Michael Lee Stallard

This summer I will be filming training videos on employee engagement, strategic alignment,  productivity and innovation for SkillSoft, the largest public company in the world that is solely focused on e-learning.  Skillsoft has 10 million licensed users that represent 55 percent of the Fortune 500 and 24 percent of the Global 2000 organizations in business, government, and education. Jason Pankau and I are excited about this opportunity to work with yet another world-class partner to take our work and ideas on The Connection Culture from our book Fired Up or Burned Out to a new audience.

Organizations today are in desperate need of improving employee engagement and strategic alignment. The Conference Board released a report in January 2010 saying its research showed employee engagement is at its lowest point since the organization began surveying. Another well-repected organization, The Corporate Executive Board, released research last year that showed 90 percent of employees are either not engaged and giving their best efforts or they are not aligned with organizational goals.

Check out Tom Friedman’s column in today’s New York Times at this link. Friedman cites Dov Siedman’s belief that in an interconnected world we need “sustainable values” more than ever. I couldn’t agree more.  In past posts I’ve written about Dov, his book entitled How and LRN, the company he founded to promote principled leadership.  

In our work at E Pluribus Partners, we promote universal character values and virtue as essential for people to thrive, individually and collectively.  Our “Character > Connection > Thrive Model” (see below) lays out the rationale.  In a nutshell, individuals who believe and behave in ways that are consistent with Universal Character Values (also known as character strengths), create “Connection Cultures” that meet universal human needs to thrive.   You can learn more about Connection Cultures, Universal Character Strengths and Virtues by reading this free manifesto published by changethis.com entitled The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage.

On Friday, I was granted a private interview with Dr. Jim Goodnight, co-founder and CEO of SAS.  We met in Atlanta during the Chick-fil-A Leadercast where 50,000 individuals participated live or via simulcast from locations around the world.

Goodnight, who has a Ph.D in statistics, founded SAS more than 30 years ago with colleagues from North Carolina State University.  Today, SAS is on a roll having achieved an enviable long-term record of revenue and profit growth. The firm was named number 1 on Fortune’s “Best Places to Work” list for 2010.  Harvard Business School named Goodnight as one of the “20th Century’s Great American Business Leaders.”  He was also recently named one of “America’s 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs” by Inc magazine.

During the Leadercast program and prior to my meeting with Goodnight, author Jim Collins interviewed him on stage. Collins has written about the Level 5 leaders who experienced a catalyst in their lives —  death of a loved one, near death experience, religious conversion — that developed humility in their character and made them better leaders.  Collins seemed to be looking for something similar in Goodnight  to explain SAS’s benevolent corporate culture where the average work week is 35 hours and the bucolic SAS campus has nearly every employee perk imaginable.  Despite Collins’ attempts to draw out Goodnight, he hit a dead end. Typical of Goodnight, he answered several of Collins’ questions with a “yes” or “no.”   When Collins asked Goodnight why most SAS employees were given offices rather than the standard cubicles that the typical software company employee has, Goodnight replied tongue in cheek that if an employee were watching porn from the privacy of his office it would not be the problem that it would be if he were in a cubicle out in the open.  The audience responded with tentative laughter.  They weren’t quite sure what to make of Goodnight.

Like Collins, I have known and written about many great leaders who experienced adversity that made them better leaders. Goodnight is a different breed, a leader who by all accounts has not gone through a Level 5-type transformation and yet has at least in some respects cracked the code on corporate culture.  For every job opening, SAS receives 100 or more resumes. Over a business cycle, SAS’s employee turnover in the low single digits is a fraction of the software industry’s that at times reaches into the mid-20 percent plus range.

My interview with Goodnight and some additional research led me to believe that Jim Goodnight is among the most important role models for leaders to emulate today.  This week I’m working on an article that explains why.  If you have thoughts about Jim Goodnight or SAS’s corporate culture that you would like to share, please post them here or email me at mstallard [at] epluribuspartners [dot] com.

Jobs, Catmull and Lafley connect with employees of their respective organizations, although they do so in distinctly unique ways. This is the topic of a webinar Jason Pankau and I will be doing for Communitelligence. You can learn more about it at this link. This topic is relevant today because Corporate Executive Board research shows that 90 percent of employees are either not engaged and giving their best efforts or they are not aligned with their organization’s goals. Research by both The Conference Board and the Corporate Executive Board shows that the solution to this problem to develop the emotional and rational connections that employee have with their organization’s mission and values, supervisor, colleagues and day-to-day work tasks. In the webinar, Michael and Jason show how great leaders do this.

Winning Workplaces just featured an article that Jason Pankau and I wrote in its April newsletter and on its website.  The article is entitled “To Boost Productivity and Innovation, Fire Up the People You Lead.”  Check out the article and the Winning Workplaces website, it has great ideas, many written by one of our favorite bloggers Mark Harbeke.  Mark is Winning Workplaces’ Director of Content Development.

On April 22, I will be speaking along with several career experts as part of Krista Daeda’s Launch Summit: Conversations on Career Potential.   Check it out.

I’ll be speaking with Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown of Real Recognition Radio on April 6 at 1:00 PM Eastern. We have a lively discussion about employee engagement and the importance of connection in store so I hope you’ll join us. To hear the program just go to this link.

The Conference Board does excellent research work on employee engagement thanks in part to John Gibbons, a Senior Research Advisor at the organization. After examining the myriad definitions of employee engagement, The Conference Board concluded that employee engagement should be defined as follows:

“Employee engagement is a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary effort to his/her work.”

I like this definition.  It is consistent with our research where we heard respondents consistently use the terms “connect” or “feel connected”  to describe the emotions they experience in relation to their organization’s identity, the people they work with and their day-to-day work.

In our book Fired Up or Burned Out and in The Connection Culture Manifesto, we identify and describe the “force of connection” as

“a bond based on shared identity, empathy and understanding that moves self-centered individuals toward group-centered membership.”

After defining connection, we identify the “Connection Culture” as the environment that produces emotional and rational connections that, as The Conference Board’s definition says “influence [people] to apply discretionary effort to [their] work.”  The Connection Culture meets universal human needs. Learn more by reading the manifesto or go even deeper by reading our book.

On April 8, I’ll be speaking as part of the Organizational Development Network Long Island’s Conference in Plainview, New York.  The title of the conference is “Building a Holistic Approach for Workforce Competitive Advantage.”  For additional details and to receive a discount on admission click on this link: OD Network Long Island E-brochure.

Jason Pankau and I are delighted to announce we are presenting a webinar for Communitelligence entitled “Reenergizing Employees Amidst and Following the ‘Great Recession.’” The webinar will occur on May 5 from 2-3 PM Eastern. Here’s an overview:

Conference Board research shows job satisfaction is at its lowest point over the 20 years it has surveyed employees. Corporate Executive Board research shows 90 percent of employees are disengaged or not aligned with organizational goals. In this webinar, Michael Lee Stallard and Jason Pankau describe what must be done to reconnect and reenergize employees.

Topics covered include:

• Research insights on what differentiates communications from engagement,

• The three factors that drive employee engagement,

• How to develop an inspiring corporate identity that makes employees feel proud of their organization,

• How to dial up the elements in the employee experience that make employees feel valued,

• How to eliminate the elements in the employee experience that make employees feel devalued, and

• Eight ways to keeping employees informed and give them a voice to share their ideas and opinions.

Additional details and registration information can be found at this link.