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| - There is a direct relationship between the growth of a company and the degree to which it implements values in its work. Hard work is the foundation of business. A small, local business, such as a machine shop or retail store managed and operated by the owner, can exist and grow primarily on the basis of physical energy and effort, i.e. hard work. But as soon as a business begins to expand beyond these narrow limits, physical energy and effort are not enough. In order to increase in size, the company finds it has to increase in quality too. It has to provide a product or service that is good enough to attract more customers. It has to be faster in producing goods or serving customers than its local competitors. The company must be able to attract and keep good employees, which means making
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| abstract
| - There is a direct relationship between the growth of a company and the degree to which it implements values in its work. Hard work is the foundation of business. A small, local business, such as a machine shop or retail store managed and operated by the owner, can exist and grow primarily on the basis of physical energy and effort, i.e. hard work. But as soon as a business begins to expand beyond these narrow limits, physical energy and effort are not enough. In order to increase in size, the company finds it has to increase in quality too. It has to provide a product or service that is good enough to attract more customers. It has to be faster in producing goods or serving customers than its local competitors. The company must be able to attract and keep good employees, which means making their jobs more pleasant and satisfying and creating opportunities for their growth. As the company becomes larger and more complex, work has to be better coordinated to avoid confusion and duplication of effort. People must learn to work together smoothly as a team. The growth of a company beyond the minimum size necessitates the development of corporate values like quality, service, punctuality, employee satisfaction, coordination and teamwork. In other words, values propel growth. This is also true in the case of hospitals. Richard Kimball, Jr. pointed out that patient-centered approach and efficient system contribute to employee satisfaction and retention. Take any company and add or increase its values and watch it grow. That is what happened to Robert Ross's company, Ross Incineration Services, fifty years after he founded it, when his children bought the business and added a value to it. The elder Mr. Ross is a physically big and powerful man, with lots of energy, a self-made man like a great many other entrepreneurs, capable of hard work and untiring effort. When he built his first waste incinerator at Grafton, Ohio back in the late 1950s, there was very little public awareness or concern in the country about the dangers or consequences of environmental pollution. So there was relatively little demand for the services he offered. It took nearly thirty years for the company to reach $1 million in revenues. When environmental issues started to emerge as an important national issue in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Ross was happy for the business it generated for his company. But when the Federal Government began strictly regulating the hazard waste industry, Ross felt stifled by the mass of new legislation and resented the burden of cumbersome, bureaucratic procedures, which the new laws imposed. By this time, his son, Gary Ross, and daughter, Maureen Cromling, had become very active in the business. Unlike their father, they were able to accept these changes and could fully appreciate the importance of the new regulations and recognize in them a great opportunity for the company. This prompted them to make two very crucial decisions. First, they bought the company from their father. Second, they made environmental compliance the number one value and priority in the company. At a time when many generators and disposers of hazardous waste were using all their ingenuity to find ways around the regulations or to minimize their impact, they decided to implement every new regulation to the fullest extent possible and even go beyond the dictates of the law where public safety would justify it. In doing so, they raised necessity to the level of an ideal. This effort was extremely laborious and expensive. It involved major investments to upgrade their physical plant. It also involved a complete revision of the systems for handling waste, training employees, tracking shipments, documentation and record-keeping. At first neither their employees nor their customers could understand the need for these radical changes. Both complained of excessive documentation. But as more and more cases came to light of bad or irresponsible waste management by generators and disposers around the country, Congress pushed through more stringent regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency demanded stricter enforcement by industry. Generators were held responsible for any violations of the law by those who disposed of their waste materials. Ross was well-prepared for these changes. Large chemical companies felt confident that Ross was a safe and reliable company that would comply with all regulations in disposing of their wastes. Ross's incineration facility was one of the first in the U.S. to be approved under the Environmental Protection Agency's rigorous licensing procedures. Ross is the only facility in the state that is not monitored by a full-time, on-site state official. During the first five years after they purchased the company from their father, revenues rose eight-fold. By focusing on implementation of a psychological value, Ross was able to elevate the level of its work and the level of service to its customers. It no longer provides merely a physical mechanism for disposal of waste. It also provides legal and psychological security to its customers that their waste is in safe hands. The value raised both the quantity of energy (volume of work) and the quality of energy (from physical to mental) in the company. Adherence to a value enabled Ross to prosper in the new regulatory environment.
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