Quality of life is often dismissed by “old hand” site location consultants, probably because they have be deluged over the years with marketing brochures containing images of Mommy and little Susie flying a kite in a local park, while Rover, the faithful dog, playfully tries to liberate the kite from little Susie’s tiny hands.
The first couple of times you see a city try to market its business climate with such images, it kind of gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. By the thousandth time, however, all you can think of is finding the nearest motion sickness bag. After all, what the heck does the fact that Mommy, Susie and Rover are happy have to do with your company’s bottom line?
If you think the answer is nothing, you’re wrong.
| A real leader cares what his or her people think, that they are happy in their jobs, that they feel pride in themselves and satisfaction in knowing that, whatever their particular job may be, that they are important and that they are making a difference. |
Remember, the image is really just a metaphor for happiness, for contentedness and, as the old saying about Army life goes, “If mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy.” And if you don’t believe that how your employees — or future employees — feel about themselves and the quality of their everyday lives is important to your company, then I would question your judgment in other, more direct, business decisions.
Now, I’m not talking about coddling people, or about overlooking laziness or inattention to detail on the job. I’m also not talking about lowering your company’s high standards in an effort to make people happy. And I’m definitely not talking about group hugs while singing “Kumbaya.”
What I am talking about is leadership. A real leader cares what his or her people think, that they are happy in their jobs, that they feel pride in themselves and satisfaction in knowing that, whatever their particular job may be, that they are important and that they are making a difference.
Leaders care about those things. Managers may, or may not. Leaders are more visionary. Managers tend to be more shortsighted and focus mainly on themselves and their own little piece of the world. At some point while moving up the career ladder, effective leaders understand this distinction and successfully make the transition. Others don’t.
That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. It does mean that their value to your company lessens the higher up the food chain they progress. At some point, management and mediocrity start to have more in common than just the fact that they both begin with the letter m.
Site selection is a leadership responsibility, not a numbers-cruncher responsibility. Sure, you need smart people to analyze all the options, from taxes to real estate to logistics to work force cost, quality and availability. You need someone who can reduce all of these variables to numbers in order to be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each location, and you clearly need someone who is able to present you with a coherent picture of the financial implications of each of your various location options.
The final decision, however, cannot be an accounting decision. It requires a leader who is smart enough to understand the meaning of the numbers, and who has the wisdom to understand their significance to the future of the company a decade or two down the road. In other words, a leader with a soul as well as a brain.
A person who believes that the quality of life of your current and future employees is of no consequence to the future success of your company is definitely not that person.
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