An elderly woman had always wanted to travel abroad. Now that she was getting on in years, she thought the time had come, but she'd never even been out of the country. So she began by going in person to the passport office and asking how long it would take to have one issued.

“You must take the loyalty oath first,” responded the passport clerk. “Raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to defend the Constitution of this country against all its enemies, domestic or foreign?"

The woman’s face became pale and her voice trembled as she asked in a small voice, “All by myself?”

Loyalty is what makes for great people, winning teams and top-flight business organizations.

Former Treasury Secretary Donald Regan said, “You’ve got to give loyalty down, if you want loyalty up.” I have a different way of saying this. I firmly believe that respect is earned, honesty is appreciated, love is gained and loyalty is returned.

In February, Americans celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, when the American hockey team beat the heavily favored Russians and then Finland to win the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. My friend Herb Brooks was the coach. Herb’s players all cited his loyalty to them and to the idea that they could win it all as the reason for what many call the greatest upset in sports history. This underdog hockey team became an American legend, all because of inexhaustible loyalty. Herb believed that blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family.

In years past, when a person landed a “dream job,” that person tended to stick around until the gold watch ceremony. That may have represented some level of loyalty, but, often, it was better described as longevity. A safe place, a comfortable situation. Loyalty to the organization was assumed.

Today, it’s more challenging to build loyalty when employees move around so much. But loyalty is always important. I still believe a person can job-hop regularly and maintain tremendous loyalty to the company that they represent.

I personally value loyalty over longevity. I would rather have a terrific employee work for us for a few years and be true to our company values than someone who still shows up every day, punches the clock and hangs around just to collect a paycheck.

Being committed to the job that one is hired to do is the mark of loyalty. Moving on is not disloyal if it means a promotion we can’t offer or a desire to use a different skill set. A person can remain loyal to an earlier employer when working in a new job. In fact, I hear regularly from former employees who let me know that their experience at our company provided them with a great start and helped to launch a successful career. They are grateful and will remain loyal to us.

When a new employee is hired at MackayMitchell, management expects commitment to the company and in return treats every employee as a valuable family member. We have a number of employees who have celebrated 20, 25, 30 and 40 years with us because we practice what we preach. But, believe me, if the loyalty factor appeared to be missing, we would re-evaluate that relationship. We need committed people to continue to provide outstanding service and produce the best envelopes in the industry.

We need loyalty to be winners. Former IBM Chairman John Akers said: “We’ve all heard the shortsighted businessmen attribute a quote to Vince Lombardi, ‘Winning is not the most important thing; it’s the only thing.’ Well, that’s a good quote for firing up a team, but as an overarching philosophy it’s just baloney. I much prefer another Lombardi quote. He expected his players to have three kinds of loyalty: to God, to their families and to the Green Bay Packers, in that order.”

As a native Minnesotan who has spent my life in the shadow of the Packers and their fiercely loyal fans, I can attest to their loyalty -- no matter where they happen to be on game day!

Mackay’s Moral: Get a lock on loyalty -- it’s one of the keys to success.

A Marine corporal was driving a benefits specialist from base to base to deliver lectures on life insurance, according to a story in Reader’s Digest. After listening to a dozen of these talks, the corporal insisted he knew the spiel by heart.

“Prove it,” the benefits specialist said. So at the next base, the corporal delivered the speech flawlessly, until a Marine asked, “What do I pay for insurance after I leave the Corps?”

The corporal temporarily froze before he had an idea. “Marine,” he said sternly, as he pointed to the benefits specialist, “that is such a dumb question that I am going to let my driver answer it.”

That corporal demonstrated two important skills: thinking on his feet and continuous learning.

When I was building my envelope manufacturing company, I was driving all over to get business. I drove 15,000 to 20,000 miles a year, and would constantly listen to audiotapes in the car, and later CDs, to boost my motivation and sharpen my sales skills. I didn’t want the drive time to be down time.

Knowing the average person spends 3 1/2 years over their lifetime in their car, I had a plan to turn my automobile into a university. I wanted to pass that opportunity on to our sales force as well. That’s why for years our company has had a tremendous library of motivational, sales and marketing materials for our employees to use. Now, like everyone else, we’ve moved on to podcasts. Why not maximize your time and learn something new?

Whenever we send someone to a seminar or training program, we ask them to come back and teach everyone at our company what they learned to maximize the return from our investment dollars. This is true for anything our people learn that might benefit others. That way, the entire group can improve their skills.

No matter how long you have been building your career, and how much you have learned with experience, there’s always more to absorb. Getting better at your job goes far beyond just learning the ropes; it’s a forever process. Maybe you can’t learn something new every day, but you can take advantage of every opportunity to learn.

Does your organization know how to learn? Here are four ideas to create a learning organization:

1. Encourage self-directed learning for employees. Don’t tell anyone what to learn, but give permission for people to explore what they think is important. Provide resources and access to information and the internet, and time off and tuition reimbursement if possible.

