An article appearing in The New York Times entitled “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction” makes it clear that the company has big problems stemming from internal rivalries. We teach that organizations that sustainable superior performance = task excellence + relationship experience. So often organizations die because the failure to achieve relationship excellence sabotages task excellence. Keep that in mind when you read the article and it will become clear that Microsoft is heading down that path.
Tag Archives: team building
Employee Engagement: Why Now, More Than Ever
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.)
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.
Employee Engagement: Resources for the Movement
Here are resources I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in getting up to speed and understanding employee engagement as well as staying plugged-in to the emerging employee engagement marketplace of ideas. I will continue to add to this post as I consider new resources and I encourage you to add resources you highly recommend to the comments section below.
Honoring Dr. King: When U2 Wouldn’t Back Down
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Attributed to Edmund Burke
In honor of the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m posting an article I wrote that was published in The Economic Times in India and in the American Management Association’s Moving Ahead. The article in part describes the time before a concert in Arizona when U2 received a letter that stated Bono, the band’s lead singer, would be killed if the band played the song Pride, which honors the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI told U2 it believed the threat was not a hoax.
Although I don’t know for certain, I suspect that Bono reflected on Dr. King’s choice to speak out in the face of death threats. Dr. King had the courage of his convictions and was willing to risk death to push back the evils of prejudice. Now, Bono had to decide if he too was willing to speak out against evil and risk death because of it.
Employee Engagement Conferences
On October 26-28, I’ll be the chairperson for the Human Capital Institute’s Employee Engagement Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. HCI has lined up some great speakers for the event. I hope you’ll check it out and join us.
As a reminder, another great conference on employee engagement will be held in Chicago on October 14. “Think Tank” is sponsored by the Forum for Performance Management and Measurement, the research center for the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. At this conference, I’ll be giving a keynote speech on the links between leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation. You can learn more about the program by clicking on employee engagement.
MichaelLeeStallard.com Recognized
Last week I received an email notifying me that my blog was selected as one of the top 100 leadership blogs by Bestuniversities.com.
New York-Presbyterian Recognized for Employee Engagement
Congratulations to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for being recognized as the top academic medical center in terms of employee engagement. I wrote an article about New York-Presbyterian entitled “Strengthening Human Value in Organizational Cultures” that appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Leader to Leader. You can read about it in a blog post of mine entitled “Amazing Things are Happening Here.”
Jim Blasingame and I discuss employee engagement on his radio program
Last Friday I was a guest on my friend Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated radio program entitled “The Small Business Advocate.” In the interview Jim and I talked about employee engagement and why leaders need to clearly communicate their vision and values to the people they are responsible for leading. This is especially important during difficult economic times. You can hear the interview by clicking on the “listen now” below.