Several months after writing the “I Cannot Teach You” article I received a letter from a relative of JD. JD’s father had read the article and explained to me that “Many are simply not capable of doing certain things and we need to recognize that.” and that “You can’t make somebody into something they don’t want to be or haven’t got the capacity to accomplish.”.

First let me explain my struggles about these two quotes with you. JD’s father is somebody I have known my entire life, has been a mentor to me, and someone I have held very dear in my heart since the day I was born. I have always taken advice from him, and he has guided me to much of my successes and picked me up through many of my failures. So with all of that in mind I immediatly converted my thinking to his and agreed with these statements. After thinking about them and rolling them around in my head for a while, I mentally came to, slapped myself across the face and said “NO!”.

When we are talking about mental changes and the capacity to change your mind, there are no limits! EVERYONE posseses the ability to change! Somewhere along the way JD’s father had lost the very basic principal given to us as kids and that is that you can be anything you want to be, you can accomplish anything as long as you put your mind to it. If someone has been led to beleive that they do not have the capacity or ability to do something their entire life, it may be a bit hard to change this person’s mindset, but in actuality the capacity and ability is still there with some very large walls trapping it inside like a prison.

I am working on my methods, but I would like for any of you reading this to post a comment on here answering the following question.

How do you break down these prison walls in order to let ideas and the potential to do ANYTHING back out into the world?

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I have found there are two very different types of employees.

Employee X:

The X employee is most typically an hourly employee, but can also be a salary employee, but is always required to put in their 8 hours a day, no matter the work load. This type of employee shows up at 8am, takes a 15 minute break at 10am, takes an hour lunch at 12pm, another 15 minute break at 3pm, and is out the door at 5pm. It does not matter what the work load is or the importance of the work being time-sensitive or not. This is the schedule they have been given by there employer for them to follow so they follow it. Very rarely will you ever see this employee in the office early or still in the office after 5pm. The X employee does exactly what they are told to do being sure not to do more or less than what their job description says they do.

Employee Y:

The Y employee is typically a salary employee and comes and goes as he/she pleases, but is always there when it is necessary. This employee may work 2 hours in a day or may work 12 depending on what needs to be done. This is a very task oriented employee that tracks their progress by what is getting done versus the time they have put in. This employee will come up with new ways to get things done more efficiently in order to allow them to have more free time or more time to get other things done. This employee does everything in their job description and many things in other peoples job descriptions.

Now that these are both laid out, which type of employee are you? Which type of employee are you, not which one you would like to be. Some people have been brought up and trained as an X employee for so long that they wouldn’t have any idea how to be a Y employee and if they were given the freedom of a Y employee it could actually cause them to under perform. Some people completely disagree with the X employee type of employment and if placed in that type of employment, they too will actually under perform because of all the restrictions holding them back.

I believe it is an employers job to determine what type of employees they have working for them and come up with work structure and compensation plan for each individual employee. All too often in companies the employer thinks that every employee should be treated the same and have the same rights, rules, and restrictions as the rest and even base compensation on what another employee makes.

In my opinion, the employer that is not utilizing and compensating its employees properly is missing out on the employees full potential and the full potential of the company as a whole. If I were an employer I would hire a full staff of X employees if I wanted everything to stay the same and just wanted to get the exact same results day in and day out. I would hire a staff of Y employees if I wanted to continually push the envelope, expand my business, and have new ideas day in and day out.

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