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It's Not Your Company

I refer to Theirs as They, you refer to theirs as my.

I was talking to someone who was fired from a company (or, to use the PC term, was made redundant).

But this individual still talked about the company like they were part of it.

"Well, when I worked there, we found that our customers would talk to us if we... "

It made me want to grab this person and go:

Hey? Hello? Are you paying attention to the world around you?

It's not your company.

Is your name on the building? Then it's not your company.

Didn't they fire you?

Isn't that why you don't work there anymore?

Then it's not your company.

Is your name on the bottom right side of the check you cash at the bank on payday, or is it just typed on the "Pay To The Order of..." line?

If your name is just on the check on the upper left part, then hello... If you don't sign the checks on the front side of the check, then it's not your company.

It's not your company.

So, it's nice for you to say "at my company, we..."

And it's even probably good for you to have that kind of buy-in to someone else's vision and dreams. Companies don't grow big without the buy-in of lots of people into a common vision.
But in the back of your mind, you must realize that it's not your company, and there is no we.

As much as you would like to think they care about you (and as much as they might actually care about you), it's not your business.

It's okay if you take ownership of what you do inside of that company, so long as you realize that it's not yours, and realize that what you do there can be taken from you at any time.

Sorry to say, but that's the truth.

If you can live the duality (buying into the vision while knowing that someone else controls the endgame), then your verbiage is probably fine.

Otherwise, you might want to start referring to "we" as "they" and "our" as "their".

Posted on October 30, 2010 5:21 AM
Full Web Address: http://strive4impact.com/its-not-your-company.html
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