Category Archives: E Pluribus Partners

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Can We Humanize Organizational Cultures?

Check out this thought-provoking interview with Peter Block. During the interview he states the following:

“in the context of organization development, what we’re trying to do is humanize systems.  The systems of consistency and control and predictability steal our humanity.”

Do you agree?  Can organizations achieve consistency, control and predictability while still preserving our humanity? How about  organizations where the cost of failure is high such as hospitals, nuclear power plants, NASA and the armed services?

Jason Pankau and I teach leaders that it’s necessary to achieve both task excellence and relationship excellence if you aspire to achieve sustainable superior performance.  In the modern era, we’ve certainly focused on and made great strides forward in achieving task excellence but we have failing miserably when it comes to achieving relationship excellence.  Two articles Jason and I wrote are relevant to this topic.  The first article entitled “Strengthening Human Value in Organizational Cultures” appeared in the Leader to Leader Journal.  The second article entitled “Encouraging Knowledge Flow” appeared in Perdido.

What do you think?

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Coach Rex Ryan Connects with Jets

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Check out this great article entitled “Channelling Churchill, Ryan Inspires His Team” on New York Jets’ football coach Rex Ryan  The article makes several important points that support the conclusion we came to from our research on leaders who produce sustainable superior performance.  Our research concluded that sustainable superior performance comes when leaders develop task excellence and relationship excellence.  Rex Ryan is doing this by connecting with his players on both emotional and rational levels. He connects rationally by communicating and leading his team to implement effective strategy and tactics.  This produces “task excellence.”  Ryan’s passion and authenticity helps him connect on an emotional level.  This helps produce “relationship excellence.” Ryan communicates simple, relevant and memorable themes with phrases such as “burn the boats” and “how dare you?” He tells memorable stories to illustrate his points.

The Jets are a decent team but not a great team, yet.  They just pulled off a big playoff win by defeating the Indianapolis Colts.  Given what I’m seeing, I expect the Jets are on the rise as Rex Ryan and team continue to develop a Connection Culture with Vision, Value and Voice.

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Coming Talent Shortage Relevant to Nations, Organizations, Managers

Take a look at this fascinating article in Foreign Affairs by Nicholas Eberstadt entitled “The Demographic Future.” It has an excellent discussion of how population and labor supply around the world will change over the next 20 years as a result of the nearly 50 percent decline of fertility worldwide over the last half century. The larger point of the article is that although many nations are presently experiencing an excess supply of labor, a shortage is certain to result as baby boomers retire and the economy resumes growing. The analysis in the article points out the need for nations to improve educational opportunities, health conditions and economic environments.  In addition, it supports the need for nations to create Connection Cultures that will attract and retain immigrant talent to their home markets, the need for organizations to create Connection Cultures that will attract and retain talent to their organizations, and the need for managers to create Connection Cultures that will attract and retain talent to the units they lead.

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Motivate Employees Now

Fired_Up_or_Burned_Out_Book_CoverThis morning appeared as a guest on my friend Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated “Small Business Advocate” radio program where we talked about leadership, employee engagement and productivity.  During the program, Jim and I discussed how the three core elements of a Connection Culture — Vision, Value and Voice — motivate employees to give their best efforts and align their behavior with organizational goals.  One of the ideas I shared was to bring employees together to read and discuss a management book including how it applies to their business.  To get them started,  I offered a free download of the digital version of Fired Up or Burned Out to listeners who sign up for my email newsletter.  To sign up for the newsletter and access the free book download click on this link.

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Pixar’s Competitive Advantage? A Connection Culture

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At the Technical Academy Awards ceremonies held in Hollywood, the Associated Press reported that it wasn’t the host, actress Jessica Biel, who attracted the most attention. Instead, it was an understated, bespectacled, computer engineer named Ed Catmull. When Catmull’s name was announced to receive an Oscar for his lifetime of work in computer animation, the crowd went wild, whistling and whooping. And rightly so. The impact Catmull and his collaborators have had on Hollywood may last for decades to come.

Ed Catmull is the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. He has rejected the traditional Hollywood star system and its often toxic work environment and replaced it with an environment that emphasizes community and long-term relationships. Catmull described it this way in a Harvard Business Review article he wrote: “[Pixar has] an environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity…the result is a vibrant community where talented people are loyal to one another and their collective work, everyone feels that they are part of something extraordinary, and their passion and accomplishments make the community a magnet for talented people…”

What is it about Pixar’s environment that attracts talented employees and helps them produce outstanding movies such as the blockbuster hits Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E that have made Pixar the envy of Hollywood?

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Overcoming Leadership Myopia

Howard Behar and Michael Lee Stallard

American leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee. Research from two well-respected organizations makes it clear that we have a big collective blind spot that’s dragging down productivity, innovation and economic performance. Earlier this year, a Conference Board research report showed that job satisfaction is at the lowest level since the organization began measuring it more than 20 years ago. The report went on to show this has been a long-term downward trend rather than a temporary decline due to the Great Recession.

Another well-respected organization, the Corporate Executive Board, came out with a research report last year that showed 90 percent of employees are either not aligned with organizational goals or not engaged and giving their best efforts. It’s nearly impossible to pull out of difficult economic seasons when nine out of ten employees are just showing up for the paycheck. We need everyone to pull together in the same direction to lift us out of this slump. What can be done?

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Free Linkage Leadership Webinars

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Jason Pankau and I spoke on a webinar for Linkage about maximizing employee engagement and alignment.  You can see the 60-minute webinar at this link.  You may also be interested in other free webinars offered by Linkage at this link.

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Mrs. Hesselbein: “To Serve is to Live”

Frances Hesselbein, To Serve Is To Live. from Leader to Leader on Vimeo.

In Fired Up or Burned Out, we wrote about Frances Hesselbein, the former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA and current chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute As we were about to part following lunch, I’ll never forget Mrs. Hesselbein looking me directly in the eyes and saying “just remember, to serve is to live.” Here is an outstanding video about Mrs. Hesselbein’s life entitled “To Serve is to Live.” Check it out.