I wrote about the Ritz Carlton’s Connection Culture in Fired Up or Burned Out. Here’s a great article from Gallup about it entitled “What’s behind the Ritz-Carlton Mystique?“
Tag Archives: Employee Engagement
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.
Webcasts with Traci Fenton, Kevin Eikenberry, Some Great Articles and a Special Offer to Boot!
Recently I hosted webcasts with Traci Fenton, founder/CEO+designer at WorldBlu, and Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group. You can see the webcasts on BrightTalk’s Leadership and Employee Engagement Channel. In the webcast with Traci, you’ll learn about organizational democracy and in Kevin’s webcast you’ll learn about how “Remarkable Leaders” create connection. I have tremendous respect for Traci and her work. Kevin, as you may know, is the author of an excellent book I reviewed entitled Remarkable Leaders. He is a first class thinker about leadership. I know you’ll enjoy both of these webcasts.
After some encouragement from Traci, I finally joined Twitter. Now I’m following both Traci and Kevin’s “tweets” (Twitter lingo for brief posts). When I read Traci’s tweets I learned about two great articles. One was written by Parker Palmer about creating movements rather than organizations and the other was a Fast Company piece about Cisco’s evolving culture of connection. I hope you’ll check them out.
I want to mention Kevin Eikenberry’s free teleseminar for individuals who want to improve their personal and/or professional lives. The seminar is entitled “Make the Next 12 Months the Best 12 Months.” It is offered at two times this Thursday December 18.
Finally, early next year I have some great webcasts in the works including with Tim Sanders, author of Saving the World at Work, and Kim Ruvolo, manager of Jet Blue’s brand. as soon as dates are confirmed I’ll post them on my blog and on my new twitter page.
How to Maximize Employee Engagement During Difficult Times
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.
Pixar: Keeping Its Eye on the Ball
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.
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.
My AMA Podcast on Employee Engagement (now on iTunes)
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.
Free Materials for AMA Webcast Participants
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!
Webinar: The Connected Enterprise
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:
- How important are the social and behavioral aspects of creating a successful “connected enterprise” initiative, as opposed to the strictly technical aspects?
- How does the use of social tools in the enterprise lead to improvements in employee engagement and employee retention?
- How does opening up information access reduce organizational risk?
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.
Prophet of Postmodern Corporate Values
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.