Tomorrow is the anniversary of D-Day when 160,000 Allied troops landed on French beaches and began the march to defeat Hitler. The Army has a website devoted to D-Day that I hope you will explore. The visual images, accounts and statistics testify to the courage of Allied soldiers. In addition, the story that I tell in a SmartByte video recorded for Athenaonline.com entitled Voice and Culture describes the American Army’s culture of ingenuity that historian Stephen Ambrose wrote was largely absent in the Nazi army.
Category Archives: Knowledge Flow
Rotman Magazine Interview
Rotman, the award-winning magazine of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, just published an interview I did with them on Connection Cultures, leadership and employee engagement. The Spring 2009 issue also features fascinating interviews with Warren Bennis, Prof. Renee Mauborgue of INSEAD and Prof. Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. You can subscribe to Rotman magazine or purchase the download by clicking here. Following is the text of the interview.
New Articles on Pixar and Selecting CEOs
Here are two new articles I wrote that will appear shortly in publications in India and the US. As with all of the articles I write they relate to leadership and employee engagement. Email me at mstallard [at] epluribuspartners [dot] com if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks – Michael
The Competitive Advantage of Pixar’s Environment
By Michael Lee Stallard
At the Technical Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, the Associated Press reported that it wasn’t the host, actress Jessica Beil, who attracted the most attention.
Challenger Disaster Documentary a Tribute to Truth Tellers
In Fired Up or Burned Out, I wrote about the lack of Knowledge Flow (or Voice) at NASA and how it contributed to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. National Geographic produced an excellent documentary about the Challenger disaster that’s available on Hulu.com. You can access it at Challenger: The Untold Story.
In most organizations there are truth tellers who have the courage to speak truth to power. In this case, Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly and The Rogers Commission’s Richard Feynman emerge as the courageous truth tellers. Feynman appears in another chapter of Fired Up or Burned Out as the young supervising engineer of the Manhattan Project who asks Robert Oppenheimer to tell the supporting engineers the purpose of the project (which results in a tenfold increase in their productivity). Feynman also appeared in Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign (above).
A Culture of Radical Innovation
In a recent study of 759 public companies across 17 nations, Gerard J. Tellis, Jaideep C. Prabhu, and Rajesh K. Chandy concluded that corporate culture is a better predictor of a firm’s ability to capitalize on disruptive innovations than factors such as government policy and R&D spending. The study entitled “Radical Innovation Across Nations: The Preeminance of Corporate Culture” appeared in the January edition of the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing. These findings are consistent with what I argued in the changethis.com manifesto I wrote entitled “The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage” and in an article entitled “Encouraging Knowledge Flow” published in Perdido.
Employee Engagement During Difficult Times
Here’s another article I’m working on. If you have any suggestions, please email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com.
During difficult times it’s natural for anxious individuals to retreat into isolation, a state that nearly always results in diminished productivity. When it comes to the amount of effort employees put in their work, research by the Corporate Leadership Council has shown that emotional connections are on average four times as important as rational factors. Emotional connections arise when employees feel: 1) proud of their organization’s mission, values and reputation, 2) valued by their supervisor and colleagues, and 3) informed and that their opinions and ideas about matters that are important to them are considered by decision-makers before decisions are made.
Recently I visited an impressive organization that is poised to continue performing well even through the challenging economic environment we are presently facing.
Truth, Beauty and Goodness Increase Employee Engagement
Here is the draft of an article I’m working on. What do you think about it? If you have any comments or suggestions, please email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.
Values of Great Leaders Connect with Employees
By Michael Lee Stallard
When people feel emotionally connected, they put more effort in their work. Research bears this out. A 2004 Corporate Leadership Council study of 50,000 employees worldwide concluded that emotional factors were four times as important as rational factors when it came to employee effort.
Great leaders connect on an emotional level with the people they are responsible for leading. When employees follow their leader’s example, they become more connected with one another, boosting trust, cooperation and esprit de corps throughout the organization. What I have discovered as a leader and as an advisor to leaders over the years is that the emotional connections leaders develop with people are ultimately grounded in the leader’s own values. The values that foster connection among people come in clusters that I refer to as Truth Values, Beauty Values and Goodness Values.
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.
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.
Q&A from My AMA Webcast on Employee Engagement
During the recent webcast I did for the American Management Association, participants submitted more questions than we were able to answer in the allotted 15 minutes for Q&A. The AMA sent me the questions so that I could answer them on my blog. Although I am not able to answer them all at once, I will continue to chip away at the list and post all the answers below.