Q: W.I.F.F.M.? (What's In It For Me?) A: You Get What You Deserve ©

Kyam McMorris is one of my closest friends, and also one of my closest brothers within Groove Phi Groove Social Fellowship Inc®. In our college days we called each other “wingmen,” which was taken from the movie TOP GUN when Tom Cruise’s character was told, “You never leave your wingman.” Up until he left New Jersey, Kyam and I were practically inseparable. We stood by one another at each other's weddings and I even stood by him during his divorce. Few people know what the words friendship and loyalty mean. Kyam is one of those people who do Kyam also has an extremely disciplined work ethic. When people tell me that I work too hard, I always have a silent inside laugh because Kyam does little else but work.

Back in 1996, I had a job as a Program Director for one of a small chain of karate schools called “Master Glazier Karate (MGK).” “MGK” was later bought out by an even larger chain, “Tiger Schulmann’s Karate (TSK).” Prior to, and for a short time after TSK’s takeover, my job as Program Director was to enroll students and oversee the operation of the school. I got Kyam a job as an Office Manager, which under the surface of the title was nothing more than a receptionist and housekeeper. However, I wanted more for Kyam, and since he wanted more for himself, I began training him on how to do my job so that he could have a chance to move up in the organization.

This job required about twelve hours a day Monday through Friday and about eight hours on Saturday (including travel time), but since we were actually enjoying our jobs and getting free karate lessons, the hours were not really taxing on us.

Things were really going great and Kyam was learning so quickly that he was allowed to sit in on the weekly Program Director meetings with the CEO, “Shihan” Mark Glazier (“Shihan” is the title bestowed upon one who has achieved the rank of “master”). Additionally, Glazier was the first real millionaire I had ever met.

Unfortunately, approximately six months into working for MGK, certain business decisions lead to Glazier selling his schools to TSK. Now, the way TSK operates, everyone who works for the TSK organization is a student of the TSK organization – even the instructors.

There were quite a few people who lost their jobs in this little transition; however, Kyam, myself, and a couple of other Program Directors were kept on by way of Shihan Glazier’s personal recommendation. Kyam was the only non-Program Director kept on; however, over the course of about three months we both wound up quitting. We felt no loyalty to TSK, and they looked down on us like they were somehow better than us as people because their organization bought out ours.

Despite our personal individual reasons for leaving TSK, we both shared that point of view. Me ... I went back into doing security work in my hopes of it somehow leading towards my career in Law Enforcement. Kyam got a job managing a Quick Chek store. Since I had gone back to working retail, I figured I was working crazy hours, but being that Quick Chek stores are open 24 hours a day, Kyam was working really crazy hours! However, he was also looking for something better and eventually found it.

Kyam got himself a job as an Admissions Representative for a business school. The job came easy to him because it was basically what I had been training him to do as a Program Director for MGK. Going into his new position, he maintained that six day a week work ethic, and after his divorce, often times put in seven days a week.

After about three or four years of consistently diligent work he got promoted from Admissions Representative to Assistant Director of Admissions. He became the “go-to” guy because of all of the time he had put in and all of the knowledge he acquired. He began getting bonuses every year and even once got an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii, where he rubbed elbows with a lot of top-level executives within the school’s corporate structure.

About a year after that trip to Hawaii, he was offered a promotion from Assistant Director of Admissions to full Director of Admissions. The only catch was that the job was at the organization’s school in Landover, Maryland. Within a couple of months, I lost my wingman. However, I could not have been more proud of my friend, my brother! As I write these lines, he’s been out there just around 5 years.  About two months after he got settled, he called me up one Sunday afternoon and sounded like someone had just died. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he was considering moving back to New Jersey.

When I asked him what was the cause for this decision after all he had accomplished, he told me that the team he was promoted to lead “was just too laid back.” As a matter of fact the entire community where he lived was very much laid back – at least in comparison to how we hustle in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut – tri-state area.

During our conversation, he introduced me to a phrase/acronym I had never heard of before. He said, “These (expletive)’s got a bad case of W.I.I.F.M.” (pronounced “wiff-em”). When I asked him what that meant he translated the acronym as “What’s in it for me?” He told me that his team cared more about how they were going to be rewarded for achieving their admission goals, as opposed to just achieving those goals because it was their job to do so. Apparently, their paycheck wasn’t good enough. They wanted incentives and rewards up front in order for them to produce, and because he never worked that way; because that was never a part of his work ethic; it was really stressing him out.

The first thing I suggested to him was to better understand why he was promoted and brought there in the first place. I said to him, “You were not promoted so that you could go to Maryland and continue to work 27 hours a day/8 days a week. Those executives put you there so that you could instill that same work ethic in your team and thus multiply the productivity you created that initially caught their attention.” I reminded him that as a leader, even though it’s his responsibility to lead by example, his team must follow that example. As for that whole “W.I.I.F.M.” thing, I suggested that he give his team a choice ... “a paycheck or a pink-slip.”

You see, that’s the problem with a great many members of society today. “What’s in it for me?” ... “What do I get out of it?” Bonuses are not to be considered as an automatic compensation. Bonuses are rewards for exceeding your goals. The problem these days is people want to be acknowledged and or rewarded just for doing what’s expected of them, and this is a very unproductive way of thinking.

Should a child be rewarded for getting one “A” on one test, or for getting straight “A’s for the entire marking period? In my opinion, perhaps he or she has earned a night or two off from doing dishes or taking out the garbage, but nothing too fantastic or extravagant. Why? A child is supposed to get good grades in school. After all, what’s more important, that children earn a letter grade or actually learn something from having put in the work required of them by studying?

Now, if that same child were to maintain a stellar grade point average over the course of the entire school year, I would then say that child earned something special – say the honor of choosing where the family goes for a summer vacation, just for an example.

Kyam has gone to work every day and done what was required of him ... and then some. He put in the time necessary ... and then some – to achieve his assigned goals. As a result, his rewards came in the form of accolades, all-expense paid trips, and a promotion. He got what he deserved. A couple weeks after he and I had that conversation, he informed me that a couple of people on his team wound up getting that pink-slip instead of their paychecks!

I think by now you are fully aware that you are on a journey, however, if you are truly on a journey of success, then you have to develop a work ethic similar to (but not necessarily as extreme as) Kyam’s work ethic. Do your job. Do what is required of you first and foremost.

However, if you want to have more, or in some way be specially rewarded, then you are going to have to do more than what is required of you! Rewards and bonuses are things that you earn – not things you are entitled to. The harder and smarter he worked, Kyam never got more than he deserved; he always got more of what he deserved.

One thing is constant for the majority of the American workforce: people who get paid just enough to keep them from quitting work just hard enough to keep from getting fired. Those who are committed to succeeding work harder than the average person. They don’t necessarily need to see the light at the end of the tunnel (the bonus or the raise) – they just know and or have faith that it’s there. They know and or have faith that the harder they plug away; the further they go beyond what’s expected of them, not only do they get closer to that light at the end of the tunnel ... that light starts coming towards them!

The universe always maintains its balance and keeps its own time, so one thing is always certain; what I call a “universal constant,” and that is you will always get what you deserve. Those who live their lives by that “W.I.I.F.M.” principle will be the ones not likely to like what they get.

As fate would have it, in the summer of 2012, his school was closed and while those other people that worked for him were left in the wind, he wound up getting scooped up by another school.

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