Employee engagement – Page 22 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

March 19, 2020

Quiet reading

Following on from yesterday’s post, here are some suggestions for reading when things are quieter. Hopefully the weather will also be fine enough by then to do this out in the fresh air:

What to Do when It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn). Seth Godin. Available from Porchlight books.
The Three Ways of Getting Things Done. Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in organizations. Gerald Fairtlough. Available from the Triarchy Press.
Change the Game: Share the Work. Building a business that works better for everyone (especially you). Kirsten Gibbs. Available from The Endless Bookcase. Or come to my virtual book launch on the 7th April, and get your own signed copy!
The Checklist Manifesto. How to get things right. Atul Gawande. Available from Profile Books.
Holacracy. The revolutionary management system that abolishes hierarchy. Brian J. Robertson. Available from Penguin.
A Beautiful Constraint. How to transform your limitations into advantages, and why its everyone’s business. Adam Morgan & Mark Barden. Available from Wiley.

Especially though I like today’s post from Corporate Rebels. The Ultimate Remote Work Policy?

Everything above is about supporting and enabling that, on both sides.

January 30, 2020

Aversion to new kinds of food is an instinct that kicks in for humans at around 2 years old. It’s a safety mechanism, evolved to protect the species. Just when they start toddling about, beyond the immediate reach of adults, children become extremely wary of whatever goes into their mouth.

As all parents know, this causes huge problems, when you’re just trying to get them all fed properly. This wariness can fossilise into a refusal to try anything new, leading to a choice between becoming what my mum used to call ‘A Marks and Spencer cafeteria’, or turning mealtimes into battles.

A non-stressful way to handle this wariness, is to give it its due attention, and give children time to overcome it themselves. Instead of putting new foods in front of them and expecting them to try them immediately, you introduce new foods as part of play.

Playing with carrots, broccoli, blueberries, with no expectation of having to eat them seems to release a child’s natural curiosity, and from painting with beetroot, it’s a small step to tasting it. Before you know it, your children are happy to try new things, mealtimes are enjoyable again, and you’re cooking the same meal for everyone.

Once you understand why children get fussy about what they eat and take it seriously, the right approach becomes obvious.

As I was watching this on TV, I wondered whether a similar approach might work with adults and work. Perhaps, if we can find ways of letting people play with changes, with no obligation to make them, we might unleash their natural curiosity and creativity and so not only end up with happier people, but better changes too.

January 29, 2020

Sanity

Listening to Start the Week on Monday, I heard Grayson Perry give a brilliant definition of sanity:

“Sanity is being all of yourself, to everyone, all of the time. Not schizophrenic or chameleon-like.”

Authenticity follows on from this: “Authenticity means bringing all of yourself to bear on a topic” – in other words, bringing your whole self to the work.

So, if it feels like your job might be driving you insane, you could be right.

January 23, 2020

Bring your whole self to work

Conventional economic theory views human beings as rational seekers of pleasure and avoiders of pain – ‘homo economicus’. We must be forced to work by the threat of starvation, while at the same time we must be persuaded to gratify every passing whim in order to boost consumption and profits.

Asking people to “Bring your whole self to work” is an acknowledgment that this view simply isn’t true.

But sometimes I do wish that people would respond to this request as ‘homo economicus’:

“Pay me for my whole self then.”

Take a closer look at Bentham’s ‘Springs of Action’ here.

November 26, 2019

The power of promise

Your Promise of Value drives everything you do, and the way you do everything.

Today, I can’t think of a better way to emphasise this than to share an example:

Hiut Denim Co. makes jeans. They aim to make some of the best jeans in the world, employing some of the best jeans-makers in the world, for creative people around the world.

Everyone in Hiut Denim Co. knows who they are for. They know why they are in business. And that drives how they do everything.

Watch the power it gives them.

Including how they attract shareholders.

October 28, 2019

Purpose

If there is one thing that human beings like better than making their own individual dent in the universe, it’s being part of something that promises to make an even bigger dent.

We crave purpose and meaning in our lives, and if we don’t get it from work, we look elsewhere for it.

‘Work’ becomes merely the means of achieving some of our ‘hygiene factors’ – a roof over our heads, food on the table – the things that enable us to pursue our purpose elsewhere. In which case, ‘work’ probably doesn’t get our full attention, or our best energy.

One response is to starve people into spending more and more time ‘in work’, in order to simply acquire the basics. That’s how you end up with a productivity paradox.

Much better, for everyone, to offer work with purpose.

October 9, 2019

Shopping

Yesterday evening I picked up my second ever online grocery order from Greenwich Pier. It was more expensive than buying the same stuff from Ocado, but not eye-wateringly so.

What I bought:

Coffee beans, chocolate, olives with lemon, olives with garlic, almonds and honey.
A contribution to the restoration of the Raybel – a historic Thames barge that will be used in future drop-offs along the Thames.
Support for small, organic growers and producers across Europe and in South America, so they can carry on treating their land, their crops and their people right.
A contribution to another income stream for the schooner Gallant and other ships like her, so that more people can enjoy sailing in her, and more people can buy goods shipped by her.
Support for New Dawn Traders and the Sail Cargo Alliance they are part of.
A contribution to another way of doing things.

We waited, in the open air for a good 10 minutes before my shopping arrived – far longer than I’ve ever waited at my favourite bugbear, the supermarket checkout – but I didn’t mind. Funny that.

We never buy ‘just stuff’. We buy what we think it means for us. Sometimes what we think it means and what it actually does are the same thing.

And that makes us ‘consumers’ more powerful than we realise.

October 8, 2019

Juggling

Jugglers make life difficult for themselves on purpose. For our entertainment. So we can marvel at their coordination and dexterity.

Business owners juggle because they haven’t realised yet that the balls can be self-powered and self-organising.

Or that enabling this is an even more impressive act.

October 4, 2019

Unscripted

Too often we think that treating customers the same way means putting them through the same mechanical process. In doing so we mistake customers for widgets. We also mistake our staff for widgets.

Much better to exploit the possibilities offered by human beings to create processes that are consistent without being mechanical.

The trick is to think about what must be covered as part of the process, then find a way to help the human being running that process to remember that, while giving them freedom as to how they cover it.

Take a phone call for example. Rather than scripting a sales or customer service call, why not create a simple prompt sheet, that lets the person making the call remember what must be covered, while letting them cover it as part of a natural conversation with whoever is on the other end of the phone. I’ve written an e-book showing you how.

Both sides of the conversation will feel more natural, and that makes both sides much happier to make and receive your calls.

October 1, 2019

Not just for customers

Your Promise of Value encompasses how you behave as a business, the benefits you offer prospects and deliver to customers, and the relationships you create with customers over time. In a way, it represents “what the business is here to do”.

As such, it is isn’t only for prospects and customers. A Promise of Value also describes how the founders and their team have decided to fulfill some of their own needs for agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and community. And as such, it creates a framework around which people who work in it as employees can fit their own fulfillment of those needs.

The ideal for a business is to kill two birds with one stone – so that making and keeping it’s promises to customers simultaneously delivers fulfillment for the people who work in it. But that is hard to achieve (and may not be desirable – where would change come from?)

So as a business you have to accept that not all employees will want the same thing. Some employees will want all these needs fulfilled by work. Others will use what work gives them (perhaps money, mastery) to fulfill other needs (perhaps purpose, community, agency) outside work. That means that offering multiple opportunities for fulfillment that are consistent with your Promise of Value is the key to creating an engaged workforce.

In other words, your Promise of Value is not just for your customers, it’s for your employees too. And both promises need to be kept if you want to succeed as a business.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Employee engagement