Tag Archives: employee motivation

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Connecting Up: Our Need for Transcendence

What do many scientists at NASA and engineers at Google have in common with a doorman at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC)?  The answer: they are fired up about the importance of their work and have a passion and energy that drives them to be a force for the cause.  Employees at NASA are fired up that they are exploring space.  Google employees are fired up because they are organizing information and making it accessible to the world.  I learned  this when I met employees at NASA and Google.   I spoke at both organizations earlier this year.

The doorman I refer to at MSKCC is named Nick.  When my wife Katie and I were walking down 53rd street in NYC in 2004 and we got within eyesight of the MSKCC  entrance, Nick locked his eyes on her and greeted her like a returning friend.  This in in Mid-town Manhattan where no one makes eye contact! Nick knows cancer patients when he sees them, probably from the wigs they wear.   It felt like the healing began within eyesight of MSKCC.

Katie was at MSKCC for high dosage chemo treatments she needed to treat advanced ovarian cancer.  Late last year her oncologist told her it that given favorable test results and five years in remission it was unlikely she would have a recurrence.  Words can’t express how overjoyed we were to hear that news. When we told Nick, he gave Katie a big hug and said how proud he was that she persevered.  We learned that Nick was a cancer survivor too and he attributed his survival to the treatments he received at MSKCC.  Is it any wonder then that this man is so passionate about his work at MSKCC.  You have to see Nick to believe it and you can if you stop by MSKCC’s entrance on 53rd Street across the street from the Citigroup building.  He’s a big guy with a dar complexion and blue eyes. Tell Nick you read about him.  Don’t worry that it may seem strange.  Former cancer patients and their family members regularly stop by to say hello to Nick. That’s how beloved he is.

Nick’s example shows that people are fired up if their work reflects the eternal values of the transcendent: truth, beauty and goodness.  MSKCC’s work reflects goodness and is expressed in it’s tagline “The Best Cancer Care, Anywhere.”  Apple’s passion for the aesthetic design and ease of use of its products reflects beauty. Work in the fields of journalism, research, theology and the academy reflect truth-seeking.

Truth, beauty and goodness are eternal values that reflect transcendence.  Human beings need the truth, beauty and goodness of transcendence to meet our need for meaning in life.  If you can find time over the holidays, reflect on the need for the transcendent values of truth, beauty and goodness in your own life. Below are links to some of my favorite essays, speeches and articles that touch on transcendence. Let me encourage you to print them out, read them and consider their relevance to your life and the lives of those you love.  

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Leading with the Power of Community

Do you ever wonder how past leaders could have missed what seems so obvious in hindsight? Sadly, most leaders live in an environment that makes them vulnerable to managerial failure.  The problem lies in a little-recognized reality of leadership: isolation.

Leading can be lonely.  Typically leaders have few, if any, high-trust relationships at work.  Because leaders have the power to make or break the careers of those around them, people are afraid to be honest with them and challenge their thinking.  Likewise, too often leaders are reluctant to let their guard down out of fear of losing the respect of their colleagues.

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HR: Order Takers or Game Changers?

The best HR leaders are game changers.  They develop conviction about what constitutes a high-performance work culture. They are a force that helps develop the values and processes necessary to make a high-performance work culture come to life.  The departments they run are NOT staffed with the type of order-takers Keith Hammonds described in his wildly popular Fast Company article entitled “Why We Hate HR.”

I recently wrote an article that describes a game changing strategy HR leaders should consider in light of today’s widespread employee disengagement.  The article was just published as the lead article in the UK’s Developing HR Strategy journal.  It’s entitled, “The Force of Connection: Boost Employee Engagement, Productivity and Innovation.”  You can download it at this link.

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Obama Leads Learning Organization

In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks in his column entitled “The Analytic Mode,” argues that President Obama leads a learning organization.  I completely agree.  In the past I’ve argued that President Obama is an intentional connector in part because he is a bridge builder who accords respect to his political opponents and because he solicits the ideas and opinions of his advisors then considers them before making decisions.  This leadership approach creates Connection Cultures that keep members of his administration feeling connected so that they give their best efforts, align their behavior with organizational goals and take the risk to communicate information, especially information the president may not want to hear but needs to hears. President Obama might also be described as an “integrative thinker” who employs a “design thinking” approach.  What do you think?

Here are links to resources that will help you consider the wisdom of President Obama’s approach in general and specifically with respect to the decision to commit additional troops to Afghanistan.

David Brook’s NY Times column entitled  “The Analtytic Mode”

Speech I recently gave at Google on Connection Cultures and the “The Force of Connection”

Dean Roger Martin of The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management on the Integrative Thinker and Design Thinking

For some perspective on a president’s decision to increase troops, listen to this Bill Moyer’s program that includes taped conversations President Johnson had with his advisors prior to committing troops to Vietnam.

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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.

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Upcoming Webcasts on Employee Engagement and Social Media

Tomorrow at 11 AM Eastern I will be presenting a 30 minute webcast on Connection Cultures and how they increase employee engagement.  This is just one in a series of webcasts I’m hosting at the Leadership and Employee Engagement channel of BrightTALK.  In the coming weeks a number of great guests will be sharing their insights about employee engagement including Kristina Patrick, Senior Project Manager for Outreach & Business Development at H&R Block,  Larry Ackerman, CEO of The Identity Circle and one of the leading experts today on corporate and individual identity, Marc Effron ,  VP of Talent Management at Avon and head of The New Talent Management Network, and Paul Spiegalman, CEO of Beryl Companies and author of Why Is Everyone Smiling?. Although some of the webcasts are not yet scheduled, you can sign up for my webcast on Connection Cultures and the webcast with Kristina Patrick of H&R Block by clicking employee engagement. 

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Buzz: Marshall Goldsmith Endorsement, Second Printing, Now in Vietnamese, Speaking Engagements

Fired Up or Burned Out continues selling well even though we don’t have a radio, tv or periodical “platform,” as publishing industry people call it. The book has spread mostly by word of mouth. Good things keep happening.  Here are a few.  Next week the second English language printing arrives.  The book was just published in Vietnamese.   Best-selling author and executive coach Marshall Goldsmith recently wrote an endorsement of it.  

I’m also receiving a growing number of invitations to speak, write and do interviews. In the coming months I will speak at several companies as well as at the American Management Association, the Wharton Alumni Club, the University of Pennsylvania Club,  the Marketing Executives Networking Group, the Advanced Learning Institute,  AthenaOnline and the Society for Human Resource Management.  Articles I authored or about our work were recently published in Chief Learning Officer magazine, The Economic Times, Moving Ahead, and Live Mint.  Upcoming articles about our work will be published in M World: The Journal of the American Management Association and Rotman.

What does it all mean?  In addition to the growing word of mouth buzz about Fired Up or Burned Out, the interest in employee engagement is rapidly increasing as companies find it difficult to recruit and retain people in certain areas such as technology, healthcare, retail and oil and gas.  Companies have also told me they find it difficult to recruit and retain Generation Y workers. Interest in increasing employee engagement is just beginning. Increasing labor shortages and the competitive effects of globalization make this inevitable.   

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Post Merger Trap#2: The Unfairness Trap

Over the course of my career I’ve had the good fortune to have been involved in several mergers. At first, I was fascinated by the process of identifying a compelling rationale for combining companies, negotiating the deal, planning the integration of people and systems and then executing the plan. The dizzying array of tasks that must be accomplished to complete a merger is challenging to say the least. In time, however, I learned that even greater challenges arose after the investment bankers and lawyers had packed up their briefcases and moved on to the next deal.