I Hope You Dance

Sometimes when I need to clear my head I like to get in my car and go for a drive. Somewhere off the beaten track in the country or along the coast. When I do that I like to listen to music. I have absolutely no talent in that arena. I can't write music, play an instrument, or sing a note; but boy I appreciate good music. It tells a story.

As I was driving yesterday I had a chance to listen again to one of my favorite tunes I Hope You Dance by country star Leanne Womack. The setting of the song is a mother singing to her very young children about the things they will face and the choices they will encounter and her wish that "if you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance." In the song she explores things like falling in love, staying true to your principles, and recognizing your relative place in the universe.

I think this is some of what people like Daniel Pink are referring to when they talk about flow, or when Seth Godin talks about each of pursuing our art. Flow as I have discussed previously is that spectacular place where our destination is clear, the balance between effort and result is in harmony and we have the autonomy to pursue of our own volition. I wonder if it was also this goal that the Founding Fathers meant when they talked about "the pursuit of happiness" and the concept of personal competency; that balance of the right and responsibility to be competent and self reliant.

As Ms. Rimes sings there is no guarantee built into this pursuit, it is the right and the decision to pursue the journey that is important.

I have to say when I read statistics that say that 55% of Americans are dissatisfied in their jobs, only 30% describe themselves as engaged, and we are spending $5 trillion on turnover and another $200 billion on "presenteeism" it doesn't sound like too many people are "dancing".

I wonder if creating engaged environments is a way to let people "dance"? I keep reading that clear expectations, respect, fairness and equity, and shared values are the keys to engagement and productivity. Is it just me or does this kind of sound like the "dancing" that both Leanne and the Founding Fathers had in mind?

What if those of us who build organizations or lead them built the opportunity to "dance" into our models? You know things like clear expectations, balanced feedback, autonomy, respect, and connection to something larger.

It seems to me that the Industrial Revolution, Frederick Taylor, and the Calvinist work ethic don't leave much room for "dancing". I think it is also okay for "dancing" to include work. Although I have seen dancers of all kinds demonstrate sprezzatura I recognize the practice and hard work that went into achieving that level of performance. It isn't for the faint hearted.

Maybe I have stretched my metaphors too broadly, but I have decided to heed Leanne's advice and look for my opportunities to "dance" and to encourage others to "dance" as well.

So I guess my wish for all of you is that "if you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance"........

Do Try This At Home!

I know for years we have encouraged people to think global and act local, but I want to explore a different paradigm with you.

As you know I am extremely passionate about the concept of creating engaged environments and strong employment brands. Often what I hear from people is " that's great Mark, but I am a small business with a small work force and small budget". The other thing I hear is "how"?

I came across a couple of pieces earlier this week that I thought were nothing short of brilliant in explaining both why and how this is relevant to small business.

Paul Mitchell, the brilliant Australian social scientist www.thehumanenterprise.com.au, shared some things that both resonated with me and were immediately applicable to businesses without regard to their size.

• The first thing that Mitchell did was describe leadership in a simple, but very compelling way. A leader excites their followers to exceptional performance. This definition is especially relevant because performance and effort are what engagement is ultimately about. Not happiness, not "satisfaction", but performance. Those others factors maybe contributors, but at the end of the day we need results.

The next thing that Mitchell talked about were the four key elements that every business should build into their "value proposition":

• Great leaders focus on followers. Mitchell and I share the belief that relationships are the "glue" in organizations. Truly effective leaders do things with people, not to people. With their employees, with their customers, with their suppliers, with their community.
• Build a sense of community. Following that same theme leaders understand they are part of a community and they invest in it. They build and nurture relationships on a foundation of trust and respect. They exchange value and values not transactions.
• Be yourself, but with more skill. Mitchell calls this authenticity. Everyone has allowable weaknesses, his point is to focus on your strengths and core competencies. Seek out other relationships internally and externally that complement your skill sets and offering.
• Focus on what matters. Mitchell suggests that we look for significance in ourselves and others. Find what you and others do right and celebrate it whether they are an employee, a customer, a neighbor, or a stranger. Connect them to the larger community and the larger context. We are a village, not an island.
• Build the excitement. There is an old amusing expression "if you are excited, you might want to let your face know". This speaks precisely to Mitchell's earlier definition of leadership. Be excited and share excitement. If you are not excited and don't believe in "you", how can you expect others to?

