The, Rules of Work, 4th Edition

RULE 75

Talk of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’

I once worked for a boss who asked who we worked for. We said:

• ourselves
• our families
• our bank managers
• our self-esteem
• our boss
• the management
• the company board of directors
• the customers
• the inland revenue
• the government.

He said a polite ‘No’ to all of these. He explained we worked for the shareholders. That’s it. That’s who you work for. Now go and buy some of your company’s shares. Now you work for yourself. Now you can start to say ‘we’ and ‘us’ instead of ‘me’ and ‘I’ and that sort of thing.

You are now a shareholder so when you have to talk about company procedure you can think how it will affect us, the shareholders – and not them, the staff (of whom you used to be one, not so very long ago).