As I write this, I’m sitting on my couch at the house trying to watch a rerun of The Office and trying to relax a bit….but my attempt at a quiet relaxing time on the couch is interrupted by the sound of a mower outside.  Thursday is when our lawn service comes to tend to the yard…and they’ve picked this particular time to come to the house.

There’s some extremely loud sounds out there. A Mower.  An Edger. A Blower.

Why can’t these guys hush it….I’m trying to relax dangit. All I really wanna do is spend some time with some  relative piece and quiet.

I get pretty upset….why can’t these guys do this earlier in the day?  Why choose now?  As I try to filter out all the noise I consider sending a fairly scathing email to the owner of the lawn company.

Then…I realize how wrong this is.

Here I am….sitting on my couch in a nice air conditioned home.  While I sit, there’s some underpaid, extremely under-appreciated guys outside mowing my yard for me….while I sit on my butt being angry at a little interruption and noise.

Geez…talk about taking things for granted.

I pay a relatively small fee to have these guys do this work for me….their effort saves me from having to do the work – and I’m extremely thankful for that during the 100 degree weather during the Texas summers.

And of course….I immediately started thinking about all those other people that I’ve taken for granted. Of course…there are plenty of people that I’m sure I’ve taken for granted in my life…parents, family, friends, colleagues- the list goes on and on.

We all take people for granted, don’t we? I think its part of being a human…we all forget how important others are and how grateful we should be for those people.

Now…before I go off the deep end into a land of mushy-ness, let me take a step back into the world of business.

Who do you take for granted in your organization?

Is it the janitor?  The security guard and/or team?

What about your sales team or your customer service organization?

What about your IT staff / team? Do you take them for granted?

Would your organization run without them?  Would you be able to ‘keep the lights on’ without your IT operations team?  Would you be able to sell the next ‘widget’ without the web/server team?

I know many organizations that have taken their IT group for granted. Many in the organization talk about the IT staff as though they are somehow less important than other folks. Many make fun of the IT professionals…and normally, the IT staff gives just as good as they get.

Often times, those same IT pro’s take many other teams/groups for granted as well. They look at requests for new technology or services with disdain because ‘those’ people don’t understand technology.   Stop thinking about ‘those’ people…you all work for the same company, right?

Whether at home or at work, let’s stop taking people for granted.

Start looking at your colleagues as the people they are rather than the position they hold…you may be amazed at how much less you take their work for granted.