Reading this article in The New York Times about the mood in New Orleans now that its football team, the Saints, is in the Super Bowl, got me thinking about employee engagement. The article identifies a factor that has boosted the morale of New Orleans residents. It is a factor that has a positive impact on employee morale, too. What is it?
Category Archives: Connection Culture
Jobs, Apple: What’s at their Core?
LiveMint/The Wall Street Journal in India asked me to comment on why Steve Jobs and Apple have been so successful. In an interview entitled “‘Think Different’ is What Makes Apple Stand Out,” I shared that it is more than the beauty and functional excellence of Apple’s products that make the firm so successful. Apple’s inspiring identity plays an important role too. (Above is a video of the original “Think Different” television ad.)
Employee Engagement Conversation w/Michael Bungay Stanier
It was my good fortune to be a guest on Michael Bungay Stanier’s Great Work podcast interviews series to discuss employee engagement and leadership. Michael is the founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a firm that provides coaching and training services to organizations. He authored the book Do More Great Work and writes the Great Work blog. I find Michael so knowledgeable and interesting. He was the 2006 Canadian Coach of the Year, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, holds a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford, and law and arts degrees with highest honors from the Australian National University. You can listen to our conversation at this link.
Cancer Changed Me In Unexpected Ways
Six years ago this month, while standing in a hospital waiting room with my mother-in-law and my two young daughters nearby, I began having a hard time breathing. My wife Katie’s surgery for ovarian cancer had gone beyond three hours. I knew that normally it shouldn’t have taken that long and I started imagining something had gone wrong. Before too long, the surgeon entered the waiting room and walked toward me. “Katie has ovarian cancer and it has spread. I’m sorry,” he told me. Today, six years later, Katie is cancer free and her doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center told us they believe it is highly unlikely that she would have a recurrence at this point.
That season in our lives changed me in expected and unexpected ways, including how I view organizations and the workplace. I wrote an essay about it entitled Alone No Longer that was published as an Amazon Short. Each year around the anniversary of Katie’s surgery, I offer a free download of Alone No Longer at this link. I hope you’ll take the time to download and read it, then reflect on its application to your life. The essay has been especially popular with people who want to know how they can help family members or friends with a serious illness. If you know of someone who might benefit from reading Alone No Longer, please pass it along with my best wishes.
Invictus: The Rest of the Story
Is China the Next Enron?
In his The New York Times column, Tom Friedman asks and answers the question: Is China the next Enron? He argues that Chinese censorship of the web restricts knowledge flows and doing so diminishes the rate of innovation. There is compelling historical evidence to support Friedman’s view. As I explained in my book Fired Up or Burned Out:
The danger to nations that reduce knowledge flow is apparent throughout history. By isolating themselves and their countries, the leaders of civilizations have missed opportunities for innovation and growth. China in 1400 had the best and largest fleet of ships in the world (over a period of three years the Chinese built or refitted 1,681 ships). With their enormous fleet, the Chinese sailed to Indonesia, Arabia, East Africa, and India. Gradually, however, the Chinese emperor’s attitude toward the benefits of foreign travel shifted as he favored domestic agriculture over maritime interests. By 1436, the Chinese were diverting resources from maintaining the ships, and by 150o, anyone who built a ship with more than two masts was subject to the death penalty. In 1525, the Chinese authorities ordered all oceangoing ships to be destroyed and their owners arrested.
A period of Chinese isolation from the rest of the world began. At the time of the ships’ destruction China led the world in innovation. It had developed gunpowder, deep drilling, printing, paper, porcelain, cast iron, and the compass. China’s isolation, however, prevented it from knowing about developments beyond its borders, the ideas and information that had contributed to its high rate of innovation when Chinese ships were sailing the world. In recent decades, economic reforms and social freedoms have reconnected China to the broader world, resulting in increased Chinese economic growth.
Like the Chinese civilization, the Arab-Islamic civilization became isolated in the sixteenth century as its leaders adopted the view that the world beyond them had little to offer. As a result of the isolationism adopted by the Chinese and Arab-Islamic civilizations, both began a period of steady decline in innovation and economic output.
Open the Books, Boost Employee Engagement
Employee engagement increases when a business opens its books and invites employees to contribute their opinions about how to improve performance. Here’s a wonderful story entitled “A Reluctant Retailer Decides to Open Her Book,” by Jack Stack, one of the pioneers of open book management. Jack is a hero in my book. Years ago he saved a business and many jobs by creating SRC Holdings from a division that was going to be shut down by its parent company. You can read about it in a book I highly recommend entitled The Great Game of Business.
Employee Engagement: Resources for the Movement
Here are resources I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in getting up to speed and understanding employee engagement as well as staying plugged-in to the emerging employee engagement marketplace of ideas. I will continue to add to this post as I consider new resources and I encourage you to add resources you highly recommend to the comments section below.
Honoring Dr. King: When U2 Wouldn’t Back Down
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Attributed to Edmund Burke
In honor of the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m posting an article I wrote that was published in The Economic Times in India and in the American Management Association’s Moving Ahead. The article in part describes the time before a concert in Arizona when U2 received a letter that stated Bono, the band’s lead singer, would be killed if the band played the song Pride, which honors the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI told U2 it believed the threat was not a hoax.
Although I don’t know for certain, I suspect that Bono reflected on Dr. King’s choice to speak out in the face of death threats. Dr. King had the courage of his convictions and was willing to risk death to push back the evils of prejudice. Now, Bono had to decide if he too was willing to speak out against evil and risk death because of it.
Diversity 2.0
Andrés Tapia has a compelling vision. Tapia believes demographic changes and the complex set of problems facing humankind will force the integration of knowledge from the silos that much knowledge resides in today. As an example, Tapia points to the field of behavioral economics that integrates knowledge from the fields of psychology and economics. As part of this trend, Tapia argues that the physical and social separation of people based on their differences will also move toward integration. He describes this vision as Diversity 2.0.