I read a short book - Reviving Work Ethic - A Leaders Guide to Ending Entitlement and Restoring Pride in the Emerging Workforce by Eric Chester.

Sometimes I like short books as they suit my short attention span.

I love the topic. One of my strengths and one of the things that I attribute my business success to is my high work ethic. I have often wondered why I am so driven. Interestingly, the people I seemed to attract in business also had tremendous work ethic. EMJ and SYNNEX were high work ethic companies.

For me, work ethic is about hours and time but equally importantly about focus and productivity with that time.

I was correctly "called out" for a previous post that implied that young people feel entitled and are not willing to do the work to get the reward. There is a perhaps a part of us that wants to think "when we were young, we worked all the time and walked uphill both ways to school - not like the young kids today".

I do know that work ethic is partly tied to energy. And as people age, their energy decreases. I wrote a guest post on "Ways to keep your work ethic".

I know my work ethic is less now than when I was in my 20s. I am wondering if I need to change my list of strengths and remove that one (by choice). I ask myself if I really want to be the hardest working. It has been a competitive advantage but...

Reviving work ethic talks about 4 quadrants of workers - the Idle, the Lucky, the Cheating and the Valued. (Sad that 3 of the 4 quadrants seem negative).

Chester then writes about how to move employees to the Valued quadrant by techniques like find your style, develop trust, value tact and timing, tell stories and cast a vision.

It is a good and thought provoking book.