Everybody Matters Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Everybody Matters identifies the best way to become successful in business, help your team members trust you, and enable people to reach their full potential by showing the power of taking better care of your employees as if they were family.

Read in: 4 minutes

Favorite quote from the author:

A few years ago I worked for a company that I thought cared about its employees. But over time, I kept hearing stories from coworkers and having my own experiences that taught me otherwise. 

They pretended to care about us, but they only cared about money. One of the executives even said that he was a greedy man in response to one of my coworker’s concerns in a meeting. It was a terrible culture, nobody knew where it was going, and the turnover rate was astronomical. 

I don’t have to deal with all of that anymore, thankfully. But I did learn a lot about how not to run a business from them. That’s why I was so excited when I read Bob Chapman’s Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family because it only reinforced these important lessons for me.

In it, you too will learn that the true secret to business success is putting your employees, and their trust and happiness, above your profits.

Here are 3 of the greatest tips for success I got out of this one:

1. You have to truly care about your employee’s needs if you want your business to thrive.
2. If you want your team members to be happy, loyal, and productive, trust them with the freedom to make their own decisions.
3. Create a cultural vision to inspire your people with hope for where you’re heading in the future.

Grab a notepad and let’s find out why Everybody Matters in your company!

Lesson 1: To thrive in business, focus on caring about your employees.

That old company I used to work for was profitable, at least most of the time. It did care about the vital factors of profits and expenditures. But it missed out on an opportunity to become so much more, if only it’s leaders would have actually cared about any of us.

The next question to ask yourself then is what does it take to create a caring environment at the office? 

First, you need to change your understanding of leadership. Go beyond the traditional and think of it more as a stewardship. You must do all you can to make sure that your employees know that you have a genuine concern for their well-being.

That doesn’t just mean asking about their productivity. When you do that, you’re just showing that your only concern is for the company and not for their lives. Instead, you need to talk with them, get to know them, and express how much they mean to you and to the company.

Your efforts to express gratitude for them will help them feel secure and fulfilled, but also make them healthier. In one poll, information from workers in America identified that people that said they loved their job spent 62% less on healthcare!

So make sure to ask at least whether or not they feel secure at work. And also check on how fulfilled they feel in their job. As you think about it yourself, it might open your eyes to just how much they rely on you for their own happiness.

Lesson 2: Let your people make their own decisions if you want them to be happy at work, loyal, and productive.

Another common occurrence at my old job was to hear about executive decisions that were made without any employee input. The mid-level managers weren’t even paid more for their leadership tasks! And the executives wouldn’t budge on this and many other choices they made.

I didn’t feel very free at work, and I knew that my employer didn’t trust me, which hurt. 

I understand now how hard it can be to let your employees make decisions on their own. But it doesn’t have to be so intimidating if you create an atmosphere of responsible freedom. This method involves deliberately crafting the workplace to help your people reach their full potential. 

One company, for example, uses what they refer to as the “just enough” strategy. In it, they clearly define what it means to win, and then let team members take the reigns to make decisions to get there.

If you run a business that focuses on customer’s experience, you might define winning as getting a high score on a customer satisfaction survey. Then, you’d give your employees free rein to do what they feel is best to make it happen. 

When they can use their strengths and ideas, people feel empowered and are more productive. And most of all, it helps them feel that you trust them.

Lesson 3: You need to get a clear vision of your culture and future if you want to inspire your team members.

If you’ve ever worked for a company that didn’t know where it wanted to go, you know how hard it can be to stay motivated. And if that company happens to be yours, then fix this by visioning. 

This involves thinking about where you want to go and the path that will take you there. To discover these things, ask yourself and your team the right questions. Start with thinking about where you’d like to be in a few years, then consider why you want to go there.

The question of why is a really important one to get just right. It will help you identify a purpose for your company, which will help you see how to better the lives of your employees. Another phrase for this is cultural visioning.

Design Group is one company that tried this out with great success. They first decided to put their existing employees first rather than trying to expand. Their focus turned toward improving the work environment.

After figuring this out, however, it was time to look to the future. Seeing that they were losing momentum, they adopted the vision of doubling in size within five years. Their efforts and focus on people paid off, and they accomplished this goal in just three years!

Everybody Matters Review

As one who has worked for a company with a highly dysfunctional management system, this book was a huge relief. Everybody Matters teaches the future of business and I think every leader in every company needs to read it. The advice it contains is as inspiring as it is practical and will transform the work life of everyone who reads it!

Who would I recommend the Everybody Matters summary to?

The 48-year-old who owns a business and wants to know the best way to take care of their employees, the 32-year-old manager whose team members keep quitting and he isn’t sure why, and anyone that wants to improve their workplace culture.

Last Updated on September 19, 2022