Lifers are the people that join a company and work there for the rest of their lives. They are important because they are the workhorses behind the organization. They are action people, probably not the real “idea” people, but instead the people that take ideas and implement. They know the most about the company because they have been there the longest.

Loafers are the people that join your company, make a huge impact but inevitably leave after a year or two, like a good pair of loafers. They are important because they drive innovation, inject creativity, and most importantly prevent stagnation.

Lifers tend to get set in their ways, they start to resent the very job they came on board to do. Likewise, Loafers tend to come in with wild ideas that may be too progressive and Lifers can serve as a check & balance to that regard. Lifers and Loafers have a tendency to clash, mainly because Loafers are always trying to change the way things are done while Lifers have settled into a process.

They are both vital to the success of a company, which, (if any) are you?

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Time is Money,” so treat time like money. If you’re asked to do something and you don’t have the time or resources, say no. Think of it as the equivalent of someone asking for your money. Certainly, you wouldn’t give them your money if you didn’t want to, so don’t give them your time. The same goes for bad ideas. Don’t go along with bad ideas just because of who proposed them. All too often I have seen upper management suggest terrible ideas that somehow garner overwhelming support from middle management.

“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” -Steve Jobs, Former Apple CEO

I recommend suggesting terrible ideas to your subordinates, see who actually calls you out on your bad ideas and fire the ones that don’t. If they won’t call you out on your terrible ideas, they certainly aren’t the right people to pick out the great ideas from the good ideas.

“People automatically associate quitting with failure, but sometimes that’s exactly what you should do. If you already spent too much time on something that wasn’t worth it, walk away. You can’t get that time back. The worst thing you can do now is waste even more time.” -REWORK, Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

A while back, I started a company called Booktab.org, the website was my attempt to fill what I thought was a niche market of people looking to keep track of and talk about the books they read. I did a bit of research but admittedly not enough. I focused on the programing, working day in and day out. Fellow avid reader Matt D’Avella joined as a Partner and we discussed ways to improve functionality and how to scale the idea. A lot of time and energy was put into the website and it was still far from complete. That’s when we came across Goodreads.com, it was better in every way. It had better functionality, aesthetics, usability, and impressive user counts. We thought about competing, nothing drives innovation like a strong competitor, but Goodreads had us beat. We were building something that already existed, so we abandoned ship before we wasted anymore time. If you’re not going to make it better, don’t build it at all. We had other ideas and Goodreads.com was well on their way to creating something amazing.

Don’t reinvent the wheel, upgrade it. If you can’t upgrade it, quit.