Added to this wisdom from over the "pond" I had a chance to see some results from the national survey and initiative on engagement from the U.K. that showed similar things. The country wide study found that there are four elements that build and sustain the engaged environment:

• Listening
• Treatment
• Coaching
• Role and role modeling

Once again it comes down to relationship. Listening and treatment speaks to my guiding principle of respect. Coaching and role speak to the principle of the big picture and autonomy. Role modeling speaks to authenticity and values. The British study also found that when leadership commits to these behaviors they become "viral", they spread through the organization both formally and informally.

By the way they did examine compensation as well and what they found was again consistent. Money may initially attract, but the most important qualities of compensation are perceived equity and fairness. So the short story is if you do compensation well it is a break even, it won't detract from engagement. If you do it badly it will destroy your foundation. Once again we see the tie back to relationship that once we get past survival mode it is about fairness and equity, not dollars.

So when you think about building and reinforcing your brand, be sure you include these elements. The interesting thing is you don't need a big budget or large staff and yes, you can do this at home......

"Lost" Opportunity

It is interesting to have the historic vote on health care in the background as I muse about this. Many opponents of the model being proposed by the Administration talk about the trillion dollars it will cost to fund the program. As a counterpoint I look at the following situation:

My readings and research tell me that we "lose" $5 trillion annually to the direct costs of employee turnover. Additional research indicates that we lose another $200 billion annually to "presenteeism"; the spending on health benefits related to stress, lost productivity due to employees dealing with personal issues at work, and the difference between contributions from employees operating at full versus marginal productivity. I saw research recently that said in addition to those costs we send over $100 billion annually on training and development in corporate America and yet less than 10% of those dollars result in meaningful and sustained change.

My math has never been my strength, but it would seem that the "lost" opportunity that these costs represent approaches five and a half trillion dollars in the U.S. economy annually. So if we addressed some of these we could pay for health care five times over and have money left over to address other critical issues like maybe education, homeless folks, and other similar societal issues. So what am I missing?

Our current economic system has retreated in a way to a kind of capitalistic feudalism. The industrial revolution was largely based on "dumbing down" tasks and activities to make them simpler and therefore more "efficient". The skills required to perform these tasks decreased and correspondingly so did the wages. Technology provide even further assistance, machines and "systems" can do what people used to do cheaper, faster, and many times more efficiently. In exchange for "compliance" we offered employees a certain degree of economic security. Then a world economy happened. Other economies began using "our" systems combined with their own enhancements and lower wages and we lost our competitive advantage. Our solution in many cases was outsourcing to these economies. At the root we forgot to include people in our "solutions", and now we are paying for it.

Research about engagement demonstrates that the U.S. economy is operating at about 30% of its potential efficiency. Before other economies gloat too much I would point out that this puts us in the top quartile.

Organizations that have a well developed engagement strategy enjoy significant advantages in productivity, profitability, and sustainability. Those terms sound pretty capitalistic to me.

Engagement is not measured exclusively by employee "satisfaction" or tenure. It is not a short term strategy or for the faint hearted. It also requires to examine and rebuild our relationships between: employer and employed, "vendor" and customer, and organization and community. We need to examine how we hire, how we train, how we reward, how we communicate, and most importantly how we relate to and value one another. The upside is that properly executed we can recapture some of those trillions and address compelling issues and not spend anymore money.

Is is just me or does that "value proposition" sound interesting? So I would ask again:

• If not now when?
• If not us then who?

Looking forward to your thoughts......

Finding "Flow"

Lately as you have probably noticed I have been talking and blogging a lot about things like sprezzatura and congruency. I think perhaps as the title of this piece implies I am pining to find my "flow".

Seth Godin, Daniel Pink and others talk about flow, that place where everything is clicking and hours just seem to disappear. It may happen at work, when you are enjoying an athletic activity, or the company of others. We have all experienced it and it is what "brings us back".

