spelled “TEAM”. Never Forget It.
How many people do you personally know who deliberately want to do a bad job? How many people do you know who want to do a poorer job today than yesterday? How many people do you know who actually plan to enjoy a life of deep mediocrity? How many people are you close to who actually plan to do the minimum, slide by, expend little effort, never learn anything new, never correct their mistakes, or objectively desire to use the lowest common denominator as their standard for life? How many people do you know who actually want to be more miserable today than they were yesterday?
It probably will not shock you to say that everyone answers these questions the same way: They do not know anyone like this, nor would they ever have a close association with anyone like this. The answer is 100 percent, no one knows anyone like this. Do people like this really exist? Think about it. There are people all around us that go into the office every day and just slide by. They do no not want to change anything; they just want to get the day over with so that they can go home and do exactly what they did they day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on.
A number of these people go out of their ways to keep from learning anything new. These people resist any kind of emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and even physical growth. They become resentful whenever they have to make any kind of effort that may require them to think more or differently about something than they did yesterday. You name it, any subject at all from astronomy to zoology, and they do not want to think about it. Just let them alone to do their jobs just as they did the day before, just as they already know them. They are perfect as they are. They do not deviate from their routine, and never thank anyone for forcing them to improve procedures or question their approach to doing their jobs in the workplace. Interestingly many of these kinds of people fill the management ranks of the world's largest organization. You can find them at General Motors, no kidding. You can find them in every government organization in existence, from California to China, from India to the Philippines, from Washington, D.C. to the Vatican.
If you stop to think about it, you do know people like this and you are indeed close to people like this. Your challenge in life is to see to it that you do not become one of these kinds of people. It will not happen to you over night through some glorious anti-life plan. Rather you will simply fall into this state of life through avoidance of your surroundings, resistance to your emotional alarms, passive hope that life will remain forever the same even if it is painful, or through habitual indifference to your long term well-being. What a mess!
You see, when you think about the questions in this light, you have to be more honest about your situation. You may not want to admit that you are close to people mentioned in the first paragraph. After all it is beneath you, right? However, when you think about the situation at work, you get a more emotionally charged view about the questions in the opening paragraph. Here you have to be more honest about it with yourself. Of course everyone knows a few jerks at work who should have been fired ages ago. They just never realize that these jerks may be them. And even great employees get fired eventually in most places, no matter what.
So let us review these questions again and be more honest with the answers. Now we have to face reality with a more determined mind-set. A good way out of this mess is by adopting the Newkirk Axiom as a guide. If you wisely and rigorously follow this Axiom, you indeed will never become one of these kinds of people. Now is a great time to dig yourself out of the rut you may have dug for yourself. Whether in the workplace or on the home-front, you can indeed make something better every day, and making things only a little better counts for something big in the long run.
The Newkirk Axiom
It is the responsibility of every corporate director, executive, manager, and employee to do a better job every day to make the enterprise more successful every day. Going in every morning and committing oneself to doing better than the previous day requires an extraordinary way of thinking informed by a specific kind of powerful knowledge. The only way anyone is ever going be able to meet such a commitment is by knowing more each day about the stuff that really matters. The only way anyone is going to know more about the stuff that really matters is if somebody shares this knowledge. Learning it all by oneself has never happened, and never will. If anyone could do this, it would take too long. In success, time still matters.