2. Promote inter-department collaboration. Bring together members of teams from different departments and let them share ideas and strategies. Encourage staff to share different opinions and points of view, so that meetings produce thoughtful, innovative results.

3. Use open-ended language. In your meetings and discussions, ask questions that stimulate creative thought and learning without simply focusing on finding “correct” answers. Show everyone on your team that you consider striving for improvement more important than arriving at a single “right” answer.

4. Treat mistakes as learning opportunities. Hold honest, straightforward conversations when something doesn’t work as anticipated. On a regular basis, ask team members what’s working and what isn’t. Look for lessons that might improve the process next time, as well as ideas for new processes that might result in an innovative product.

A baseball manager made an announcement to his team at the hotel on the morning of the game that there would be two buses leaving for the ballpark. “The 2 p.m. bus will be for those players who need extra work, and the empty bus will be leaving at 5 p.m.”

We all need extra work if we want to improve.

Everyone is fascinated with big plays -- a “Hail Mary” pass in football, a grand slam in baseball, a hat trick in hockey. However, quite often it’s the smaller plays, like a base hit, negotiating a new labor contract or finding a way to improve a manufacturing process, that consistently achieve success. Never downplay the everyday efforts to up your game and keep making progress, no matter what business you are in!

Mackay’s Moral: You don’t just get better; you make yourself better.

There is an Apache legend that the Creator gave human beings the ability to talk, run and see. But he was not satisfied until he also gave them the ability to laugh. Pleased with what he had done, the Creator said, “Now you are fit to live.”

With so much uncertainty in the world right now, one thing remains the same: Humor is a tremendous stress reliever and is more important than ever if we're to keep an optimistic outlook for the future. Besides, April is National Humor Month. I like to readjust my outlook by reading stories that have a message that stays with me. Here are some of my favorites.

At the end of a particularly frustrating practice one day, a football coach dismissed his players by yelling, “Now, all you idiots, go take a shower!” All but one player headed toward the locker room. The coach glared at him and asked why he was still there. “You told all the idiots to go, sir,” the player replied, “and there sure seems to be a lot of them. But I am not an idiot.”

And speaking of idiots, a minister, a Boy Scout and a computer executive were flying to a meeting in a small private plane. About halfway to their destination, the pilot came back and announced that the plane was going to crash and that there were only three parachutes for four people.

The pilot said, “I am going to use one of the parachutes because I have a wife and four small children,” and he jumped.

The computer executive said, “I should have one of the parachutes because I am the smartest man in the world and my company needs me,” and he jumped.

The minister turned to the Boy Scout and, smiling sadly, said, “You are young and I have lived a good, long life, so you take the last parachute and I'll go down with the plane.”

The Boy Scout said, “Relax, reverend, the smartest man in the world just strapped on my backpack and jumped out of the plane!”

While we’re on the subject of truly smart people, here are a couple goodies about two giants in American history, Henry Ford and George Washington Carver.

Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Co. who introduced mass manufacturing techniques to America, was asked at his 50th wedding anniversary about his secret to a good marriage. He replied, “The formula is the same as in car manufacturing. Stick to one model.”

Carver, the agricultural scientist and inventor who discovered more than 300 uses for the peanut and helped to save the South with his crop rotation plans, told this lesson on humility and humor. “When I was young, I asked God to tell me the mystery of the universe.

"But God answered, 'That knowledge is reserved for me alone.' So I said, 'Then, God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.'

"And God said, 'George, that’s more nearly your size.'”

Speaking of peanuts, they say elephants never forget. Ask the man who had gone to the circus as a small boy and didn’t make a return visit until years later. He was sitting in a cheap seat when an elephant came along, reached up into the stands, wrapped his trunk gently about the man and carried him over to deposit him gently in the best seat in the circus tent.

The man turned to his neighbor and said, “The elephant remembered that the last time I was here, years ago, I fed him peanuts.”

Just then the elephant came back, lifted his trunk, pointed it straight at the man and blew a stream of water in his face.

“Oh!” the man said. “I forgot I gave them to him in the bag.”

Now for one of my all-time favorites. A carpenter entered a doctor’s office. The receptionist asked him why he was there.

“I have shingles,” the carpenter replied. And so a nurse was summoned.

“Why are you here today?” she asked the carpenter.

“I have shingles,” was the answer.

She took his blood pressure, temperature, height and weight, and told him to change into a gown and wait for the doctor.

When the doctor came in, the carpenter told him again, “I have shingles.”

“Where?” the doctor asked.

Impatiently, the carpenter said, “Where do you think? Outside, in my truck.”

I hope these anecdotes have brightened your day. A good sense of humor is a lifeline to better days ahead.

Mackay’s Moral: Remember, tough times don’t last, but tough people do!