I kind of like to think of engagement as flow on an organizational level. Groups of people who become immersed in what we are doing and enjoying it to the point that the processes and the results blur. We see the value and the values alignment and so we provide our discretionary effort, that last bit that puts us over the top.

I don't think that organizations or individuals can maintain a state of flow constantly, but I think we can provide environments where we see it and experience it frequently. As I allude to I think it is much more about providing an environment than "direction".

Godin describes that each of us has our "art" embedded" in us somewhere. It doesn't mean we were born to paint or make music or even be a crafts person of some kind, but there is something we were born to do.

I think I like like Godin because of two primary reasons above others:

• Like me he feels like Frederick W. Taylor, the "father" of scientific management, contributed to a model that has repressed the human spirit for multiple generations
• He is one of the only other authors I have read of late that actually draws upon and and mentions Monty Roberts, the original "horse whisperer", and his concept of "joining up" rather than compliance as a model for interpersonal and organizational relationships.

As you know I feel like concepts like lean manufacturing, six sigma, and others are inherently self limiting because they do not take into account the "human" dimension. You don't see anywhere in those models where they talk about art or flow or sprezzatura. It is about consistency and numbers and process. Probably makes my friend Frederick Taylor orgasmic in his grave!

I am pleased when I see that the younger generations are demanding more of the opportunity to find "flow". They call it different things like work life balance, and autonomy, or others; but at the root they are seeking if not demanding environments that provide them with at least that opportunity.

So I guess at the end of the day whether you want to call it "flow", or sprezzatura, or congruency, or engagement why are we so afraid of it? The "numbers" show that how ever you label it the results in key performance areas are vastly superior to the "old" ways of doing things.

Isn't it time to embrace a new model- especially when we can see the "proof in the pudding"?

Achieving Spezzatura

I enjoy Seth Godin. He challenges you and conventional wisdom and pushes you to examine your life and expectations.

As I have mentioned previously I recently finished his new book - Linchpins, about the people who are really the most critical in our organizations. Godin argues and I agree that the most important skills in any organization are the skills it takes to bind people together and convert them from a group into a team with a shared vision and goals. He also points out that linchpins don't value compliance very much. They value their "art" and the work. Unfortunately our current system has managed to institutionalize compliance in almost every aspect of our society from education to the world of work. He goes so far as to say the educational system was built to provide an army of compliant serfs to staff our "factories"; factories not just in terms of manufacturing, but computer programming and administrative functions. Anything where standardization and "process" are king.

He also argues that this standardization hurts rather than helps in the long term. When I look at the level of engagement world wide coupled with turnover and job dissatisfaction I am inclined to agree.

Sprezzatura is an Italian word that translates into being able to do your craft without a lot of visible effort- with grace and elan rather than sweating and grunting. It probably causes people with a strong Calvinist ethic to writhe uncomfortably in their chair.

When I watched the women's figure skating competition for the gold medal I think sprezzatura was what I saw exhibited by the young woman from Korea, it was not just that she performed a brilliant routine it was that she was so graceful and elegant you almost forgot how difficult those moves were to accomplish.

My personal goal is to achieve sprezzatura in my work. It has caused me issues in my "corporate life". I have actually had more than one supervisor criticize me because it didn't look like I was working "hard" enough. I asked them if there was an issue with my work or output and they indicated there wasn't, but one actually commented, "I never see you sweat".

I like the idea of organizations and people I work with experiencing sprezzatura, the work is performed and expectations are met , but in such a way that it seems effortless and elegant. It creates an opportunity for engagement not only for those doing the "work", but those enjoying the benefit.

Commitment or engagement is where employees "join up" rather than comply. They come into their organizations and their lives with a connection to both the work and the vision of the organization. They are in congruence. The studies say that this engagement can be correlated to higher results and benefit all key performance indicators. Maybe in some ways these organizations are allowing their employees to enjoy a level of Sprezzatura.

So I would leave you with a couple of thoughts:

• What would sprezzatura look like for you personally?
• Would you rather have your employees work hard, or achieve sprezzatura?

I know what my answers are......