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.
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.
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.
The article I wrote about Warren Buffett and recently posted on my blog was published today by The Economic Times in India. The article was entitled “Warren Buffett Makes Berkshire Hathaway Proud.”
Today the American Management Association posted a podcast I did with the AMA’s Dave Summers. The topic of the podcast is how to create Connection Cultures that increase employee engagement. You can hear the podcast and even download it on an iPod or iPhone by clicking on employee engagement.
Here are links below to follow-up materials for the participants in the American Management Association webcast I’m doing tomorrow. The 2,600 spots for the webcast were oversubscribed but the AMA is making the recording of it available on or around November 10. You can click here to sign up for an email to access the recording. Here are the materials:
Free download from changethis.com:
Connection Culture eBook
Free Getting Started Guide to Connection Cultures:
e-pluribus-partners-getting-started
Feel free to pass them along to anyone who might benefit!
This Thursday November 6 at 11:00 AM Eastern, I’ll be participating in a webinar hosted by Lee White of E Quint Consulting. The webinar is titled “The Connected Enterprise: Using Social Connectivity to Drive Productivity.” It will consist of a panel discussion with Lee Bryant, Co-Founder, Headshift, Mark Scrimshire, Founder, Ekive and yours truly.
The focus of the conversation will be around the factors that contribute to a successful Enterprise 2.0 implementation, and practical advice for carrying out such a project. Some of the questions the panel will address include:
Don’t miss what is certain to be an enlightening conversation about the intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and corporate culture. To register for this webinar, click here.
Every age has its prophets who observe the movement of social, political and economic forces then project what the future might hold. Tim Sanders’ new book, Saving the World at Work, represents the projections of a knowledgeable and thoughtful prognosticator. Sanders has observed the effect of recent events on the psyche of individuals. Events such as September 11, CEO scandals, and the environmental crisis are traumas that have shocked most individuals into re-examining the values they once embraced. Although the recent financial and economic shocks came post-publication, they bolster Sanders’ case.
On November 17th I will be at AthenaOnline’s studios in Emeryville, California to tape some new video SmartBytes™ on employee engagement. AthenaOnline.com is is a premier publisher of multimedia training, education and career development products. Athena was founded as a sister company to the Institute for Management Studies (IMS), with a mission to leverage technology to deliver business knowledge when and where individuals need it. Athena has consistently delivered award-winning programs over the Internet, internal networks and on CD-Rom.
Following the taping sessions at Athena, I’ll be going down the street (literally) to meet with John Walker at Pixar Animation studios. John was the producer of “The Incredibles,”(one of my favorite movies). I’m looking forward to seeing John and learning more about how Pixar creates a community that seemingly has achieved task and relationship excellence. If you have any questions you would like me to ask John, please post them below or email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com.