When I was about
14 years old, I asked
my paternal grandfather what it took to be good
at his profession, law. At the
time, I thought I might want to
be a lawyer and who better to
ask than my grandfather, who
owned his own firm.
“Dusty,” he said, “work hard
and treat people the way you
want to be treated. Be honest
with everyone you deal with
and, more important, be fair. If
you do that, you’ll do well.”
My grandfather died 19 years
ago, when I was 20 years old,
so he never saw me grasp the
meaning of his words when I
became an adult. And I never
became a lawyer, choosing
instead a career in my first
love, journalism. But the true power of my grandfather’s advice
comes back to me
every once in
awhile when I run
into someone who
remembers him.
Unsolicited, their
recollection of
Austin is exactly the
same: “Your grandfather was one of the most
honest men I ever met. Even
when he was on the other
side, he was always fair.”
As we put this annual
human resources issue of
Smart Business to bed, my
grandfather’s tenets of honesty,
fairness and treating people well
kept popping into my head.
The results of our eighth
annual ERC/SBN Workplace Practices Survey
are eye-opening but
not necessarily surprising — the top
issue facing CEOs
in Northeast Ohio is
the battle for talent.
It’s a battle won
by building work-places where
employees don’t
just clock in and out. They
take a true interest in the
organizations they work for
because the people who
employ them take a genuine
interest in them.
That is the theme of
Assistant Editor Kristy
O’Hara’s cover story on
Olympic Steel CEO Michael
Siegal. Siegal runs an organization that has been recognized numerous times as one of the
region’s top places to work. By
focusing on employees, Siegal
has grown Olympic Steel to
more than $1 billion in sales
and record profits. “At the end
of the day,” Siegal says, “all
that matters is people.”
Our survey’s results, as my
grandfather would attest to,
don’t reveal anything magical
about how to run your work-place and win the talent battle.
It’s all just plain common
sense. Organizations are at
their best when they treat their
people well. Believe it or not,
it’s really as simple as that. <<
Contact Editor Dustin Klein at
[email protected]
