“What can you learn from working in the mail room? You won’t learn humility. You won’t learn respect. You won’t learn the company inside out or from the bottom up. What you will learn is something very important, and perhaps a bit frightening, about yourself.

The people who get ahead have a need, are driven to perform a task well, no matter what the task is or how mundane it may actually be. They bring to any job an attitude which actually transforms the job into something greater. Carpenters who become contractors at one time had a need to drive a nail straighter and truer than anyone else. Waiters who end up owning restaurants were at one time very good waiters.

Some executives, had they started in the mail room, would still be sorting mail – and misrouting most of it.”

Mark McCormack, founder, IMG