Category Archives: Connection Culture

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Webcast with Charles W. “Willy” Moore, Jr. of Lockheed Martin

Please join me as I host a webcast with Charles W. “Willy” Moore Jr. on January 14, at 11:00 AM Eastern. When I spoke to a group of leaders at Lockheed Martin last year I heard Willy share his thoughts on leadership. He impressed me with his wisdom and extensive experience as a Vice President responsible for a major group at Lockheed and as a Vice Admiral during a distinguished 36-year career in the United States Navy. During his Navy career, Vice Admiral Moore served as a Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Readiness and Logistics, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet (1998-2002). In this role VADM Moore commanded all U.S. Naval Forces throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa during a time of nearly constant combat. VADM Moore led his forces in combat operations including Infinite Reach after the 1998 Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Operation Desert Fox in Iraq and subsequent combat in the no-fly zone, Operation Southern Watch, Operation Determined Response after the terrorist bombing of USS Cole and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan fighting the global war on terrorism.

This is a webcast you don’t want to miss. To sign up for the live webcast or to hear a recording, click here.

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Webcast with Tim Sanders, Author of “Saving the World at Work”


On Friday, January 23 at 12:00 PM Eastern Time, I hosted a 30 minute webcast with Tim Sanders, Author of the newly released book Saving the World at Work. Tim also wrote two other outstanding books entitled The Likability Factor and Love is the Killer App. Tim has deep experience in cutting-edge businesses and marketing. He was the Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and later their Leadership Coach. Prior to his senior positions at Yahoo!, Tim created and led the Yahoo! ValueLab, an in-house “think tank” which delivered futuristic insight to the company’s partners and clients. To hear the webcast click here.

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New York-Presbyterian Recognized for Employee Engagement











Congratulations to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for being recognized as the top academic medical center in terms of employee engagement. I wrote an article about New York-Presbyterian entitled “Strengthening Human Value in Organizational Cultures” that appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Leader to Leader. You can read about it in a blog post of mine entitled “Amazing Things are Happening Here.”

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Jim Blasingame and I discuss employee engagement on his radio program

Last Friday I was a guest on my friend Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated radio program entitled “The Small Business Advocate.” In the interview Jim and I talked about employee engagement and why leaders need to clearly communicate their vision and values to the people they are responsible for leading. This is especially important during difficult economic times. You can hear the interview by clicking on the “listen now” below.

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New Video Clips on Relationship Excellence, Criticism, Difficult Times and Imbalance

Athenaonline.com sent me links to several video clips I filmed for its MyQuickCoach product that was voted one of Human Resource Executive magazine’s top training products of the year. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Relationship Excellence and Performance

Praise and Criticism

Engaging Employees in Difficult Times

Leadership and Imbalance

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Free E-book on Connection Culture and Employee Engagement

Today, Athenaonline.com sent out an email newsletter to its clients to make them aware of the recent training videos I filmed for its MyQuickCoach program. In the email AthenaOnline included this video clip of me discussing the importance of Connection Cultures.

Athenaonline was voted one of Human Resource Executive magazines top new training products. It includes thought leaders such as Marshall Goldsmith, Ram Charan and David Allen on topics like leadership training and development, employee engagement, team building and time mangement .

For the AthenaOnline clients who are clicking through to check out my blog, I want to make you aware of the free, downloadable eBook I wrote that was published by Changethis.com. You can download it by clicking on employee engagement.

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Sad for Siemens’ Employees

Last week Siemens paid a $1.6 billion fine for its bribery violations. The New York Times’ writers Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller wrote an excellent article about it entitled “At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item.”

Corporate identity is a source of pride in the best organizations. It is a factor that contributes to connection and employee engagement. When a company’s identity is tarnished like Siemens has been, it rubs off on employees’ identities too. Siemens’ leaders can recover provided they develop a culture that places a high value on integrity, honesty and justice. If they do, it will improve employee and customer engagement. If they fail to do this, I would not be very optimistic about Siemens’ future.

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How to energize your organization

I just discovered a fascinating article that appeared in the Sloan Management Review about how individuals increase energy in organizations. Several of the practices are germane to employee engagement and Connection Culture Theory. Here’s a copy of the article what-creates-energy-in-organizations

Note: The free download of this article was available on co-author Professor Wayne Baker’s website at the University of Michigan.

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Pixar: Keeping Its Eye on the Ball

Pixar Ball

I’m in San Francisco this week filming SmartBytes for Athenaonline.com, speaking at ALI’s social media conference, doing a television interview and meeting John Walker, a producer at Pixar Animation. John was the producer of “The Incredibles” and pre-Pixar he produced “The Iron Giant.” John’s the business guy in a partnership with director Brad Bird.

Presently, I’m working on an article about Pixar Animation and why it has been so successful. My thesis is that Pixar has a Connection Culture that provides a competitive advantage. I also suspect that there is so much pressure to produce results that the risk to Pixar is that it focuses on task excellence alone to the detriment of its Connection Culture. To sustain its success, Pixar must keep its eye on maintaining both task excellence and a Connection Culture that produces relationship excellence.  When organizations fail to maintain relationship excellence it ultimately sabotages task excellence because disconnected workers don’t give their best efforts to their work and stop communicating (which leads to ill-informed decisions.)

I’m pulling for Pixar and believe as long as it stays keenly aware of this risk and actively maintains a Connection Culture, it will continue to be the shining star in the dismal motion picture production industry.