“Assets make things possible. People make things happen.” John C. Maxwell
Labor Day is a holiday that was established in the late 1800’s to celebrate the “contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” (Department of Labor.gov). As I take a few minutes to reflect at the end of this Labor Day I am reminded of all the different faces of laborers and all the things we do to make things happen.
Laborers come in all shapes and sizes. They all have a different story of why they are doing the job they are doing. They all have different needs, hopes and dreams. But they all have something to contribute to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our world.
In the late 1870’s, when Labor Day was only a public holiday in a handful of states, barbed wire had just been invented. Marvin Stone just patented the winding process to manufacture the first paper drinking straws and Nicola Tesla invented the AC motor. It’s interesting that all these years later paper drinking straws and Tesla’s are making a comeback. But for everything old that is new again we have gained new strides in ways too numerous to count. Laborer’s have manufactured automobiles of all shapes, colors and sizes, put people in airplanes and taken them all around the world, created and maned a space station, developed methods of communicating instantly around the globe, built buildings over 2,700 feet tall and made a computer small enough to fit in a persons hand. Not to mention the advancements in medicine, where vaccinations have almost completely wiped out diseases that were a death sentence and prosthetic limbs give people a whole new lease on life.
As you think about the people in your life that make things happen, that contribute to the strength and prosperity of your organization or community think about the assets you have to invest in them. What is it that you can make possible for people who make things happen?
