I was in the Army for four years. My last two years in the Army were spent as a Non-commissioned officer. I was Corporal and an assistant squad leader for a 12-man engineer squad. As such I wore green tabs on my epaulets which meant I was in a leadership position. While I served, and I imagine this is true today as well, there was an unwritten rule—if you were an officer or NCO you made sure your troops were cared for before you were.
This rule was most evident in the chow line when in the field. On those rare occasions when you got a hot meal in the field, officers and NCOs made sure everyone else ate first, then the NCOs, then the officers. There were many times when I missed out on a hot meal because they ran out of food and I had to settle for a Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE, aka, three lies in one) or in a couple of cases scrounge around for what I could find, normally a left over "John Wayne Bar" or go hungry. Of course if my troops were taken care of that was all that mattered, my needs were secondary to theirs.
I feel that that was an important lesson that I learned in my life—that those who serve under you should be cared for first. Of course, in the corporate world that does not happen:
78 million other U.S. Baby Boomers have had the misfortune of approaching retirement age at a time when stock market crashes diminished their 401k nest eggs, companies began eliminating defined benefit pensions in record numbers and previously unimagined technical advances all but eliminated entire job descriptions from travel agent to telephone operator. At the same time, companies began moving other jobs overseas, to be filled by people willing to work for far less and still able to connect to the U.S. market in real time.
Corporate profits are soaring and CEOs, bankers, and other corporate officers are raking in bonuses that are the equivalent of the GDP of some third world nations. Yet the people who work hard every day so corporations can earn these huge profits don’t get a pension, don’t get profit sharing and if they see a bonus it is likely in four figures instead of the seven figures that CEOs get for running a company into the ground. Instead the workers get a 401k that they cannot afford to put money into.
That unwritten rule I learned some 25 years ago in the Army was a good rule. It is a rule that many corporate leaders would do well to learn. Care for your employees first. Then you can take care of yourself.