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?
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
Hardwiring Talent Management
One way to think of organizations is that they are a bundle of resources, processes and values (referred to as the RPV framework). Leaders need to actively manage all three elements of the RPV mix. In this post I would like to zero in on processes. Processes are to organizations what hardwiring is to the human brain: it allows the organization (or organism) to complete routine tasks with minimal expenditure of energy and resources while bringing consistency and proven reliability to execution.
Two processes I recently learned about that support talent management are One Page Talent Management and Online Mentoring.
Knowledge Flow Attracts, Engages and Retains Talent
Here is a link to Part III of a series of blog posts I wrote for the Human Capital Institute’s Talent Economy Blog. This post is on the benefit of increasing knowledge flow in an organization to attract, engage and retain talent.
New From the Employee Engagement Network
For those of you who really like to cut to the chase, here’s a pdf of one sentence employee engagement advice from some of the Employee Engagement Network’s members. Many thanks to Employee Engagement Network founder David Zinger for organizing this.
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.