There is a lesson I learned as a child that I continue to re-learn throughout my life (yes, I'm slow).  When I was growing up, I mowed lawns to make money.  One of the lawns I mowed was very large, it had a lot of trees and I had to mow the entire lawn with a push mower.  Thankfully, the owners only had me mow the back yard, they mowed their small front yard on their own.  One day I mowed the back yard and the mower wouldn't turn off when I finished.  I decided I would just keep pushing until the mower ran out of gas and thought the owners would be thrilled to come home and have their front yard mowed too.  So I mowed the front lawn as fast as I could, hoping with every step that the mower would run out of gas, not considering if I was doing a quality job or not, just thinking it was nice of me to do something extra.  Eventually the mower did run out of gas, I cleaned up and went home.

The next day my mom told me we needed to go visit the owners of this lawn, that they wanted to talk to me.  I was sure they were going to praise me for the extra work I had done!  When we got there I found out it was the opposite.  They took my mom and I out and showed us how poor the front lawn looked.  They explained that I only did the back yard because they liked to have the front lawn grow longer and they used a mulching mower so it would look nicer.  I had used the wrong tool and worked too fast, and it showed.

The next time you feel like you are going above and beyond helping someone, consider whether or not you are crossing the boundary to the front yard.  Understand your area of expertise and focus on being the best, that's where you have the right tools, skills and knowledge and where others expect you to put forth your best effort.  If someone asks you for help with something that isn't within your boundary, let them know that they need to talk to the person in charge of the front yard.  They will be much more satisfied with the solution if they get it from the right person and in the end you both will be happy with the outcome.  We are all best suited to use our strengths, not our weaknesses!

Employee job satisfaction is very important to Jelecos along with a good work/life balance.  Our company motto is "Faith, Self, Family, Career" in that order.  In this difficult time of cost cutting, it is important to help employees and their families handle stress.   In the Sunday print edition of The Omaha World Herald  Jelecos was featured in an article about our focus in this area. 

Even though Jelecos has clients spread across the United States, we’ve always been heavily involved in the Omaha business community. We decided to make a statement about our commitment to Omaha by including the Chamber’s “Say Yes, Buy O!” logo in one of our new advertising pieces. The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce recently featured us in an article about this effort.

 You can read the entire article on the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce Web site!